Renata Adler
Renata Adler's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
New York Times
(Photo Credit: Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images)
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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The Cobra (1968) |
There is really no acting or directing to speak of. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Venom (Gift) (1966) |
It would have been really interesting to see the film (written and directed by Knud Leif Thomsen) uncensored because then it would have turned, in part, into the film the young man was making. But that, presumably, will be some years yet. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968) |
The movie neglects no opportunity to be gross (everyone's pudgy hands, for example, are constantly on someone else, and there are two burps in the script, presumably for high comic effect), and yet it can't quite relax and be porcine. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Games Men Play (1968) |
These beautifully drawn characterizations are played by Luis Sandrini and Maria Antinea, and Guillermo Brideston and Elsa Daniel. And the interrelationship of the two couples closes the movie on a sweet, yet realistic note. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Broken Wings (1964) |
The movie itself, the first Lebanese film to be released in the United States, is in Arabic, which sounds quite soft and beautiful. It is done very simply in black and white and whatever has to do with life in Beirut is worthy and interesting. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Have You Heard of The San Francisco Mime Troupe? (1968) |
But there are some moments in the life of this radical left, vibrant, hate-free band of troubadours that are worth the price of admission if you can pass through a little incomprehension and ennui to get to them. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Long Day's Dying (1968) |
Smug dimestore Existential, Angry Arts careless put-on, megaphone ironies with repetition for slow learners and a share in the insatiable, self-righteous blood lust of the camera. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Touchables (1968) |
The rest is awful, a sort of fidgety mod pornography, which uses the advertising convention for eroticism-cutting abruptly from teasing sex scenes to gadgetry, in this case pinball machines, trampolines and odd items of furniture and clothing. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Violent Four (1968) |
There are long, not very suspenseful chases in which a lot of cars collide, there are some irate Italian ladies, whose fenders have been smashed, and then the last two crooks are caught by a comically awe-inspiring number of Italian police. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Money and the Woman (1940) |
One of those sodden, gross off-color comedies that the Italians do so badly and export to us. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Guide (1965) |
It is also poor reporting - it simply does not tell us anything that we did not know already, and what it does tell - in fuzzy interviews about, for example, the Arab refugee problem - it tells unclearly. Everything about it is off. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1967) |
A kind of gentle cross between "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"-a little hard to imagine, it is true, but less pretentious than the first and less false than the second. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Windflowers (2011) |
There is some low-grade ideological discussion part way through, which is static and which-since movies, unlike books, leave one no time to think, and unlike live performances, give one no chance to influence by responding-is out of place. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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24 Hours in a Woman's Life (1961) |
The thing has a specialized, dated aura of romance, but there is something disturbingly unresolved about its sensuality - like an orchid pressed under a pile of under-shorts or a riding crop in marzipan. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Capricious Summer (1968) |
It's a big improvement over the thinly disguised industrial films that so often are used as short subjects in local movie houses. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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(undefined) |
Since very few gang, jewel-theft color films are done in deadly earnest, it is not quite clear to me where the genre ends and its spoof begins. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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You Are What You Eat (1968) |
An awful lot of it is gross and grossly done, but there are moments when one laughs and thinks. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Funny Girl (1968) |
When she is singing--in a marvelous scene on roller skates--when she throws a line away, or shrugs, or looks funny or sad, she has a power, gentleness and intensity that rather knocks all the props and sets and camera angles on their ear. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967) |
What happens, then, is an almost pure case of being amused by some of the film without the slightest idea of what people are up to. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Grand Slam (1967) |
The final pay-off, another restaurant scene in the shadow of Rome's Coliseum, is a briskly absurd reach-out, but at least Mr. Robinson was reading The New York Times. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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They Only Kill Once (1968) |
It is a strong cast. Telly Savalas and Rip Torn, in particular, act fine, consistent villains-Mr. Savalas heavy, comic and civilized, Mr. Torn, callow and lip curling. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Kisses and Hugs (1999) |
In the end, the film (directed by Jonas Cornell) suffers from the same uncertainty and lassitude the characters have, its whimseys not always inventive, its charm not as clear and new as some of its predecessors. But it is a nice movie all the same. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Family Band (1968) |
There are also several uneasy, convictionless patriotic numbers-with talk of unity after fights that divide a nation-which suggest, that worry about national ideals is shaking even the values of musicals. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968) |
Clive Donner, in short, who directs, directs quite beautifully from one point of view. Not the viewpoint of spoken language certainly, or of narrative. But from a pictorial point of view, of what a new fantasy of mod love and courtship might look like. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Break Up (1968) |
The rhythm of the film, the way it is cut and put together, is altogether skittish and out of phose-so that it is very hard even to pay attention to what is going on. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Interlude (1957) |
