Richard Schickel
Select another critic »For 569 reviews, this critic has graded:
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55% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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43% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.9 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Richard Schickel's Scores
- Movies
- TV
| Average review score: | 67 | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest review score: | Yojimbo | |
| Lowest review score: | Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 | |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 351 out of 569
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Mixed: 153 out of 569
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Negative: 65 out of 569
569
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Richard Schickel
Like its many raucous predecessors, Blazing Saddles is a thing of bits and bits—some good, some awful—pinned to a story line that sags like a tenement clothesline. The movie tends to improve in the retelling, as memory edits out ineptitudes, the better to dwell on moments of glory... But goldarned if it doesn't work. Goldarned if the whole fool enterprise is not worth the attention of any moviegoer with a penchant for what one actor, commenting on another's Gabby Hayes imitation, calls "authentic western gibberish."- Time
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- Richard Schickel
A lot of very good actors...do honest, probing work in a context where, typically, less will do.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
As the gags pile up remorselessly, and the viewer strains to keep up with the story line and the cutting subtext, a furious but benign apnea takes hold. You can't enjoy a good long laugh because you'll miss too much. It's the happiest form of internal injury.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
For all the film's murky misdirections, it is very enjoyable. That's because Nolan's recreation of the illusionists' backstage world is so marvelously detailed, including as it does revelations of how some of their best tricks are accomplished.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
For Hackman embodies the energy and outrage the rest of this rather twee family lacks. Royal stirs them all to life, and this great, bumptious performance by an actor gleefully rediscovering his funny bone stirs us to appreciative life too.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
It must have been difficult for Schanberg to confront the record of his own blindness and powerlessness when he wrote the articles on which this movie is based. It must be nerve-racking for the producers to offer a tale so lacking in standard melodramatic satisfactions. But the result is worth it, for this is the clearest film statement yet on how the nature of heroism has changed in this totalitarian century.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Wry humor and even a certain sexiness break through the reserve of a rueful, realistic, but finally emotionally rewarding film.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The Freshman is no small thing. Well, actually, it is a small thing. But to a moviegoer deafened by and reeling from the rolling barrage laid down by the early summer's big box-office guns, the determined modesty, the unsprung affability of Andrew Bergman's comedy are precisely what make it treasurable.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Works as a sweetly loony ensemble piece, a sort of cracked romance that's typical of director Barry Levinson at his shrewd but unpretentious best.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
It's an exercise in style by Robert Rodriguez and not to be taken any more (or less) seriously than his giddy "Spy Kids" movies.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The result is a lovely movie, one that allows its characters unexpected spurts of growth and regression, darkness and grace.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The movie ends in a burst of violence that we are unprepared for and don't believe. Maybe it's the film's final joke. It's a miscalculation -- though a calculated one -- but it does not erase one's fond memories of all the odd, deeply humorous behavior that preceded it.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
So long as Casino stays focused on the excesses -- of language, of violence, of ambition -- in the life-styles of the rich and infamous, it remains a smart, knowing, if often repetitive, spectacle.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The players are uniformly good, but a special word must be said for Fiennes, whose portrayal of physical awkwardness and painful taciturnity never begs either for laughs or for sympathy.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
Babel is a movie that leaves you feeling limp and wrung out, but mysteriously moved by its vivid human encounters with the hot, tightly wired, chancy and coincidental world, ever capable of terrorizing us when we least expect it.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
An edgy, watchable film, but one that makes you feel more squeamish than screamish.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
A rich man, perpetually tiddly from drink, gets incompetent self into various muddles; unflappable gentleman's gentleman gets him out. It has always been an excellent joke, and Writer-Director Gordon has added a dash of sentiment to their relationship, trusting Sir John's expertise to keep things taut and tart, which he does admirably.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
It is good to see the Disney craftsmen doing what they do best on such a grand and risky scale. If one has time for only one space opera this season, this is the one to choose.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
The result is a laff riot. Well, all right, a laff scuffle -- a picture that isn't quite as funny as it might be, but is as funny as it needs to be.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
These people are fools for heedless love and, perhaps, needless complication, and you can't help responding to the heat of their passion.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
McTiernan does not fall too much in love with any scene, character or gadget. He has judged his material (and our attention spans) very well. His alternation of menace and human interest, technological wizardry and action sequences is subtly calibrated, ultimately hypnotic in its effect. [5 Mar 1990, p.70]- Time
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- Richard Schickel
It will fascinate and possibly even delight cinephiles. Who does not enjoy gawking at accidents, particularly those in which there are no fatalities and the sad story unfolds in almost slow-motion clarity?- Time
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- Richard Schickel
This wee, discreet little movie has a certain rueful intelligence about the ways we rather carelessly talk ourselves into love--and out of it as well.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
It is hard to imagine anyone, with the possible exception of preadolescent males, who will not, in the end turn on to Turning Point.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
This isn't just a thrill ride; it's a rocket into the thrilling past, when directors could scare you with how much emotion they packed into a movie.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
This moving tribute to a handful of candles flickering in the darkness has the power to summon us--one prays--to our better selves.- Time
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- Richard Schickel
That metaphor is pitch-perfect, but the film works a little too hard at proving the vileness of beauty pageants.- Time
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- Time
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- Richard Schickel
So even when they don’t achieve the glorious farce of a Fargo, there is always something fascinating about following the Coens’ rapt gaze as they peer into the American nut bowl.- Time
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- Time
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