Richard Whittaker

Select another critic »
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
view
per page
    • 69 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The Donut King
    Gu keeps her camera on how the community he helped build thrived and flourished without him, even as it acknowledged his role. As Asian Americans face increasing racism, its closing message about how immigrant communities – like the Cambodians who came over in 1975 with guns at their backs – help define America has only become more timely.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    [DaCosta] may divert the series from its withering dissection of the green and pleasant land’s self-image, but her absurdist perspective on this inherently absurd franchise is still undeniably entertaining.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To
    Cuartas tenderly catches the scenario at the end of the road, leaving only the question of who, if any, will be able to walk away. Not that their existence is tenable for anyone that crosses their paths, and Cuartas' script gives plenty of space for the core trio to explore their tragic roles in this disaster.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    News of the World
    While Greengrass' Texas is a place where naivety can get you killed, he still finds a place for trust and healing, expressed through the growing interdependence of Kidd and the kid. Our trauma, News of the World tells us, is not something we can box away. We cannot simply turn the page and pretend it never happened. But we can decide which stories we continue to tell.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Mother Mary
    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.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    When Evil Lurks
    Demián Rugna's debut feature, Terrified contains one of the most eerily disturbing scenes in recent cinema history, a moment involving an unwanted guest at a dinner table. His follow-up, When Evil Lurks, confirms that the Argentinian filmmaker knows exactly how to get under your skin.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train
    Mugen Train plunges straight into the continuity that its huge fanbase wants, and that opening walk among the tombstones sets up that there will be no release from the historical horror aspects that have made the show such a massive success.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Ashkal: The Tunisian Investigation
    The resolution is purposefully yet powerfully enigmatic, in a fashion that transcends both the police procedural of the opening acts and the details of Tunisian political history.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The Midnight Sky
    The Midnight Sky shines with Clooney’s deep and abiding belief in the human condition, in compassion, in … “redemption” is the wrong word, too Catholic. Rather, in connection, even if it is brief, even if it is seemingly one-sided.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Sanctuary
    The deepest pleasures of Sanctuary are in how Abbott and Qualley – both identifiably horny and human – suck every drip of pleasure out of Micah Bloomberg's script.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Alice, Darling
    In its often distressing, sometimes nauseating depiction of a woman caught in weaponized co-dependence, Alice, Darling is rarely an easy watch. Yet it is always captivating, and that all comes back to Kendrick in what may well be her most powerful performance to date.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The Eternal Daughter
    An interpersonal drama shot like a 1980s British television supernatural tale, The Eternal Daughter is a ghost story in the same way that Lenny Abrahamson’s class-riddled gothic fable The Little Stranger is, or Henrik Ibsen’s Gengangere (better known by the mistranslated title Ghosts).
    • tbd Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The United States of Insanity
    The United States of Insanity is as much a portrait of a long-ignored, mocked, and lambasted band, and the subculture that surrounds it, as it is a trip into a deeply disturbing and Kafkaesque assault on civil liberties.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The Choral
    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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The Toxic Avenger
    Don't let the big (but not that big) budget fool you: It's Troma, baby, just how you like it.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Daddio
    The seated dance between Johnson and Penn is witty, earnest, honest, and overflowing with kindness, making Daddio a remarkable story of two strangers opening up to each other.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Splitsville
    Splitsville succeeds because it never seems fragmented. As a director, Covino dances between the sensual and the silly while constantly exploring the core thesis of the messiness of relationships.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    The Queen of Black Magic
    If there are two signatures to Indonesian horror, they would be an overwhelming sense of relentless dread, and poisonous centipedes. The Queen of Black Magic has plenty of both, and an enthralling supernatural siege story binding everything together so tight you'll barely be able to breathe.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    Noa may not be Caesar's heir as leader of the apes, but he definitely walks in his footsteps as a worthy protagonist in the latest iteration of this ever-intriguing sci-fi classic.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Nobody
    Just like the best of the 1980s actioneers, Nobody has just the right mix of brains, brawn, and gut-busting laughs.
    • 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Suitable Flesh
    Honestly, this may be the only horror film that invokes Red Shoe Diaries and Cthulhu equally.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Lost Soulz
    Propper’s greatest success is that she doesn’t overdramatize tragedy and trauma. Awful things do occur, but in an organic way, so that the inevitable reaction is a sense of stunned shock. That’s why there’s no sense of judgement: Instead, there is just Propper’s overwhelming sense of empathy for what it is to be young right now.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Lucky
    Lucky is not simply not a rape-revenge film. It's a brutal, brilliant rebuttal to the idea of a fit of cathartic violence.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Prey
    Director Dan Trachtenberg proved deft at re-envisioning franchise when he dumped the kaiju found footage gimmick of Cloverfield in favor of character-driven survivalist paranoia for 10 Cloverfield Lane and Prey is no less of a worthy twist of the garrote.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Hokum
    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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Ride Your Wave
    Yuasa entrances the eye, but he also know how to make your heart soar with this deft, delicate, and highly entertaining story of loss, of coming to terms with grief, of moving on without ever forgetting.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 78 Richard Whittaker
    Happily
    Happily drifts into the same kind of sci fi-tinged bourgeois relationship drama territory as Elizabeth Moss/Mark Duplass four-hander The One I Love, or the dimension-hopping dinner party of indie fave Coherence. Snide, sleek, and effortlessly biting, Happily is wittier and meaner than either, but also curiously romantic, like an episode of The Twilight Zone with a score by the Mountain Goats.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »