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Moira Walsh
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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White Heat (1949) |
Though undeniably exciting, the net result is pretty pointless and very brutal. - America Magazine
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| Posted Apr 22, 2024
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The Caine Mutiny (1954) |
The film is a creditable adaptation of a stirring tale. The necessary pruning has been so done that the novel’s clash of events and characters retains its original balance. - America Magazine
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| Posted Apr 19, 2024
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The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) |
T.E.B. Clarke's script is a tongue in cheek masterpiece of ingenious improbability. - America Magazine
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| Posted Apr 18, 2024
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Sabrina (1954) |
The leading players are professionally competent as usual but seem miscast, with the exception of Miss Hepburn, whose role has been tailored to exploit her elfin charms and who succeeds in being a little too elfin to be quite bearable. - America Magazine
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| Posted Mar 28, 2024
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The Big Heat (1953) |
This aggregation of horrors succeeds in being so repellent, and also so unreal and ultimately ludicrous, that I would not have mentioned the picture except that, strange to say, it has been given quite favorable mention in other quarters. - America Magazine
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| Posted Mar 27, 2024
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The Searchers (1956) |
The film has a seemingly authentic feeling for the harshness and crudity of frontier life... and any number of striking photographic effects. It is curiously deficient however in the unity and cumulative power implicit in the material. - America Magazine
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| Posted Mar 25, 2024
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Westward the Women (1951) |
It seldom gets out of the standard, adult horse-opera class. - America Magazine
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| Posted Feb 23, 2024
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The Left Handed Gun (1958) |
It is as fundamentally unsatisfactory a film as was ever made by people with talent and serious intent. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 29, 2023
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Too Much, Too Soon (1958) |
The film does not unduly sensationalize the material and it is neither uninteresting nor unconvincing. It is however almost unrelievedly downbeat. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 29, 2023
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South Pacific (1958) |
South Pacific is too sophisticated to have the broad general suitability of The King and I. For its more limited audience, however, it is a practically perfect screen version of a contemporary musical comedy classic. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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The Sound and the Fury (1959) |
The Sound and the Fury is another depressing but generally tasteful and responsible examination of the seamier side of life. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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Imitation of Life (1959) |
It is an inadvertently compromising title to put on a film that actually is nothing but an imitation of life and a bad one at that. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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Some Like It Hot (1959) |
Some Like It Hot is the wildest and wooliest comedy since Preston Sturges left Hollywood and the Marx Brothers disbanded as a team... Director (and co-author) Billy Wilder is one of the best in the business and knew exactly what he was doing. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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The Shaggy Dog (1959) |
It is a real shaggy dog story in the sense of having neither explanation nor point. It is intelligently made however and surprisingly likeable especially for youngsters. Also its lunatic premise gives rise to some pricelessly funny bits. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) |
The movie is done with taste and skill and no little cinematic distinction. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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I Want to Live! (1958) |
Most of the picture’s impact, however, is the contribution of Susan Hayward, giving the performance of her career as the doomed but indomitable Barbara. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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The Horse's Mouth (1958) |
In the first place the hero’s adventures have an inspired slapstick quality such as screen comedy seldom achieves nowadays. Secondly... on occasion, [it is] quite moving as a study of the temperament of the artistic genius. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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King Creole (1958) |
Presley shows signs that he is getting the hang of acting. The picture itself, however, after a promising enough beginning turns into a lurid melodramatic hash. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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Rio Bravo (1959) |
In addition to its excessive length and consequent slow pace the film has other liabilities... Nevertheless the characterizations are unusually solid and get more interesting as they go along. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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Aparajito (1956) |
[The sequel to Pather Panchali] is movingly and beautifully done on its own terms and establishes that its author-director, Satyajit Ray, is not a one-picture man but the possessor of an authentic movie-making talent. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) |
The picture takes an inordinate amount of time getting started but once underway it displays a flair for the unexpected, the imaginative and the madly logical that all good fairy stories should have. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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The Nun's Story (1959) |
[Conveys] a profound and moving insight into the total self-sacrifice and tough-fibred holiness of convent life. Moreover it clothes these insights in striking dramatic terms which can hardly fail to absorb and edify the believer and the unbeliever alike. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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The Lone Ranger (1956) |
The picture proceeds exactly according to formula. It has enough elementary action to have provided a bonanza for stunt men but its appeal would appear to be limited strictly to small boys of all ages. - America Magazine
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| Posted Nov 09, 2023
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Some Came Running (1958) |
I do not know whether or not James Jones’ censorable, over-length novel had an intelligible point of view. The partially disinfected screen version in any case occupies two hours and fifteen minutes displaying a total lack of one. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Aug 24, 2023
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The Defiant Ones (1958) |
Kramer has given the story the kind of stark production it needed and especially has obtained heightened realistic effects through the calculated omission of background music. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Aug 24, 2023
