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 | Review | |
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34% | National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985) |
The film spares us no stereotypes. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 13, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 12, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 12, 2020
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82% | Innerspace (1987) |
Densely inventive and consistently hilarious. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 6, 2020
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70% | Heartbreak Ridge (1986) |
A film so uninvolving that you barely wake up for the big battle finale. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Aug 6, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jul 18, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jul 16, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 17, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 15, 2020
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98% | My Left Foot (1989) |
It is a spellbinding journey. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jun 12, 2020
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91% | Something Wild (1986) |
This is the Demme of "Melvin and Howard," soaring back where he belongs, and long overdue too. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jun 11, 2020
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91% | The Journey of Natty Gann (1985) |
The real missing element is heart. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Mar 30, 2020
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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
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| Posted Mar 24, 2020
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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
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| Posted Nov 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Mar 27, 2019
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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
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| Posted Mar 26, 2019
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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
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| Posted Mar 19, 2019
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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
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| Posted Mar 6, 2019
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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
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| Posted Jan 23, 2019
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53% | Return to Oz (1985) |
Return to Oz doesn't soar when it so clearly should. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Dec 12, 2018
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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
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| Posted Dec 6, 2018
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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
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| Posted Dec 6, 2018
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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
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| Posted Oct 17, 2018
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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
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| Posted Mar 22, 2018
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43% | St. Elmo's Fire (1985) |
All speed and stylishness without a bit of emotional resonance beneath. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 13, 2017
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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
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| Posted Dec 9, 2016
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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
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| Posted Oct 26, 2016
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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
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| Posted Aug 23, 2016
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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
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| Posted Dec 14, 2015
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74% | The Living Daylights (1987) |
I feel just rotten about this, but I'm afraid I've outgrown James. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Oct 20, 2015
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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
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| Posted Sep 15, 2015
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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
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| 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
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| 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
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| Posted Jun 8, 2015
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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
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| 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
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| Posted Apr 3, 2015
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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
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| 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
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| 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
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| Posted Mar 3, 2015
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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
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| Posted Feb 11, 2015
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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
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| 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
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| 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
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| 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
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| Posted Aug 26, 2014
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11% | Club Paradise (1986) |
A frenetically unfunny and charmless movie. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 26, 2014
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72% | 3 Hommes et un Couffin (Three Men and a Cradle) (1985) |
A perfectly pleasant little piffle. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 25, 2014
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13% | Howard the Duck (1986) |
For all those who cottoned to the charm of the comic books, the duck stops here. - Los Angeles Times
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| Posted Jul 9, 2014
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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
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| Posted Jun 2, 2014
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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
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| Posted May 20, 2014
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