As a long-time fan of Pauline Kael (I still read her capsule reviews daily - if you can find an old Cinemania CD-Rom, they're highly, highly recommended, they also contain Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert reviews, and really after those three you don't need anyone else),I found this documentary entertaining, if somewhat superficial; well-selected clips and images from over a hundred movies enhance it and prevent it from being a "talking heads" affair, but it could have focused more on Kael's actual writings, i.e. the actual text of her reviews, to show us more clearly what the fuss was all about. We do get some of that ("Limelight", "Sound of Music", "Bonnie & Clyde", etc.) but I was left wanting more. I would also appreciate a little more emphasis on the more obscure films and filmmakers she championed, rather than her well-known favorites Brian De Palma and Robert Altman. Still, the film is worth at least one viewing by any Pauline Kael addict. *** out of 4.

Here's a documentary about film critic Pauline Kael. A movie about a movie critic! It seems an exercise in tail chasing.

For seemingly forever, including a couple of decades at The New Yorker, Pauline Kael was the outspoken voice of people who love an unseemly art. Movies, by their nature, cannot aspire to find that one, golden patron who will pay for their work. Instead, they must seek a mass audience, which means one must not be too hoity-toity. The business of movies is to make a product at a price that will entice enough people to pay for it to yield a profit. It's the same business model that a kid selling lemonade or Boeing making air craft uses.

If a critic has any purpose, it's to upbraid the movie producer who tries to slip bad films past an unsuspecting audience, to alert that audience to something that is unexpectedly good, and to do it in a manner that keeps people interested in her own, subjective opinion.... because it's all opinions, and it's all subjective... and ultimately, to let her audience know why: why this movie is good, why that movie is bad, why the third is junk, but good junk, and the fourth bad junk. She must be a prude and a pander, and enormously popular. And, to a certain extent, she must be feared.

All this Miss Kael did, with her world-weary attitude, her accessible, combative prose, her position as a reviewer for The New Yorker, and her books.

If this movie has any value, it's to alert people to the existence of Miss Kael's writing, to let them know that here's someone who has seen these films and might be able to tell them something that would enrich their understanding of them. Yet what matters about Miss Kael is not her life, or her rise to prominence. It's her writing. So read what she wrote.

GREAT film about film critic Pauline Kael. It chronicles her whole life mostly concentrating on her decades long time as the film critic for The New Yorker magazine. It contains interviews with other film critics, directors, studio executives and family members. Best of all it has film clips of TV interviews she did and ahs clips from movies she reviewed with voice overs of her reviews discussing them. I loved her writing when I started reading The New Yorker in 1980. Her movie reviews were beautifully written and to the point. She could be pretty vicious at times (she HATED David Leans' films) but was also very nice--she was one of the first critics to praise Brian DePalma. It skimps a little on her personal life (she was married but you hear nothing about her husband) but that's a small complaint. I was fascinated and entertained throughout.