Richard Schickel Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Richard Schickel

Richard Schickel

Agrees with the Tomatometer 73% of the time.

Publications:: The Atlantic , Time Canada , TIME Magazine
Critics' Group:: Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle

Total Reviews:: 335
Total QuickRatings:: 1

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 335

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	29%	The House of the Spirits (1994)	" The thing works in its goofy way, mainly because Bille August is a man of apparently dauntless conviction. He has written and directed every scene with serene authority." — TIME Magazine Posted May 20, 2013
	30%	Freebie and the Bean (1974)	" Freebie (James Caan) is a cop whose corruption is supposed to be charming." — TIME Magazine Posted May 17, 2013
	80%	Fight Club (1999)	" It is working American Beauty-Susan Faludi territory, that illiberal, impious, inarticulate fringe that threatens the smug American center with an anger that cannot explain itself, can act out its frustrations only in inexplicable violence." — TIME Magazine Posted Apr 22, 2013
	88%	Superman II (1981)	" Let's face it, times change, and Superman and friend have sweetly embraced the spirit of the '80s as well as each other." — TIME Magazine Posted Apr 12, 2013
	54%	Basic Instinct (1992)	" [The film has] a smug faith in the ability of its own speed, smartness and luxe to wow the yokels." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 25, 2013
	72%	Dirty Dancing (1987)	" If the ending of Eleanor Bergstein's script is too neat and inspirational, the rough energy of the film's song and dance does carry one along, past the whispered doubts of better judgment." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 25, 2013
	78%	F.I.S.T. (1978)	" F.I.S.T. stands for nearly 2 1/2 hours of almost unmitigated boredom-a misfired would-be proletarian epic with Sylvester Stallone misplaying the Jimmy Hoffa part with a self-confidence that borders on the sublime." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 25, 2013
	77%	A Beautiful Mind (2001)	" The result is mainstream moviemaking at its highest, most satisfying level." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 24, 2013
	56%	The Turning Point (1977)	" You yield to The Turning Point relucantly, knowing well that it is conning you -- with sentiment, with flamboyance, with sheer slickness." — TIME Magazine Posted Jan 30, 2012
	76%	Black Hawk Down (2001)	" Black Hawk Down makes that point without preachment, in precise and pitiless imagery. And for that reason alone it takes its place on the very short list of the unforgettable movies about war and its ineradicable and immeasurable costs." — TIME Magazine Posted Nov 8, 2011
	76%	Top Secret! (1984)	" This time, though, the creative group has neglected to build to the kind of giddy, everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink climax that made Airplane! such a memorable exercise in anarchy." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 18, 2011
	78%	The Long Riders (1980)	" Hill is very much in the American grain, the inheritor of the Ford-Hawks-Walsh tradition of artful, understated action film making." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 7, 2011
	97%	The Right Stuff (1983)	" Moviegoers seeking a grand yet edifying entertainment, right-stuffed with what Kaufman calls "seriousness of subject matter and a wild humor that comes out of left field," now know where to look..." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 5, 2011
	96%	The Big Easy (1987)	" A movie that manages to be atmospherically rich while also satisfying the slash-crash imperatives of the police-action genre." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 5, 2011
	83%	The Onion Field (1979)	" The Onion Field is a serious and most uncompromising movie. It lacks, however, the sort of disciplined craft that might have made it a powerful and affecting one." — TIME Magazine Posted Sep 10, 2011
—	95%	Raiders of the Lost Ark (2012)	" Raiders of the Lost Ark has it all -- or, anyway, more than enough to transport moviegoers back to the dazzling, thrill-sated matinee idyls of old." — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 8, 2011
	84%	Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)	" Here is a dream as old as adolescence, and it is fun to be reminded of its ageless potency, especially in a movie as good-hearted as this one." — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 8, 2011
	92%	Rocky (1976)	" The story is achingly familiar, and though Stallone has a certain power, he is certainly not the subtlest actor to crawl out from under Marlon's overcoat." — TIME Magazine Posted Jul 26, 2011
	90%	Network (1976)	" The plot that Paddy Chayefsky has concocted to prove this point is so crazily preposterous that even in post-Watergate America -- where we know that bats can get loose in the corridors of power -- it is just impossible to accept." — TIME Magazine Posted Jul 18, 2011
	73%	Falling Down (1993)	" Let's face it, there is an element of truth in the character of D-FENS. But it is, finally, tabloid truth." — TIME Magazine Posted Jul 18, 2011
	70%	Silkwood (1983)	" The facts it can lay its hands on do not support a politically alarming or dramatically compelling conclusion to the mysteries of this case. Nor do they lead to a very uplifting statement about the motives and character of its central figure." — TIME Magazine Posted Jul 1, 2011
	90%	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)	" Freeman, who is simply a great actor, a man who has never struck a false note in his career, both narrates this tale and anchors it with his authoritative playing." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 15, 2011
	92%	On Golden Pond (1981)	" When it sometimes seems the whole society has spiritually decamped for Tinseltown, the movie offers the hope that people can come home again-at least for a visit." — TIME Magazine Posted Jun 7, 2011
	84%	Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)	" On the basically farcical level where it chooses to stay, it is a funny and likable movie." — TIME Magazine Posted May 23, 2011
