Hooked (book)
Hooked: Film Writings, 1985–88 (1989) is the ninth collection of movie reviews by the critic Pauline Kael, covering the period from July 1985 to June 1988.[1]
All articles in the book originally appeared in The New Yorker.
She reviews more than 170 films giving rich praise to the work of directors and performers she admires - in this collection for example, Robert Altman; Alan Rudolph - for his film Songwriter; Nick Nolte; Susan Sarandon; Melanie Griffith; Lesley Ann Warren; Steve Martin in Roxanne. And she attacks what she regards as second rate, for example, George Lucas, -"George Lucas should believe less in himself - he keeps trying to come up with an original idea, and he can't"; and the film Heartbreak Ridge - "It would take a board of inquiry made up of gods to determine whether this picture is more offensive aesthetically, psychologically, morally, or politically."
The films she recommends include:
- The Best of Times
- Dreamchild
- Sweet Dreams
- Down and Out in Beverly Hills
- Compromising Positions
- My Beautiful Laundrette
- Mona Lisa
- Salvador
- Club Paradise
- Mike's Murder
- Blue Velvet
- She's Gotta Have It
- Re-Animator
- Something Wild
- Hour of the Star
- The Stepfather
- Law of Desire
- Raising Arizona
- Brazil
- Roxanne
- Tampopo
- Eat the Peach
- The Witches of Eastwick
- Wish You Were Here
- Hamburger Hill
- Hope and Glory
- Weeds
- The Dead
- The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
- Moonstruck
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- High Tide
- High Season
- Pass the Ammo
- Hairspray
- Matador
- Beetlejuice
- Masquerade
- A World Apart
- Bull Durham
The title refers to her film 'addiction'. "I got hooked on movies at an early age, (around 4 or 5 , when I saw them while sitting on my parents' laps), and I am still a child before a moving image. Movies seem to me the most mysteriously great of all art forms."
The book is out-of-print in the United States, but is still published by Marion Boyars Publishers in the United Kingdom.