Sheila Benson

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

T-Meter Title | Year
34% National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985) The film spares us no stereotypes. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 13, 2020
82% Stand and Deliver (1988) You could remain, mesmerized, in Jaime Escalante's high-school math class forever, the way you remain under the spell of Escalante himself as "Stand and Deliver" unfolds. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 12, 2020
52% Tequila Sunrise (1988) Towne has acres of plot here, lashings of it, plot so complicated and so intricate that if you're not clenched to follow every second of it, you're lost. The sheer details of what he has created finally engulf Towne's handsome trio. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 12, 2020
82% Innerspace (1987) Densely inventive and consistently hilarious. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 6, 2020
70% Heartbreak Ridge (1986) A film so uninvolving that you barely wake up for the big battle finale. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 6, 2020
89% Married to the Mob (1988) Demme makes crystal-clear what some have suspected for quite a while: that there are few more luxurious movie pleasures than watching Michelle Pfeiffer when she's given a role worthy of her. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 18, 2020
50% Clara's Heart (1988) The surprises may not come quite often enough for some, but at all times there is Goldberg's glowing performance to keep us fascinated, or a nice salty bit of humor, or a great little character riff by Harris that's completely endearing. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 16, 2020
52% White Palace (1990) "White Palace" is more than a start for director Mandoki, who was sturdily launched with "Gaby"; it's a continued indication of a sure and powerful sensitivity. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2020
76% Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) Hughes has absolutely nothing new to report--no fresh perspectives, no gratefully received maturity, nothing added or deepened. Or speeded up, from the feel of it. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 17, 2020
92% Reversal of Fortune (1990) Screenwriter Nicholas Kazan, director Barbet Schroeder and, especially, Jeremy Irons--in a glittering performance as the divinely decadent Dane--have chosen to treat this social death spiral as a tragicomedy of manners. It's an inspired tone. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2020
98% My Left Foot (1989) It is a spellbinding journey. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 12, 2020
91% Something Wild (1986) This is the Demme of "Melvin and Howard," soaring back where he belongs, and long overdue too. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 11, 2020
91% The Journey of Natty Gann (1985) The real missing element is heart. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 30, 2020
91% La Bamba (1987) You can have a perfectly pleasant time at "La Bamba" but you come out still hungry to understand the forces that shaped [Ritchie Valens]. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 24, 2020
71% Scrooged (1988) It's not a bad notion for a satiric comedy and this one begins well, but then veers entirely out of hand until it's as over-inflated as its own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and as funny as a mugging. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 19, 2019
30% Over the Top (1987) The only diversion is keeping track of the shameless advertising plugs that dot the film, like toadstools after a rain. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 27, 2019
37% Road House (1989) But in deep "Road House" country... and the undefined made crassly visible, there isn't a whiff of romance anywhere, any more than there's a single jot of common sense. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 26, 2019
37% Ishtar (1987) It is a smart, generous, genuinely funny affair. Sometimes, like the camel who almost ambles away with the picture, it's longish in the tooth, but it is based on an extremely astute vision of life. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 19, 2019
40% A Chorus Line (1985) If you were one of that legion who saw A Chorus Line more than once in the theater, the film is enough to make you doubt your judgment. If you've never seen the stage piece, you may come out wondering what in the name of goodness all the fuss was about. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 6, 2019
60% Green Card (1990) [A]n effortlessly engaging love story whose ace in the hole is the almost indecent magnetism of Gerard Depardieu. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 23, 2019
53% Return to Oz (1985) Return to Oz doesn't soar when it so clearly should. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 12, 2018
51% Willow (1988) If it evaporates from memory with the airiness of a bubble bath, at least it leaves a friendly glow and a sense of a magical world lovingly evoked. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 6, 2018
83% The Bostonians (1984) James' story is so fascinating and Redgrave so urgently fine that you can lose sight of these lapses and have an eminently satisfying time. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 6, 2018
80% Dominick and Eugene (1988) Taking potentially sticky material...Young has held a hard line and has shaped a story of relationships that rings pure and fine as crystal. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2018
40% Beaches (1988) Beaches is bloodless, and Garry Marshall's direction, which might have given it style, is completely competent and entirely without personality. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 22, 2018
43% St. Elmo's Fire (1985) All speed and stylishness without a bit of emotional resonance beneath. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2017
96% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 9, 2016
75% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 26, 2016
42% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 23, 2016
82% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 14, 2015
74% The Living Daylights (1987) I feel just rotten about this, but I'm afraid I've outgrown James. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2015
87% The Hit (1984) "The Hit" is something special: thoughtful, perfectly performed and carrying the clear stamp of an extremely interesting director. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2015
56% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 7, 2015
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 24, 2015
70% The Land Before Time (1988) Do dinosaurs really lend themselves to ootsie-cutesiness? - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2015
40% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted May 13, 2015
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 3, 2015
89% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 18, 2015
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 13, 2015
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 3, 2015
89% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 11, 2015
55% Valmont (1989) Colin Firth's Valmont is pleasant, a dreadful thing to say about one of literature's most magnetic seducers. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2015
10% Revolution (1985) What's lacking in this heartfelt, well-researched, sporadically interesting movie is a master plan. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 17, 2014
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 14, 2014
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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 26, 2014
11% Club Paradise (1986) A frenetically unfunny and charmless movie. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 26, 2014
72% 3 Hommes et un Couffin (Three Men and a Cradle) (1985) A perfectly pleasant little piffle. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 25, 2014
13% Howard the Duck (1986) For all those who cottoned to the charm of the comic books, the duck stops here. - Los Angeles Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 9, 2014
80% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2014
38% 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 EDIT
Read More | Posted May 20, 2014