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A Grin Without a Cat Reviews
A Grin Without a Cat is a potently poetic diatribe regarding political fervor, social upheaval, and oppression of all kinds.
Full Review | Jan 23, 2021
Epic (or perhaps encyclopedic, or maybe satiric).
Full Review | Sep 27, 2018
The greatest documentary ever made about the struggle for socialism. The real thing, I should add, rather than the epithet applied by Glenn Beck to the Democratic Party and its leader Barack Hoover.
Full Review | Jun 18, 2010
It's not your usual political doc.
Full Review | Original Score: A | Oct 15, 2009
Depending on your mood and your familiarity with international politics from 30 to 40 years ago, A Grin Without a Cat can be either talky and esoteric or haunting and prophetic.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 14, 2009
It recreates the feel of the period, but in the end its obscurity undercuts its power.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 11, 2009
A Grin Without a Cat plays more like a creative mix tape than a standard hunk of journalism.
Full Review | May 7, 2009
Just to take in Grin's first few moments, a mash-up of Battleship Potemkin and police whacking May '68 protesters, is to see a mind sifting through chaos and making beautiful, critical sense of it.
Full Review | Original Score: 6/6 | May 6, 2009
A masterpiece among masterpieces, the two-part, three-hour A Grin Without a Cat is Chris Marker's most ambitious, clear-headed string of cinematic clauses and ideological couplets, and also his most impenetrable.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | May 5, 2009
massive, towering, and impassioned
Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 3, 2009
This slapdash documentary about left wing political movements is probably best understood in the original French and was a lot more relevant in 1977 when it was first made.
Full Review | Original Score: C | Apr 24, 2009
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 18, 2005
While it regards 1967 as the key turning point of the 20th century, and returns again and again to images of dissidents in the streets, it's alarmingly current.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 17, 2003
An exhaustive investigation into the roots and after-effects of the revolutions and counter-revolutions that rocked France, the U.S., China, Latin America and Czechoslovakia in 1967 and 1968.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 2, 2002
A timely look back at civil disobedience, anti-war movements and the power of strong voices.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2002
This is a movie about the world at war with itself, and the result is riveting, sublime and unforgettable.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 26, 2002
Although it's a bit smug and repetitive, this documentary engages your brain in a way few current films do.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 29, 2002
A three-hour cinema master class.
Full Review | Jun 18, 2002
Achieves a sort of filmic epiphany that revels in the true potential of the medium.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 6, 2002