Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris
Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:
(Photo Credit: Robin Platzer/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
Publications: The Atlantic, Film Comment Magazine, Observer, Village Voice, New Yorker, Vogue
Critics' Group: National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
65% The Touch (1971) Bergman's psychological intensity, though often disconnected dramatically, grabs our throats with its intimations of unrelieved pain and suffering. - Vogue EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 19, 2020
92% Mon Oncle d'Amérique (1980) With Mon Oncle d'Amérique, however, Resnais is truly resurgent as he reacquaints us with the richness of his paradoxes, the profundity of his playfulness. - Vogue EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 19, 2020
100% Every Man for Himself (Sauve qui peut (la vie)) (1980) Every Man for Himself emerges as an exquisite piece of cinematic music for the restless, harried, disconnected, rootless times in which we live. - Vogue EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 18, 2020
33% Beyond the Law (1967) Unfortunately, Mailer's brand of minimal movie-making remains more interesting to talk around than to talk about. It is not for me to tell him what to do with his time and money, but I can't help wishing aloud that would stop making movies. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 17, 2020
29% What's New, Pussycat? (1965) The best picture of the year thus far, and by far the funniest comedy. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 17, 2019
45% The Cell (2000) Ultimately, the reliance on a dream world tends to reduce suspense and even narrative logic. Thus, everything is possible and nothing is necessary. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 1, 2019
No Score Yet Dangerous Acts (1998) I find mysterious depths of guilt and fear in Dangerous Acts that I cannot fully fathom. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2019
36% 20 Dates (1999) This sort of social Grand Guignol has been done to death in movies, sitcoms and stand-up routines. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2019
22% 8MM (1999) Mr. Cage has become such a wet-eyed purveyor of moral anguish that he makes Mr. Pitt look calm, cool and collected. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2019
54% Cruel Intentions (1999) At this infantile level of appraisal, I suspect that Ms. Gellar and Mr. Phillippe may have a harder time next summer than last. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 21, 2019
84% Barefoot in the Park (1967) The movie is full of physical details that I found impossible to believe. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 30, 2018
25% Casino Royale (1967) Things pick up a little bit when Orson Welles, Peter Sellers, and Woody Allen stumble into the scene, but the total experience remains boringly incoherent. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 30, 2018
88% Five Easy Pieces (1970) A very modern film. Elliptical, absurdist, harshly humorous, convulsively lyrical. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2017
94% Lola (1961) There is something gentle and elusive going on here, and you should catch the movie at long last even if you've seen it before. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 1, 2017
67% Ha-Sodot (The Secrets) (2007) One of the most remarkable movies of the year. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2017
92% To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) "To Kill a Mockingbird" relates the Cult of Childhood to the Negro Problem with disastrous results. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 22, 2016
52% Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) Mr. Lucas is not without a certain technocratic sagacity, but I don't think he's communicating even with the young as astutely as he once did. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2015
90% The Warriors (1979) If the movie is not as dangerous as its detractors claim, neither is it as glorious and memorable as some of its less discriminating admirers would have it. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2015
95% Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Nichols has actually committed all the classic errors of the sophisticated stage director let loose on the unsophisticated movies. For starters, he has underestimated the power of the spoken word in his search for visual pyrotechnics. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 10, 2015
100% The Last Picture Show (1971) At first glance, the movie is a faithful and skillful adaptation of the source, but a second look at both the film and the book reveals some interesting divergences. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 2, 2015
68% Public Enemies (2009) The desperate times in which we suddenly find ourselves ... make Public Enemies seem especially timely. - Film Comment Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 24, 2014
17% Wild Wild West (1999) Forget all the ruinously expensive special effects. They're not worth a minute of your time, much less two hours of mind-boggling mediocrity. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2014
24% Pearl Harbor (2001) The best way to see the movie is as I did: expecting nothing and being pleasantly surprised, and strangely moved, by Mr. Bay's audacity in filming his lovers in end-of-the-world close-ups, however briefly. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted May 28, 2014
79% Politist, adj. (Police, Adjective) (2009) The film proceeds at Detective Cristi's pace, stopping and starting, hiding and emerging, scanning and staring, as the languid camera surveys the dismal neighborhoods with undisguised ennui. - Film Comment Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2013
92% Vincere (2010) Bellocchio encapsulates the long-running mass hysteria of a nation enthralled by the demagogic antics of a now-seeming buffoon. - Film Comment Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2013
