Pauline Kael

From the Blurb: Taking It All In is the seventh collection of Pauline Kael's movie reviews, and it maintains the high standard she set for herself almost twenty years ago in I Lost it at the Movies and has held to in each of its memorable successors: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Going Steady, Deeper into Movies, Reeling, and When the Lights Go Down. From its title, which sums up in a phrase the Kael way of seeing and writing about movies, to its concluding...

Discusses films such as On the waterfront, East of Eden, Blackboard jungle, Room at the top, Look back in anger, The entertainer, Sons and lovers, Saturday night and Sunday morning, Hud, The earrings of Madame de ..., The golden coach, Smiles of a summer night, La grande illusion, Forbidden games, Shoeshine, Beggar's opera, The seven samurai, Breathless, The cousins, West Side story, L'Avventura, One, two, three, The mark, Kagi, The innocents, A view...

I Lost It at the Movies is vintage Kael on such classics of post-war cinema as On the Waterfront, Smiles of a Summer Night, West Side Story, The Seven Samurai, Lolita, Jules et Jim, etc., writing comments so fresh and direct, it's as if the movies had only been released last week.

"Few directors have portrayed the agonies and epiphanies of growsing up as poetically---and controversially---as Louis Malle. Laced with autobiographical details, Murmur of the heart, Lacombe, Lucien, and Au revoir les enfants tell stories of youth, set against the tumult of World War II and postwar France. Tragic, amusing, and poignant, these three films are more than just coming-of-age stories. They are the director's ongong response to a world...