Creed II
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Homecoming
Log in with Facebook
OR
By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango.
Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password.
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Tomatometer Not Available...
——
Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (18) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (2) | DVD (7)
A tour de force, a triumph by a director confronting almost impossible complications and contradictions and mastering them. It's very funny, all right, but remember: With Buñuel, you only laugh when it hurts.
The physical production is stunning to look at. The cast is large, first-rate, but the presence that dazzles us is that of the Old Master, just off screen, mercilessly testing our senses of sanity and humor.
Albeit scattershot, Phantom does cohere as a satire of keeping up appearances in which everything is as it appears.
The challenging lack of a narrative center doesn't prevent this film from having a great deal to say about the modern world and its ambivalent grasp of freedom.
Beneath its lucid exterior, beneath its classical style, The Spectre of Liberty is one of those poetic works: a coherent enigma, inexhaustibly prismatic.
Bunuel's most uninhibited venture though audacious and satisfying my Bunuel pangs, lacks a bite or enough charm to appeal to the masses.
An uproarious summary of Luis Bunuel's surrealistic concerns in a collection of anecdotes starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Piccoli, and Monica Vitti.
as illusory as a dream about a mailman and as real as the letter you find in your hand
The Phantom of Liberty moves with great confidence and comfort. Odd that such a wicked film should feel comfortable, but there you have it. That's Bunuel.
It's wild, angry and often very funny.
This heady masterwork isn't particularly easy to decipher, but it's best approached as the literal comedy of manners Buñuel intends it to be.
Second-tier Bunuel, sometimes on target but mostly ineffective.
"The Phantom of Liberty" (the penultimate work of director Luis Bunuel's amazing career) is a tricky film to get a handle on, because it's structured like a "Monty Python's Flying Circus" episode. Nothing but quirky vignettes and transitions, with no sense of overall narrative shape. A DVD interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere reveals the perverse concept was to follow a story that is abandoned just when it turns most interesting, and then switch to a less interesting story. Wow. Notable sequences span a missing child who isn't really missing, a visit with a sadomasochistic couple, a surreal night of insomnia and the strangest dinner-table scene you'll ever see. Other pieces will fade from memory as soon as the film ends. The cast is stuffed with European actors whose faces are more familiar than their names, including Monica Vitti, Michel Piccoli, Jean Rochefort, Michael Lonsdale and Adolfo Celi.
Super Reviewer
There is a LOT going on in this film! Bunuel takes "modern" society to task in an a very ammusing, slightly dark but always insightful manner. I found it very interesting and had a few good chuckles along the way. Not my favorite Bunuel film...but well worth a watch.
Buñuel's dark sense of humour can make us not only witnesses but supporters of this derision to all institutions that rule society. A concatenation of segments that adress tragedies, misbehavings and formalisms with the same farcical tone. Possibly inspired by 'The Saragossa manuscript' one of Buñuel's personal favourite films.
Buñuel's 1974 surrealist comedy is really a sequence of skits that mostly begin but never reach an ending, overlapping each other, completely without relation. All of them regard the different conventions and attitudes of society that Buñuel despised: he ridicules them, subverts them, and exposes them with a wit and an irreverence that are as shocking for their imagery as they are for their odd containment and elegance. I think this is probably the most wildly intelligent comedy I've ever seen, which is enhanced by the director's impeccable narrative style and the extensive first-rate cast. Definitely a must-watch for anyone looking to find the non-sense in what is usually considered logical, to be scandalized or to laugh for 2 hours straight.
There are no approved quotes yet for this movie.
View All