Henry Sheehan
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Boys on the Side (1995) |
The three make their strange-bedfellows friendship appear utterly plausible. In doing so, they give Boys on the Side a core of emotional authenticity and make it a forceful, if inelegant, tribute to female friendship. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Mar 14, 2023
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The Big Lebowski (1998) |
"Lebowski" is, as it turns out, a comedy, yet Joel and Ethan Coen, so adept at sneering at the shortcomings of others, have failed to put anything funny in the movie. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Jan 24, 2023
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) |
So go, enjoy. Your kids will love it. And so will you. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Dec 19, 2022
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Braveheart (1995) |
Braveheart doesn't amount to much more than theatrical chest-thumping by Gibson. He clearly knows how to put a movie together, but he is going to have to get over himself before that knowledge does anyone any good. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Nov 18, 2022
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Gladiator (2000) |
There is a plot, but it is at once so derivative and so undernourished that it never really registers as a story. As far as it goes, it's "Spartacus Lite," minus that epic's moral grandeur. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Nov 01, 2022
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Addams Family Values (1993) |
Unlike the main story, the camp portion builds steadily and cleverly to a nicely sabotaged pageant. But it wouldn't work without Ricci, who can really hold the screen. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Sep 21, 2022
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The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) |
Watching The Patchwork Girl of Oz is an exercise in nostalgia, but it’s of a high order, a passage right into Baum’s 19th-century imagination. - Boston Phoenix
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| Posted Sep 14, 2022
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They Live (1988) |
They Live's greatest virtues result from its uncommon bonding of dedicated workmanship and stylistic self-assurance. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Defending Your Life (1991) |
Funny and profound. This is a great film. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Near Dark (1987) |
It's the air of deep, neurotic melancholy that makes Near Dark work. The film's rhythm is set by lonely, nighttime vistas, incantatory shots of the sun setting and rising. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Colors (1988) |
Making gang membership a function of psychology and depicting the local communities as helpless and malformed makes it easy for the filmmakers to avoid admitting... the larger and more relevant issues of politics, economics, and social structure. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Sugar Cane Alley (1983) |
Euzhan Palcy's movie shines like the warm summer days of childhood; it captures a youngster's confusing passage into adulthood, his dawning awareness of the world that stretches beyond his poor home village. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Sans Soleil (1982) |
Marker the intellectual, the theorist of montage, and the leftist are all evident in Sans Soleil, whose intellectual breadth seems ostentatious at first but eventually coheres. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Monsieur Hire (1989) |
Like Hire's own stubbornly individual traits, they grow out of a faith in human possibilities that, no matter how unhappily stunted, form the essence of Monsieur Hire's convictions. And it is that faith that makes this film a lofty and brilliant work. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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To Our Loves (1983) |
It's a fierce film, brilliantly realistic and tough, and its reticence about right and wrong, its reluctance to judge rather than observe, make it the most wrenchingly honest film about sex to hit the screens since Luna. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Story of Women (1988) |
It is quite simply the masterpiece that shows Chabrol has been growing and changing, modifying his fundamental concerns and refining his already elevated technique, but retaining his extraordinary combination of psychological insight and formal control. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Diary of a Country Priest (1950) |
Blank faces are often inscrutable, matter-of-fact line readings flirt with monotone, and motions across sets and landscapes are deliberate and modest. Yet... the performances that emerge are ultimately devastating and transparent in their revelations. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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Mouchette (1967) |
Disturbing and heart-rending. - Los Angeles Reader
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| Posted Aug 12, 2022
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The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) |
Hanson doesn’t take any plot shortcuts either. We know right from the start who Peyton is and what she’s up to. The film even plays fair with our sympathies... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 26, 2022
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The People Under the Stairs (1991) |
The People Under the Stairs may be as misshapen as the people who live in this basement, but it might be as subversive too. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 26, 2022
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The Man in the Moon (1991) |
Although The Man in the Moon is frequently sad to the point of pain, it ends with a quietly optimistic poignancy. This is due partly to the film’s performances - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 24, 2022
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Edward Scissorhands (1990) |
Edward Scissorhands is a flashy and entertaining apologia from an artist who has not accumulated enough work to justify such self-concern. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 24, 2022
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Ghost (1990) |
Not only is the comedy itself fresh, but it keeps the suspense well-stropped as well. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 12, 2022
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Cry Baby (1990) |
In fact, the movie is so good- humored that it stands in marked contrast to almost every other mainstream American film out now... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 12, 2022
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The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990) |
It’s too bad Clay doesn’t have the inclination or ability to plumb his oppressing-on-the-outside but oppressed-on-the-inside persona. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 12, 2022
