Barry Lyndon (1975)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:49
Fresh:46
Rotten:3
Average Rating:7.8/10
Runtime: 3 hrs 9 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: BARRY LYNDON is Stanley Kubrick's epic costume drama based on William Makepeace Thackeray's picaresque novel. It tells the story of a young rogue who wanders through life getting lost in various... [More]
Starring: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger
Director: Stanley Kubrick
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Reviews for Barry Lyndon
| Tomatometer | Critic | Review | Category |
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 5/5 |
Its story of an 18th-century social climber, adapted from Thackeray, unfolds in Gainsborough-esque landscapes and in rooms lit either by milky-white sunshine or shimmering candle flames. Full Review |
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The film's truly outstanding performance is by Patrick Magee, an actor of terrifying intensity. Full Review |
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5/6 |
One of cinema’s most heartfelt and sustained (it runs over three hours), if cynical, visions of an individual’s powerlessness. Full Review |
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4/5 |
It's a tour de force, with the director pushing the limits of film technology to realise his singular vision, developing new camera lenses to tell this 18th Century cautionary tale with only natural, available light. Full Review |
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5/5 |
It’s a work of technical brilliance and considerable beauty; the slow and deliberate pacing only serves to make Barry’s adventures more fascinating. Full Review |
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4/5 |
Barry Lyndon is something to rediscover. Full Review |
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3/5 |
Director Stanley Kubrick's opulent epic is certainly a feast for the eyes, with every scene beautifully framed and the attention to exquisite detail breathtaking. Full Review |
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5/5 |
You can't tear your eyes from it. Loosely held together by Michael Hordern's drolly ironic narration, it might not catch very much of Thackeray's tone but it creates a world that is sumptuously, even shockingly, vivid. Full Review |
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A |
A bold, experimental screen adaptation, Kubrick's much understood film at the time of its release, is a masterpiece, marking the helmer's meticulous attention to every single frame. Full Review |
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Like all Kubrick films, it's a curiosity, but Barry Lyndon contains more than enough beauty, artistry and hard-won truth to justify its conceits. Full Review |
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4/5 |
Kubrick's superb version of William Thackery's first novel is meticulous and philosophically stimulating but it can leave some audiences unmoved on an emotional level. Full Review |
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A |
It paints a detailed picture of Europe's 18th-century period that could have been drawn by master painters such as Constable, Gainborough and Watteau. Full Review |
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Stanley Kubrick's magisterial Thackeray adaptation now stands as one of his greatest and most savagely ironic films, not to mention one of the few period pieces on celluloid so transporting that it seems to predate the invention of cameras. Full Review |
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4/4 |
Grave, painterly, and bitterly satirical. Full Review |
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Ryan O'Neal's excellent performance captures the shallow opportunism endemic to the title character who is brought down as much by his own flaws as by the mores of the ordered social structure of 18th-century England. Full Review |
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All of Stanley Kubrick's features look better now than when they were first released, but Barry Lyndon, which fared poorly at the box office in 1975, remains his most underrated. It may also be his greatest. Full Review |
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3.5/4 |
Barry Lyndon isn't a great success, and it's not a great entertainment, but it's a great example of directorial vision: Kubrick saying he's going to make this material function as an illustration of the way he sees the world. Full Review |
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5/5 |
A true neglected jewel in the Kubrick crown. Full Review |
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Seeing Barry Lyndon a second time, I found myself charmed by just how funny and lively it is, in an underplayed way, when it just seemed cold the first time around. Full Review |
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The movie's charms are limited to its technical and visual virtuosity and droll voice-over narration. Full Review |
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