Sheila O'Malley

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RogerEbert.com
For 606 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 67% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 30% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Sheila O'Malley's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Under the Shadow
Lowest review score: 0 The Haunting of Sharon Tate
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 466 out of 606
  2. Mixed: 69 out of 606
  3. Negative: 71 out of 606
606 movie reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Suzi Q
    Suzi Q is a portrait of Quatro's journey and her influence on the generations that came after. Most importantly, it is a history lesson for those who may not be aware of Quatro. As Joan Jett, one of the many people interviewed, says, "[Suzi] really should be one of those people who should be much more discussed, much more in the lexicon of musicians—especially being so early."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali
    The montage of footage—New York street scenes in the 1950s, 1960s, the press conferences, speeches, footage of the men getting off airplanes, surrounded by a crush of people, or laughing together, talking together, is mesmerizing. Individually and together, both men “shook up the world.” Blood Brothers shows why.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden
    The best part may very well be an actual 1932 silent movie, filmed on Floreana, and shown in its entirety in "Galapagos Affair".
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Patriots Day
    The hero worship of a fictional character in the midst of all of this real-life drama is a mistake.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    The Sentence
    It's an emotionally exhausting film — but a little bit of perspective might have resulted in an even more politically urgent document. As it is, though, The Sentence is the beginning of a conversation that needs to continue.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Greener Grass
    The golf cart scene is an excellent example of what Greener Grass is attacking, and it's a sharp and subversive critique: it would be great to live in a more civil world, but too much civility leads to golf carts stalled at a four-way intersection.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
    A compelling and insightful examination of this strange story, and it utilizes the cooperation of Sandra Bagaria, the Canadian woman who had been in a long-distance romantic relationship with Amina (even though the two had never met.)
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    The Deepest Breath
    Eloquent and moving, The Deepest Breath shows what it's like "down there," why people risk their lives to free fall into the blackness where it is so quiet, and why they also risk their lives to bring divers in trouble back up to the noisy surface.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Wasp
    Watching Harris and Dormer create this event together is why I love going to the movies. In that elegant, horrible townhouse, anything could happen. And anything does.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love
    Marianne and Leonard turns out to be a rather run-of-the-mill documentary about Cohen's journey, taking us down well-documented paths.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Magpie
    In its style, “Magpie” is a marital thriller with noir trappings galore, including an almost ridiculously convoluted (yet satisfying) conclusion. Still, it’s most effective as the study of an angry wife’s chaotic psychological state.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    Sightseers
    Director Wheatley has already shown his aptitude for sardonic horror-commentaries, and Sightseers is his best film to date. Sightseers is dark, gruesome, blithely amoral and thoroughly entertaining.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    I Used to Go Here
    This sounds very dark. But I Used to Go Here, grounded by a beautiful performance from Gillian Jacobs, treats its subject light-heartedly, while still managing to be honest.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Ask Dr. Ruth
    The film does a great job of contextualizing the phenom of Dr. Ruth.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    The Homesman
    The Homesman doesn't play things safe, and that's a welcome change.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Everything Went Fine
    Based on the autobiographical book Everything Went Well by the late Emmanuèle Bernheim (a frequent Ozon collaborator), Everything Went Fine is an emotional and complex portrait of a family in crisis, the father's stroke exposing underlying cracks, old pains, new anxieties.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    The Heiresses
    Emotions never before experienced come surging to the surface. How Martinessi pulls this off — in what is his first feature — is nothing less than extraordinary.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    Collective
    Alexander Nanau's Collective has a propulsive energy, relentlessly building in urgency and outrage.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Una Noche
    Despite the bleak-ness of the situation, the film vibrates with color, noise, music, ferocious arguments (both serious and teasing), and eye-catching snapshots of everyday life in Havana.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    True Things
    For those of you who miss films made by adults and for adults, films which treat things like sex and loneliness with respect and honesty, "True Things" isn't to be missed.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Chuck
    Chuck ultimately works, mainly because Schreiber is so watchable. There's something compelling about seeing a man who is so strong and so weak, simultaneously. You like him in spite of him.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    The Water Man
    Children absorb everything, good and bad, all the stresses, heartbreak, anxiety of the adults around them. Children can handle the difficult things. Oyelowo knows this and respects it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Sometimes I Think About Dying
    Sometimes I Think About Dying feels like it needs one more "act" to complete its arc. It's an unfinished bridge. The film attempts an eventual catharsis, but there's just not enough information to get us across the river. We're left hanging.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    National Anthem
