Manny Farber

Manny Farber The New Republic Feb 3, 2026 This is one of those rare films in which a pose or a gesture stands out so significantly that you feel that the cameraman had as much to do with the story as the director and writer. Go to Full Review The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) 97% 93%

Manny Farber The New Republic Jan 13, 2026 For the most part, however, it is morbidly successful and has a good deal of intelligent writing and direction -- plus, of course, Miss Bergman. Go to Full Review Gaslight (1944) 94% 90%

Manny Farber The Nation Apr 11, 2024 The characters seem to be wrapped thinly around steaming amounts of vengeance, avarice, or cruelty, but Marvin and Ford make it a well-acted movie that offers interesting impressions of how a practical-minded American male operates in crises Go to Full Review The Big Heat (1953) 95% 90%

Manny Farber The Nation Jun 20, 2023 Hitchcock’s latest film, Strangers on a Train , is fun to watch if you check your intelligence at the box office. Go to Full Review Strangers on a Train (1951) 98% 92%

Manny Farber The New Republic Mar 25, 2022 One is aware from the start of this movie that it is something new, not done before... The content of each shot was conceived in a film sense rather than any other, and no other picture this year has equaled it. Not even nearly. Go to Full Review In Which We Serve (1942) 90% 74%

Manny Farber The New Republic Feb 18, 2022 Casablanca is as ineffectual as a Collier’s short story, but with one thing and another -- like Bergman, Veidt and Humphrey Bogart -- it is a pleasure of sorts. Go to Full Review Casablanca (1942) 99% 95%

Manny Farber The New Republic Jan 3, 2022 The picture is entertaining enough, but its cloying goodness will make you yourself feel like a problem child. Go to Full Review Mrs. Miniver (1942) 93% 84%

Manny Farber The New Leader Nov 17, 2021 [Crossfire] has the neatness of a Chiclet, the tone of a nickel, and the speed of a hiccup. Go to Full Review Crossfire (1947) 88% 75%

Manny Farber The New Leader Nov 17, 2021 This movie suffocates you with Hemingway's puerile notions about what makes men heroes and cowards, and it will probably sell only the five-year-old yeggs in the audience. Go to Full Review The Macomber Affair (1947) 67% 61%

Manny Farber The Nation Oct 11, 2021 An uncompromising study of American decadence displaying a sad, worn, methodical beauty few films have had since the late twenties. Go to Full Review Sunset Boulevard (1950) 98% 95%

Manny Farber The Nation Sep 21, 2021 The Thing (from Another World) is a slick item thriftily combining a heavy science story with a pure adventure yarn for better than ordinary entertainment. Go to Full Review The Thing from Another World (1951) 87% 73%

Manny Farber The Nation Sep 16, 2021 The film pleased me for about five minutes, even though the plot seemed manufactured to permit yet another documentarist to shoot his favorite run-down American environment; then it disintegrated into a compromise with the truth. Go to Full Review The Little Fugitive (1953) 93% 86%

Manny Farber The New Leader Sep 15, 2021 Lonelyhearts turns a revered novel of pessimism into a semi-optimistic newspaper story, confused in casting. rigid in story-telling, but mildly gripping because of its TV-style intimacy and drive. Go to Full Review Lonelyhearts (1958) 70% 52%

Manny Farber The New Leader Sep 15, 2021 In many ways, "Sound" is a bad joke... However, everything outside the story is sharply etched and fairly gripping for an opulent movie. Go to Full Review The Sound and the Fury (1959) 60% 44%

Manny Farber The New Leader Sep 15, 2021 Rio Bravo is a soft, slack, not very rousing Western by a man (Howard Hawks) who knows better, having supervised a nearly endless chain of masterful journey films. Go to Full Review Rio Bravo (1959) 96% 91%

Manny Farber The New Leader Sep 15, 2021 The Hustler is cut down to almost nothing by tons of pompous elegance (Paul Newman and male associates), and then intermittently saved by Miss Laurie's grace on top of inferiority, slackness and a willed driving towards self-destruction. Go to Full Review The Hustler (1961) 94% 93%

Manny Farber The New Leader Sep 15, 2021 There is one mannerism, a somber, time-devouring stare which [Albert Finney] wedges into each seduction, that destroys the credible surface of his characterization. It gives the role an inexplicable theatricality. Go to Full Review Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) 87% 87%

Manny Farber The New Leader Sep 15, 2021 An eerie, felicitous opportunism steered this film -- just enough Freudian bitters, modern marriage, supernatural overcast, and "smashingly beautiful" postcards to provide a full matinee of culture for the expanding middlebrow-highbrow audience. Go to Full Review Wild Strawberries (1957) 94% 94%

Manny Farber The New Leader Sep 15, 2021 With the resilience missing, the flip motions only accentuate the supineness of the actors who, while trying for the shrill terror of a Goya drawing, resemble a subway vendor's jiggling dolls. Go to Full Review The Sun's Burial (1960) 60% 78%

Manny Farber The New Leader Sep 15, 2021 Having finally ditched the boxed-in theatrical form, Kazan hurls his shrieking restlessness directly at the audience in what seems a last ditch effort to summon up the memorializing grandeur of latter-day George Stevens direction. Go to Full Review Splendor in the Grass (1961) 75% 90%