Hooked (book)

Hooked (1989) is the ninth collection of movie reviews by the critic Pauline Kael, covering the period from July 1985 to June 1988. All articles in the book originally appeared in The New Yorker.

She reviews more than 170 films giving rich praise to the work of directors and performers she admires - in this collection for example, Robert Altman, ("When he's working in top form there's nobody who can touch him. They can't even get near him"); Alan Rudolph - for his film Songwriter; Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon, Melanie Griffith, - ("Has anybody ever looked better in smeared lipstick?"); Lesley Ann Warren, ("one of the great beauties of the screen"); Steve Martin in Roxanne, - ("seems to crossbreed the skills of Fields and Buster Keaton, with some Fred Astaire mingled in. He's a wonder"). And cool to what she regards as second rate, here for example, George Lucas ("George Lucas should believe less in himself - he keeps trying to come up with an original idea, and he can't"); and the film Heartbreak Ridge - ("It would take a board of inquiry made up of gods to determine whether this picture is more offensive aesthetically, psychologically, morally, or politically.")

Her trademark witty style pervades the collection, - the telling use of metaphor - ("Robert Downey Jr., whose soul is floppy-eared.."), - the jamming up of oppositions against each other to suggest the complexity of things - ("she's both a small-town cartoon of sexual magic and the real thing." - "Big isn't about kids wanting to be big; it's about grown-ups feeling little"); - remarks with epigrammatic force, - ("Shallow entertainment helps keep us sane"); - the deft undercutting of a word or statement by the following word or statement - ("She's an innocent, deeply conventional woman who loves being rudely awakened." - "Top Gun is a recruiting poster that isn't concerned with recruiting but with being a poster." - "He's the kind of actor John Wayne would have been if he'd been an actor.")

The films she recommends include:

• The Best of Times
• Dreamchild
• Sweet Dreams
• Down and Out in Beverly Hills
• Compromising Positions
• My Beautiful Laundrette
• Mona Lisa
• Salvador
• Club Paradise
• Mike's Murder
• Blue Velvet
• She's Gotta Have It
• Re-Animator
• Something Wild
• Hour of the Star
• The Stepfather
• Law of Desire
• Raising Arizona
• Brazil
• Roxanne
• Tampopo
• Eat the Peach
• The Witches of Eastwick
• Wish You Were Here
• Hamburger Hill
• Hope and Glory
• Weeds
• The Dead
• The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
• Moonstruck
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• High Tide
• High Season
• Pass the Ammo
• Hairspray
• Matador
• Beetlejuice
• Masquerade
• A World Apart
• Bull Durham

The title refers to her film 'addiction'. "I got hooked on movies at an early age, (around 4 or 5, when I saw them while sitting on my parents' laps), and I am still a child before a moving image. Movies seem to me the most mysteriously great of all art forms."

The book is out-of-print in the United States, but is still published by Marion Boyars Publishers in the United Kingdom.