Mike Nichols’s divisive fourth feature is a fascinating cultural artifact.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2025

Nichols, holding the rare honor of the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony winner), excels at bringing the best out of his performers.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 17, 2025

Feiffer has a way of capturing men and their inflated egos—that competitive nature—but also the disgusting way they see women, in such an honest manner that it’s often painful to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 15, 2025

[Jules Feiffer and Mike Nichols] have made a film that is hard but not cynical, clever but not superficial and, as movies go, quite important.

Full Review | Oct 3, 2023

Some of the scenes are so emotionally harsh as to provoke gasps.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Nov 29, 2022

Brilliantly directed, Nichols focused on closeups to reveal character, aided enormously by Feiffer’s incisive dialogue and story.

Full Review | Aug 29, 2022

Carnal Knowledge may be an acid bath, but it strips a certain kind of man right down to the bone.

Full Review | Jun 30, 2021

Nichols has broken thoroughly now with his stage beginnings, integrating camera and action easily, using space and silence with the fluency of a man at home behind a lens.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2020

A sharp reflection about the relationship between young men and women. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 23, 2019

Frank '70s coming-of-age tale has lots of sex, profanity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2016

... an acerbic and, in many ways, dispiriting portrait of masculinity and male sexuality in the post-World War II culture.

Full Review | Jan 29, 2009

A pretentious and uneven provocative moralistic adult drama about coping with the "sexual revolution" among the middle-class males.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Nov 11, 2008

Ah, the sweet smell of '70s American cinema when anything was possible.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 3, 2008

A rather superficial and limited probe of American male sexual hypocrisies.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2008

Deeply felt critique of middle-class sexual politics, and one of the better films of formerly interesting director Mike Nichols.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 8, 2008

The picture has its moments of chilling insight, though essentially it is one more quaint early-70s stab at an American art cinema that never materialized.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2008

Misunderstood by critics and viewers, Nichols' satire of male chauvinism is by turns witty, provocative, funny, and depressing. The film was so controversial in 1971 that it went all the way to the Supreme Court for obscenity charges.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Apr 23, 2007

This was never quite the major assault on sexism and male chauvinism it set itself up to be.

Full Review | Feb 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 13, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2005