Popular reviews

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  Review by ciara ★★ 5

  tell me why we watched this to study queer feminist cinema when it wasn’t queer or feminist apart from hepburn looking a little bit like a lesbian

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  Review by eely ★★★

  yelling—angry.
  waving my HANDS a lot.

  specific point of view on things.

  cynthia cyn-THI-a
  jesus DIED for our cynthia (darrington)s.
  jesus CRIED. runaway bride. 
  katharine hepburn. katharine HEP...burns

  CYNTHIA
  mmmm cynthia 
  YOU’RE DEAD 
  you are dead

  bop boop beep boop bop you’re dead

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  Review by Sally Jane Black

  I like to think Katharine Hepburn's performance here served as inspiration for some; some young girl who saw this and wanted to be just like her and just pretended it had a different ending. There's a commentary to be found here, a progressive one hidden behind the conventional moral here; you could turn this easily into an argument for, say, Choice, or against traditional views of men and women, or against monogamy, even. Still, there's undercurrents here that have unfortunate ideas lurking within them; noble sacrifice for a man is ignoble in my eyes, for instance. Mostly, though, it mystifies why Hepburn's character isn't the title character and why she isn't first billed.

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  Review by sarah ★★★ 1

  Glad I watched this, even though the messages here regarding women are suspect. One thought that consoled me as I watched Katharine Hepburn make sacrifices for a lover who sacrificed nothing is that, well, at least this film wasn’t directed by a man 🥴

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  Review by AJ ★★★

  I can manage without you.
  Yes, but I wouldn't let you.

  Katharine Hepburn is effortlessly cool in her second screen outing, especially when she's being a badass aviatrix and when she's dressed as a silver moth.

  Sadly, I never bought the romance and melodrama forced in Christopher Strong. It is pushing the envelope, even for a pre-code. I think that this would've felt manipulative if it was directed by a man, but Dorothy Arzner is at the helm and that does help considering the mixed signals. Be independent. Be badass. Put your dreams and loves aside so that you can be married. The ending especially muddies things.

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  Review by Robin ★★★

  anyway this should be called Cynthia Darrington, thank you and goodnight.

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  Review by el ★★

  everything here feels half baked. dorothy arzner had a lot of interesting ideas. unfortunately, they were mostly diluted by early/mid 20th century ideas about womanhood. i wish she was working today so we could see her truly shine. 

  (side note: this is a film in which katharine hepburn attempts to break records through aviation and repeatedly risks her life doing so while her partner is made miserable by her antics. from my limited knowledge of the hepburn/howard hughes romance, wasn’t that the nature of their relationship? him almost dying and her shitting her pants over it? life imitates art.)

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  Review by Alyssa Heflin ★★★

  @ColinClive she gay dude stop it lol

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  Review by Dale Nauertz ★★★★

  Until a month or so ago, I had never heard of Dorothy Arzner, the first woman to belong to the director's guild. Now, thanks to my subscription to the Criterion Channel, I am able to sample some of her work.

  "Christopher Strong" is the story of a man who has been happily married for decades. He would go on being happily married if his hard-partying daughter hadn't dragged him out in the middle of the night to participate in a "treasure hunt". He was recruited because he is an example of a man who has been married and never cheated upon his wife. At this party, he is introduced to Lady Cynthia Darrington, a female aviator who is over the…

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  Review by Elizabeth 🥀 ★★★★

  "Death is nothing, but I didn't want to die before I'd known love .. all love"

  Wow. I was not expecting such a depressing ending. This is one of the pre-code Katharine Hepburn movies I really liked. It does have a lot going for it, especially the "Moth" dress she wore in this film. She was radiant!

  The film itself looks at love and the core of what brings people together and also what tears them apart. For Cynthia (Hepburn) she was a young woman who had not experienced this type of love before. Also, she was very much into breaking a record as a pilot - something I found her character to be quite strong willed over and allowed…

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  Review by annabelle ★★★

  there is nothing that could’ve prepared me for that metallic moth costume

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  Review by James 🇺🇦 ★★★

  A rather strange and unremarkable melodrama, but notable for being an early Katharine Hepburn vehicle (her second film) and for being directed by Dorothy Arzner, literally the only female director working in Hollywood during most of her career.

  Hepburn's future stardom is easy to predict with the benefit of hindsight when watching her early film appearances, her performance here is rather toned down compared to the relentless energy of her work with George Cukor. The film doesn't seem have much to say in terms of a statement or themes but it can certainly be appreciated for championing female independence and exploring changing social mores; Hepburn plays a fearless, career minded pilot who doesn't plan on falling in love and when she does it only complicates matters, especially as it's with a happily married man.

  Worth watching just to see Hepburn dressed as a giant metallic moth.

  Streamed on The Criterion Channel.