75% Octubre (2011) It is through its loving attentiveness to words and silences that the movie draws us closer and closer into its universal theme. - Film Comment Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2013
84% The Ghost Writer (2010) In the total context of Polanski's hard life and grim ordeals ... The Ghost Writer constitutes a miracle of artistic and psychological resilience. - Film Comment Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2013
86% A Clockwork Orange (1971) A painless, bloodless, and ultimately pointless futuristic fantasy. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 6, 2013
94% Patton (1970) George C. Scott's performance cannot be praised highly enough for capturing both the violence and the vulnerability of the Patton personality without degenerating either into vulgar caricature or cardboard sentimentality. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 6, 2013
95% The Birds (1963) Drawing from the relatively invisible literary talents of Daphne DuMaurier and Evan Hunter, Alfred Hitchcock has fashioned a major work of cinematic art, and "cinematic" is the operative term here, not "literary" or "sociological." - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 18, 2013
90% Nashville (1975) I hate to go out on a limb after only one viewing, but Nashville strikes me as Altman's best film, and the most exciting dramatic musical since Blue Angel. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 15, 2013
88% The Candidate (1972) Redford fancies himself so superior to the electoral process that he ends up with a completely fatuous characterization of a politician. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 14, 2013
87% The Graduate (1967) The emotional elevation of the film is due in no small measure to the extraordinarily engaging performances of Anne Bancroft as the wife-mother-mistress, Dustin Hoffman as the lumbering Lancelot, and Katherine Ross as his fair Elaine. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 14, 2013
96% Psycho (1960) Hitchcock is the most-daring avant-garde film-maker in America today. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 8, 2012
98% The Godfather (1972) Brando's triumph and fascination is less that of an actor of parts than of a star galaxy of myths. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 24, 2012
94% L'Avventura (1960) A graduate of Screenwriting 1-2 might dismiss this method as casualness or even carelessness, but every shot and bit of business in L'Avventura represents calculation of the highest order. - Village Voice EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 6, 2010
88% Séraphine (2009) The film is a commendably worthy endeavor, and I am almost ashamed that my ingrained hedonistic attitude toward movies prevents me from recommending Séraphine more enthusiastically. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2009
71% Tetro (2009) Despite all its longueurs and extreme aggravations, Tetro deserves to be seen as the late work of one of the cinema's most accomplished masters of mise-en-scène. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2009
96% Herb & Dorothy (2008) Herb & Dorothy describes and amply illustrates the extraordinary saga of the Vogels, who double-handedly built one of the most important collections of Minimalist and Conceptual Art in history with their modest salaries. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 3, 2009
80% Okuribito (Departures) (2009) The ultimate beauty of the film rests in its symbolic details that bridge the abyss between the living and the dead. As the French might say, it is to make one cry. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 3, 2009
80% Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight (2009) What elevates the film to something more than a talking-heads documentary is the rapport established between Mr. Glaser and Ms. Keys on a project they both saw as a visual and verbal love letter to New York City. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted May 20, 2009
33% Terminator Salvation (2009) I cannot completely condemn a movie that has been very competently written, directed and acted, any more than I can blame Mr. Schwarzenegger for all the woes he has encountered while trying to govern California. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted May 20, 2009
47% Management (2009) In this Springtime of our Discontent, Management offers a bit of sunny but not entirely silly escapism. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted May 13, 2009
63% Adoration (2008) As for Mr. Egoyan, he remains an auteur at the highest level of cinematic creation, and even one of his lesser films, like Adoration, deserves to be seen. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted May 6, 2009
92% La Ventana (The Window) (2008) The Window is not without a certain visual spell that makes it a first-rate artistic achievement. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted May 6, 2009
22% Jazz in the Diamond District (2009) The music, with its infectious energy, together with Ms. Cameron's onstage charisma makes Jazz in the Diamond District well worth seeing. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 29, 2009
40% A Wink and a Smile (2008) A Wink and a Smile struck me as 90 minutes of narcissism with a hyper-feminist slant, and no erotic charge whatsoever. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 29, 2009
96% Revanche (2009) One of the most compelling assemblages of character studies I have seen so far in this too-often-dismal year of moviegoing. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 22, 2009
57% The Soloist (2009) Mr Downey and Mr. Foxx both turn in Oscar-worthy performances in their very strenuous and detail-drenched roles. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 22, 2009
91% Etz Limon (Lemon Tree) (2009) Lemon Tree is well worth seeing as a first-class artistic achievement bridging two civilizations. - Observer EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 15, 2009