Gilbert Adair
Gilbert Adair's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Film Comment Magazine,
Sight and Sound,
Time Out,
Independent on Sunday,
Monthly Film Bulletin
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 76% | Bulworth (1998) |
Beatty is to be congratulated on even attempting to prick America's conscience in these conservative times, but the real reason for seeing it is the panache with which it captures the irresistible flash and filigree of American politics.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 66% | Tea with Mussolini (1999) |
It's a lazy, thoroughly old- fashioned entertainment... Yet it's also unexpectedly watchable and unpretentious -- campy, too, if you're into that kind of thing -- and it communicates a sense that everyone involved had a super time making it.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 83% | Crna macka, beli macor (Black Cat, White Cat) (1999) |
It's like a novel written entirely in italics, every single sentence of which ends with an exclamation mark. As there are people of whom it's said that they don't know their own strength, Kusturica is a film-maker who doesn't know his own brilliance.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 71% | The Idiots (Idioterne) (Dogma 95) (2000) |
Not everyone's cup of tea and, indeed, not a cup of tea at all, but one of those extremely rare films that aren't content to leave the cinema as they found it.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 55% | Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) |
From the ridiculous title, with those two M's gummily stuck together in the middle, to the uniformly atrocious performances, from the incomprehensible plot to the sluggish pacing, The Phantom Menace is an unsalvageable disaster.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 71% | Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom) (1979) |
It's a masterpiece, still the most convincing representation of human cruelty in the history of the cinema.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 92% | Memento (2000) |
If the prospect of having to do some of the work yourself doesn't alarm you, then Nolan's first American film is well worth catching, a thriller which is for once authentically Borgesian, to use an overworked qualifier.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 90% | In the Mood for Love (2001) |
The problem with In the Mood for Love is that its imagery has far too many face-cards and not enough twos and fives and eights, which, boring as they are, nevertheless constitute the indispensable nitty-gritty of narrative.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 81% | The Mask of Zorro (1998) |
The problem with Martin Campbell's new movie is that, even though by no means a disgrace, it's finally just another inflated big nothing.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 98% | Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) (1999) |
It's the film we, Almodvar's faithful fans, have been waiting for, the film we knew he had, as they say, in him.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| No Score Yet | Aprile (1998) |
There's really no getting away from it. As an actor, Moretti is a ham. Parma ham, maybe, but ham nevertheless.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 89% | A Clockwork Orange (1971) |
It's one of those meant-to-be films whose refutation of every conceivable criticism has been pre-programmed into the work itself.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 93% | Being John Malkovich (1999) |
It's a film, indeed, of such jaw-dropping originality that its flaws -- and it definitely has some -- count for far less than they otherwise would.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 79% | Fight Club (1999) |
Just when it's supposedly getting to grips with its theme, the movie goes utterly haywire and becomes yet another brainless, humourless bone-cruncher.‐ Independent on Sunday
Read More | Posted Nov 27, 2017
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| 20% | Sextette (1978) |
Sextette is, of course, a bad film, shakily acted, carelessly written (from "a play by Mae West") and directed without an iota of style by Ken Hughes. What is striking, however, is the wholly relative degree of its badness.‐ Film Comment Magazine
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2017
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| No Score Yet | City on Fire (1978) |
The attractions of City on Fire may be encapsulated thus: Fire destroys city. Not many stars killed. Except that 'dull', as criticism, scarcely does justice to the ludicrous contrivance of this disaster movie.‐ Monthly Film Bulletin
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2015
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| 69% | The Dogs of War (1980) |
Completing the tableau is the requisite whiff of Boy's Own Fascism, too diffuse to spoil our entertainment but tangible nevertheless.‐ Monthly Film Bulletin
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2015
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| No Score Yet | Moment by Moment (1978) |
Critics are fond of attributing a film's badness to some hypothetical computer: this truly terrible movie might have been made by HAL in his most maudlin "Bicycle-built-for-two" mood, as the plugs were being pulled out.‐ Monthly Film Bulletin
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2015
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| 33% | North Sea Hijack (ffolkes) (Assault Force) (1980) |
Such eccentric coating on basically humdrum material is symptomatic of the film as a whole.‐ Monthly Film Bulletin
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2015
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| 50% | La Luna (1979) |
In elegance, rapidity of execution and perfection of expression, Bertolucci is the cinema's Stendhal.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2015
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| 64% | The Outsiders (1983) |
One of the most overtly aesthetic, art-for-art's-sake films in Hollywood's history, a faux-naïf Pre-Raphaelite mural in which angels with dirty faces but immaculately pure hearts burn with a hard, gemlike flame before being snuffed out in their prime.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2015
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| No Score Yet | That Sinking Feeling (1979) |
Its too frequent lapses into nudgingly facetious whimsy... tend to swamp the more delicate trouvailles.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2015
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| 93% | Gregory's Girl (1981) |
Within its modest narrative framework, Gregory's Girl strikes me as a well-nigh flawless comedy.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 2, 2015
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| 56% | The Mystery of Oberwald (Il Mistero di Oberwald) (1981) |
Mine is a minority opinion, but I am convinced that his experiments with video and colour will make Il Mistero di Oberwald the Becky Sharp of cinema's long-promised and long-deferred electronic era.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 1, 2015
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| No Score Yet | Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations) (1984) |
Straub and Huillet have filmed Kafka in unslavishly faithful fashion, with a serenity strangely belying the venerable controversy which still cramps the cinematic adaptation of classic texts.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 1, 2015
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| 100% | Stalker (1979) |
With this film, Tarkovsky re-entrusts to the medium a responsibility which in the West is upheld, if at all, only by documentaries (and by a rare maverick work like Pasolini's Salò): that of testifying, of showing.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 1, 2015
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| 82% | Ginger e Fred (Ginger and Fred) (1986) |
The scenes in and around the television studio, as the two forlorn old troupers come to terms with the punkish fauna of the 1980s, are -- for this director -- strangely verveless and unfocused.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 1, 2015
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| 98% | E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) |
Spielberg would seem to be groping towards a virtual theology of space, space as Heaven, offering solace to a world which has foolishly renounced its traditional God but still aches to extend its own spiritual frontiers.‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Aug 1, 2015
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| 88% | Carmen (Bizet's Carmen ) (1984) |
The organising flaw of this Carmen, which turns it into one long longueur, lies at the nub of the medium's specificity - of what it means to make, or be, a film.‐ Monthly Film Bulletin
Read More | Posted Aug 1, 2015
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| 94% | Amadeus (1984) |
What Amadeus presents us with is an unexpected and strangely moving spectacle: a Roadrunner cartoon in which Wily Coyote... ends at last by stopping his fleet-footed foe dead in his tracks.‐ Monthly Film Bulletin
Read More | Posted Mar 3, 2015
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| 71% | City of Women (La città delle donne) (1981) |
Only a pinchpenny soul could denigrate the generosity, the sheer fertility of the Maestro's invention in this curate's egg by Fabergé.‐ Time Out
Read More | Posted Jun 24, 2006
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| 100% | Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (Trial of Joan of Arc) (1962) |
The tension generated by juxtaposing such humiliation with the serenely beautiful text (from the transcription of the trial) resolves itself in the unforgettable final image.‐ Time Out
Read More | Posted Mar 25, 2006
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| 100% | The Two of Us (Le vieil homme et l'enfant) (1967) |
The film's good humour and discretion, plus Simon's virtuoso performance, make it never less than watchable.‐ Time Out
Read More | Posted Feb 11, 2006
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| 90% | Sous les Toits de Paris (Under the Roofs of Paris) (1930) |
A miniaturist masterpiece.‐ Time Out
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2006
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