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McCall's

McCall's is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Pare Lorentz, Pauline Kael, Robert E. Sherwood.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Crisis: A Film of the Nazi Way (1939) Pare Lorentz Even though it was good man, Herbert Kline, and although it deals with a tortured people... Crisis remains an ill-contrived picture.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
The 400 Million (1939) Pare Lorentz The narration does not give us a clear idea of what is going on in the picture. Well-written, it wanders from newsreel interpretation, to symbolism, to first person narration, and is confusing.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
Love Affair (1939) Pare Lorentz The neatest and most expert movie of the spring is a light comedy, Love Affair, and as it was produced as well as directed by Leo McCarey, and as it shows a skill away and above anything we have had in a long time.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
Virginia (1941) Pare Lorentz Instead of a drama, the picture turns out to be a garrulous battlefield guide lecture, in which the assembled actors give out with some of the most maudlin and annoying professional Southernisms I ever have heard.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
Buck Privates (1941) Pare Lorentz Shoddy stuff.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
So Ends Our Night (1941) Pare Lorentz There are many repetitious and pedestrian sequences, but the picture is so well-played, and produced in such sobriety and good taste, it is on the whole a noteworthy production.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
Beloved Enemy (1936) Pare Lorentz It is too long and too delicate to be a legend of Michael Collins; it is too well-produced and played not to be seen.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
Great Guy (1936) Pare Lorentz From a production standpoint, The Great Guy is one of the worst movies I ever have seen. The lighting is bad and so are the sets. [But Cagney] never has appeared to better advantage -- a bit subdued, a little more polished, and a great deal more sincere.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
After the Thin Man (1936) Pare Lorentz I am happy to report that, while it will not be as fresh to you as the original Dashiell Hammett production, After The Thin Man is a very successful sequel.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
On Borrowed Time (1939) Pare Lorentz If you do not go to movies very often, you may enjoy Mr. Barrymore’s performance. If you see many movies, you've probably seen him play so many lovable old men you probably can't think of him but as Lionel Barrymore.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
The Wizard of Oz (1939) Pare Lorentz It is a film you should see as an example of the extraordinary mechanical possibilities of the motion picture. But the three ill-at-ease musical comedy men... will make you feel that the wrong cast had wandered onto the set.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
Golden Boy (1939) Pare Lorentz Odets’ incredible gift of characterization still comes through the inept direction, and bad acting, and William Holden, as the youngster, does a fair job.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
The Real Glory (1939) Pare Lorentz Pleasant people, in a simple, well-made, tight melodrama, but it failed to stir me simply because I could not divorce this story of a minor island war of ours from the recollection of the newsreel I had seen just before The Real Glory began.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
The Rains Came (1939) Pare Lorentz Unfortunately there wasn't much time for either plot because of a storm, a flood, and a plague which came along in the middle of the story and which of all the floods, hurricanes and disasters I’ve ever seen on film, was without doubt the worst.
Posted Dec 27, 2023  Edit critic review
You Can't Take It With You (1938) Pare Lorentz Capra deserves all the praise he has been given recently for breaking down the script into a fast, entertaining, and always interesting picture.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
The Life of Emile Zola (1937) Pare Lorentz It’s a grave story told with great dignity and superbly played and produced.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Pare Lorentz If I were asked to list the most important movie activity of 1937 ten years from now, I should have only one item to report: Walter Disney made a full length picture. And this one event may save the industry as it is now organized.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Jezebel (1938) Pare Lorentz You will find Jezebel an authentic and logical piece of work, and you will find Miss Davis a really fine actress.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
In Caliente (1935) Pare Lorentz I imagine it is a great deal of fun to make a musical comedy picture, because of the complicated equipment, the sets, and the huge crowds you have to deal with; and for that reason, probably, almost every chorus number runs too long.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Call of the Wild (1935) Pare Lorentz Considering the rip-roaring Northwest epics of the old silent days, you would reasonably expect The Call of the Wild to be a robust spectacle... It falls so short of being even faintly wild, however, that it has a peculiar charm about it.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Escape Me Never (1935) Pare Lorentz You never would want to see the picture more than once, but there are very few Bergners in the world and, lacking any other immediate opportunity to see her... you will find Escape Me Never an important, if typical, star movie.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
The Informer (1935) Pare Lorentz The best picture of the season to date is The Informer, a terse, brutal story of the Irish revolution: a somber portrait of a rabbit-minded giant who betrays his best friend and is hunted to his doom against the leaden background of war-torn Dublin.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Sergeant York (1941) Pare Lorentz It is an uneven production, and no one was comfortable with the locale. Yet it is a strong picture, and an honest one.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) Pare Lorentz A fine, merry, lovely and melodious picture.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Anna Karenina (1935) Pare Lorentz Anna Karenina could have been more tragic and stirring had the director not shown us his lovelorn heroine in conventional shopworn situations.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Fire Over England (1937) Pare Lorentz Fire Over England is one of those rare things -- a fine job of collaboration on the part of actors, writers, costumers, musicians, technicians and producers, but director Howard deserves most of the credit for the picture.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Camille (1936) Pare Lorentz It was a mistake to make Camille in he first place.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
You Only Live Once (1937) Pare Lorentz It is a high tribute to Fritz Lang that although you know what is coming, he does keep you harrowed almost throughout the picture waiting for his inevitable dénouement.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Maid of Salem (1937) Pare Lorentz I am sorry Maid of Salem is not a better picture. It dealt with an unusual theme and it was produced well enough to give you an idea of how good it might have been.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Another Thin Man (1939) Pare Lorentz William Powell and Myrna Loy are the most charming married couple we've ever had on the screen, and certainly seem to be people you'd enjoy meeting up with on a New Year's Eve, even if they casually duck bullets and knives as they stroll from bar to bar.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Ninotchka (1939) Pare Lorentz The picture itself might have been a very amusing satire at the expense of the Russians if it had been made with any thing lighter than a loaded baseball bat.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Fantasia (1940) Pare Lorentz [Disney] has developed an entirely new method of recording and projecting music, immeasurably broadening the potential use of music and pictures; above all, Fantasia itself is an audacious, stirring, austere and entirely new kind of movie.
