For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies

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For Keeps is a dazzling anthology of reviews and essays by Pauline Kael, America's most important movie critic. This hefty book contains a fifth of Kael's total output. It reprints all of her most famous reviews, including her controversial treatments of Last Tango in Paris, The Long Goodbye, and Nashville. Also here are some of her best longer essays, "Movie Brutalists," "Trash, Art, and the Movies," and &quoy;Cary Grant: the Man from Dream City." Raising Kane, Kael's book-length revisionist view of Citizen Kane, is reproduced in its entirety. Kael's style is impassioned, incisive, witty, and deeply personal. In the preface to this extraordinary volume, Kael says, "I'm frequently asked why I don't write my memoirs. I think I have."

From Publishers Weekly
In this mammoth anthology, former New Yorker film critic Kael skims the cream from 10 of her previous review compilations published between 1965 and 1991, adding a generous excerpt from The Citizen Kane Book (1971). In more than 275 pointed, wisecracking, sometimes maddening, always engaging reviews, Kael deflates pretensions, skewers schlock and zeroes in on what makes good movies work. She files opinionated, often politically incorrect put-downs of Dances with Wolves, Platoon, Rain Man, Fellini Satyricon, West Side Story, The Color Purple and Lenny, while revealing her eclectic, unpredictable taste in plaudits for Lolita, Prizzi's Honor, Tootsie, Z, The Magic Flute and My Beautiful Laundrette. Kael resolutely approaches film as an art form that must be understood on its own terms, yet her reviews depict precisely how movies interact with life, popular culture and the collective psyche, making this a treasure trove of some of the best film criticism available. First serial to the New Yorker. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This anthology contains reviews and other film-related writings by The New Yorker's illustrious critic spanning the years 1962-92. Over 275 well-chosen selections, which are drawn from Kael's 13 previous book compilations, are arranged in chronological order. The work is important not so much for its scope as for the individuality and candor of its author. Kael is arguably the most pernicious, influential, and literary of film critics to have written in the postwar era. In addition to ennobling criticism itself with her masterly reviews, she has been bold enough to publish insightful, if biting, critiques of the reviews of other prominent critics. In view of Kael's reputation and the appealing style of the individual pieces, this compilation may supersede many existing movie guides for both casual readers and students of film, and it will probably not sit on your shelves.Douglas McClemont, New YorkCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Think of this as the Riverside Shakespeare of longtime New Yorker film critic Kael's writing: It's not the complete works, but it's close. Kael (Movie Love, 1991, etc.) has been both celebrated and shunned for her reviews, largely because she cultivated her role as a polished outsider and thought quite highly of herself and her judgment. Her prose was always sharp, and the mixture of film literacy and gut reaction she brought to her criticism often confused readers who were on the verge of thinking they had her figured out. Kael has written some astonishing things; for example, she called Paul Newman's performance in Slapshot ``the role of his life--to date.'' That's the pleasure of a book like this: Nearly everything in it was written in the heat of the moment, and as a record of American popular culture it offers the eclectic reactions of one quirky intelligence. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


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This anthology contains reviews and other film-related writings by The New Yorker's illustrious critic spanning the years 1962-92. Over 275 well-chosen selections, which are drawn from Kael's 13 previous book compilations, are arranged in chronological order. The work is important not so much for its scope as for the individuality and candor of its author. Kael is arguably the most pernicious, influential, and literary of film critics to have written in the postwar era. In addition to ennobling criticism itself with her masterly reviews, she has been bold enough to publish insightful, if biting, critiques of the reviews of other prominent critics. In view of Kael's reputation and the appealing style of the individual pieces, this compilation may supersede many existing movie guides for both casual readers and students of film, and it will probably not sit on your shelves.-Douglas McClemont, New York


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