Michael Phillips

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Chicago Tribune
For 2,578 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1 point higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Michael Phillips' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 The Third Man
Lowest review score: 0 Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,779 out of 2578
  2. Mixed: 510 out of 2578
  3. Negative: 289 out of 2578
2578 movie reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    The Wrestler
    The Wrestler works for the same reason "Rachel Getting Married" works. The way they're acted, shot, edited and scored, both films deploy a loose, rough-hewn documentary style to great dramatic advantage. The corn isn't hyped. The performances click without going for the jugular.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Warfare
    It’s a specific sort of achievement, without the full dimension or larger resonance of a classic. That’s a lot to ask of any film, especially one that does so much so rigorously and well.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Gravity
    It's a nerve-wracking visual experience of unusual and paradoxical delicacy. And if your stomach can take it, it's truly something to see.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    The Personal History of David Copperfield
    Tilda Swinton’s a tightly wound riot as Copperfield’s snappish aunt, living seaside and fending off stray donkeys while her serenely mad lodger Mr. Dick resides in his own universe. He is played by Hugh Laurie, beautifully, as if Bertie Wooster had taken a few wrong turns.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Showing Up
    The movie has a tiny motor of a narrative, but it’s just enough. Nothing is overstated, and a lot of Showing Up isn’t even stated; it’s simply shown, on the fly or with the merest emphasis on what Lizzie goes through as she completes her work.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Severance
    I prefer my horror with a chaser of wit, and Severance, a modest but very lively British import, serves it up in harsh but high style.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    It is a film, often breathtaking without settling for being pretty, filled with nervous silence.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Get On Up
    Get on Up hits all these high points. But the Butterworths fracture the order, fruitfully. They're more interested in making musical and dramatic connections across time and space — something in the '70s triggering a childhood memory, for example — than in laying them out predictably.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    It’s zippier than “Incredibles 2,” and nearly as witty as the first “Lego Movie,” with whom it shares a very funny screenwriter, Phil Lord.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Nomadland
    While there’s little or no outright expression of religious faith in Nomadland, Zhao and company have given us a glancing but evocative state-of-the-nation character study. In its own spiritual fashion, Fern’s story becomes one about the character of a nation, and an America desperately searching for the ribbon of highway (to quote Woody Guthrie) to take us all the way home.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Sita Sings the Blues
    Nina Paley's delicious Sita Sings the Blues finds solace in autobiography and an animated gold mine in the caverns of an ancient Sanskrit epic.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Giant
    Gigante represents the sort of artful low-budget accomplishment that could, and should, be coming out of distressingly stingy Chicago once a year — whatever the subject, whatever the sensibility.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    7 Boxes
    You wait for months, sometimes, for a movie to show you something new. "7 Boxes" does exactly that, and while it's no more than a briskly managed bit of escapism, it's a really good example of same.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Hell or High Water
    What the movie has, above all, is a dramatic line, clean and straight. In its faces, its scenery and its plain satisfactions it makes us feel like we've been somewhere, when we get to the end of that line.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Magic Mike
    One of the pleasures of Magic Mike is its egalitarian spirit and dedication to the ensemble.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
    This is an elegant and eloquent love letter from one master filmmaker to two of his prized idols.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    The Salesman
    The acting is wonderful throughout, but Alidoosti creates an especially haunting depiction of one woman's adversities in a country, and a marriage, that may not have her best interests at heart.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Buried
    This exercise in racked nerves makes most of the year's thrillers look like flailing maniacs by comparison.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Long Day's Journey Into Night
    Bi, not yet 30, has made a movie that feels like a visual sigh and, yes, a dream. It’s a reminder of just how expansive the cinema’s boundaries remain.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    How to Have Sex
    Already, McKenna-Bruce can work wonders in terms of assured technique and complicated emotions and she’s magically right as Tara.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Portrait of Wally
    The documentary carrying the same name as Schiele's painting works like a suspense drama and a slippery chronicle of ownership, theft and vaguely unsettling resolution.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Don't Think Twice
    A genuinely charming comedy about real people challenging themselves to create new realities for laughs and a little truth, one made-up scene at a time.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Sunshine
    Sunshine is near-classic modern science fiction, hobbled only by a chaotic final reel and some casting missteps in the white-male department.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
    Watching Loeb opposite Berg, you're reminded of the miracles of chemistry and the luck of the draw when it comes to casting a show -- any show.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    The Taste of Tea
    The most charming comedy in town, writer-director-editor Katsuhito Ishii's 2003 piece is a modern Japanese variation on "You Can't Take It With You," with some lovely fantastical flourishes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Captain America: The First Avenger
    The most stylish comics-derived entertainment of the year...It's paced and designed for people who won't shrivel up and die if two or three characters take 45 seconds between combat sequences to have a conversation about world domination, or a dame.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Senna
    The film is a remarkable experience on a purely sensory level, and the best of its archival footage - on the track, in private meetings with drivers before the races, from the white-knuckle, over-the-shoulder perspective of Senna himself - is pure gold.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Happy-Go-Lucky
    There’s something of the harlequin in Leigh’s conception of this bright, manic young woman.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Let the Sunshine In
    The film itself isn’t dorky in the least. It’s an elegant and witty rumination on one woman’s quest for romantic fire.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Phillips
    Mulan
    Shooting largely on New Zealand’s South Island, Caro has a beautiful knack for fluid transitions: the witch entering the body of an unsuspecting traveler in silhouetted shadow, for example, or a simple, fixed composition of Mulan riding from one side of the screen to the other, in extreme long shot. The dizzying wuxia martial arts action, with warriors sprinting up, down and sideways, defying gravity, propel the action scenes without overwhelming them.
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