    The theme is present in every frame. Gilford's affection for the characters is clear. I'm happy to have met them, to have been welcomed into their world for a short time.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Bethlehem
    When it stays with the two leads, one Israeli, one Palestinian, it makes a compelling story.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Red Obsession
    The footage of Bordeaux is awe-inspiring, with aerial shots of the great chateaux and the vineyards. Closeups of the labels from the different chateaux abound, along with luscious shots of glimmering wine being poured. The obsessive nature of the entire industry is reflected in these shots, a good marriage of theme and form.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    We the Parents
    We the Parents, one-sided and promotional as it often feels, presents a possible solution, as well as the difficulties in achieving it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Never Look Away
    At a daunting 188 minutes long, Never Look Away takes its time, doesn't force its themes. Like one of those novels that follows a family through multiple generations, Never Look Away follows Kurt from Dresden, to Düsseldorf, to Berlin.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Nightmare
    The Nightmare is more effective than the esoteric "Room 237" because it represents a full immersion into a common human experience. The re-enactments are superb.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    All of Us Strangers
    This potentially maudlin stuff is elevated by the work of all of the actors. What matters here is not just what is being said, but the emotions underneath.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    I Was at Home, But
    I Was at Home, But... creates a space where questions are asked, but rarely answered, where things are suggested and never underlined, and every element — camera placement, music, blocking, sound design — is so deliberate that it pulls you into its vortex, and it makes you submit to its severe rhythms.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Band Aid
    Lister-Jones is the very definition of a "phenom," and if the film sometimes falls back on cliché, there's enough charm and interest here — particularly in the chemistry between the two leads — to keep it afloat.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Light of My Life
    Affleck's acting style has always been understated to the point of barely existing. It's why he was riveting in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” in particular. Affleck drifts, he floats through dialogue, he doesn't have words at his easy disposal. This works well for him here.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Vox Lux
    The film is an onslaught, sometimes silly, sometimes profound, but always riveting and emotional, and dazzlingly sure of itself.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    Annette
    Annette is an exhilarating and exuberant experience.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Gift
    The Gift uses the tricks of the thriller trade well, but why it really works is that it withholds the necessary information until almost the very end.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Lady Chatterley's Lover
    You feel you are running alongside the characters, trying to catch up with them on their journeys forward.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Tom at the Farm
    Strains to be a psychological thriller but its length (102 minutes) dissipates the tension that should be taut and compressed.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four
    Southwest of Salem has an investigative questioning bent, but it is always clear in its attitudes about the four co-defendants. It is a powerful act of advocacy. It's hard to look at these events in any light other than that a terrible miscarriage of justice has taken place.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Ponyboi
    The quiet character-based scenes are often mesmerizing, as are the dreamy sequences where time seems to stand still. When the plot makes its demands, the spell is broken.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Ma
    Ma is more about its visuals than anything else.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Gaia
    Gaia does not feel like homework. It's a thought-provoking and disturbing experience rather than a lecture.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    A Simple Favor
    It's suspenseful, but also hilarious.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Life Ahead
    "The Last Movie Star" paid tribute to Burt Reynolds' career, but also appreciated what he brought to the table as an old man. The Life Ahead operates the same way, allowing Loren similar grace and space.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Wiener-Dog
    With all its humor (and there is a ton), Wiener-Dog, following the journey of a dachshund as it is shuffled from owner to owner, is one of Solondz's sharpest visions of futility.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall
    Exquisitely researched, beautifully put together, with that celebratory knowledgeable chorus of voices pouring over us, what Spike Lee's documentary really is is an act of love.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Wander Darkly
    Wander Darkly is not some misty-eyed golden-hued stroll down memory lane. The title of the film is eloquent. Darkness threatens every moment.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Last Showgirl
    Anderson’s accomplishment here defies easy comparison. It’s not a comeback. It’s a beginning.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Phantom Boy
    The film can be smothered by the obligations of its plot, but it's still beautiful and original, extremely funny, and sometimes very moving.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Megan Leavey
    Megan Leavey is that rare breed: a war movie that actually shows something new about war, a sub-culture within a familiar sub-culture, the world of the military's K-9 units. For that alone, it should be applauded.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    Crimson Peak
