Richard Corliss

Tomatometer-approved critic

Publications: Film Comment Magazine, TIME Magazine

Critics' Group: New York Film Critics Circle

Movie Reviews Only

Movies
TV

T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
95%	Les Vampires (1915)	Les Vampires, with thrill upon stunt upon criminal chicanery, is as modern as Rush Hour or The X Files. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 17, 2019
52%	Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)	Some movies ought to be reviewed not by critics but by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 1, 2019
22%	Patch Adams (1998)	Comics who want to do Hamlet often end up, as here, serving big, sticky slices of ham. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 1, 2019
88%	Affliction (1997)	There are too many of these men in life, and not enough films that tell their sad tales. That gives Affliction a therapeutic worth. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 1, 2019
56%	I, Robot (2004)	In the end, I, Robot is just an assembly-line product of a not very advanced model. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 1, 2019
51%	Oliver & Company (1988)	Oliver & Company is Dickens with a twist, and Disney with a treat. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 27, 2019
42%	Space Jam (1996)	The movie could have been a gleaming showcase for cartoon wit. Instead it's an 87-minute commercial peddling sainthood for Michael Jordan. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 22, 2019
40%	A Chorus Line (1985)	Richard Attenborough's movies are like the best-behaved guests at a Swiss embassy reception; they never offend, never impress. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 6, 2019
52%	Death Becomes Her (1992)	Meryl Streep shines in a glitzy black comedy, but it's still She-Devil with a make-over. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 3, 2019
11%	An American Carol (2008)	The mean spirit of Zucker's satire hardly jibes with the liberal spirits of the original tale. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 29, 2018
51%	Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)	Director Ron Howard usually lets his comedies gestate organically, but his Grinch is frantic from start to finish. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 29, 2018
36%	Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)	Only marginally insufferable, the Ernest movie is...a big-screen example of the TV-sitcom tendency to go broad and sappy with a token Yuletide show each December. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 29, 2018
24%	Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)	We're not knocking the transformation of a hallowed holiday figure into a homicidal maniac...it's the pleasure Billy and the movie take in leering at, then dicing up young women that lands Charles E. Sellier Jr.'s sicko Santa on our worst list. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 29, 2018
73%	Frosty the Snowman (1969)	To those of middle age who remember Frosty fondly, we offer this warning: Look again, and yawn. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 29, 2018
14%	Wholly Moses! (1980)	There are a couple of droll sight gags, but nothing can redeem Wholly Moses! from its destiny of eternal mirthlessness. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 30, 2018
94%	Howards End (1992)	Elegant and powerful, accommodating collisions of class and temperament with the grace of a perfect Edwardian hostess, Howards End is the work to which all Merchant Ivory's other films have pointed and aspired. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 24, 2016
71%	Black Sunday (1977)	Black Sunday may well make a bundle, thanks to the technical skill with which it manages its long-delayed payoff. But it is getting tiresome to be forced to admire, for want of anything else to do, the skill with which moviemakers jerk audiences around. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 23, 2016
43%	Everybody's All-American (1988)	As the one character who grows and doesn't just calcify, Lange brings wily zest to each step in Babs' coming-out party. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 23, 2016
66%	The Pillow Book (1997)	In The Pillow Book, text and texture meet so exquisitely. Sex is a visual art, Greenaway says, and writing is a matter of life and death. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted May 2, 2016
93%	Salaam Bombay! (1988)	Salaam Bombay! deserves a broad audience, not just to open American eyes to plights of hunger and homelessness abroad, but to open American minds to the vitality of a cinema without rim shots and happy endings. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 29, 2015
93%	99 Homes (2015)	Shannon as actor and Carver as charismatic scoundrel are winners, and neither needs a government bailout to possess every minute of 99 Homes. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 23, 2015
85%	The Sacrifice (1986)	In The Sacrifice, the cryptic Tarkovsky style helps create a towering cathedral. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 4, 2015
90%	Mad Max (1979)	[The] film has been consigned to the grind houses, where audiences are responding as Miller wants them to. From there Mad Max will find its way to the film schools and revival houses, where its tough-gutted intelligence may be appreciated. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted May 11, 2015
87%	Fresh (1994)	[Fresh is] made with a subtle precision that suggests a Vermeer landscape of the ninth circle of hell. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 21, 2015
