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Iris Barry

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

(Photo Credit: Sasha/Stringer/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
The Black Pirate (1926) 100% EDIT “The Black Pirate is wholly -- to steal a phrase from Juno and the Paycock -- a darling film. There is no ostentation, no mock morality, no cheap love-making, no error of taste, and, above all, no stupidity in it.” – The Spectator Mar 23, 2023 Full Review Faust (1926) 91% EDIT “If a film version of Faust is to be consistent, it should not, as this does, totter between the extremes of Flemish art and those of pretty picture postcards.” – The Spectator Oct 7, 2020 Full Review The Lady (1925) 86% EDIT “In [Norma Talmadge's] new piece, The Lady, she has occasional moments of emotional power, and some of the film itself has charm, when it recaptures so quaintly the atmosphere of the long gone music-halls. But it is not a good film.” – The Spectator Apr 14, 2020 Full Review So Big (1924) 75% EDIT “Intelligence, sincere feeling and an elusive kind of beauty distinguish [Colleen Moore's] performance as the little school-mistress turned farmer's wife.” – The Spectator Apr 14, 2020 Full Review Skinner's Dress Suit (1917) EDIT “[Denny's] films are definitely delightful and extremely funny, not farces like those of Lloyd and Keaton, but real, light comedy, from which the plaguey humour of dress suits, dance partners and domestic and business life in general is deftly extracted.” – The Spectator Apr 14, 2020 Full Review EDIT “I warmly recommend What Happened to Jones.” – The Spectator Apr 14, 2020 Full Review Graustark (1925) 83% EDIT “Graustark is a triumph of folly and bathos.” – The Spectator Apr 14, 2020 Full Review EDIT “The film has its own strange power, and it is mercifully large in conception and dignified in treatment.” – The Spectator Feb 15, 2020 Full Review The Threepenny Opera (1931) EDIT “Here is an extravaganza in Hogarthian vein, but dressed out in deliciously exaggerated late 19th century costumes, and set in a romantic London underworld that never was.” – National Board of Review Magazine Sep 21, 2019 Full Review Abraham Lincoln (1924) EDIT “Lincoln's life and his character... are on the heroic scale, and this film has excellently recreated both; but more than that, it has an unaffected simplicity and naturalness very much more powerful than any mock-romance.” – The Spectator Jul 23, 2019 Full Review Mons (1926) EDIT “Mons is a picture in a thousand, one which each single individual should see. It is a purge for apathy and forgetfulness as well as an inspiration.” – The Spectator Jul 23, 2019 Full Review Les aventures extraordinaires de Michel Strogoff (2004) EDIT “This spectacular film from France, with its surging mobs and bloodthirsty incidents, leaves one with a rather mixed impression. It is not a good film, but it is a little enjoyable.” – The Spectator Jul 23, 2019 Full Review Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1924) 38% EDIT “Had it been called anything else it would have seemed a faintly more interesting melodrama than usual on the often reiterated seduction theme. But that it should pretend to be a version of Thomas Hardy's novel is monstrous.” – The Spectator Jul 11, 2019 Full Review Dante's Inferno (1924) EDIT “Now that a powerful American producer, Mr. Fox, has attempted to film the Inferno, we can only sympathize with his crude if sincere desire to give something more dignified to the picture-theatres than their usual fare, and acknowledge that he has failed.” – The Spectator Jul 11, 2019 Full Review EDIT “The Lover of Camille, intended to be a distinctive film, lacks even the constructive skill in which America has no rivals.” – The Spectator Jul 11, 2019 Full Review Ben-Hur (1925) 96% EDIT “There is a real poetry of size and opulence in the film.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review Manon Lescaut (2013) EDIT “A picture which is so packed with visual beauty that one needs to see it several times fully to appreciate its perfection.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review Nell Gwyn (1926) EDIT “It can sincerely be said that it is infinitely brighter and better than the average of our native pictures.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review Variety (1925) 100% EDIT “A grim drama in the life of a troupe of acrobats, it is incomparably acted by Emil Jannings.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review EDIT “There is little enough amusement of any other kind, save what is supplied by sub-titles taken from the veteran farce.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review The Salvation Hunters (1925) EDIT “The Salvation Hunters is an honest thing ; and if it rouses the critical faculties that is a good sign, a proof that the man who made it aimed high, aimed above pleasing the public by drugging it.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review Forbidden Paradise (1924) EDIT “Too often the cinema presents us with a picture of attractive moral laxity, and tags a text at the end. There is no text to Forbidden Paradise, nor was any necessary, for the laxity it shows is not attractive, though depicted with fine wit.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review The Miracle Of The Wolves (1924) EDIT “The Miracle of the Wolves is sound rather than astonishing, though the Louis XL of M. Dullin is superb.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review The Epic of Everest (1924) 100% EDIT “To my mind the great merit of this film is its almost abstract beauty and its direct satisfaction of a human need. It is not art, I know, but it sets an example to those who try to produce pictures which are.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review The Marriage Circle (1924) 100% EDIT “The Marriage Circle may well silence those who claim that the film cannot compare as a dramatic form with the stage-play. For this is at once perfect cinematography and perfect conventional drama.” – The Spectator Jul 2, 2019 Full Review
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