Sheila Benson
Sheila Benson's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
L.A. Weekly,
Los Angeles Times
| Publications: | Film Scouts, L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Weekly, Parallax View |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 45% | St. Elmo's Fire (1985) |
All speed and stylishness without a bit of emotional resonance beneath.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2017
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| 98% | The Right Stuff (1983) |
Kaufman has combined the resources and ingenuity of movie making with the freewheeling, damn-the-conventions style of of the New Journalism and come up with a generous, high-spirited look at the bravery and lunacy that was that era.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Dec 9, 2016
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| 70% | Empire of the Sun (1987) |
The film's grave problem is a lack of central heating: We don't have a single character to warm up to. ‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Oct 26, 2016
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| 46% | Everybody's All-American (1988) |
It's not exactly nourishing, but then again, its performances are so addictive that you may not even care.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Aug 23, 2016
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| 80% | Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) |
With this last of the central Star Wars cycle, there is the sense of the closing of a circle, of leaving behind real friends. It is accomplished with a weight and a new maturity that seem entirely fitting, yet the movie has lost none of its sense of fun.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Dec 14, 2015
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| 70% | The Living Daylights (1987) |
I feel just rotten about this, but I'm afraid I've outgrown James.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2015
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| 85% | The Hit (1984) |
"The Hit" is something special: thoughtful, perfectly performed and carrying the clear stamp of an extremely interesting director.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2015
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| 57% | Plenty (1985) |
Be a little patient: What builds beneath this quiet exterior, shot through with dark wit, is a haunting examination of the price that romantic idealism can exact.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 7, 2015
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| 13% | Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988) |
The excruciating "Arthur 2 on the Rocks" should come with a surgeon general's warning: "This sort of stupidity may sap your will to live or to watch movies ever again."‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 24, 2015
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| 70% | The Land Before Time (1988) |
Do dinosaurs really lend themselves to ootsie-cutesiness?‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2015
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| 39% | Rocky IV (1985) |
This is grim and witless storytelling, and what makes it so depressing is that it hasn't improved by so much as a chemical trace since the days of the first Rocky.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted May 13, 2015
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| 69% | Die Hard 2 (1990) |
This is the most cheerfully preposterous film of a jaw-dropping summer, which is not to say it's not fun, it's simply orchestrated Looney Tunes.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Apr 3, 2015
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| 90% | After Hours (1985) |
After Hours is dazzling movie making; you could get a giddy kick just from cinematographer Michael Ballhaus' shot as a set of house keys floats down toward the camera, tossed from a top-floor apartment.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Mar 18, 2015
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| 100% | Tampopo (1985) |
Japanese films have commented before on the intrinsic connection between food and sex, but not with the erotic gusto of Juzo Itami's Tampopo and rarely with the comic lustiness of this broad-scale satire.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Mar 13, 2015
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| 93% | Do the Right Thing (1989) |
Do the Right Thing is complex, bravura movie making. It is also hugely entertaining, since fortunately for us, Lee's seditious method is to use humor to carry his biting message.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Mar 3, 2015
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| 86% | The Hunt for Red October (1990) |
You may not be limp from accumulated tension when this hunt is over, but its cautiously upbeat global message leaves a satisfying glow and it operates with a crackerjack premise.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Feb 11, 2015
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| 54% | Valmont (1989) |
Colin Firth's Valmont is pleasant, a dreadful thing to say about one of literature's most magnetic seducers.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2015
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| 10% | Revolution (1985) |
What's lacking in this heartfelt, well-researched, sporadically interesting movie is a master plan.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Dec 17, 2014
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| 94% | Blue Velvet (1986) |
Shocking, visionary, rapturously controlled, its images of innocence and a dark, bruising sexuality drop straight into our unconscious where they rest like depth charges.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Nov 14, 2014
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| 67% | Monanieba (Repentance) (1984) |
[Repentance] is lit with bursts of satiric humor, with music, bits of opera and great flights of surreal imagery, which only serve to intensify its growing horror. And it is never less than physically gorgeous.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2014
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| 11% | Club Paradise (1986) |
A frenetically unfunny and charmless movie.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 26, 2014
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| 76% | 3 Hommes et un Couffin (Three Men and a Cradle) (1985) |
A perfectly pleasant little piffle.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 25, 2014
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| 15% | Howard the Duck (1986) |
For all those who cottoned to the charm of the comic books, the duck stops here.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 9, 2014
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| 79% | Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) |
Just as you think you have its moves all doped out, a scene of such shocking beauty flashes before you that it takes your breath away.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2014
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| 39% | Days of Thunder (1990) |
Whoosh!! Days of Thunder just streaked in, fast as a race-car paint job and about as flat.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted May 20, 2014
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| 0% | Jaws: The Revenge (1987) |
Dumb beyond belief, hollow, bloody and nonsensical, it's Universal Studios' vanity movie, a way of providing employment yet again for its Great White icon.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Apr 30, 2014