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The Old Man and the Sea (1958) |
The emotional impact is second hand and the narrative seems unnecessarily padded. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Aug 24, 2023
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) |
The success of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof more probably rests on the straight-forward grounds that it is a strong, well-acted drama and more especially that its theme... has a tragic pertinence for many contemporary audiences. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Aug 24, 2023
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A Tale of Two Cities (1958) |
In writing the screen play T. E. B. Clarke has addressed himself to modernizing the speech and attitudes. Unfortunately this does not make the story seem any more plausible. It only makes it seem rather flat. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Aug 24, 2023
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Damn Yankees (1958) |
The baseball jokes are funny, the lyrics apt, the players expert and, most important, the mood fast and unpretentious The sexy dancing and demeanor of Gwen Verdon are in a class by themselves. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Aug 24, 2023
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Pather Panchali (1955) |
The film proves to be, rather like The Old Man and the Sea, an artfully devised tribute to the human spirit. The black-and-white camera work is both a joy in itself and a sensitive instrument in carrying out the director’s purposes. - The Catholic World
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| Posted Aug 24, 2023
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) |
The story... seems pretty crude and pointless in modern dress. - America Magazine
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| Posted Mar 08, 2023
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Sayonara (1957) |
It does not convince you that the characters are so much in love that they must go against normal conventions in choosing a marriage partner. It merely says that they are. - America Magazine
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Flower Drum Song (1961) |
This picture is pleasant enough entertainment. - America Magazine
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| Posted Feb 28, 2023
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Stalag 17 (1953) |
To me, however, it seemed sufficiently cynical in tone and contrived in structure to preclude the realism and the affirmation of the resiliency of the human spirit, which adults expect such materials to yield. - America Magazine
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| Posted Nov 04, 2022
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High Noon (1952) |
A tense and exciting evening's entertainment for adults. As a parable of humanity's moral cowardice, however, the film rings false. - America Magazine
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| Posted Sep 20, 2022
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A Raisin in the Sun (1961) |
A powerful drama about basically decent, ordinary, likeable people. - America Magazine
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| Posted Aug 23, 2022
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Gigi (1958) |
The picture may be slow-moving in spots and ultimately rather cloying in its opulent prettiness. Nevertheless it is an expert piece of moviemaking in all departments, and boasts an array of plus values that should certainly capture the public's fancy. - America Magazine
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| Posted Mar 24, 2022
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Porgy and Bess (1959) |
[It's] exquisite to look at and its reproduction of the Gershwin score is well-nigh perfect. To obtain this physical perfection, however, it has sacrificed the universal human appeal which... was what endeared it to audiences all over the world. - America Magazine
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| Posted Jan 20, 2022
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Nightmare Alley (1947) |
Neither profound nor even very convincing; and it tends to take human depravity for granted in a way that is far more likely to turn the stomach than to stimulate the mind. - America Magazine
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| Posted Dec 03, 2021
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West Side Story (1961) |
I have several serious reservations about the film... Nevertheless, this is a film of extraordinary power and beauty and impact. It does catch fire. - America Magazine
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| Posted Dec 01, 2021
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All the King's Men (1949) |
It is not a pleasant experience sitting through a picture which does not have any character of real moral stature, but the film's forceful point is that venality and fear are the reasons why it could happen here. - America Magazine
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| Posted Nov 30, 2021
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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) |
This latter-day Colonel Blimp is pretty hard to swallow as a symbol of the military mind, but Guinness' superb performance makes him terrifyingly and unforgettably real as an individual. - America Magazine
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| Posted Nov 17, 2021
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Paths of Glory (1957) |
Stanley Kubrick brings a controlled power to his direction of the uncompromisingly grim events, and Kirk Douglas, who produced the film, finds a most congenial role as an uncorrupted French colonel fighting for his men. - America Magazine
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| Posted Nov 17, 2021
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Marty (1955) |
The wealth of observed detail about life in the Bronx (the film's locale and also where it was made) conveys a vibrant and unmistakable ring of truth. - America Magazine
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| Posted Oct 18, 2021
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Sunset Boulevard (1950) |
Quibbles about plausibility aside, the characters come to life within their narrow, melodramatic framework. - America Magazine
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| Posted Oct 11, 2021
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The Little Fugitive (1953) |
An acutely observed, touching, almost irresistibly funny and not at all pretentious account of a small boy's twenty-four hours of solitary adventuring in Coney Island. - America Magazine
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| Posted Sep 16, 2021
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The Littlest Outlaw (1955) |
There is a good deal of the charm of a fairy story about the picture and also some superb riding sequences. - America Magazine
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| Posted Aug 23, 2021
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Adventure in Baltimore (1949) |
[Shirley Temple, Robert Young, and John Agar] are the attractive principals; but their efforts are hampered by a script that never gets much beyond superficial sentiment and contrived comic situations. - America Magazine
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| Posted Jul 29, 2021
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Red Canyon (1949) |
[A] pleasant and somewhat unusual family Western. - America Magazine
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| Posted Jul 29, 2021
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The Trouble With Women (1947) |
Thin and predictable and only mildly amusing. - America Magazine
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| Posted Jul 29, 2021
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