On “Hudson River Blues”
Hollywood Reporter Jan. 7th, 1999
“A fine relationship film. A well written script by Jennifer and John Manocherian -earthy, witty, thoughtful and sincere -makes it all work… Director Nell Cox gets some excellent performances.”
On Liza’s Pioneer Diary
New York Times 1977
“Miss Cox and Liza’s Pioneer Diary represent the best of what “Visions” was designed for -talent and originality in American Television Programming. The production is beautifully lean and compelling”
Hollywood Reporter
“Nell Cox carries off the roles of writer, director and producer with skillfull aplomb, wearing each of these hats with delightful expertise. It’s a fascinating film, rich with authentic detail, and peopled with wonderfully believable characters.”
Christian Science Monitor
“Liza succeeds beautifully. It’s a minor tour de force – Breathtaking in its utter simplicity. It will turn out to be a cherished memory of your television viewing.”
Los Angeles Times
“Outstanding. Miss Cox is adept at dialogue and characterization as she in drawing fine performances from her cast. Liza’s Pioneer Diary has much poignance and humor and many striking images.”
The Washington Post
“Visions” has struck gold with Liza’s Pioneer Diary. This unstressed, utimately very touching account of a trek across the Nebraska plains in 1848 has all the homespun virtues audiences are always said to be clamoring for – warmth, human dimension, historical perspective, relevance, humor, pathos and dignity. It also happens to be a darned good story.”
Newsweek
“Liza’s Pioneer Diary” is to the typical TV western what “Crime and Punishment” is to “Starsky and Hutch”
Variety
The quality is consistently excellent. The film is the first feature-lenght effort by Cox, but the skill, taste and intelligence of the show certainly indicate more will be coming.
On “A to B”
NYTimes May 28th, 1971
“But wait till you see the real beauty of the batch! This is Nell Cox’s ‘A to B.’ Running 35 minutes, it is one of the most honest, sensitive and judicious dramatic vignettes of a young girl’s discovery of self that we have seen in a long time. Apparently, Miss Cox has used non-professionals and a Southern town (judging by the accents). The heroine is so natural and appealing — likewise her young Bohemian sweetheart — that it almost hurts.
In every way, this movie is alive, not merely lifelike. Made with financial help from the American Film Institute, the picture has a memorable fade – out post scripted with the words ‘To Be Continued.’ C’mon, Nell, let’s have the rest of the story. So far, swell!”
Howard Thompson
This film was shown on a program at the Whitney Museum called FILMS BY WOMEN.
New York Post, May 28th, 1971, Archer Winsten
The Whitney Museum’s American Filmmaker Series has come up with a 35 – minute winner in Nell Cox’s “A to B” which is part of their Films by Women program running through next Wednesday. Called “a synthesis of cinema verité techniques used in a dramatic film”, it can serve as the ultimate and precisely truthful portratit of the younger generation and the Gap. It can also emphasize how wrong and far from the mark so many Hollywood attempts have been.
Miss Cox gives her performers a tight structure, then permits them to improvise. The results are so good that your first impulse is to find out who wrote that good dialogue.
A second impulse is to find out what that young man has been doing that no major Hollywood producer has caught his easy, charming realism. It turns out that his name is Wade Christiansen and he’s an architecture student at the University of Kentucky. If he goes unseen much longer it will be a blot on the talent scouts of an entire industry.
In short, this is a filmic revelation, traditional in technique but so good in its detail that it brings you up short. What is that younger generation stuff we’ve been swallowing?
Newsday, May 26th, 1971, Joseph Gelmis
The best film in the program is Nell Cox’s 35 minute “A to B”, which was made with a $9,000 grant from the American Film Institute and $7,000 of Miss Cox’s own money. It was shown on in December on National Educational Television’s “Flick Out Show”. Shot in Lexington, Ky., “A to B” is a simple but effective drama about a repressed teenage girl’s emotional liberation with her discovery of an alternative life-style, a cabalistic hippie subculture in the midst of a very conventional community. Trained as a film editor, Miss Cox has a sensitive eye an ear and handles actors well. She found her personal hipster star, Wade Christiansen, an architecture student at the University of Kentucky, walking down a city street. He is more attractive and intelligent and believable than all the stars of the big budget: Now Films.
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Nell Cox 