Hooked (book)

Hooked: Film Writings, 1985–88 (1989) is the ninth collection of movie reviews by the critic Pauline Kael, covering the period from July 1985 to June 1988.^[1] All articles in the book originally appeared in The New Yorker.

She reviews more than 170 films giving rich praise to the work of directors and performers she admires - in this collection for example, Robert Altman; Alan Rudolph - for his film Songwriter; Nick Nolte; Susan Sarandon; Melanie Griffith; Lesley Ann Warren; Steve Martin in Roxanne. And she attacks what she regards as second rate, for example, George Lucas, -"George Lucas should believe less in himself - he keeps trying to come up with an original idea, and he can't"; and the film Heartbreak Ridge - "It would take a board of inquiry made up of gods to determine whether this picture is more offensive aesthetically, psychologically, morally, or politically."

The films she recommends include:

The title refers to her film 'addiction'. "I got hooked on movies at an early age, (around 4 or 5 , when I saw them while sitting on my parents' laps), and I am still a child before a moving image. Movies seem to me the most mysteriously great of all art forms."

The book is out-of-print in the United States, but is still published by Marion Boyars Publishers in the United Kingdom.

References

This page was last edited on 25 January 2022, at 23:29