Publications list

The Devil Finds Work

The Devil Finds Work is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer^® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): James Baldwin.

Rating	Title \| Year	Author	Quote
	The Defiant Ones (1958)	James Baldwin	No one, clearly, was able to foresee what Poitier would do with his role -- nor was anyone, thereafter, able to undo it -- and his performance, which lends the film its only real distinction, also, paradoxically, smashes it to pieces. Posted May 01, 2024 Edit critic review
	The Exorcist (1973)	James Baldwin	The mindless and hysterical banality of the evil presented in The Exorcist is the most terrifying thing about the film. The Americans should certainly know more about evil than that; if they pretend otherwise, they are lying. Posted May 01, 2024 Edit critic review
	I Spit on Your Grave (1959)	James Baldwin	An utterly cynical use of the name of Boris Vian, the young Frenchman who wrote the novel on which the film is emphatically not based. Posted May 01, 2024 Edit critic review
	Fury (1936)	James Baldwin	It is meant to be a study of mob violence, on which level it is indignant, sincere, and inept. Posted May 01, 2024 Edit critic review
	Lawrence of Arabia (1962)	James Baldwin	It may be said that the weary melancholy underlying Lawrence of Arabia stems from the stupefying apprehension that, whereas England may have been doomed to civilize the world, no power under heaven can civilize England. Posted May 01, 2024 Edit critic review
	My Son John (1952)	James Baldwin	Nothing can possibly redeem so grisly a species of sentimental dishonesty, but Robert Walker's gleefully vicious parody of the wayward American son does a great deal to demystify it. Posted May 01, 2024 Edit critic review
	Lady Sings the Blues (1972)	James Baldwin	It has absolutely nothing to do with Billie, or with jazz, or any other kind of music, or the risks of an artist, or American life, or black life, or narcotics, or the narcotics laws, or clubs, or managers, or policemen, or despair, or love. Posted May 01, 2024 Edit critic review
	Dead End (1937)	James Baldwin	The severity of the social situation which Dead End so romanticizes (somewhat like its direct descendant, West Side Story) utterly precludes the innocence of its heroine. Posted Jan 17, 2024 Edit critic review
	You Only Live Once (1937)	James Baldwin	Lang's concern, or obsession, was with the fact and the effect of human loneliness, and the ways in which we are all responsible for the creation, and the fate, of the isolated monster: whom we isolate because we recognize him as living within us. Posted Jan 17, 2024 Edit critic review