Considering the many nomination announcements in recent weeks, including those for the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards, as well as the unveiling of the 2014 New York Film Critics Awards winners, it seems this year’s Oscar frontrunners can boast clearly defined leads. To recap: The NYFCC named American Hustle its Best Picture of the year, while, with four nominations, 12 Years A Slave garnered the most SAG nods. The Golden Globes divided its love equally between the two contenders, nominating each for seven awards. In other words, American Hustle (which opens wide tomorrow) and 12 Years Slave are the industry’s sweethearts, and America -- or at least her film critics -- loves them. Right?
Not quite. Peter Debruge of Variety recently published a screed that attributed Hustle’s popularity to a fortuitous alignment of its stars – all of the film’s major names are at the top of their games, and, in the case of Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and director David O. Russell, fresh off last year’s award-winning Silver Linings Playbook, at the height of their popularity, guaranteeing their collaboration would generate a certain amount of fanfare. But Hustle, Debruge contends, doesn’t deserve the praise: It’s a hot mess. Stephanie Zacharek of The Village Voice doesn’t lambast 12 Years A Slave, but she does challenge the positive consensus. “Is there any blood in its veins?” she asks.
If the old adage “you can’t please everyone” won’t surprise anyone, some might be taken aback by the contemporary negativity surrounding other roundly popular, and what are now considered canonical, films. TIME magazine, for instance, had this to say about greatest-film-of-all-time Vertigo back in 1958: “The mystery is not so much who done it as who cares.”
Inspired by this spirit of contrariness -- or maverick insight, if you prefer -- we’ve compiled a list of against-the-grain reviews for some of the most critically lauded and beloved films of all time. Taste certainly does lie in the eye of the viewer.
We like to think the one who called Audrey Hepburn awkward had a cataract.
Gone With the Wind – Reviewed by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. for The Atlantic, 1973
And how badly written it is! There is hardly a sharp or even a credible line. It is picture-postcard writing, as it is picture-postcard photography (and, for that matter, picture-postcard music). Melanie and Scarlett, the women's-serial rewrite of Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp, are too much: one too good to be true, the other too wicked. As Ms. Scarlett, Vivien Leigh gives a thin and shallow performance. She does not enrich the part by the slightest idiosyncrasy or originality. It is far more external and far less interesting as a rendition of a Southern bitch than Bette Davis' Jezebel or Miriam Hopkins' Temple Drake. Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard are beyond belief.
Casablanca – Reviewed by TIME magazine, 1942
Nothing short of an invasion could add much to Casablanca.
Rebel Without a Cause – Reviewed by Box Office Magazine, 1955
Others, and presumably they will be a vast majority, may be prone to opine that the story has few, if any, believable characters, situations or passages of dialogue.
Thus handicapped by the script's utter implausibility, which is alleviated not one whit by the strained direction of Nicholas Ray, Dean's delineation is far below the arrestingly high standards set by the above-mentioned portrayal in "Eden." His supporting cast, both its juvenile and adult components, are projected with even less effectiveness.
Vertigo – Reviewed by TIME magazine, 1958
The old master, now a slave to television, has turned out another Hitchcock-and-bull story in which the mystery is not so much who done it as who cares.
Lawrence of Arabia – Reviewed by Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, 1962
The fault seems to lie, first in the concept of telling the story of this self-tortured man against a background of action that has the characteristic of a mammoth Western film. The nature of Lawrence cannot be captured in grand Super-Panavision shots of sunrise on the desert or in scenes of him arguing with a shrewd old British general in a massive Moorish hall.
The fault is also in the lengthy but surprisingly lusterless dialogue of Robert Bolt's over-written screenplay. Seldom has so little been said in so many words.
My Fair Lady – Reviewed by Geoff Andrew for Time Out: London
Hepburn is clearly awkward as the Cockney Eliza in the first half, and in general the adaptation is a little too reverential to really come alive.
Rosemary’s Baby – Reviewed by Renata Adler, The New York Times, 1968
Everyone else is fine, but the movie—although it is pleasant—doesn't quite work on any of its dark or powerful terms.
I think this is because it is almost too extremely plausible. The quality of the young people's lives seems the quality of lives that one knows, even to the point of finding old people next door to avoid and lean on. One gets very annoyed that they don't catch on sooner. One's friends would have understood the situation at once. So that for most of its length the film has nothing to be excited about.
Chinatown – Reviewed by Gene Siskel for The Chicago Tribune, 1974
As much as I admire the work of both (Roman) Polanski and (Jack) Nicholson, I found "Chinatown" tedious from beginning to just before the end. . . .
The majority of problems are to be found in Polanski's direction of Robert Towne's ("The Last Detail") script. The opening shot of almost every scene has been so artificially overcomposed as to make one aware of Jack Nicholson wearing '30s clothes while standing in a room decorated to look like a '30s room while talking to stereotypes plucked from an assortment of '30s movies.
The Silence of the Lambs – Reviewed by Dave Kehr for The Chicago Tribune, 1991
It`s easy to understand why [director Jonathan Demme] might want to shake off the cute and cuddly image that has settled on his work (though his films have always contained a beckoning dark side, an edge of violence and despair).
But ``The Silence of the Lambs`` does more than avoid sweetness and light. It`s a gnarled, brutal, highly manipulative film that, at its center, seems morally indefensible.
The Artist – Reviewed by Jaime N. Christley for Slant Magazine, 2011
The idea of making a film about the American cinema between 1927 and 1933 seems as daunting a prospect as making a film about the entire cinema—in other words, the difference between conceiving the magnitude of a galaxy and the magnitude of the universe. You might as well make a 100-minute film about the Renaissance. Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist neatly sidesteps this unsolvable dilemma by ignoring everything that's fascinating and memorable about the era, focusing instead on a patchwork of general knowledge, so eroded of inconvenient facts that it doesn't even qualify as a roman à clef.
American Hustle – Peter Debruge for Variety, 2013
How has “Hustle” conned so many intelligent people into declaring it a masterpiece? This is a messy C-minus movie at best, one that makes Michael Bay’s “Pain & Gain” look downright disciplined by comparison.
12 Years A Slave – Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek for The Village Voice, 2013
It's all so perfect, so right.
But is there any blood in its veins? 12 Years a Slave is a pristine, aesthetically tasteful movie about the horrors of slavery. Aside from a characteristically nuanced lead performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor—plus an oak-tree-tall supporting one by Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as a breath of movie-star vitality from Brad Pitt in a very small role—it's a picture that stays more than a few safe steps away from anything so dangerous as raw feeling. Even when it depicts inhuman cruelty, as it often does, it never compromises its aesthetic purity.
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