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Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989) |
The absurdity of trying to assert one’s identity by subjugating another’s is the delightfully cruel premise... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 11, 2022
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Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) |
As a tragedian, Allen is still stuck in some sort of high school classroom, cribbing the form, but never the substance, of vaunted classics. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 11, 2022
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Pink Cadillac (1989) |
Eastwood constantly shifts back and forth in his feelings about the relationship between his heroes and the society that breeds them. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 11, 2022
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Ghostbusters II (1989) |
Murray's character sits firmly at the center of the film, and makes it part of a series, rather than just another sequel. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 11, 2022
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Gorillas in the Mist (1988) |
Gorillas in the Mist does a good job of relating the high points of Fossey's life... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 11, 2022
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The Dead Pool (1988) |
It is perfectly adequate, in fact. It is just that adequate should not be good enough for Clint Eastwood. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 11, 2022
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*batteries not Included (1987) |
Within that ugly image, the symbol for the enlightened middle class is one of submission and collaboration. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 10, 2022
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Eddie Murphy Raw (1987) |
In other words, it is just conventional TV-style shooting. Which is appropriate, I guess, for a comedian who seems to get most of his ideas about life from the mass media. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 10, 2022
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The Pick-Up Artist (1987) |
he Pick-Up Artist is not going to change anyone's life or deflect the course of film history, but it's an invigorating and enjoyable entertainment... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 10, 2022
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Near Dark (1987) |
The film’s purgation of terror is as vital and energizing as can be possible. This is one hell of a movie. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 10, 2022
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Gardens of Stone (1987) |
Bereft of that core, Gardens of Stone drifts off into decoration that’s intricate and highly accomplished, but strictly ornamental... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 10, 2022
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Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) |
It’s possible Scott felt he had nothing to work with. The film’s plot, such as it is, barely exists... - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 10, 2022
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The Witches of Eastwick (1987) |
All in all, a polished and witty bit of male sexual panic. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 10, 2022
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Roxanne (1987) |
Using that happy/sad tension, Martin voices the impolite, uncool hunger that is fashionably stifled and dismissed. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 09, 2022
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Full Metal Jacket (1987) |
The most horrifying moments of Full Metal Jacket are those in which the young Americans gladly assist in their own damnation. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 09, 2022
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RoboCop (1987) |
Murphy, at least in Verhoeven’s hands, seems to be asking for his fate with his gum-chewing, gun-toting bravado. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 09, 2022
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The Living Daylights (1987) |
The Living Daylights might be reactionary hooey as far as its worldview goes, but it’s really fun hooey. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 09, 2022
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Street Smart (1987) |
While the tone is downbeat, the bitter realism and quiet virtuosity of Street Smart are, in the forcefulness of their presentation, strangely exhilarating. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 09, 2022
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Making Mr. Right (1987) |
With one eye on contemporary life, and another on life the way she’d like to see it, Susan Seidelman is in the mode of a classic satirist. But she’s an amiable one. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 09, 2022
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Prick Up Your Ears (1987) |
To reconstruct private lives when documentation gives out is an act of imagination, and that is what the film Prick Up Your Ears is all about. - Chicago Reader
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| Posted May 09, 2022
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Titanic (1997) |
Cameron has filled this saga almost to the bursting point with stories and themes that stretch from romance to expose, from parables of hubris to celebrations of industry. This is a great, sprawling film because it urgently needs to be so. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Mar 17, 2022
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Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) |
Thanks to screenwriter and director Carl Franklin, Devil has blossomed into a compulsively watchable mystery, a redolently atmospheric period piece, and a provocative meditation on race, ambition and civics. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Oct 27, 2021
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L.A. Confidential (1997) |
Adapted from a novel said to be unadaptable and set in a genre that has seemed increasingly played out, it brings clarity and life to its art and to life. That's a pretty good definition of a masterpiece, isn't it? - Orange County Register
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| Posted Oct 20, 2021
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My Family/Mi Familia (1995) |
What makes movie characters come alive are differences, not similarities. My Family could be any family, and thus, is no family at all. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Aug 26, 2021
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Go Fish (1994) |
Max and Ely's courtship can't sustain itself on single-cell motivation, not dramatically, anyway. - Orange County Register
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| Posted Aug 25, 2021
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