Posted Oct 30, 2023  Edit critic review
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) Pauline Kael It’s an ambitious film that works hard to achieve a lean and hungry look. But characters to whom we feel indifferent and storytelling so oblique that it turns the plot into an audience guessing game are not acceptable substitutes for suspense and irony.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
Viva Maria (1965) Pauline Kael Parts of it are so badly miscalculated, so lacking in timing and rhythm and point, that you hate yourself even for sitting there. But when it’s good, it’s really lovely.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
Thunderball (1965) Pauline Kael Thunderball is, at least, itself: the male fantasy mixture as before -- but perhaps a little lighter, less sadistic than Goldfinger, without the spectacular sequences but constantly in entertaining motion.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Koumiko Mystery (1967) Pauline Kael The most beautiful movie I’ve seen recently.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) Pauline Kael Are there people to whom a movie like this is new? Are we being snobbish and thoughtless if we groan? I don’t think so: even to those who haven’t grown up and beyond this kind of movie, it can never be fresh.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Slender Thread (1965) Pauline Kael This clean, economical, well-organized production is fraudulent naturalism -- details that are carefully arranged, so that we will accept them as normal, as true, though they are drawn not from observation but from the exigencies of plot need.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
Seven Women (1966) Pauline Kael This picture is more absurd than the deliberate spoof movies, because each cliché character and situation is played in apparent earnest; it’s almost deadpan farce.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Sound of Music (1965) Pauline Kael Of course, it's well done for what it is: that is to say, those who made it are experts at manipulating responses. They're the Pavlovs of moviemaking: they turn us into dogs that salivate on signal.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Singing Nun (1966) Pauline Kael The Singing Nun will make you realize how good Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story was. Although the theme, the conflict and even the story line are similar, The Singing Nun reduces them to smiles, twinkles, banalities and falseness.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Group (1966) Pauline Kael When the [film] slows down for the sequences involving just a couple of people, something very touching and almost beautiful happens. For those moments — and there are several of them — The Group is more interesting than almost any recent American movie.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
Madame X (1966) Pauline Kael Madame X is so excruciating not only because the actors and actresses do not embody what they’re supposed to, but because the movie depends on the conventions of the M-G-M style of the ’forties. It is spiritually dedicated to the worst of old Hollywood.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Chase (1966) Pauline Kael In The Chase, not only are the elaborate production values out of place, nobody seems to be in control of them.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
Harper (1966) Pauline Kael Harper sounded promising -- Paul Newman in an attempt to recapture the Bogart private-eye world of The Big Sleep, with its spoiled people and overripe Southern California civilization. But it’s a despicably incompetent attempt.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
Lord Love a Duck (1966) Pauline Kael After we’ve sat, laughing occasionally but mainly being rather appalled by this exhibition of lack of control, we are preached at from the screen for our tiny minds and our family spray deodorants.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
Heroism (1957) Pauline Kael Eroica is a true black comedy and one of the few modern movies that has something relevant to say about the modern world.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
Having a Wild Weekend (1965) Pauline Kael It is one of the few films of 1965 that linger in the memory -- a forlorn little Cinderella that the public never took to the big boxoffice ball.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
What's New, Pussycat? (1965) Pauline Kael It achieves a vulgarity that is cleansing; it’s like hearing four-letter words after a conversation full of euphemisms and innuendos.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
The Pawnbroker (1964) Pauline Kael Juano Hernandez, as the man who wants to talk, gives the single most moving performance I saw in 1965, and Rod Steiger’s power makes our questioning of much of the action seem like quibbling.
Posted Sep 20, 2023  Edit critic review
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