This may be the way it is in life and in England (where the film is set) but it doesn't sustain a narrative. There is nothing particularly startlingly true-ringing about what they do or say or are, and the burden on the acting is just too great. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Fifth Horseman Is Fear (1965) |
So beautifully and thoughtfully made - well written and acted, shot with perfect economy and care-that one is almost surprised at the end to be very much moved by the substance of it. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Planet of the Apes (1968) |
It is no good at all, but fun, at moments, to watch. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Pierrot le Fou (1965) |
The film is poetic, quiet, introverted, personal. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Up the Junction (1968) |
It is rare to find a portrayal of a gentle young man without any air of effeminacy or saintliness. Dennis Waterman does the whole difficult thing exactly right. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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A Matter of Innocence (1968) |
But the movie, shot in color in Singapore, has some nice music by Michel Legrand (who did "Umbrellas of Cherbourg"), and it is entertaining in a way bad movies are. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967) |
The Fastest Guitar Alive is an old-fashioned, good-natured bad movie-to be seen at exam time, or at a drive-in, or when you just feel like seeing a movie you won't have to discuss afterward. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 09, 2018
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Ice Station Zebra (1968) |
A fairly tight, exciting, Saturday night adventure story that suddenly goes all muddy in its crises, so that at two crucial points, it is very difficult to know what is going on, or who knows what about it. It doesn't make much difference, though. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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The Impossible Years (1968) |
One of those peculiarly joyless, fumbling, dirty comedies that only Hollywood (and perhaps some small German filmmakers) would ever want to produce. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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Charlie Bubbles (1968) |
The ending, a low key absurdist touch, is as quiet, beautifully made and carefully thought out as the rest. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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The Double Man (1967) |
But the plotting is tight and Mr. Brynner looks exotic and stony enough to keep one's mind off the title; when the denouement comes it is a moderate surprise. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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The Magus (1968) |
It is surprising how the movie (which was shot, incidentally, in Majorca without the Greek crisis in mind) is not embarrassing, but actually dovetails with yachtings and oppressions in contemporary Greece. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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Bye Bye Braverman (1968) |
Sidney Lumet has probably exhausted the cinema possibilities of drawing people together out of separate lives to attend funerals in semisatirical circumstances. It hardly ever works in fiction, and it does not seem the best vehicle for his movies at all. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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Winter Kept Us Warm (1968) |
The film was shot in 16-mm., and David Secter, who wrote, produced and directed, settles down-after a slow start with some rather flashy tracking shots-and does extremely well. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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Tonio Kroeger (1968) |
Sunday afternoon kind of boredom. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) |
"Lylah Clare" is not funny, exactly-the old Hollywood responses are still enough in effect to bring one to the verge, once or twice of choking up-but it is kind of fun to watch. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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China Is Near (1967) |
Most of the time, however, one is constantly aware that the film seems rather long. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 08, 2018
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The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968) |
There is a lot of pointlessly dizzying camera work, and an opening song that is off-key. There are a lot of broad, tired jokes. When Davy Kaye gets himself locked in an outhouse, there even has to be a bee in it. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 04, 2018
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Joanna (1968) |
It it clear that, rather like a late meal by somebody confident who doesn't really cook, this has been a peculiar and highly mixed event, with moments of technical brilliance. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 04, 2018
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The Illiac Passion (1967) |
The visual work is not much either. The camera, which hardly ever moves from side to side, for the most part zooms in and out in a kind of sucking motion. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 04, 2018
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Tell Me Lies (1968) |
The rest is abysmal and boring-as though slapdash work had a special authenticity, and the Angry Arts had an obligation to make even less sense than anybody else. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 04, 2018
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Sebastian (1968) |
The put-on, of course, consists in never really letting the audience know what level of seriousness the film is at, and the movie itself sometimes seems unsure. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 04, 2018
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Me (1968) |
[Maurice] Pialat is doing something that movies rarely do any more: tell a simple, touching story warmly, straight. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 04, 2018
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The Split (1968) |
The film is almost completely successful in its two unmatched parts. - New York Times
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| Posted Jan 04, 2018
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Poor Cow (1967) |
An argument can certainly be made for sex in movies that try to approach seriously the problems of the young; and this one, which begins so frankly with maternity, seems to have become quite nervous about things physical right after the credits came on. - New York Times
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| Posted Mar 14, 2015
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