Michael Wilmington

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Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times
For 1,969 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 75% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 23% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Michael Wilmington's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Sweet Sixteen
Lowest review score: 0 Repossessed
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,505 out of 1969
  2. Mixed: 305 out of 1969
  3. Negative: 159 out of 1969
1969 movie reviews
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    The Miracle Worker
    Anne Bancroft won the Oscar playing Helen Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, in this intelligent adaptation of William Gibson's Broadway hit, and it's a fierce, moving job, highlighted by the incredibly savage battles between teacher Annie and pupil Helen (fellow Oscar winner Patty Duke). It's a model serious bio-drama.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Heaven
    The result is both engrossing and moving, a poem about a love that breaks barriers and passes understanding.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Nurse Betty
    The movie has a deliberately screw-loose feel.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    A Scanner Darkly
    It's one of the most faithful movie adaptations of any Dick story to date, and it comes from the scariest of all his books, as well as the truest.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Wonderland
    One of the best realistic dramas of the year.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    National Velvet
    Elizabeth Taylor, at 12 already a raging beauty, plays Velvet Brown -- the passionate girl who loves horses and wants to win the Grand National; it's perhaps her most perfect performance and one of her best-loved. [16 Nov 2001, p.C1]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Brute Force
    A socially conscious prison picture (written by Richard Brooks) that sometimes deliriously suggests a Brooklynesque mating of Jean Genet and Warner Bros. [20 Apr 2007, p.C8]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    The Piano Teacher
    You will not forget The Piano Teacher. Nor will you forget Isabelle Huppert, a brave, brilliant actress who here plays her masterpiece.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Edmond
    Mamet is a writer who turns off some audiences, and almost everything that might bother them is in Edmond: foul language, raging machismo, violence and seemingly bigoted tirades. But almost everything audiences like about him is there too: candor, suspense, ideas, crackling slang, vivid characters.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Girl Crazy
    Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney out West at a boys school/dude ranch. Their best movie musical, adapted from the Ginger Rogers-Ethel Merman stage show, with that great George and Ira Gershwin score. [13 Apr 2007, p.C6]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 57 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    The Muse
    A real gem: a deadpan fantasy that turns into one of the best pictures ever about the post-"Star Wars" studio moviemaking era.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Any Given Sunday
    There's scarcely a scene in which the actors, action and sound track aren't cranked up to maximum intensity.
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Duma
    Duma, at its best, reminded me exactly why we loved movies as children: because they told stories like this, with images just as rhapsodically colorful and exciting.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Horse Feathers
    In their cockeyed prime, the Marx Brothers dismantle higher education by taking over Huxley College and setting it on a collision course with football arch-rival Darwin. [30 Dec 2005, p.C4]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    3 Godfathers
    The great Christmas western with Duke Wayne, Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey Jr. as three fugitive outlaws, who, by caring for an abandoned baby, unwittingly become sagebrush equivalents for the Three Wise Men. [04 May 2001, p.C1]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Domestic Violence
    Be forewarned: The movie lasts three hours and 16 minutes, and nearly all of it deals with subjects that polite society (and even rude society) tends to ignore or evade.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Seraphim Falls
    You could say that Seraphim Falls, was no better than the typical Westerns of the 1950s and '60s--which I think underrates it. But those typical Westerns were pretty darn good, and so is Seraphim Falls.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Intolerable Cruelty
    Elegant, cheerfully cynical fun of the kind we used to get regularly from Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks and other masters of the classic Hollywood screwball comedy -- all those '30s-'40s movies about rich people sloshed, or acting crazy and running romantically amok.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    California Split
    An Altman classic on a subject he knows well.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    The Hustler
    Rossen treats the jousts at the pool tables here like mythic battles waged by legendary knights on a playing field composed of nicotine, dirty felt and wasted dreams.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    La bûche
    A fine French comedy-drama.
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 58 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Big Fish
    A word of warning. Big Fish is so strange and so literary that audiences seeking conventional fare may get impatient with it. But it always takes effort to catch the big ones. This one is worth it.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Melinda and Melinda
    Allen gives us at least half a classic comedy - more than we usually get at the movies these days - while having some elegant fun with an idea that has intrigued poets and smart alecks through the ages: the interchangeability of comedy and tragedy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Michael Wilmington
    Wonder Boys
    An often-wondrous comedy, just as rich and surprising as "L.A. Confidential" but considerably less dark.
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