Richard Whittaker

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Austin Chronicle
For 629 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. Positive: 447 out of 629
  2. Mixed: 145 out of 629
  3. Negative: 37 out of 629
629 movie reviews
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    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    M3GAN 2.0
    With M3GAN out of her recognizable body for most of the film, it becomes clear how much of the success of both films comes down to Davis’ delivery.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Orphan: First Kill
    What makes Orphan: First Kill worthwhile is that it acknowledges the original before taking a hard left turn into overblown soapy madness. The modern gothic of the first film transforms here into a perfectly fitting explosion of operatic schlock.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    Boogie
    Huang's understatement often seems flat. There's nothing visually distinctive about his depiction of diverse working class NYC, and major events bubble up with surprisingly little impact. With so much on the line, Boogie just sort of dribbles to nothingness.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Sympathy for the Devil
    It's mean, gritty, and brutally nihilist, its mystery unwrapping before it strangles you with its perfect meanness. If noir is about, as the old saying goes, bad people doing bad things for good reasons, then Sympathy for the Devil bleeds in all the right ways.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Scare Package II: Rad Chad's Revenge
    When it comes to the segments, Scare Package II is much more successful than the first film in striking a unified tone – maybe less outrageously funny, maybe a little drier, but still entertaining.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Anemone
    When Day-Lewis and Bean are allowed to be real brothers in arms, Anemone truly blooms.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Prisoners of the Ghostland
    Ultimately, Prisoners of the Ghostland is an OK film by a great filmmaker who has made truly great films, most memorable for its cast and the fact Sono finally made an English-language movie. Yet, when what's noteworthy about a film is just that it exists, it's more a vapor than an actual phantom.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    Night Patrol
    Prows lets all those subplots divert him from saying something meaningful about how even the best-intentioned of cops end up part of a nightmare machine. Luckily, the plentiful and creative gore splatters enough blood and ichor to provide camouflage disguising those shortcomings. Or rather, enough to make Night Patrol entertaining – just not enough to completely obfuscate what it could have been.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    The YouTube Effect
    Winter can't resist the cheering idea that, for all its sins, YouTube has created a new, disseminated knowledge base. However, that core concern about its dangers is what really drives The YouTube Effect, and re-enforces its central finding that it has had an undeniably corrosive effect on our lives, even as we've fallen for its steady stream of pablum and bootlegged shows.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    The Mauritanian
    The Mauritanian wants to be a fusion of Papillon and A Few Good Men, but it cannot work out whether it wants to make a purely emotive argument, or engage in a brutal cross-examination of the legal system.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 20 Richard Whittaker
    Destroy All Neighbors
    Destroy All Neighbors has all the verve of a blood clot.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    The Amazing Maurice
    It's still not quite Pratchett-y, still a little static – most especially in the oddly flat animation – and still not quite snappy enough. But that doesn't stop Maurice being an entertaining way to convince kids to pick up the book.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 89 Richard Whittaker
    Landscape with Invisible Hand
    It's an incisive, intriguing, and ultimately moving look at America's ongoing socioeconomic collapse: The whole "kids streaming their first slow dance" thing is just one aspect of this rich and nuanced drama.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Silent Night, Deadly Night
    Acheson channels exploitation legend Sid Haig as Charlie, and it’s just delightful to see Nelson give one of the all-time “oh, it’s that guy” bit part specialists a truly memorable role. That it’s in that rare remake that successfully inverts an old favorite while staying true to its grisly inheritance makes it even more of a gift.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Hypnotic
    This is Rodriguez the lover of the C-movie, the kind of filmmaker that Roger Corman would have adored. Hypnotic has that run-and-gun energy, rough around the edges but not in a way that impinges on the fun. It's also Rodriguez flexing some old action muscles, with that opening heist arguably his most bruising and well-constructed practical set-piece in a couple of decades.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    The Moment
    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.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    I.S.S.
