5001 Nights at the Movies [Paperback]

Pauline Kael (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1991

Smart, funny, and unforgettable, Pauline Kael is the most interesting and influential film critic in America. Her ability to skewer an actor or director and her wit, insight, and thorough knowledge of the film business make her by far the most rewarding regular observer of the movie scene. This new collection covers films that have come out since the previous 1985 edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This series of capsule movie reviews by the great Pauline Kael is actually an anthology of her writings for the "Goings on About Town" section of the New Yorker magazine. In 5001 Nights, Kael digs into the heart of each movie she considers with extraordinary penetration and exuberance. And while every movie you know may not appear here, each of Kael's reviews is detailed enough to provide tremendous insight into the movies that are covered. This book is as much fun to browse as it is to read through. Whether you've run the rounds at your local video store, Kael will lead you to treasures you may not know are out there.

Product Details

• Paperback: 960 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Company (May 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805013679
• ISBN-13: 978-0805013672
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #648,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Helpful for any film book collection., August 28, 1998

By 

Michael Aita (Monmouth Junction, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 5001 Nights at the Movies (Paperback)

This is a very good anthology of Pauline Kael's writings, but capsule reviews are very unsatisfying to those who are familiar with the strengths of her reviews as they were originally written. Kael is known for her flowing, "conversational" writing style; by chopping many of her reviews into two or three paragraphs, the main reasons for reading her in the first place tend to evaporate. In a typical Kael review, she literally layered opinions on top of opinions. It was not enough for her to simply review a movie--she had to express exactly how the directors and actors had grown (or diminished themselves). One looked forward to reading her because she had such a superb way of relating the film she was writing about to other films, whether by the same director or not, and she could intelligently speculate on how the film tied in to current events or may have been a product of them. She would talk expertly about how many films seemed to evolve out of other less superior ones and then expand due to a director's vision and desire to update a particular theme. Kael focused on what a movie is about--what it is really saying--and her dedication and playfulness was quite infectious (the many reviewers who used her style became known as Paulettes.) For a reference book, "5001 Nights At The Movies" is fun to look through; it is full of reviews but it is Kael-lite. She didn't call one of her best books "Deeper Into Movies" for nothing!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview, July 25, 2003

By 

Eugene Koh "LA Reader" (Torrance, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 5001 Nights at the Movies (Paperback)

As someone who is just beginning to explore the classics, I love being able to see what Pauline Kael thought about many of the most important movies of our time. Since I often agree with her, it helps me save time and money in determining which movies I want to rent (and if not available to rent, buy). All movie titles are in alphabetical order, and there is an index in the back which contains film titles, directors, actors, etc.

However, the capsule reviews can occasionally be misleading. From the capsules, I thought Pauline liked (or at least didn't dislike) "8 1/2" by Fellini and "Hiroshima Mon Amour" by Resnais. But in her book "I Lost It At The Movies", the full reviews are a pretty harsh pan.

I also wish that she had a "Best Movies" list. Nevertheless, still a very useful (but thick) book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars loads of fun, April 24, 2000

By 

"russellvlad" - See all my reviews

This review is from: 5001 Nights at the Movies (Paperback)

Gosh... Movie reviewers can certainly offend easily. I agree with Pauline Kael's assessments roughly 50% of the time, but I still love reading her. She is always intelligent (even when she is wrong wrong wrong) --- and what a great writer! She manages to be "mean" over and over again without exactly being mean-spirited. And why on earth is a movie reviewer not supposed to have political opinions? I never understand this peculiarly American criticism. Can you review "Triumph of the Will" or "Rambo" or "La Chinoise" without venturing into the realm of politics? Probably, but why would you want to? I don't think the type of person who makes this criticism is really looking for a dry, studied dissection of film technique, but perhaps I'm wrong. Anyway, she's no more "political" than any other worthwhile reviewer I can think of. This book is full of buried treasures --- quite a few films in it that I had never even heard of before. It's just a darned entertaining read, too. Every few pages, there is a laugh-out-loud funny turn of phrase. Usually a pretty mean turn of phrase but it's hard to have harsh feelings towards someone who writes, for example, in her review of "Funny Lady", "The moviemakers weren't just going to make a sequel to 'Funny Girl'---they were going to kill us." Or, in a review of "The Last Tycoon", "...so enervated, it's like a vampire movie after the vampires have left."