    Crimson Peak's atmosphere crackles with sexual passion and dark secrets. There are a couple of monsters (supernatural and human), but the gigantic emotions are the most terrifying thing onscreen.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Cyrano
    Cyrano gets the big things right, and Dinklage embodies it all.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    Cemetery of Splendor
    The fantastical and surreal are presented with unshowy practicality. It's magical realism mixed with kitchen-sink drama, seasoned by a haunting sense of history as a sentient entity.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    Disorder
    Played by Matthias Schoenaerts, Vincent is a tormented and inarticulate man, and the riveting center of Alice Winocour's sexy, relentless thriller Disorder.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
    The thematic elements are in place, the emotional tension is highly strung, and the action unfolds in a wave like the fire erupting from the dragon's mouth, overtaking all in its path.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Mid90s
    The strength of Mid90s lies in its small observations about a very tight sub-culture, and what that sub-culture provided its most devoted adherents.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Catfight
    Tukel takes that tired cliché and blows it to smithereens. Let's hear it for unvarnished hatred expressed with no holds barred.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    All of You
    Goldstein and Poots’ chemistry is authentic, and without it the film wouldn’t and couldn’t work.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The One I Love
    Unabashedly entertaining at an efficient 91-minutes, The One I Love is an extremely confident first feature, with some really fun things to say about identity and relationship, connection and destiny.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Way Back
    This is what movies can do, at their best, draw you out of yourself in spite of yourself.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Sheila O'Malley
    White Girl
    The scenes of wretched debauchery pile up, and in a film only 88 minutes long it's a tough slog. It's difficult to perceive what story is actually being told. There's a lot to look at, colors, light, drugs and nudity, and much of it looks really good. But there's nothing else to latch onto.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Tigertail
    Tigertail floats back and forth between the present and the past, an effective device that creates comparisons, often painful, between Pin-Jiu's hopes as a young man and the disappointments and hardships of the years following.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Polina
    The most important thing Polina does—and it is testament, again, to the involvement of Preljocaj, a man who has devoted his life to dance—is that it shows that the everyday life of an artist is not made up of catharsis and accomplishment, triumphs and breakthroughs. Those moments only come after years of hard work, of failing and trying again.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Hearts Beat Loud
    Hearts Beat Loud could use more urgency in the telling, more sense of what is at stake for the characters.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Rounding
    Rounding doesn’t quite make its own case, in terms of the symbolism it throws into the mix, but as a portrayal of a man falling apart from overwhelming stress it works quite well.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Just the Two of Us
    Just the Two of Us is not clever, self-important, or stylistically overt. This is a story, well told.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    A Call to Spy
    An engrossing and often thrilling spy drama, and a tribute to this courageous and diverse group of women.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 25 Sheila O'Malley
    Home Sweet Hell
    The fact that a woman has Crohn's disease is meant to be hilarious, in a nudge-nudge wink-wink "You know she's not giving her husband any sex" kind of way. It's wretched.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Naz & Maalik
    Some viewers may find all the walking and talking tedious, evidence of a film spinning its wheels. But these are the best sections of Naz & Maalik.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Sheila O'Malley
    What Josiah Saw
    The family trauma is so clotted-thick, a faster pace and tightened-up editing might have eradicated the slow-motion underwater feel of the whole.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Sheila O'Malley
    Permanent
    The film has a good comedic rhythm, and there's a rambunctious bickering energy in every scene. It's often quite funny. But Permanent feels like a short film stretched to feature length. It never quite rises above the level of its premise.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    I Am Not Madame Bovary
    I Am Madame Bovary plays out as a comedy, a lampoon of the incompetence and laziness of government officials.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    The End
    The experiment of "The End" may not entirely work, but it is good that it exists.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Wild Diamond
    Wild Diamond doesn’t judge or look down on its main character and doesn’t try to control how we view her. This is a welcome rarity.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Ma Belle, My Beauty
    Anchored by four very good performances, Ma Belle, My Beauty unfortunately suffers from inertia and a lack of conflict. There is conflict, but it's presented in such a languishing way that it leaves the film grasping for something solid to hold onto.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Sheila O'Malley
    Touch Me Not
    Touch Me Not is definitely abstract and intellectualized, although I didn't find it exploitative. But so much of the film left me cold, even bored.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Agnes
    Cinematographer Samuel Calvin is to be commended for his striking work, and Reece shows an intuitive understanding of when to move the camera, and—more importantly—when not to move the camera. It's all very elegantly put together.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Sheila O'Malley
    Suffragette
    Suffragette feels like a documentary in its visuals, but at the same time drowns in subjectivity (Maud's face in repeated closeup).
