Popular reviews

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  Review by eely ★★★ 1

  me to my reflection in the microwave glass as i heat up vegan mac & cheese at two o’clock in the morning: i could’ve had class. i could’ve been a contender. i could’ve been somebody. instead of a bum. which is what i am.

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 33

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  It's hard for me to get behind this film, which I read as a call-to-action to cleanse unions (and by extension, leftist politics) of corrupting influences. Watching a film where a man, played with surprisingly quiet passion by Brando, stands up (eventually) to those corrupting influences in risk of his life, his freedom, or his love, watching this knowing that Kazan, perhaps out of spite, perhaps out of cowardice, perhaps both, named names to HUAC, just left me feeling bitter. Reading it instead as a story about rejecting the union entirely would not, of course, make it any better. This is not an atonement; it's just almost a defense.

  That it is made with craft, with the shadows of noir…

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  Review by k(arst)en ★★★½ 19

  Brando's performance really did live up to my expectations. Not only ahead of its time but also capable of surpassing dramatic performances today. I can feel the rage boiling underneath this film which is why I see it staying with me for awhile. The ending felt much more spiritual than I was expecting. Lot of religious metaphors that I couldn't pick up on my first time around but that I look forward to revisiting. I don't really know how I feel about this film other than what I just said. One film closer to getting through that AFI list, though!

  I'm doing my absolute best to not compare Brando's looks to....well I'll let you guys guess.

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  Review by Will Sloan ★★★★★ 4

  Very powerful. “And what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville.”

  My politics are that it’s okay to rat on your union boss if he is corrupt and murderous, but it’s not okay to rat on your former colleagues to the HUAC when you are already an Academy Award-winning director.

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 7

  Part of Dastardly Difficult December: film nr.39

  One of the great American Classics that somehow managed to elude me all this time.

  I now fully understand what people mean when they say that acting has a pre-Brando and a post-Brando era. Brando delivers a seminal performance here that shook things up mainly because he showed a natural quality to his acting that wasn't common in those days. He wasn't articulate, was very physical and clearly improvised a lot.

  As an adept of the Actors Studio he was a practitioner of Method Acting and if ever there was a definitive example of what that can do to a performance, it is shown in Brando's portrayal of Terry Malloy. In a story…

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  Review by Nakul ★★★★½

  "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."

  Elia Kazan's ON THE WATERFRONT is a bonafide classic and it still holds up. A powerful morality tale and a blatant look inside a corrupted mob-infested union that rules over the local dock workers.
  An absolute masterwork of cinematography by Boris Kaufman. Marlon Brando gives a performance way ahead of it's time, one of the greatest ever.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★½ 1

  84/100

  Of the 100 greatest shrugs in the history of motion pictures, at least 45 are performed by Marlon Brando here.

  (Not much to say that's non-obvious. Father Barry's unfailing righteousness used to irk me a bit, but I now think Malden gives him a certain vainglorious air that makes him resoundingly human. Only reservations are that Bernstein's score sometimes gets intrusive during dialogue scenes and that Terry's appearance in court feels rushed and anticlimactic. Otherwise: stirring, delicate, beautifully observed, not really all that self-exculpatory. And Brando is just absurdly great, perfecting a sort of intense offhandedness that neither Dean nor Clift was ever quite able to manage.)

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★★ 50

  “On the Waterfront” is the moment that Elia Kazan stood up and exorcised his demons. But one man’s devils are another man’s martyrs. And Kazan, a man by any other name, might also be what another would call a rat. 

  Kazan, though, did not see himself as a man, or a rat. He saw his cooperative provision of names before HUAC as the act of a hero. Such is the perception and pathos that he carries into the making of “On the Waterfront.” 

  Marlon Brando is Kazan’s representative image within the film. Here, he plays a dockworker who witnessed a murder by his fellow longshoreman, and must testify as to their guilt, despite union bosses’ persuasive measures to keep him…

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  Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★★ 4

  thinking about this in correlation with kazan's actions as one of the directors who ratted out multiple individuals as communists during the blacklists, a man who betrayed those people and his country in order to essentially save his own skin making a movie about a working class man fighting against a corrupt union is endlessly fascinating.
  kazan's actions were unforgivable, screwing over former friends and other innocent people for personal benefit/for his anti communist agenda is despicable and morally reprehensible but its interesting to think about how he intended for this film to come across, is kazan positioning the unions as the communists with malloy being the liberator who rats on them and eventually is considered the hero a stand…

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  Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★★½ 14

  Episode 20 of The Cineflek Podcast out now with cuckoochanel and Richard Chandler! (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

  It is easy to see why Scorsese worships this movie, it is a gritty on-location portrait of New York with religious imagery throughout.

  This movie lives and dies by its acting. Centered around Brando's all-time performance is a supporting cast that is really a who's who of 50s character actors, launching the careers of Rod Steiger, and Eva Marie Saint. Beyond that, Lee J Cobb and Carl Malden play off each other as the good and evil forces to Brando's morally confused character.

  It is impossible to separate this film from Kazan's own history with HUAC and choosing to testify. The film's message is that…

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  Review by Sam Meltzer ★★★½ 14

  One of the most honest, rich, and beautiful portrayals of poverty ever brought to screen. While there were maybe a small number of scenes that I wasn’t totally into, I can’t deny that I love this one. Its excellent script and wonderful performances help bring this story to life with such ease. The expressions on Marlon Brando’s eyes alone are enough to make you feel sad. A lot of scenes involve some form of fighting and it captures the theme of poverty really really well. These men have to fight to get what they want, or else they’ll literally be left with nothing. When you dig deeper, it’s a really sad story. And yes, he could’ve been somebody. 😔😔

  Best Picture Rank

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  Review by Branson Reese 1

  Sort of sucks that this is so good.