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James Agee

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

(Photo Credit: John Springer Collection/Corbis Historical/Getty Images)

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Sunset Boulevard (1950) 98% EDIT “It is Hollywood craftsmanship at its smartest and at just about its best, and it is hard to find better craftsmanship than that, at this time, in any art or country.” – Sight & Sound Oct 11, 2021 Full Review The Pearl (1947) 90% EDIT “An extremely sincere and high-minded effort and, in my opinion, perfectly lousy "art."” – The Nation Jul 19, 2021 Full Review L'Atalante (1934) 100% EDIT “It is very good, spasmodically great poetry applied to pretty good prose; a great talent trying, I judge, to apply itself so far as it can stand to, conventionally and commercially.” – The Nation Jun 28, 2021 Full Review Great Expectations (1946) 100% EDIT “The film is almost never less than graceful, tasteful, and intelligent, and some of it is better than that.” – The Nation Jun 28, 2021 Full Review The Hucksters (1947) 60% EDIT “I dislike the movie as I disliked what little I could read of the book: for I find uniquely nauseating the spectacle of incurable corruption laboring under delusions of honesty.” – The Nation Jun 28, 2021 Full Review New Orleans (1947) EDIT “The movie is a crime. Not only is it horribly inept and unimaginative in everything that does not center on jazz; the jazz itself is too often cut short, or smothered as background for pictures which fail to carry it out.” – The Nation Jun 28, 2021 Full Review Zero for Conduct (1933) 94% EDIT “It is hard for me to imagine how anyone with a curious eye and intelligence can fail to be excited by it, for it is one of the most visually eloquent and adventurous movies I have seen.” – The Nation Jun 28, 2021 Full Review Another Part of the Forest (1948) EDIT “Ardently acted, and directed with sense and tension by Michael Gordon.” – The Nation Jun 28, 2021 Full Review Roughly Speaking (1945) EDIT “The whole thing depresses me beyond words. Jack Carson, however, is likable, as he always is.” – The Nation Jun 24, 2021 Full Review Objective, Burma! (1945) 86% EDIT “It makes this picture moving and good, for all its outright faults and sorry limitations.” – The Nation Jun 24, 2021 Full Review The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) 97% EDIT “There is nothing brilliant about the picture, but it is perceptive, witty, and sweet-tempered, and it shows a continuous feeling for the charm and illuminating power of mannerism, speech, and gesture used semi-ritually, rather than purely realistically.” – The Nation Jun 24, 2021 Full Review God Is My Co-Pilot (1945) EDIT “The picture is not as bad, I must admit, as I'm making it sound; but it is not good enough to make me feel particularly sorry about that.” – The Nation Jun 24, 2021 Full Review San Pietro (1945) EDIT “No war film I have seen has been quite so attentive to the heaviness of casualties, and to the number of yards gained or lost, in such an action; none has so levelly watched and implied what it meant, in such full and complex terms.” – The Nation Jun 23, 2021 Full Review It Happened at the Inn (1943) EDIT “Some of the characters are as salient as those of comic strips; none lose truthfulness or depth through this; all are with tender, sober adroitness graded, controlled, and modulated between different levels of caricature and... realism.” – The Nation Jun 23, 2021 Full Review Cornered (1945) EDIT “Murder, My Sweet gave a Raymond Chandler story the combination of skinned knuckles and big-city sentience proper to it; Cornered, without losing much if any force as melodrama, is much more elaborate, self-assured, and ambitious.” – The Nation Jun 23, 2021 Full Review Cluny Brown (1946) 94% EDIT “Lubitsch's direction -- always, at its best, so shrewd about protocol -- makes the film more amusing than there was any other reason to expect; and Richard Haydn's performance as a prissily bullying, mother-bound druggist is very nice caricature.” – The Nation Jun 23, 2021 Full Review The Blue Dahlia (1946) 100% EDIT “It knows its own weight and size perfectly and carries them gracefully and without self-importance; it is, barring occasional victories and noble accidents, about as good a movie as can be expected from the big factories.” – The Nation Jun 23, 2021 Full Review Air Force (1943) 82% EDIT “I cannot be sure how I feel about Air Force. It is loud, loose, sincere, violently masculine, and at times quite exciting.” – The Nation Feb 10, 2021 Full Review The Hard Way (1942) EDIT “There is a good deal in it to excite and to please.” – The Nation Feb 10, 2021 Full Review Saludos Amigos (1942) 82% EDIT “Saludos Amigos depresses me. Self-interested, belated ingratiation embarrasses me, and Disney's famous cuteness, however richly it may mirror national infantilism, is hard on my stomach.” – The Nation Feb 10, 2021 Full Review Casablanca (1942) 99% EDIT “Apparently Casablanca, which I must say I liked, is working up a rather serious reputation as a fine melodrama. Why? It is obviously an improvement on one of the world's worst plays; but it is not such an improvement that that is not obvious.” – The Nation Feb 10, 2021 Full Review Cabin in the Sky (1943) 81% EDIT “Like many star-filled pictures, this one never really shows off its crowded heavens.” – TIME Magazine Dec 16, 2020 Full Review Casbah (1948) EDIT “The older versions were slicker moviemaking but took this likable trash more seriously than it is worth. The new version has just about the right easygoing attitude.” – TIME Magazine Mar 2, 2018 Full Review Tawny Pipit (1944) EDIT “Bernard Miles and Charles Saunders, who collaborated in writing and directing Pipit, are not quite equal to their idea; and Mr. Miles, who is too young to play the colonel, is not quite up to his role.” – TIME Magazine Mar 2, 2018 Full Review Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) 86% EDIT “Blandings may turn out to be too citified for small-town audiences, and incomprehensible abroad; but among those millions of Americans who have tried to feather a country nest with city greenbacks, it ought to hit the jackpot.” – TIME Magazine Mar 2, 2018 Full Review
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