Vincent Canby

And there were all these critics.

You know, there was Vincent Canby at the New York Times who was reliably sober-sighted and pretty good in general.

There was Andrew Sarris at the Village Voice, who was an acolyte of the new wave and the politique des auteurs and all that stuff.

And he knew his business, absolutely.

I'm kind of interested, but I'm...

Between Two Stools, I don't really know if I want to see it.

Is it going to bum me out? Is it going to bore me stupid? And so what I do is I read Vincent Canby, and I read Andrew Sarris, and I read Pauline Kael, and I kind of triangulate between them.

I know that Pauline Kael resists anything kind of European, especially, or avant-garde or anything like that.

Just the, the history of the room would drive me mad So Roger Ebert gave it three out of four, calling it cheerful from beginning to end, and he must have had a very long toilet break.

Vincent Canby praised Branagh's direction, calling it ravishing entertainment.

Desson Thomas praised the cuts to the text as giving wonderful import to this silliness from long ago, and stated that Branagh has once again blown away the forbidding academic dust and found a funny retro essence for the '90s.

It's really important that the Shakespeare films don't feel stuffy because that buries it.

Now, here's a good one.

Vincent Canby, The New York Times.

Given the huge box office success of the William Peter Blatty, William Friedkin production of The Exorcist, there had to be a sequel.

But did it have to be this desperate concoction, the main thrust of which is that the original exorcism wasn't all it was cracked up to be? It's one thing to carry a story further along, but it's another to deny the original no matter what you thought of it.

And I really do.

Vincent Canby and Kevin Thomas are probably my favorite critics.

I can see where he's coming from.

I don't agree entirely.

So he liked it.

And Vincent Canby from the New York Times, he called the film back then, he said, it's part ghost story, part revenge Western.

More than a little silly, he said, and often quite entertaining in a way that makes you wonder if you've lost your good sense, right? This is crazy right here.

John Wayne criticized the film.

Okay.

Uh, Vincent Canby, another pretty prominent critic of this time, said, "Brian De Palma goes too far, which may be not only the most consistent quality through all his films but also the most important and possibly the most endearing.

Each of his films is guaranteed to offend some people all of the time, including his staunchest admirers.

He never leaves well enough alone.

And so, like you mentioned, you know, apocalypse now isn't there so like putting martin sheen in your vietnam movie is a very that's a choice but that's a choice but it really all it does is highlight how much more you should be watching apocalypse now than this goddamn ralph macho movie sure all right that is a very extended version of the news from 1979 jason what did the critics say about all that jazz

In the New York Times, Vincent Canby raved, quote,

After

all, funerals are only wasted on the dead.

He encountered strong resistance to showing that film.

Vincent Canby called it a hippie, drugged-out marijuana coffee table book, and there were other beautiful things said about it.

Bernie Gersten just became director of Radio City Hall.

Luddy insisted there's something that should be seen.