Richard Lawson

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IndieWire, The Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair
For 512 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Richard Lawson's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Roma
Lowest review score: 10 The Woman in the Window
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 313 out of 512
  2. Mixed: 159 out of 512
  3. Negative: 40 out of 512
512 movie reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Eileen
    The movie is deliberately alienating, but Oldroyd has not done enough to earn our devotion before he pulls the rug out and flashes us a smirk. The movie is a provocative tease that doesn’t have the stuff to back up the joke, try as its game performers might to make it all mean something. I found myself wishing that Eileen was longer. Its fertile territory is woefully underdeveloped—so much of the film’s innate potential goes unutilized. At least there is Hathaway’s glowing star turn, both reminding us of what we knew she could do and introducing us to something new.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Emancipation
    Fuqua’s chosen technique only undermines his solemn intentions, rather than using starkness to make a salient point. Emancipation is overthought to its increasing detriment.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    The Twits
    That the film has such a strong, timely moral argument makes one reconsider its creative merits.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    The Front Runner
    In this grim reality, The Front Runner feels quaint, almost a hopeful thing, crafted in the old ways with a pitiable naïveté.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    The Batman
    The reality is that there is probably nothing truly novel to be done with Batman at this point. He’s been thoroughly mined for both fun and pathos; try as Reeves and his co-screenwriter Peter Craig might, they can’t squeeze much higher-meaning blood out of a fatally depleted stone. Pattinson, moody and saturnine, does what he can, but he’s not afforded much beyond growling and scowling.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Gladiator II
    The sequel is epic in length and spectacle, but not in feeling.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Bodies Bodies Bodies
    As this process unfolds, Reijn and DeLappe manage some moments of shivery suspense. Reijn makes expressive use of the house, tearing up staircases and down shadowy corridors with giddy abandon. But narratively, the film grows awfully repetitive, some version of the same argument taking place in one dark room after another.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Eddington
    Eddington gradually shifts away from the hyper topical and into a despairing, bleakly amusing look at an America prone to violent fantasy and deed, entrenched in escalating conflict, caught in a terrible entropy. When Aster finally knuckles down and ramps up the action, Eddington takes strange flight.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Not Okay
    Had the movie pitched itself on a one-way trip into the black, Deutch would no doubt have been up to the task. She’s a squirmy wonder in the film, loathsome and pitiable and, perhaps, grimly relatable. At times, Shephard overstates Danni’s detachment from polite society, but otherwise she and Deutch keep things in frightfully believable bounds.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Jurassic World Dominion
    Though the script, by Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael, does occasionally surprise with a little fugue of sharp writing, Dominion mostly seeks to drag us along for its indulgent 150-minute run in the hopes that it will exhaust us into thinking we’ve been served a rich, satisfying meal. There is at least some nice seasoning throughout.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    The Lighthouse
    There needn’t be some deeper theme or intent behind a movie like this, but The Lighthouse is an awfully trying experience to end with such a sneering shrug of the shoulders. I couldn’t shake the feeling that The Lighthouse is simply an exercise, an overeager writing class project from a guy who’s just read Sartre, Beckett, and, I dunno, Stephen King.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Wildlife
    Dano shows technical promise as a director, but I hope his taste in material has a bit more range. Now that he’s gotten a rather passionless passion project out of his system, hopefully he’ll lift his gaze up in search of other, more vibrant lives—out there in the vastness, hungry for perfect lighting.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Wonder Woman 1984
    In its best stretches—the first hour of the film, let’s say—WW84 sweetly revels in its old-school trappings, its hokey mystery, its goofy villain, its resourceful hero. The film is light on its feet, colorful and playful in a way not seen elsewhere in the DC Universe.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Mountainhead
    Maybe the few moments when Mountainhead does take on a chilling relevance—when it seems to pick at something nightmarishly real—are enough to justify the sillier stuff. And, we must sadly admit, that silly stuff may not actually be that silly.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Skywalkers: A Love Story
    Skywalkers might be the first of a new genre: extended vlog (or TikTok, or Instragram reel) as feature film, existing somewhere between fact and fiction and all in service of promoting a brand.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Falling for Christmas
    It’s a story of reinvention for an actor trying to do the same. It mostly works a treat. Lohan’s performance is perky and agreeable, a shimmer of that old Mean Girls (or, hell, Parent Trap) charm dancing around her for the first time in a while. I’d happily watch her in more after this—though preferably in something a bit meatier than a Hallmark knock-off.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Alien: Romulus
    If it hadn’t had someone of Álvarez’s care and attention at the helm, Romulus could certainly have been a lot worse.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Spider-Man: No Way Home
    What I will say is that director Jon Watts handles this grand convergence of properties old and current with enough verve to almost sustain the long run of the film. But there’s so much brand Frankensteining to be done that there’s really no time for quirk and texture; much of the bounce and sparkle of the past two Holland films is lost.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    The Forgiven
    Chastain pulls focus whenever she can, operating as one of the film’s main resources of levity and acerbic bite. I wish the movie had more of that energy—McDonagh keeps the proceedings oddly muted given the circumstances—but at least Chastain is there, pepping things up a bit.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Anyone But You
    Anyone but You is undoubtedly a cut above most rom-coms we’ve been served in recent years, and its many efforts to feel big and luxe do not go unnoticed. But it’s curiously unromantic and is only clever in fits and starts. If the movie were to approach me at a coffee shop, smug grin gleaming away, I’d probably only commit to a fling.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Blade Runner 2049
    While it certainly stimulated and overwhelmed my senses, Blade Runner 2049 rarely got my mind whirring the way one always hopes this kind of artful, serious-minded sci-fi will.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Extra Geography
    I appreciate that Manners and Battye are trying to add some extra flair to what is otherwise a fairly conventional growing-pains narrative, but too often Extra Geography seems located outside any map of the real world.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Meg 2: The Trench
    Meg 2 is confident in its schlock, piling on one ridiculous conceit after another at such a pace that the audience can’t help but be swept up in it. That is a harder needle to thread than many filmmakers seem to think—it’s not enough to just be stupid.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    A Quiet Place Part II
    The film’s self-seriousness bogs down what should be a mad and skittering thing, jangling us with all its agonizing silence. We should be having more fun as we watch through our fingers.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Eighth Grade
    Eighth Grade is an exciting directorial debut for Burnham, a precocious teen phenomenon who seems to have grown into a thoughtful adult—one who intimately knows of what he speaks. He’s made an alarmingly perceptive film that only rarely goes for the easy joke or verges toward cliché
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Everybody Knows
    There’s nothing wrong with a good soap opera—and when one looks as bespoke as this one, and has such fine actors in it, it should go down a treat. But Everybody Knows lumbers and frustrates as it goes.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Bones and All
    Bones and All has its merits, but the film is only a decent side dish at the feast of Guadagnino. You’ll likely leave the theater still feeling hungry.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Hanging by a Wire
    Perhaps if the film was more polished, and had some added depth, it might feel more substantial. As is, Hanging by a Wire is a gripping story not told thoroughly enough.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    Blindspotting
    Blindspotting never settles into a consistent cadence. This isn’t exactly a problem, in theory—movies can contain multitudes, of course—but in this trio’s overeager execution, all that chaos renders the movie curiously inert.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Richard Lawson
    F9: The Fast Saga
    F9’s attempts at classical drama, all its reckoning with dynastic sin, do weigh the thing down quite a bit. Those going to the theater simply for the kicky, bad-joke, MacGuffin charms of F&F may find themselves a little bored and distracted, as I was, by all the turgidity.
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