Richard Corliss
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | Film Comment Magazine, TIME Magazine |
| Critics' Group: | New York Film Critics Circle |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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
Read More | Posted Apr 30, 2018
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 24, 2016
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 23, 2016
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| 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
Read More | Posted Aug 23, 2016
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| 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
Read More | Posted May 2, 2016
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| 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
Read More | Posted Sep 29, 2015
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| 92% | 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
Read More | Posted Sep 23, 2015
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| 84% | The Sacrifice (1986) |
In The Sacrifice, the cryptic Tarkovsky style helps create a towering cathedral.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted May 11, 2015
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| 87% | Fresh (1994) |
[Fresh is] made with a subtle precision that suggests a Vermeer landscape of the ninth circle of hell.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 21, 2015
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| 92% | Ex Machina (2015) |
The year's most seductive high-IQ drama.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 9, 2015
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| 80% | Furious 7 (2015) |
It's an enormous, steroidal blast, and as much ingenious fun as a blockbuster can be.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 1, 2015
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| 29% | 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
Read More | Posted Mar 25, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Mar 19, 2015
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| 29% | 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
Read More | Posted Mar 18, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2015
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| 82% | 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
Read More | Posted Mar 13, 2015
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| 95% | 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
Read More | Posted Mar 9, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Feb 27, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Feb 12, 2015
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| 76% | 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
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2015
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| 90% | Obvious Child (2014) |
Robespierre's direction of the many fine actors she assembled is assured, her sense of pacing nicely loose-limbed.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2015
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| 96% | Citizenfour (2014) |
Poitras' movie works even better as a horror picture -- perfect for Halloween week.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2015
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| 91% | 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
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2015
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| 78% | The Theory of Everything (2014) |
The film both adheres to and gently upends the conventions of the Great Man genre.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Jan 2, 2015
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| 91% | The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) |
Grand isn't good enough a word for this Budapest Hotel. Great is more like it.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 2, 2015
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| 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
Read More | Posted Jan 2, 2015
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| 98% | 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
Read More | Posted Jan 2, 2015
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| 28% | Annie (2014) |
A teeter-totter between O.K. and Meh.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 23, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Dec 23, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Dec 23, 2014
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| 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
Read More | Posted Dec 17, 2014
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| 10% | Revolution (1985) |
[A] solemn, incoherent, brown film.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 17, 2014
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| 59% | The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) |
If The Hobbit doesn't equal the achievement of Jackson's earlier Middle-earth movies -- and, honestly, what could? -- it is still, in sum, a thrilling effort.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 16, 2014
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| 98% | How to Train Your Dragon (2010) |
It's a foolproof scheme for picture making: take the plot elements of favorite movies, paint the concoction with bright colors so it looks like the zazziest customized car, set it running at NASCAR speed, and you have How to Train Your Dragon.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2014
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| 89% | Tangled (2010) |
This is your basic, and very enjoyable, Disney princess musical, an empowerment tale to teach bright, dreamy girls how to grow to maturity -- and outgrow the adults in charge.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2014
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| 29% | Dumb and Dumber To (2014) |
I wish I could put as little thought into writing about Dumb and Dumber To as the Farrelly brothers did in making it.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Nov 20, 2014
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| 94% | Blue Velvet (1986) |
Lynch and his film will surely be reviled, but as an experiment in expanding cinema's dramatic and technical vocabulary, Blue Velvet demands respect.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Nov 14, 2014
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| 67% | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014) |
The two-hour foot-soldier slog through Mockingjay Part 1 forces audiences into mostly wasteful waiting for something special to happen.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Nov 13, 2014
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| 77% | Rosewater (2014) |
The virtue of this movie is its commitment to political ambiguity and emotional truth.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Nov 13, 2014
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| 95% | Nightcrawler (2014) |
A mesmerizing cipher, Lou is a spiritual descendant of Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, and of the withholding protagonists in the existential French crime films of Robert Bresson and Jean-Pierre Melville‐ TIME Magazine
Posted Oct 31, 2014
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| 40% | Horns (2014) |
Anyone could imagine the better, cleaner, more coherent 90-min. film at the core of Horns: the one about the physics of apparent demonic possession.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 30, 2014
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| 71% | Interstellar (2014) |
Double-domed and defiantly serious, Interstellar is a must-take ride with a few narrative bumps.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 29, 2014
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| 86% | John Wick (2014) |
Action movies are about movement, and John Wick pursues that goal with remorseless verve.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2014
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| 55% | White Bird in a Blizzard (2014) |
Beyond the prurient, there's not much of interest in this dour portrait of middle-class family values.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 23, 2014
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| 92% | Birdman (2014) |
Birdman represents not just Keaton's fictional apologia but also his defiant, nearly heroic comeback.‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 16, 2014
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| 90% | Wetlands (2014) |
Even if Wetlands were far less entertaining, it would still be a calling card for Juri's star-is-born performance. The beguiled viewer watches her and thinks, "Bingo!"‐ TIME Magazine
Read More | Posted Oct 16, 2014
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