    For a film with such weighty aspirations, I.S.S. lacks gravity.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Rapid Response
    Rapid Response is a celebration of behind-the-scenes heroes, and their dedication to medicine and science as a way to save lives. Its microfocus, anecdotal structure, and reliance on archive footage and talking heads, undoubtedly makes this one for the true devotees of motorsports, but they'll not want to miss it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    The Penguin Lessons
    Anyone just expecting a cutesy animal romp may be sorely disappointed, but that’s because this isn’t about the quietly expansive inner life of Juan Salvador.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Richard Whittaker
    Monstrous
    What really drags it down is the wafer-thin script by Carol Chrest, which neither Sivertson nor a determined if sometimes overblown Ricci can pull past its messy metaphor and undeserved twists.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Wolf
    Superficially, Wolf may seem like an entry into the queer canon, and it's not hard to see superficial similarities between the facility and a gay conversion therapy facility, or to superimpose transphobia onto Jacob's diagnosis of species dysphoria.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    It's a Wonderful Knife
    Clunky horror in-jokes, like a heavy-handed Scream nod in the name of Winnie's aunt (Isabelle), feel labored, and it's all plagued by the same unevenness that afflicted director Tyler MacIntyre's Tragedy Girls: The gore and the comedy are well-executed, but the timing is off.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 89 Richard Whittaker
    Kandahar
    While Kandahar is undoubtedly spectacular war cinema, it's also a weighty meditation on the seeming impossibility for some of walking away from conflict.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Richard Whittaker
    Eternals
    There’s been an urge to excuse the director and blame the studio, arguing that Zhao just didn’t fit into the strictures of the MCU. Yet that doesn’t explain how weak the script she co-wrote is, or why it’s so insufferably long, or why it almost completely fails to tackle its own core conceits of blind loyalty, of the perils of immortality, of rebellion against faith.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Eleanor the Great
    Eleanor the Great never quite grapples with the ethical dilemmas that it raises, either in Eleanor’s stories, Nina’s efforts to turn them into a news project, or Roger’s usurping of their wishes for a segment on their show. But if the narrative logic falls apart, at least its emotional core remains solid, much of it bound together by Squibb’s warmth and charm.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Over Your Dead Body
    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.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Silent Night
    It’s a slow document of stiff upper lips beginning to quiver, and while Knightley excels as the perfect Kensington upper-crust mummy, it’s Goode who personifies that desperate attempt to keep a veneer of control, even as his world is on the verge of devastation.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    The Last Voyage of the Demeter
    As much as Øvredal tries to evade all the modern blockbuster conventions that are bound to keep the Demeter from its best destination, it’s too bumpy a journey to ever feel quite on course.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Invader
    At a raw and rare 70 minutes, Invader is Keating challenging himself to deliver the leanest, sparest home invasion imaginable. But it’s only minimalist in the story and cinematography.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    National Champions
    It’s bleak and brutal, and Waugh’s cold tone (a definite throwback to Shot Caller) leaves no one with clean hands. But as a testament to the costs of a noble sacrifice in the face of institutional inhumanity, it’s as vital as any of his earlier films.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Despicable Me 4
    The script by Mike White (who may have been locked in the writer’s room by Illumination Studios after working on the superior Migration) and series co-creator Ken Daurio feels like a stack of B-plots stapled together rather than a full story.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Azrael
    Weaving, who excels at this kind of character-driven action-horror, plays perfectly with our empathy, wordlessly guiding us through this damned land.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Bloody Hell
    It's delightfully frightful fun, a fine addition to the venerable and febrile tradition of Australian comedy-horror.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Slingshot
    If Slingshot leaned into that character study, rather than roughly gaffer-taping it to a deep space thriller, maybe it wouldn’t stall out on the launch pad so badly.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    The Last Full Measure
    What could have been a worthy tribute becomes a by-the-numbers melodrama.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission
    This is definitely one My Hero Academia adventure that should go back to the classroom.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Kids vs. Aliens
    A gleefully gross adventure that bundles together all of wrestling-and-horror nerd Eisener's favorite obsessions (he's also part of the team behind VICE's The Dark Side of the Ring), Kids vs. Aliens is exactly the kind of age-inappropriate horror that kids will absolutely love.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
    Operation Fortune is just one long series of heist sequences that run at the same speed, at the same tone, and all flatly shot by Ritchie's new regular cinematographer, Alan Stewart.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Richard Whittaker
    Karate Kid: Legends
    Kids may come out of Karate Kid: Legends crane-kicking in excitement from the handful of fights, and older fans can relish the nostalgia, but for everyone else it’s wax on, nod off.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Accidental Texan
    There’s an earnestness about Accidental Texan that can only warm your heart. Every moment is predictable, but in Bristol’s capable hands that becomes a strength.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Clerks III