	97%	No Way Out (1987)	" Viewers who arrive at the movie five minutes late and leave five minutes early will avoid the setup and payoff for the preposterous twist that spoils this lively, intelligent remake of 1948's The Big Clock." — TIME Magazine Posted May 23, 2011
	76%	Sorcerer (1977)	" The new movie is handsomely shot and crisply edited. Why, then, does one rather distantly respect it instead of just plain liking it? It is an odd, disappointing feeling to take away from a summertime movie." — TIME Magazine Posted May 20, 2011
	67%	American Gigolo (1980)	" Schrader's development of the frame-up story is mechanically melodramatic, and Gere, essentially a boring actor, doesn't help much either. He just cannot carry a picture, even when his passivity and gentleness well serve some aspects of his character..." — TIME Magazine Posted May 9, 2011
	95%	Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)	" Grail is as funny as a movie can get, but it is also a tough-minded picture -- as outraged about the human propensity for violence as it is outrageous in its attack on that propensity." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 29, 2011
—	69%	The Mirror Crack'd (1980)	" The good lines make Mirror more fun to watch than it has any right to be." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 23, 2011
	100%	Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie (2005)	" This modest retrospective provides a fine occasion to salute an American original working in a medium that will never get its critical due, but continues to exercise a mighty claim on affectionate memory." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 22, 2011
	82%	The Natural (1984)	" Levinson must have felt he had to swing for the fences. He can be forgiven for choking up with all The Natural's fans looking on dubiously. In fairness, the official scorer must credit him with a single. And Redford with an RBI." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 21, 2011
	67%	Cobb (1994)	" This is a messy movie, sometimes repetitive, sometimes too compressed and allusive. But that's like saying Ty Cobb was not a very good sport -- irrelevant in comparison to the horrific fascination of his story." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 21, 2011
	81%	Children of a Lesser God (1986)	" Children of a Lesser God, though given a handsome openness in Director Haines' production, cannot transcend the banalities of the play. But Matlin does. She is, one might say, a miracle worker." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 16, 2011
	63%	Contact (1997)	" Something like one of those mysterious asteroids that get the astronomers all worked up: a large body of gaseous matter surrounding a relatively small core of solid substance." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 16, 2011
	54%	Spaceballs (1987)	" The crew flings itself energetically through space in search of laughs, but it will never penetrate the galaxy where Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein traced their giddy orbits." — TIME Magazine Posted Jan 18, 2011
	95%	Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)	" This film wants to have it both ways: to have a more urbane, more "important" scope than the original, and yet retain some of its inexpensive intimacy as well." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 22, 2010
	90%	The Shining (1980)	" Kubrick has made a movie that will have to be reckoned with on the highest level." — TIME Magazine Posted Oct 21, 2010
	80%	Fame (1980)	" Every once in a while what appears to be the entire student body pours out into the street to do song-and-dance numbers, some of which are cheerful enough, but all of which break faith with the film's realistic premise." — TIME Magazine Posted Sep 8, 2010
	94%	The Freshman (1990)	" No film offering the spectacle of a Komodo dragon being transported across a state line for immoral purposes can be lightly dismissed." — TIME Magazine Posted Sep 8, 2010
	91%	Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)	" This horrific tale is told with marvelous shadowy indirection and delicate lyricism. " — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 30, 2010
	85%	Dead Poets Society (1989)	" Williams, who has comparatively little screen time, has come to act, not to cut comic riffs, and he does so with forceful, ultimately compelling, simplicity." — TIME Magazine Posted Aug 24, 2010
	82%	Cliffhanger (1993)	" We are not at Cliffhanger for realism; we're there for the cliffhanging, and there's plenty of it." — TIME Magazine Posted Jul 25, 2010
	63%	Demolition Man (1993)	" Ultimately the script's often sharp social satire is drowned out by the noise and confusion. It is also undercut by casting virtually all the psychopathically murderous criminals as minority-group members." — TIME Magazine Posted Jul 25, 2010
	85%	Rosewood (1997)	" Rhames' gravity and grace, Voight's pinched anguish as he wills himself to do right, the moving work of actors like Don Cheadle and Esther Rolle do much to redeem this film for human if not historical reality." — TIME Magazine Posted Apr 28, 2010
	77%	Michael Collins (1996)	" There are pain and honor in [Neeson's] performance, and they constantly rise up to redeem a film that is less probing, less thoughtful than its director's claims and aspirations for it." — TIME Magazine Posted Mar 28, 2010
	89%	Gandhi (1982)	" In playing Gandhi, an actor must be less concerned with physical verisimilitude than with spiritual presence, and here Kingsley is nothing short of astonishing." — TIME Magazine Posted Feb 24, 2010
	80%	Casino (1995)	" So long as Casino stays focused on the excesses -- of language, of violence, of ambition -- in the life-styles of the rich and infamous, it remains a smart, knowing, if often repetitive, spectacle." — TIME Magazine Posted Jan 25, 2010
	89%	After Hours (1985)	" The result is a delirious and challenging comedy, a postmodern Ulysses in Nighttown." — TIME Magazine Posted Jan 25, 2010
	88%	Gallipoli (1981)	" Well acted and, within its limited terms, well made, Gallipoli represents a failure of nerve as well as design." — TIME Magazine Posted Jan 18, 2010

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