92%	Ex Machina (2015)	The year's most seductive high-IQ drama. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 9, 2015
81%	Furious 7 (2015)	It's an enormous, steroidal blast, and as much ingenious fun as a blockbuster can be. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 1, 2015
28%	Get Hard (2015)	Laughter trumps political fairness; and Get Hard made me laugh at, and with, situations I hadn't thought could tickle me. The movie has a warm heart beating under its seemingly scabrous shell. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 25, 2015
16%	Serena (2015)	Filmed in 2012 and finally limping into theaters like a glamorous zombie, the movie has star wattage but zero emotional voltage. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 19, 2015
28%	Insurgent (2015)	With its repeat itinerary, Insurgent is less a sequel than a remake. The movie has an ordinary middle-chapter scenario, and less The Empire Strikes Back than Attack of the Clones. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 18, 2015
84%	Cinderella (2015)	Nearly a century after that black-and-white cartoon short, and 65 years after a "classic" animated feature that missed the mark, Disney finally got Cinderella right -- for now and, happily, ever after. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 16, 2015
83%	Talk Radio (1988)	Stone wants more. In Salvador and Platoon he found drama to match his message; here he must invent tragedy to suit his spleen. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 13, 2015
94%	The Crying Game (1992)	In a style of agitated naturalism, Jordan examines poignant matters of life and death, sex and friendship, duty and loyalty, freedom and bondage, manhood and womanhood and all the ambiguous areas in between. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 9, 2015
56%	Focus (2015)	The mix of longtime star and minx on the rise is one tasty element in the success of a movie that approaches the modest goals and effortless allure of a 60-year-old Hitchcock. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 27, 2015
25%	Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)	Creating a genteel R-rated film from a very X-rated book is like making a Mamma Mia! movie without the songs. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 12, 2015
77%	Fury (2014)	Pitt, who at 50 still looks great with his shirt off, has the gruff charisma to play a dauntless soldier with killer courage and a vestigial streak of humanity. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 5, 2015
91%	Obvious Child (2014)	Robespierre's direction of the many fine actors she assembled is assured, her sense of pacing nicely loose-limbed. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 5, 2015
96%	Citizenfour (2014)	Poitras' movie works even better as a horror picture -- perfect for Halloween week. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 5, 2015
90%	Locke (2014)	[Hardy's performance is] the reason you'd see Locke, and the reason you may remember it fondly, long after the ride ends. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 5, 2015
79%	The Theory of Everything (2014)	The film both adheres to and gently upends the conventions of the Great Man genre. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 5, 2015
89%	Big Hero 6 (2014)	On the high-quality scale set by the Disney animated features in their latest Renaissance, this one doesn't quite measure up. But Big Hero 6 is sure to entertain millions of smart kids and their escort parents. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 5, 2015
90%	The Imitation Game (2014)	The "action" here is Turing tinkering with his machine. Or simply thinking -- which, as Cumberbatch portrays it, is adventure of the highest order. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 4, 2015
97%	Mr. Turner (2014)	Epic in breadth and length (2 1/2 hours), and gorgeously photographed (digitally) by Bill Pope, Mr. Turner is intimate in incident. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 2, 2015
91%	The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)	Grand isn't good enough a word for this Budapest Hotel. Great is more like it. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 2, 2015
72%	American Sniper (2015)	It's a gritty, confident portrait of a man whose life may have been somewhat messier than this Hollywood version. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 2, 2015
99%	Selma (2015)	If not quite in quality then certainly in import and impact, this is the film of the year - of 1965 and perhaps of 2014. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 2, 2015
28%	Annie (2014)	A teeter-totter between O.K. and Meh. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 23, 2014
51%	Unbroken (2014)	Jolie has made a grand, solid movie of the Zamperini story, but O'Connell is the part of Unbroken that was truly worth the wait. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 23, 2014
72%	Big Eyes (2014)	The Keane story is a rich parable that deserves either a wilder or a more acute telling than Burton provides here. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 23, 2014
51%	The Interview (2014)	Maybe you will love The Interview - if you can ever see the movie - as much as some people hate or fear it. But if you're hoping for any cogent political satire here, then the joke's on you. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 17, 2014
10%	Revolution (1985)	[A] solemn, incoherent, brown film. - TIME Magazine EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 17, 2014