Ted Whitehead

Ted Whitehead
Ted Whitehead's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): The Spectator
Publications: The Spectator

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
100% The Buddy Holly Story (1978) The film should please Buddy Holly fans and perhaps the young generation who are curious about rock's beginnings. Rave on. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted May 23, 2019
25% Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) It's a predictable movie mixing new-style hardware with old fashioned heroics, a routine space Western. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted May 9, 2018
No Score Yet The Hound of the Baskervilles (1980) The irritating paradox is of course that there is always money available for trash such as The Hound of the Baskervilles. The problem with this is not that it's frivolous but that it's so desperately unfunny. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 26, 2018
89% Scum (1980) Alan Clarke's direction is hard, clear and utterly uncompromising, and the performances of his largely unfamiliar cast are so authentic and convincing as to make one flinch. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 1, 2018
75% Pretty Baby (1978) The pervasive romanticism and the psychological shallowness left me feeling bored long before the end. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 1, 2018
94% The Deer Hunter (1978) The performances are unforgettable, particularly by Christopher Walken as the dreamy, masochistic, Russian-looking Nick. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 17, 2016
63% Moonraker (1979) All that remains of the mood of the early films is the theme tune. And though Albert R. Broccoli, the producer, says that Bond goes on forever and never ages. the fact is that he is getting more juvenile with every film that's made. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2015
95% Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) All the tension and scariness of the original has gone and in its place is a bit of floppy old cabbage. See the Fifties version if you can. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2015
88% Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata) (1978) [Bergman's] self conscious, immensely grave direction suggests some statement about the meaning of life and all that. It is all exquisitely tedious. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2015
55% California Suite (1978) The desperation of the director, Herbert Ross, is embarrassingly obvious in the Crazy Gang antics of this foursome. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 28, 2015
67% Dracula (1979) John Badham directs with great verve and pace, considerably helped by the atmospheric organ music of John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2015
77% The American Soldier (Der amerikanische Soldat) (1976) Fassbinder loses both comedy and tension in his pursuit of grotesquerie, and there is a desperate sense of strain throughout. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2015
88% Germany in Autumn (1978) Germany in Autumn, though its contributions are uneven, is a fascinating political symposium, in which the cost of preserving order is anxiously measured against the cost of the order that is being preserved. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2015
89% Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (Four Nights of a Dreamer) (1972) Where [Dostoevsky] reveals and analyses intensity of perception, Bresson merely suggests it. The parable shrinks into an anecdote, and a pretty boring one at that. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2015
97% Alien (1979) It's tempting to describe the brilliantly staged scenes of horror and surprise but it would be a shame not to allow the film to reveal its own secrets, enough to say that the tension is savage and you are held in suspense right up to the end frames. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 30, 2015
52% The Lord of the Rings (1978) Even the most magical fantasy falls to earth if it's not clear who's who and what's happening, as every maker of fables should know. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 24, 2015
88% The Muppet Movie (1979) The cast are all here, along with the technical wizardry, but the dialogue staggers from one leaden gag to another and there is an unmistakeable note of desperation throughout. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2015
95% Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Nosferatu the Vampyre) (1979) Worth seeing for the visuals, then, but minor Herzog. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2015
65% Despair (Despair - Eine Reise ins Licht) (1978) The resultant film is, he says, faithful to both Stoppard's script and Nabokov's novel; it is certainly not faithful to Fassbinder, who is here seen tripping over one style after another and ending up utterly ditched. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 18, 2015