Richard Schickel
Select another critic »For 568 reviews, this critic has graded:
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55% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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42% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.9 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Richard Schickel's Scores
- Movies
- TV
Average review score: | 67 | |
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Highest review score: | The Untouchables | |
Lowest review score: | Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 351 out of 568
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Mixed: 152 out of 568
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Negative: 65 out of 568
568
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Richard Schickel
More important, we should take into account the fact that this is really quite a good movie--a character-driven (as opposed to whammy-driven) suspense drama--dark, fatalistic and, within its melodramatically stretched terms, emotionally plausible.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
All the actors in No Man's Land are wonderfully alive, fractious and unpredictable. Their performances also help break down the schematics and turn this into an emotionally potent, powerfully thoughtful and finally tragic experience.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Makes everything Hollywood has lately done in the action genre look clumsy, dull and stale. It is a short, nonstop stuntfest that, by going back to basics and placing them on the screen with simple, breathless stylishness, turns what is essentially a lowlife movie form into something one is not embarrassed to call "pure" cinema--all energy, movement and high kinetic wit.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Loutishness without self-awareness remains loutishness--and it is finally depressing.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
This is a sad, subtle and very good movie, designed not so much to make you think, but to make you feel the impact of large events on little lives.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Everyone in the cast has his or her solo, and all rise brilliantly to their occasions, notably Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Beals, Mina Badie and a divinely neurotic Jane Adams.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
It is, finally, as a richly pulsating, hugely entertaining human comedy -- antic, wayward, glancing -- that Short Cuts bemuses, amuses and finally entrances us. [4 Oct 1993]- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Kubrick’s remains perhaps the blackest comedy ever put on screen, and with Peter Sellers brilliantly playing multiple roles, the blackest, funniest movie of the post-war era.- Time
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- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Very simply, Bertolucci has found an elegance of design and execution that few of his contemporaries could even dream of. [23 Nov 1987]- Time
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- Richard Schickel
One of this movie's implications--and it's a common enough one these days--is that sensitivity is a quality impossible to find in straight guys. [20 April 1998]- Time
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- Richard Schickel
But in shaping their tale for the screen, shouldn't he have honored their courage--and, yes, inventiveness--with something other than cliches?- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Yes, Burt Reynolds has some dirty, lively moments as a crooked, sex-starved Congressman. But the crazy, nothing-to-lose anarchy of people living below the margin and beyond the fringe is not within Bergman's fastidious reach.- Time
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- Time
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- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Before Director Ron Howard and his gargle of writers (Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel and Bruce Jay Friedman) arrange a satisfactorily romantic ending for their odd couple, they also manage to satirize everything from presidential politics to daytime television. They are a jostling, busily observant, fundamentally good-natured crew, and audiences are well advised to take a plunge on Splash.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Well acted, and it achieves a strong, smart, engaging life of its own.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
To make an unembarrassing movie about embarrassment is definitely an eye-opening achievement.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The actor (Puri) and the film make something fine, winning and memorable.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
As long as Training Day stays tightly focused on the struggle between the two cops, the movie is first rate.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Unsparing but never unsympathetic, emerges as one of the year's best, most brutally honest movies.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Unfolds with a patient intelligence. The Sixth Sense might not scare you out of your wits, but it could reward them.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are glorious comic actresses, while Joan Plowright provides a firm, touching moral center to the film. They almost make you forget Cher's totally out-of-it work as a disapproved-of American and carry the film to its destiny, which is one of inoffensive inconsequence, prettily staged. [24 May 1999, p.88]- Time
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- Richard Schickel
What saves this movie from hopeless sentimentality is Meryl Streep's subtle performance.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Finally, though, Traffic, for all its earnestness, does not work. It leaves one feeling restless and dissatisfied.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Maybe the film loses a little steam as it rolls along, but it is still puffing and tooting as Clooney and Zellweger ride off into the sunset -- on a comically raffish period motorcycle, free as the wind.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The production's genially tatty air enhances its anarchical mood and encourages one to go with its goofy yet often shrewd comic flow.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
What Willis proves in Die Hard is that it is not one you can ease through, especially if your preparation runs more to body building than to character building. [July 25, 1988]- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The movie and everyone in it remain, under Ivan Reitman's determinedly casual direction, very loosely organized. They amble agreeably, but not necessarily hilariously, from one special-effects sequence to the next. These are not better, worse or even different from the original's trick work, and their lack of punctuating surprise is the film's largest problem, especially at the shamelessly repetitive climax. [26 June 1989, p.89]- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The result is tiresome and tone-deaf and a disappointing comeback for Bogdanovich.- Time
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