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 | Review | |
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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
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| Posted Dec 17, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 17, 2020
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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
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| Posted Apr 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Apr 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Apr 17, 2020
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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
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| Posted Apr 7, 2020
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76% | The Goonies (1985) |
The Goonies is as hip, sassy and innocent as its seven teenage heroes. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Apr 6, 2020
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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
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| Posted Apr 3, 2020
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91% | La Bamba (1987) |
How many films can be squeezed out of this formula? - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Mar 24, 2020
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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
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| Posted Mar 24, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jan 29, 2020
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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
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| Posted Sep 10, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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86% | The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) |
The best reason for seeing Joe Tynan is Meryl Streep. - Maclean's Magazine
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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88% | The Muppet Movie (1979) |
The Muppet Movie packs all the thrills, laughs and excitement of a... well, two-ring circus. - Maclean's Magazine
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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No Score Yet | The Bell Jar (1979) |
Read the book. Flee the movie. - Maclean's Magazine
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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76% | Hardcore (1979) |
Despite its subject, the movie is beyond austerity -- it's inert. - Maclean's Magazine
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jul 19, 2019
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46% | The Way of the Gun (2000) |
What aims at being terrifying is just loud and goofy. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Jun 17, 2019
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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
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| Posted May 2, 2019
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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
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| Posted Apr 17, 2019
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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
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| Posted Apr 1, 2019
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22% | Patch Adams (1998) |
Comics who want to do Hamlet often end up, as here, serving big, sticky slices of ham. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Apr 1, 2019
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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
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| Posted Apr 1, 2019
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56% | I, Robot (2004) |
In the end, I, Robot is just an assembly-line product of a not very advanced model. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Apr 1, 2019
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50% | Oliver & Company (1988) |
Oliver & Company is Dickens with a twist, and Disney with a treat. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Mar 27, 2019
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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
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| Posted Mar 22, 2019
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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
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| Posted Mar 6, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jan 3, 2019
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12% | An American Carol (2008) |
The mean spirit of Zucker's satire hardly jibes with the liberal spirits of the original tale. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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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
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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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
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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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
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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73% | Frosty the Snowman (1969) |
To those of middle age who remember Frosty fondly, we offer this warning: Look again, and yawn. - TIME Magazine
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| Posted Nov 29, 2018
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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
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| 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
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| Posted Aug 24, 2016
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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
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| Posted Aug 23, 2016
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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
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| Posted Aug 23, 2016
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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
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| 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
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| Posted Sep 29, 2015
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