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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    • 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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