    Smith is still a long way from being a great filmmaker, but he's an earnest one. And Clerks III, flawed as it is, is his heartfelt farewell to the Quick Stop.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    PAW Patrol: The Movie
    PAW Patrol: The Movie is bigger and prettier than the TV show, but it's still PAW Patrol. What makes it worth the time investment for kids is that it's really about introducing the street-smart long-haired Dachshund Liberty (Martin) into the team, while giving a little drama to Chase's life as he processes some old trauma about being a stray in the big city.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    The Marvels
    Worse, the Marvels themselves have any potential chemistry drowned like an Atlantean with blocked gills. All the giddy charm of the Ms. Marvel version of Kamala Khan is lost in a torrent of fannish shrieks, while the demand that the audience feel empathy for grown adult Monica Rambeau who's still pouting that Auntie Carol never came back (Auntie Carol, who was literally off saving the cosmos) is wearisome.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    My Animal
    Where so many queer creature features attempt to refract and reframe fairy tale tropes, Jae Matthews' script for My Animal is intriguing because there's always the threat of the real world at the edges.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 89 Richard Whittaker
    The Ballad of Wallis Island
    Under the gentle hand of Griffiths, The Ballad of Wallis Island is both hilarious and delicate, never even making the buffoonish Charles simply a figure of mockery.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Hillbilly Elegy
    Howard, mercifully, dumps most of Vance's political cant in favor of a maudlin, slow, rehab drama, carried on the backs of a cavalcade of wafer-thin characters.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Richard Whittaker
    Snow White
    That the audience for Ari Aster’s folk horror might find more pleasure in this Snow White than the average child is telling, since it’s almost impossible to work out who this version of the story is aimed at. Children will be bored, teens talked down to, and most adults will wonder where their Snow White is.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Cobweb
    Cobweb's greatest achievement is in ambiguity, in leading the story to its inevitable ending without ever sacrificing that unnerving quality.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 20 Richard Whittaker
    The Violent Heart
    Anodyne and asinine in equal measures, The Violent Heart is just brainless.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Bullet Train
    It takes a special kind of smart to be really, really dumb. And make no mistake, Bullet Train is a really, really dumb movie. Like, every gunshot echoes around its gloriously vacant skull. Because there's also a particular kind of smart-dumb film that is endlessly, idiotically fun, and that's what Bullet Train is.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Spirit Untamed
    Unfortunately, the formulaic Spirit Untamed never seems to know which trail it's taking.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    In Cold Light
    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.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 89 Richard Whittaker
    How to Make a Killing
    Like its bloodline kin, it’s a perfectly scathing glance at power, money, and how the love of both can curdle the soul.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The Front Room
    What makes The Front Room universal is that it’s ultimately about power, about who runs the house.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    The Instigators
    Lackluster and slow even in its supposedly hi-octane chase sequences, much of the blame lies with director Doug Liman.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    TRON: Ares
    Rønning doesn’t seem confident in his storytelling acumen, relying instead on running narration provided by real-life TV anchors cold-reading the least convincing announcements this side of a Fox News host talking about Portland.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Luck
    Luck feels overthought and overwritten. There's a lithe, fun, bright, and much shorter movie in here somewhere.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Dashcam
    Annie is a lot to handle, even for the truncated 77-minute run time, and maybe it would work better as a V/H/S 20-minute slot – but then you wouldn't get quite so amazingly infuriated by her. Dashcam, like few films, relies on your annoyance.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Manodrome
    It's Eisenberg who finds Ralphie in those narrative spaces, creating a whole and crushingly convincing portrait of a profoundly lost man, and the damage left in his wake.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Haunted Mansion
    The experience is a little like being stuck in a Doom Buggy on a day when the ride is very stop-start. The flow of the attraction collapses, becoming individual cool designs but not a story.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    Hunted
    It's a hodgepodge of wildly divergent narrative styles, from the mystical to the grisly and into the ridiculous.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    The Tunnel
    The Tunnel may be shrouded in blistering embers and fumes, but it never loses sight of the victims and helpers, of whom there are many. Just as it's an ensemble drama, so it's the community that saves what it can of the day, and gives a feel-good ending with a tinge of sadness.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Elevator Game
    Director Rebekah McKendry follows up her deliciously disgusting Lovecraftian rest stop comedy Glorious with a feature that doesn't have quite the same twisted ingenuity. Instead, she focuses on good, old-fashioned scares.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Gunpowder Milkshake
    As much as Gillan, Headey, and the three Librarians (Bassett, Gugino, and Yeoh) of the gunplay apocalypse embrace the visual stylization and harshly annunciated dialogue, Gunpower Milkshake is immemorable. Like a decent milkshake, it's fine while you're consuming it, but chances are you won't remember it after the last slurp.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
    It's that rare horror-comedy that is both comedic and horrifying.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Richard Whittaker
    Honey Don't!
    The greatest problem is the woeful miscasting of Qualley as Honey. The script by Coen and his wife and sometimes-film editor Tricia Cooke seems to position the gun-free P.I. as a melding of two great noir conventions – the cool gumshoe and the femme fatale – and the camera loves following Qualley in high heels and wrap dresses. Yet there’s nothing much going on beyond those visuals.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
    Yes, even after all these years, ‘busting will still make you feel good.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Skylines
    The aliens look better than ever, Morgan delivers just the right kind of dry-witted action heroics, and Skylines takes the trip to the stars that the franchise has been promising.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Earwig and the Witch
    Combined with the glacially slow and uneventful narrative, the end result feels like a feature by a small, cheap animation studio in 2010 trying to make a Miyazaki-esque cartoon.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Joker: Folie à Deux
    Phillips sets the stage for a courtroom procedural – and then rolls a hand grenade into the middle of that weighty stage with a series of song and dance numbers.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
    It’s a fittingly mediocre end to a franchise that has always been OK with being average.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    Hero Mode
    As a heartfelt feel-good story about industrial espionage and how to win the right way, Hero Mode is charming if undemanding, and feels at least a little authentic to its milieu.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Richard Whittaker
    Gigi & Nate
    It's a call to action with no banner behind which to rally, sanitized to the point of being anodyne.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    DogMan
    A film of immense contradictions and baffling coherency, it may be Besson’s most interesting work to date, because he finally embraces the outcast.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Ghostbusters: Afterlife
    Ghostbusters: Afterlife may not change cinema in the way the original did, but it’s a worthy next generation.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Don't Tell a Soul
    McAulay has crafted a terse, bleak drama. It's reminiscent of the portrait of a corrupt male friendship in Super Dark Times, but with the added pressures of kinship and family. To describe Don't Tell a Soul as a story of toxic masculinity is both accurate but, in a time when every film with a flawed or unpleasant male an/protagonist gets that tag, almost glib. There's something rancid between the boys.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Cherry
    Cherry is a small-scale tragedy, one repeated over and over again in broad sweeps, but still specific to this one instance. The issue is that, when the audience knows the inevitable path, there are limited opportunities for surprises – especially since the Russos set the entire story as a flashback.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 0 Richard Whittaker
    The King's Man
    All the broad humor of the original film is gone, replaced by clunky and often tasteless gags, and the attempts to extract pathos from genuine tragedies vary from tacky to insulting.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Clean
    There’s a rumbling, inconsolable guilt at the heart of Clean, the latest from fascinatingly flexible writer/director Paul Solet.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Dracula
    Call it what it is: Luc Besson’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a copy of a copy.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    The Long Night
    The Long Night may not be revolutionary, it's definitely got its own dark magic.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Mortal Kombat
    Mortal Kombat commits the unforgivable sin of actually being boring duing the middle hour of training and exposition. Even when it finally gets into full combat mode, there's no tournament, just a 30 minute throw down between a bunch of vaguely recognizable characters.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    1992
    Vromen does make some efforts at re-creating the period. But what links 1992 to the era is that it feels like part of that wave of low-budget late-Nineties Heat knockoffs, all featuring a cast that can do better but hey, a paycheck is a paycheck. 1992 is just Hard Rain with the riots standing in for a storm.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    The Seventh Day
    Who do you cast when you've got a mid-tier supernatural thriller that needs a low-key but charismatic, talented but not showboaty, and recognizable actor to play one of the leads? Guy Pearce, of course, and without him under Peter's decidedly unpriestly demeanor then middling supernatural chiller The Seventh Day would barely raise a flutter of attention, never mind a spirit.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Silo
    That Silo centers around the people of the town is what differentiates it from a media satire like Ace in the Hole, and places it alongside The Straight Story, God's Own Country, and Minari: films that feel like studies of rural life.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    The Old Way
    Yes, The Old Way is at first glimpse merely a classic revenger, but it's also vintage low-key Cage, with that acid little twist that makes it all the more fascinating.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Richard Whittaker
    Red Snow
    Red Snow does a surprisingly good job of manipulating, and then subverting, your sympathies for these particular devils.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Richard Whittaker
    Back to Black
    Taking its title from her second and final critically-acclaimed blockbuster album, music biopic Back to Black gives you all those details you’ll recognize – but not much beyond that.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 67 Richard Whittaker
    Dark Phoenix
    There are flashes of what made the franchise work. Turner, after stumbling through the part in the rocky terrain of X-Men: Apocalypse, finally gets to grapple with the emotional complexities of a woman whose gifts are the most constant curse.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 20 Richard Whittaker
    Anaconda
    By the time the final act slithers on the screen, Gormican has abandoned any sense of originality and just props the film up on nostalgia-manipulating cameos and clumsy, overused needle drops. Those moments barely cover some astoundingly inept filmmaking, from shot composition to editing, that will make you wish you were watching Anaconda 3: Offspring instead. OK, maybe it’s not that bad, but Anaconda – both this film and the whole franchise – should just slip back into the swamp.
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