Richard Nilsen, Arizona Republic
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For 24 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 45% higher than the average critic
  • 8% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Richard Nilsen's Scores

  • Movies
Average review score: 64
Highest review score:
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Critic Score 90
Lowest review score:
Finding Joe
Critic Score 20
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 24
  3. Negative: 1 out of 24
24 movie reviews
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    • Metascore: 85
    • Richard Nilsen 90
    Exit Through the Gift Shop
    A sparkling documentary in which we can't trust that anything in it is true. And yet you would never call it a hoax.
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    • Metascore: 74
    • Richard Nilsen 90
    Farewell
    As in a Le Carré novel, we're given long doses of the private lives of the protagonists, and we learn their secrets, their insecurities and the toll taken by the necessity of constant lying.
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    • Metascore: 54
    • Richard Nilsen 80
    Bran Nue Dae
    An infectiously joyful Australian Aboriginal musical.
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    • Metascore: 63
    • Richard Nilsen 80
    Howl
    This film is a wonderful act of imagination on its own.
    • Metascore: 57
    • Richard Nilsen 80
    A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    As the film comes to an end, more and more of "Blood Simple" is translated directly to China, even to the last drop.
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    • Metascore: 59
    • Richard Nilsen 80
    My Afternoons with Margueritte
    The film is leisurely paced, as many French films are, and not much actually happens, but as a character study, it feels true, and ultimately moving.
    • Metascore: 83
    • Richard Nilsen 80
    Pina
    For anyone with an interest in dance, Pina is a must-see. For anyone not interested in contemporary dance, Pina is a should-see. It could change your mind.
    • Metascore: 68
    • Richard Nilsen 70
    Four Lions
    Four Lions is a comedy about terrorism. No, not a thoughtful, intellectual take on the absurdities of suicide bombing. It's slapstick. Actually, it's the Three Stooges of Jihad.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Richard Nilsen 70
    Strongman
    Strongman is a documentary Diane Arbus might have made: These are the wretched of the Earth, and our peeking into their lives feels intrusive.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Richard Nilsen 70
    Crime After Crime
    As cinema, Crime After Crime is nothing special. It would be perfect for a PBS "Frontline" entry. But it reminds us, once again, that little can be quite so riveting as a well-told story from a compelling talking head.
    • Metascore: 62
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    Micmacs
    Jeunet's new film, Micmacs, mixes the dark, claustrophobic world of "Delicatessen" and "City of Lost Children," with the happy-ending optimism of "Amélie" and "A Very Long Engagement." It isn't a convincing graft of moods.
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    • Metascore: 47
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    The Little Traitor
    Doesn't attempt much, doesn't accomplish much, doesn't offer much and doesn't leave you with anything memorable to take home with you.
    • Metascore: 55
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    Mao's Last Dancer
    It's hard to know whether to take it to task as a film critic or as a dance critic. It isn't that it fails on either level - it's a serviceable movie - but it neither attempts nor achieves much of value.
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    • Metascore: 47
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    Restless
    You also aren't sure what the film is about or if it's about anything at all, except fluid filmmaking.
    • Metascore: 68
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    Potiche
    It's also a head-scratcher: How did a movie this stubbornly old-fashioned ever get made by such a trendy French director as Francois Ozon.
    • Metascore: 49
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    Henry's Crime
    Go for Caan and Farmiga, and stay to be surprised by Reeves.
    • Metascore: 60
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    Bride Flight
    None of the characters, save Ada, is interesting enough to sustain the creaky joints of the convention of the story mechanism.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
    If you can ignore the implausibility -- nay, the opacity -- of the plot, the film is wonderfully cinematic, with great photography, exciting editing, fresh camera angles and some impressive CGI.
    • Metascore: 53
    • Richard Nilsen 60
    Delicacy
    Delicacy is not a very good movie. But it is entertaining enough -- barely enough -- to make it worth seeing.
    • Metascore: 56
    • Richard Nilsen 50
    Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
    Two narcissists do not a couple make, and without any actual relationship, there really isn't a movie.
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    • Metascore: 59
    • Richard Nilsen 50
    The Whistleblower
    You come away from watching the film with a moral bellyache.
    • Metascore: 46
    • Richard Nilsen 40
    The Flowers of War
    The film is cinematically brilliant but morally obtuse.
    • Metascore: 45
    • Richard Nilsen 20
    Finding Joe
    It comprises some 20 talking heads, each pretty much saying the same thing, interspersed with film of children dressed up as mythical heroes, enacting the stages of the "hero's journey."

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