Network (1976)

Finch's spouting is impressive, but we prefer Holden's sardonic edge, even if his big speeches seem the most predictably written.

Chayefsky was apparently serious about much of this shrill, self-important 1976 satire about television, interlaced with bile about radicals and pushy career women, and so were some critics at the time.

A timeless satire on television as a wasteland.

No review available.

For some reason, Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning satire was perceived as a drama when the movie came out in 1976. Much ahead of its time, the film was a cautionary tale of the news media as infotainment (emphasis on the secon part of the concept).

So truthful, so prescient, it's painful. Paddy Chayevsky delivers one of the best screenplays ever written.

No review available.

Much of Chayefsky's script seems to have been written with megaphone in hand, which is close to how director Sidney Lumet airs it out. Yet in retrospect, maybe the ravings of Finch as a deranged anchorman aren't so far from surreal madness of Jerry Spring

One would assume that a 1976 film about network television would feel dated today, but director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky had such a fine concept that Network seems downright contemporary.

Rare is the social satire that rings as true as Network does, and the film is even more topical today than it was thirty years ago.