Looking for Mr. Goodbar

The portentous invocation of Catholic guilt and psychotically split personality couldn't be clearer if 'Madonna and Whore' had also been laid out in blinking neon.

What makes the film ... so fascinating and repellent at once is precisely the confusion and anxiety it articulates about women's sexual freedom.

In Looking for Mr Goodbar, writer-director Richard Brooks manifests his ability to catch accurately both the tone and subtlety of characters in the most repellant environments.

Judith Rossner's calculated bestseller, about a contemporary woman's sexuality and her 'descent' into the world of New York singles bars, gets what it deserves in this old-fashioned adaptation.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is very much worth seeing, particularly for the Diane Keaton performance.

In a day when some straights are just beginning to suspect that all gay men might not be women-hating freaks, Brooks is reinforcing a negative, stereotypic image of gay men.

1977 was the year of TWO fantastic Diane Keaton performances.

A fascinating book is turned into a bleak and empty film by making things much less complicated than they really are. The film maker has manipulated the idea of the book and has limited the image of the woman to satisfy commerce requirements.

...benefits from Keaton's superb (and completely convincing) turn as the sympathetic protagonist...

[Keaton's] vulnerability, cynically expressive eyebrows, constantly reassessing eyes, give Looking for Mr. Goodbar an immediacy it doesn't deserve.