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Richard Schickel

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

(Photo Credit: Michael Caulfield Archive/WireImage/Getty Images)

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
North (1994) 12% EDIT “Director Rob Reiner strives too hard for the tones of a fable, but the result is far from fabulous.” – TIME Magazine Jan 26, 2026 Full Review The Abyss (1989) 76% EDIT “Harris and Mastrantonio do have a strong death and resurrection sequence, but long before that, one is pining for a rubber shark or a plastic octopus -- anything, in fact, out of a good old low-tech thriller.” – TIME Magazine Dec 9, 2025 Full Review Dracula (1979) 64% EDIT “There is no point in retelling this tale if you are going to be stuffy about it.” – TIME Magazine Oct 21, 2025 Full Review Night Moves (1975) 78% EDIT “Night Moves becomes more entertaining and more interesting than it basically has any right to be.” – TIME Magazine May 28, 2025 Full Review Withnail and I (1987) 84% EDIT “Even the most mild mannered of these new [British] movies, Withnail and I, is a shock to our expectations.” – TIME Magazine Apr 4, 2025 Full Review Rancho Deluxe (1975) 62% EDIT “It achieves some interesting images and some strong dramatic moments, but its good impulses are blunted by creative caution.” – TIME Magazine Mar 25, 2025 Full Review Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975) 53% EDIT “The film is technically competent enough and in its small way inoffensive. But it is all familiar surfaces. ” – TIME Magazine Mar 8, 2025 Full Review Blue Velvet (1986) 91% 4/4 EDIT “A biliously ironic assault on the goopy fantasies with which movies have traditionally solaced those hard-pressed souls enduring either provincialism or adolescence or (worst-case scenario) both at the same time.” – Video Review Jan 22, 2025 Full Review Napoleon (1927) 87% EDIT “Napoleon is a triumph of pure cinematic style over conventional expectations. There is no "characterization" in the usual sense, though in the title role Albert Dieudonné gives a great silent performance of looks, gestures and poses. ” – TIME Magazine May 14, 2024 Full Review Planet of the Apes (1968) 86% EDIT “The best American movie I have seen so far this year. Considering the competition, that is, perhaps, faint praise, but the movie is at least alive. By this I mean that it is alive to -- and delighted with -- its own possibilities.” – LIFE May 2, 2024 Full Review Lady Sings the Blues (1972) 73% EDIT “It is Diana Ross in the title role, however, who carries the whole thing on her skinny shoulders, makes us believe, makes us care. ” – LIFE Apr 4, 2024 Full Review Grease (1978) 65% EDIT “A movie that has as its true subject a bygone style but is utterly devoid of that quality itself.” – TIME Magazine Feb 8, 2024 Full Review The Last of the Mohicans (1992) 88% EDIT “Old-fashioned Hollywood history was exhilarating... It is the great virtue of this grandly scaled yet deliriously energetic movie that it reanimates that long-ago feeling without patronizing it.” – TIME Magazine Dec 14, 2023 Full Review Little Big Man (1970) 91% EDIT “Although the movie is not quite the first in which the Indians are allowed to win a battle, it is surely the first in which they get most of the good lines.” – LIFE Nov 10, 2023 Full Review Smoke Signals (1998) 90% EDIT “The result is a shrewd portrait, sly, casual yet palpably authentic... Smoke Signals could be more complex and compelling narratively, but there's a sweet freshness in its voice that's worth heeding.” – TIME Magazine Nov 8, 2023 Full Review Lone Star (1996) 91% EDIT “Sayles is a meditative storyteller, with a tendency to mute melodrama rather than letting it wail. But he is also one of the few filmmakers still ferreting out the strangeness and anxiety hidden beneath our poses of ordinariness.” – TIME Magazine Sep 6, 2023 Full Review When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) 68% EDIT “Well, this is the '90s, when weekends aren't allowed to be lost, only politely postponed.” – TIME Magazine Sep 1, 2023 Full Review Moscow on the Hudson (1984) 74% EDIT “Robin Williams, who seems to have absorbed something of the Russian soul while acquiring a persuasive Russian accent, is excellent.” – TIME Magazine Aug 22, 2023 Full Review Bringing Up Baby (1938) 97% 4/4 EDIT “The dialogue sparkles and the acting shines as the big cat escapes and mishap follows mishap in swift succession.” – Video Review Jul 25, 2023 Full Review Coming Apart (1969) 50% EDIT “The film's effect is powerful, not least because of Rip Torn's brilliant performance as he transforms himself from a man making a half-serious experiment in living to a creature ensnared in a trap of his own devising.” – LIFE Jul 18, 2023 Full Review Castle Keep (1969) 44% EDIT “Well worth seeing, not because perfection has been achieved, but because a good serious film response has been made to a good serious book.” – LIFE Jul 18, 2023 Full Review The Garden of Delights (1970) EDIT “A well-acted study in psychological violence that tears at our consciousness with clever, velvet claws.” – LIFE Jul 18, 2023 Full Review Bad Company (1972) 84% EDIT “It's a hard movie to summarize and a hard movie to forget -- soft-spoken, hard-headed, stylistically singular. Bad Company is good company, the best I have found at the movies in a long time.” – LIFE Jul 18, 2023 Full Review The Matrix (1999) 83% EDIT “Given a budget that encourages their kinesthetic skills, the filmmakers tend to go on a bit, but it's mostly a kind of quick, glancing hipness that's being indulged here. And that's a rare and welcome commodity in mass-market moviemaking these days.” – TIME Magazine Jul 12, 2023 Full Review Magnolia (1999) 82% EDIT “These characters are all well played, but we don't fully connect with them. Or, finally, with an endless movie that mostly mistakes inflation for importance.” – TIME Magazine Jun 29, 2023 Full Review
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