Richard Corliss

Richard Corliss
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications: Film Comment Magazine, Maclean's Magazine, TIME Magazine
Critics' Group: New York Film Critics Circle

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
87% The Joy Luck Club (1993) One warning: the typhoon of emotions makes this an eight-handkerchief movie. Bring four for the mothers, four for the daughters when they realize what brave resolve is hidden in an old woman's stern love. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 17, 2020
92% Reversal of Fortune (1990) TV might make cautionary stick figures of Claus and Sunny. Reversal of Fortune treats them as if they were Noel Coward lovers gone to hell in a Lamborghini. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2020
87% Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) [Director John McNaughton] shows few of Henry's dozen or so crimes. Instead he reveals the victims, at the scenes of their deaths, in slow zoom shots accompanied by elegiac music. He is a coroner with a touch of the poet. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 21, 2020
85% The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) Greenaway -- inspired by Jacobean revenge plays and Dutch masters' paintings -- stuffs the viewer with ripe images and raw language. He tests your appetite for intelligent sensation. For many it may be a daunting test, but it is worth taking. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 21, 2020
24% The River (1984) The Hallmark glow is appropriate, for this River is no Depression documentary; it is a fantasy of domestic integrity, where the spirit of Walker Evans surrenders to the sentiment of Walt Disney. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 17, 2020
26% The Story of Us (1999) Mostly the movie is like the marriage: good casting, golden promise, yet somehow a grating ordeal. The Story of Us means to describe pain; instead, it inflicts it. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 7, 2020
76% The Goonies (1985) The Goonies is as hip, sassy and innocent as its seven teenage heroes. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2020
23% Leap Year (2010) Welcome another gentleman Brit to possible leading-man status in Hollywood. Everyone else involved should redact Leap Year from his or her résumé. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 3, 2020
91% La Bamba (1987) How many films can be squeezed out of this formula? - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 24, 2020
57% A Love in Germany (Eine Liebe in Deutschland) (1983) A Love in Germany reveals Schygulla as a superb, fearless actress and an international star ready to take Hollywood. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 24, 2020
74% The Fog (1980) The evidence for John Carpenter's artistry is right there on the screen. Most moviegoers will be too scared to notice. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2020
82% High School Musical 2 (2007) At best, it's an honorable sequel to the thing of last year -- but I'm pleased it exists, and more tickled that the franchise is so successful. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 10, 2019
38% The Black Hole (1979) No matter what its story means to tell us about the sterility of science and the tyranny of the computer, The Black Hole is executed with such impersonal craftsmanship that it ends up on the side of the machines. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
No Score Yet The Promise (1978) When, at year's end, critics vote The Promise the Drippiest Movie of 1979, you may want to know first-hand what all the pouting was about. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
57% Yanks (1979) Yanks, a tribute to sentimental war movies as much as to the camaraderie of war, concentrates on murmurs of the middle-class heart. And in its soft-spoken fidelity to the domestic emotions, it is indeed gorgeous. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
86% The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) The best reason for seeing Joe Tynan is Meryl Streep. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
69% Saint Jack (1979) It's good to have [Bogdanovich] once again feeding his habit -- and ours -- for well-made movies with engaging characters and a fine feeling for time and place. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
100% Pane e Cioccolata (Bread and Chocolate) (1974) Bread and Chocolate provides a yeasty, semisweet couple of hours at the movies -- no mean accomplishment these days. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
88% The Muppet Movie (1979) The Muppet Movie packs all the thrills, laughs and excitement of a... well, two-ring circus. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
No Score Yet The Bell Jar (1979) Read the book. Flee the movie. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
84% North Dallas Forty (1979) The movie boasts some fine performances -- by Nolte, Mac Davis as the Bulls' quarterback and John Matuszak as a fired-up lineman -- but it's too concerned with celebrating the mating and bonding rituals of overgrown adolescents. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
71% Agatha (1979) Even the seeker after that most honorable of movie pleasures -- a good time -- is likely to say, "Nice. But why bother?" - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
No Score Yet The Last Married Couple in America (1980) There are no valid historical or esthetic reasons to see this out-of-date ode to California compatibility. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
No Score Yet Lost and Found (1979) Melvin Frank has a fine track record as a comedy write, but he hasn't the directorial ability to bring off this uneasy blend of slapstick and satire. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
81% The Jerk (1979) Carl Reiner, who has made his own contributions to comedy with Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke, does little to set a mood or rhythm or even an aura of good feeling that will carry audiences over the slow spots. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
76% Hardcore (1979) Despite its subject, the movie is beyond austerity -- it's inert. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
41% When a Stranger Calls (1979) When a Stranger Calls does not herald a major film-making talent -- it's just another textbook experiment in terror. You will jump, though. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
No Score Yet Hero at Large (1980) Hero at Large elicits a few laughs, a thrill or two and a climactic bucket of tears. - Maclean's Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 19, 2019
46% The Way of the Gun (2000) What aims at being terrifying is just loud and goofy. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2019
79% The Dark Crystal (1982) As narrative, the incidents in The Dark Crystal are unremarkable; as the excuse for special effects, fanciful decor and eccentric characters, they do nicely enough. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted May 2, 2019
96% 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
59% 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
50% Oliver & Company (1988) Oliver & Company is Dickens with a twist, and Disney with a treat. - TIME Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 27, 2019
43% 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
54% 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
12% 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
49% 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
42% 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
69% 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
42% 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
67% 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