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Sweet Micky for President
    The backstage scenes are almost as entertaining as the mayhem of the campaign.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Your Lucky Day
    It works as a genre film; it's thrilling and suspenseful, with enough twists to keep you guessing, but the pointed commentary is impossible to ignore.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Sitting in Bars with Cake
    The cake part of the story feels imposed, a problem since it is the film's organizing principle. It is a tribute to the two young actresses and the supporting cast that this caring friendship survives the artificial cakebarring.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Fast Color
    Threaded through with interesting thoughts about matriarchy, climate change and generational trauma, Fast Color tries to do a little too much, and there are maybe one too many things shoehorned in, but Hart wisely keeps the focus intimate, staying close to the characters.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Bettie Page Reveals All
    She is an engaging guide, humorous and honest, cynical and wise, with that same sense of innocent joy in her own fame that translated into in photos.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Born to be Blue
    The film isn't perfect, and in a lot of ways it doesn't accomplish what it set out to do, but if you're going to tell a story about Chet Baker you need to understand what it means to "get inside every note." Born To Be Blue does.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Enzo Avitabile Music Life
    The film feels like a first draft. But then there is the music to celebrate.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 38 Sheila O'Malley
    Downsizing
    Alexander Payne's Downsizing starts with an intriguing "What if?...", the launch-pad of all good sci-fi stories, and very quickly devolves into a bland story about a nondescript khaki-wearing guy who learns to care about the less-fortunate.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
    Comedy being what it is, your mileage may vary, but for me the pure candy-colored exuberant silliness of Barb and Star didn't just make me laugh. It provided solace, too.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    The Lost King
    The Lost King gets sidetracked. Still, it's a great story!
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
    The film doesn't burden pinball machines with more meaning than they can stand. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is strictly low stakes. This is part of its knowing charm.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    To the Bone
    To the Bone isn't all that interested in the actual treatment of the condition, even though the majority of the film takes place in a treatment program. The film also gets hugely distracted by a romantic sub-plot, a sub-plot that is pushy and awkward from the jump.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Miss Sloane
    The film is not so much tone-deaf as old-fashioned, emerging from a more innocent time (say, three weeks ago) when "politics as usual" actually had some meaning.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Happy Prince
    This is Everett's first film as a director, and there are times when it shows. But what he brings to the table - as a director, writer, and actor - is his intuitive "take" on Oscar Wilde and the performance alone makes this riveting and revelatory viewing.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Men & Chicken
    What does all of this add up to? Damned if I know. But it's fun to see a film that plays by its own rules to such a degree that any comparison to anything else falls apart.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Tow
    In less deft hands, the film could have been a clichéd affair, featuring Amanda delivering an impassioned courtroom speech that brings the judge to tears and the onlookers to a burst of applause. “Tow”’s distinct tone avoids these clichés—the film is often quite funny—turning the expected into the unexpected.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Mountain
    The Mountain, with its long stretches of quiet, bleak subject matter, and Alverson's staunch refusal to let us in, or fill in the blanks, creates a genuinely unnerving mood.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    In a Valley of Violence
    In a Valley of Violence, written and directed by Ti West, starts out slow, picks up speed, and finally launches itself into a screwball standoff, but always with a slapstick hilarious energy.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Unwelcome
    Some of Unwelcome is legitimately creepy and upsetting. Some of it is hilarious. Whether or not the hilarity is intended is unclear.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Late Night
    Late Night comes directly from Kaling's own experiences. This is an earnest and funny comedy, with very sharp teeth.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    The best part of Lars von Trier's fascinating, engaging and often didactic Nymphomaniac is that, despite the sometimes-grim tone and bleak color palate, it's an extremely funny film, playful, even.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Long Dumb Road
    Fidell trusts the dynamic between her two main actors, and allows them a lot of leeway. The conversations have a fresh and improvisational quality. Best of all, she leaves space for the unexpected and the random.
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