Stuart Klawans

Film Critic

Stuart Klawans was the film critic for The Nation from 1988 through 2020

Night of the Living Dead Night of the Living Dead

Sooner or later, there would have to be fireworks in Bringing Out the Dead.

Oct 28, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Rough and Tumble Rough and Tumble

Begin with a cluster of molecules in the void. The camera zooms away from them, sucking you back through some dim anatomical corridor.

Oct 21, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Uneasy Riders Uneasy Riders

What was it like in the sixties, wonders a dewy young woman in The Limey, speaking to Peter Fonda. Who better to ask?

Oct 14, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Woman Off the Verge Woman Off the Verge

To die for art: No one takes the idea seriously anymore, and yet people do it every day.

Sep 30, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

The Boys of Summer The Boys of Summer

To the list of movie characters who look back on their lives from the Beyond, add Lester Burnham, the 42-year-old, dead narrator of American Beauty. He is a murder victim--so it ...

Sep 23, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Adults Only Adults Only

Conventional wisdom has it that Americans stopped attending foreign films as soon as the domestic ones started featuring bare breasts. Convention, as usual, is too simple.

Sep 16, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

War of the Worlds War of the Worlds

When a boy comes of age in a movie made by Francophones, he's generally obliged to visit a brothel.

Sep 9, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Humiliation With a Smile Humiliation With a Smile

To suffer humiliation can be tragic. To bear humiliation for much longer than necessary, yet with loud impatience, is the comic gift of Albert Brooks.

Sep 2, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Bewitched Bewitched

Summer Celluloid Meltdown

Aug 19, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

Old Masters Old Masters

For contemporary reactions from Nation critics to the films of Stanley Kubrick, follow these links: Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Shining...

Jul 22, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

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