Wendy Michener

Wendy Michener
Wendy Michener's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): Maclean's Magazine
Publications: Maclean's Magazine

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
No Score Yet The Leather Boys (1964) Furie, a former Toronto film-maker, conjures up some marvelously evocative scenes... - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
60% The Group (1966) This all-female society emerges simply as sinister; Lumet never shows why the expectations of these women are so tragically unfulfilled. Either he just doesn't understand or else The Group is one big put-down of women's colleges. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
No Score Yet McGuire, Go Home! (The High Bright Sun) (1965) There is lots of shooting and fighting in The High, Bright Sun, but when you can't spot the bad guys, you don't really care who does what to whom. And that's the end of suspense. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
50% Die! Die! My Darling! (1965) If you like this sort of picture, it's worth seeing for Tallulah alone. She's terrific. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
No Score Yet Masquerade (A Shabby Tiger) (Operation Masquerade ) (1965) Masquerade is also pretty frank about its origins...none of it is as convincing, as inevitable as the plots bottled in Bond. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
No Score Yet Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) ... the whole picture lacks the feeling for period and social differences that distinguished Tom Jones. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
82% Othello (1965) There are, of course, many ways to film a staged play, and some are so crude as to be of little value even for the record. Fortunately Othello has been made both wisely and well. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
No Score Yet John Goldfarb, Please Come Home (1965) Funny? Now and then. If you happen to catch the trailer you will have seen all the best bits. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
80% The Tomb of Ligeia (1965) The latest and best of the Price/Corman/Allan Poe chiller-dillers relies less on Gothic gimmicks and more on odd quirks of the human personality, all set in the ravishingly English setting of an abandoned abbey. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
97% Major Dundee (1965) Charlton Heston has never been better or more vigorous. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
62% Cheyenne Autumn (1964) Cheyenne Autumn is a blockbuster of a Western-but unfortunately also a bust. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
50% A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) Charlie Chaplin's A Countess From Hong Kong is a failure because of the spoken word. The storyline is as basic and clear as the situations in Chaplin's two-reclers. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
86% The Taming of the Shrew (1967) The Bard has not been badly served. The Taming has a justness and balance to it that puts it up into the ranks of the best of Shakespearean films. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
100% Mary Poppins (1964) The animation sequences suffer from Disney's animals-are-just-like people coyness, and the plot is too goody-good for words. But even the worst parts are saved by an air of innocent enjoyment. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
94% My Fair Lady (1964) There are other good things to be said about the picture, but it fails in the one really crucial area. A musical that doesn't communicate physical joy is as pointless, it seems to me, as a tragedy that fails to communicate sadness. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
100% The Ipcress File (1965) It does smack a little of Bond-style technical gimmickry. But the spectacular violence and playboy-style sex of the Bond series has been avoided without any loss of entertainment value. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
No Score Yet Once a Thief (1965) A movie that could easily have been written by a computer and was photographed by a cameraman with the new-wave shakes. The dialogue is as familiar as family arguments. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
67% Darling (1965) ...it's a quality Darling catches perfectly. "The research period was enormously entertaining," he says, and so is the movie. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
78% Zorba the Greek (1964) As a whole the picture doesn't come off, partly because Quinn completely overshadows Alan Bates. Partly, too, because so much is unexplained. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
88% Help! (1965) Fresher than anything else around. Help! the second Beatle flick, is not so much a movie as a way of life. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
No Score Yet Casanova '70 (1965) A delicious, beautifully staged and witty comedy. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
No Score Yet A Very Special Favor (1965) The basic plot is nasty enough, but the dialogue is even nastier. As usual, all this escapes censorship under false pretences, not the least of which is that A Very Special Favor is funny. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
83% Walk, Don't Run (1966) The picture already seems like last year's movie, and in a way it is. The match-making plot is taken from an earlier housingshortage comedy called The More The Merrier. Even Cary Grant is a disappointment. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
67% Arabesque (1966) Arabesque [is] a slick and highly entertaining spy flick. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2019
15% The Oscar (1966) iI's all one big, crushing bore. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 2, 2019
86% Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) Like Hitchcock in Psycho, Preminger is playing upon our fears of the irrational, seemingly motiveless crime. But Preminger's film is at once more effective and more sadistic. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 2, 2019
No Score Yet The Trap (The Mad Trapper) (1966) Its naïveté would have been perfectly acceptable in 1935, say, or even in 1948 when so many of the popular French-Canadian serials were filmed, but it's very hard to accept as a product of Canadian film-making in 1966. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 27, 2019
90% The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) It doesn't matter if the whole thing is improbable, because Aldrich keeps things moving, keeps up our interest in who will survive, and how. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
No Score Yet Life at the Top (1965) Life At The Top is not a very likable film, partly because the treatment is heavy-handed, and partly because Joe's self-disgust turns everything sour... - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
No Score Yet Madame X (1966) Lana Turner's stinker to remember. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
47% The Loved One (1965) A suicidal comedy embalmed in its own sick jokes... - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
83% Doctor Zhivago (1965) ...still the best epic around... - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
78% The 10th Victim (La Decima vittima) (The Tenth Victim) (1965) The Tenth Victim, Elio Petri's ingenious combination of science-fiction and spy-adventure, marked the end of a trend. Ursula Andress, spies, and op-art decors have never been the same. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
63% The Wild Angels (1966) The Wild Angels, a tale of revenge and violent fun in a California motorcycle gang, is one of the first commercial pictures to show the direct influence of U.S. underground movies, most of which are too far-out for general distribution. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
84% What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) What's Up Tiger Lily? Woody Allen, that's what. His wild sub-version of a routine Japanese spy picture is the surprise hip hit of the year. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
67% Morgan! (Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment) (1966) Karel Reisz's madcap comedy is so funny it hurts. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
95% Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? is easily the most sensational film of the year. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
96% The Fortune Cookie (1966) Walter Matthau leers into the lens with loathsome brilliance while Jack Lemmon gives him a run for his money, pirouetting behind him in a wheel-chair. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
86% The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966) The Russians Are Coming is not the best comedy of the year but it stands out in a lean period for good old American slapstick. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
No Score Yet The Appaloosa (1966) The Appaloosa combines a British feeling for style and manners with that wide-open North American vigor. But the snow scenes are strictly from Canada. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
98% Repulsion (1965) Repulsion is far more shocking, in fact, than anything Hitchcock ever made, because it can produce in the spectator the added shock of self-recognition, the hallmark of a real artwork. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
No Score Yet A High Wind in Jamaica (1964) High Wind In Jamaica is a pleasantly old-fashioned sort of adventure. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
No Score Yet Mirage (1965) Mirage has all the fascination of trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without any idea of what the picture is going to look like when you're through. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
100% The Shop On Main Street (Obchod na Korze) (1966) Paul Newman makes an altogether likable person out of the central character, and I soon became so engrossed in watching him track down the daddy-nappers... - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
83% The Pawnbroker (1965) If The Pawnbroker is nasty, the reason is that director Sidney Lumet consistently overplays his hand. Apart from a magnificent virtuoso performance by Rod Steiger - that incredibly versatile actor - the movie has nothing to do with art. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
No Score Yet Dear Heart (1964) Geraldine Page is clearly a most desirable woman, so they have given her the handicap of a poisonous personality, and most men in the audience may wonder why on earth Glenn Ford, of all people, wants to spend the rest of his life with her. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
No Score Yet One Potato, Two Potato (1964) It is pleasantly shocking to watch the very real face of Barbara Barrie with its slightly off-centre prettiness and terrifying vulnerability. And the Negro in-laws (Robert Earle Jones and Vinette Carroll) have an authenticity that speaks for itself. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
91% Georgy Girl (1966) Georgy Girl is from the life's-a-giggle school of comedy, and Lynn Redgrave larks about non-stop, exhibiting a talent for mimicry with overtones of Joyce Grenfell. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
75% A Man and a Woman (1966) Failing to find the words to resolve this situation, Lelouch leaves the rest of his story to his songwriters, and, predictably, the picture sinks into the sticky swamp of adolescent lovisms. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2019
87% Blow-Up (1966) As usual, Antonioni's images have a seductive loveliness. No fashion photographer ever took more glamorous shots, or made London look more inviting. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 26, 2019