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| 97% | GoodFellas (1990) |
GoodFellas, which somehow mixes its horrors with a deep vein of mordant humor, flows with the exuberance of a filmmaker who has every detail nailed and a few new lovely moves he wants to show us.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Mar 25, 2014
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| 61% | About Last Night (1986) |
Writers DeClue and Kazurinsky have created a recognizable geography for every age; you suspect that About Last Night will set off pangs of identification everywhere.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Feb 13, 2014
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| 93% | Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) |
Perfection is boring, but boring is the very last word to describe Hannah and Her Sisters, which just may be a perfect movie.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Feb 10, 2014
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| 92% | Moonstruck (1987) |
An American movie with foreign-film sensibilities, Moonstruck's depths come from their perfect balance of writing and direction.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Feb 7, 2014
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| 56% | Out of Africa (1985) |
Streep may convince us utterly that she is in love with Africa, but our views of it are a little too stately to really feel the place.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jan 6, 2014
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| 92% | The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) |
The sheer volume and invention of Gilliam's visual largess sets him apart, and his wit operates for the most part at a dangerously sophisticated level.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Nov 15, 2013
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| 4/5 | 85% | Yaaba (1989) |
Yaaba's power sneaks up on you. At first it seems as spare as the airy African Savannah where it unfolds. It's only with a little distance from its muted beauty that the plan of the film becomes clear.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2013
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| 86% | Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) |
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is as fine a film as it is a brutally disturbing one.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Aug 12, 2013
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| 5/5 | 86% | Presumed Innocent (1990) |
Intelligent, complex and enthralling.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2013
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| 93% | Parenthood (1989) |
The remaining cast, young, old and in-between, is lovely.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2013
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| 2.5/5 | 88% | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) |
Even if he's considerably more battered than his nearest competitor, Indiana quits at the top of the heap. It's just that the heap isn't what it was eight years ago. It's been almost flattered to death.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 31, 2013
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| 5/5 | 93% | A Fish Called Wanda (1988) |
Low comedy at high speed, it pretends to be a caper movie about a smooth London jewel heist and its infinitely complex aftermath. Actually, it's a smart farce about ingrained cultural differences.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 30, 2013
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| 2/5 | 83% | Thelma & Louise (1991) |
Are we so starved for "strong" women's roles that this revenge, and the pell-mell, lunatic flight that follows, fits anyone's definition of strength, or even more peculiarly, of neo-feminism?‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 30, 2013
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| 98% | Aliens (1986) |
It's blaster action, not Gothic future-horror. Fortunately, director-screenwriter James Cameron has shaped his film around the defiant intelligence and sensual athleticism of Weaver, and that's where Aliens works best.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 30, 2013
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| 97% | Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) |
For audiences who grew up with cartoons as a natural part of their moviegoing, the shock may not be the mix of live and animated folk--it may come from the truly revolutionary sight of great icons of rival studios cheerfully rubbing shoulders.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 30, 2013
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| 5/5 | 89% | When Harry Met Sally (1989) |
The summer's uncorseted, unqualified delight.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 30, 2013
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| 91% | No Way Out (1987) |
No Way Out's greatest prize is Costner, a leading man at last: fiercely good, intelligent, appreciatively sensual in a performance balanced perfectly between action and introspection.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jul 29, 2013
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| 1/5 | 16% | The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) |
Certainly Wolfe's canvas might lend itself to a broad approach, but broad like Dr. Strangelove, not broad like the Three Stooges.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 28, 2013
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| 4.5/5 | 91% | Stand by Me (1986) |
It stands, sweet and strong, ribald, outrageous and funny, like its heroes themselves -- a bit gamy around the edges, perhaps, but pure and fine clear through. It's one of those treasures absolutely not to be missed.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2013
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| 96% | Back to the Future (1985) |
It's big, cartoonish and empty, with an interesting premise that is underdeveloped and overproduced.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2013
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| 2.5/5 | 80% | The Untouchables (1987) |
Where, under his stainless-steel incorruptibility, was Ness' gnawing flaw? To Mamet and De Palma, goodness and dullness seem inseparable.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 25, 2013
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| 2.5/5 | 74% | Ghost (1990) |
The movie's slogan is "Believe," not an unreasonable request. But even those who'd be happy to comply must get past Ghost's one casting jaw-dropper, a certain woolly-mindedness to its script and a production prettified to the point of stickiness.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 25, 2013
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| 95% | Full Metal Jacket (1987) |
It may seem too spare, too clinical, its moments of war even too familiar for some. But, aiming for minds as well as hearts, Kubrick hits his target squarely.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2013
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| 5% | Cocktail (1988) |
The pairing of old-hand Brown and young-hand Cruise may have been meant to remind us of Cruise and Paul Newman; if so, think of this as The Color of Counterfeit Money.‐ Los Angeles Times
Read More | Posted May 21, 2013
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