Richard Whittaker

Select another critic »
For 624 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Richard Whittaker's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Blindspotting
Lowest review score: 0 Old
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 37 out of 624
624 movie reviews
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    There are moments in the bleak social commentary of The School Duel that make it clear that satire is dead. Or rather, that the extremity of what is happening in American culture is so grotesque that it’s almost impossible to push into the realm of absurdist commentary.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Léger and Robichaud’s update is mostly successful in filtering the intent of the original for modern sensibilities, not least in the plentiful sex scenes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    As Bauman falls deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Bilberry Inn, McCarthy masterfully reminds us that a ghost can be real and a metaphor, as the scares demand.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Richard Whittaker
    The tonal disconnect between the subtext and the delivery leaves this Animal Farm wobbling like the first time Napoleon tries to walk on two legs.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Mārama is arguably at its most effective as a political text when it isn’t trying so hard to be part of the heritage that includes Hitchcock’s Rebecca and del Toro’s Crimson Peak.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    It’s an adept translation that is in turns bloody and cruel, insightful and hilarious, and, under the plentiful gore and uproarious laughter, a surprisingly touching drama. Just one with slapstick bloodbath tendencies.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Lowery may have dealt with the uncanny in A Ghost Story, but the whole point of that film was the mundanity of the afterlife. This is a truly supernatural tale, and the storytelling transitions into his version of horror, abstract and oblique.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    It may well be that Ozon has made the best possible conventional adaptation of the book. Yet maybe it requires a more unconventional touch to truly translate Camus’ point.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    A few unforgivably heavy-handed nods to The Shining aside, [Kawamura] has created a fresh new addition to contemporary J-horror, one that deftly warps the characters around its own rules without rendering them merely props for the next shock.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 11 Richard Whittaker
    Faces of Death is dull and thoughtless, its attempts to smash influencer culture into voyeurism feeling artificial.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 89 Richard Whittaker
    For two filmmakers best known for their comedic scripts like the Jump Street films and The Lego Movie, they know when to pull back on the humor and instead embrace the spectacle, and find their perfect proxy in Gosling.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    A testament to the adage that a good filmmaker can make anything out of nothing, Undertone should go in your playlist now.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    There are flashes of greatness, especially when Gyllenhaal and cinematographer Lawrence Sher capture some of the film’s wilder set-pieces. But then the narrative messiness undercuts the beauty of those images.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    It becomes a warm and insightful tribute to every kid that finds peace climbing up a tree, to every adult that realizes the value of the natural world, and to the ties that bind us to the world around us. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn what a keystone species is.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The influence of the original Mad Max is undeniable – not the crazy biker bits, but the sense of a collapsing world, of the personal impacts and damage inflicted by the end of everything.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 89 Richard Whittaker
    Like its bloodline kin, it’s a perfectly scathing glance at power, money, and how the love of both can curdle the soul.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    The best moments are when Keery and Campbell get to be blue collar schlubs facing down these messy menaces. Maybe if there was more of their back-and-forth and less of Neeson and Torchia’s distant double act, or vice versa, then Cold Storage might balance between its gruesome and goofy aspects.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 89 Richard Whittaker
    Onscreen, Lighton explores the imbalance between the two and gently leads the audience with sympathy and empathy to a perfect resolution that asks both to face their own dysfunction.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie may not win over many or even any new fans, but devotees of the TV show, and even diehards from the single-n Nirvana web days will relish having their favorite gentle idiots back and hearing the same joke on a bigger stage.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    For all of Elordi’s mutton-chopped brooding and Robbie’s vamping, there’s something shallow and glib about “Wuthering Heights.” Yet again, the psychosexual classic tragedy has been turned into a well-crafted mass-market potboiler.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    It’s the same thrill as the Final Destination movies, which Egerton and Hardy have both noted as an influence: watching likable protagonists try and sometimes fail to evade death.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Call it what it is: Luc Besson’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a copy of a copy.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Making a movie about how annoyed you were that your label tried to force you to make a concert movie is just 103 minutes of Charli xcx relitigating an argument she already won, just with added product placement.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Its gentleness and incremental increases in weirdness are a feature, not a bug.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    The result is something that feels like an adult’s idea of a sophisticated kids’ movie, its sense of adventure and imagination overruled and undercut by its tone of mature melancholy.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    Raimi plays with the audience’s loyalties, making the insufferable Brad increasingly sympathetic and Linda more unhinged and despicable by the minute. Yet ultimately Send Help devolves into two awful people being awful to each other for two hours.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Richard Whittaker
    The plot and character development remains early-2000s video game level, a fact made even more disappointing because Gans added so much more to the first film.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    In Cold Light is far better constructed and executed than its generic, straight-to-video title might imply, but it’s too monotonous – in the literal meaning of the word – to reach its aspirations or to really use its cast.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 0 Richard Whittaker
    Seriously, audiences do not need another constant reminder that their lives are slipping away. Just watching Mercy will have them reconsidering their priorities.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Bennett’s true genius is not merely in his words – although few have ever achieved his flair for simplicity and wit. It’s in his compassion.

Top Trailers