Sheila O'Malley

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RogerEbert.com
For 605 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: 465 out of 605
  2. Mixed: 69 out of 605
  3. Negative: 71 out of 605
605 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."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 38 Sheila O'Malley
    All I Can Say
    All I Can Say feels much longer than it actually is. Hoon struggled with addiction. He was arrested many times. It's a cautionary tale but one we've heard so many times before. Fans of Hoon will thrill to all of this footage. For others, it'll be a pretty tough haul.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Babyteeth
    You may think you know where it is going. And maybe you're right. But how the film gets there is a very different matter.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 25 Sheila O'Malley
    Darkness Falls
    Clichés are already shorthand, so when you shorthand the shorthand, assuming audiences will just take the leap into whatever "reality" you are trying to create, you end up with a cop-thriller like Darkness Falls: a bizarre series of cliché after cliché, with no real work done to fill in the blanks with complexity, nuance, or even basic human reality.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Shirley
    Decker's visual style is as distinct as a fingerprint. She destabilizes images, focusing in on parts of it, rarely looking at things head on. The experience is sometimes like listening to music underwater, or trying to adjust the muscles in your eyes to read the fine print.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    On the Record
    On the Record does a lot of things very well, but what it does best of all is back up Mayo's eloquent and pained statement. Everybody loses when women go away.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    The Vast of Night
    How on earth Patterson made a movie about a UFO hovering over a small town in the late 1950s without falling back on every cliche in the book is the fun and wonder of The Vast of Night. You already know the plot. You've seen it all before. But the way the story is told is new. With The Vast of Night, it really is about the how, not just the "what happens."
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Flood
    Headey starred in "Game of Thrones," but also works with the International Rescue Committee as a human rights activist. She executive produced The Flood, and it is clearly an issue important to her. Her performance is quiet and controlled.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 38 Sheila O'Malley
    Endings, Beginnings
    The main problem is: It's not actually clear what is appealing and/or interesting about any of these people.
    • 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.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 38 Sheila O'Malley
    Almost Love
    It's not the movie's fault, per se, although Almost Love has problems other than being jarringly out of date with How We Live Now.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Banana Split
    Make it through the first 10 minutes. It’s just the film warming up. The rest of it flows.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Sheila O'Malley
    Stargirl
    The best thing about Stargirl is that Big Star's yearning ode to adolescence "Thirteen" is played in its entirety not once, but twice. If Stargirl introduces a new generation to the wonder that is Big Star, it will have done more than enough.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Saint Frances
    It's truly refreshing to watch a film where nobody has anything figured out, where life proceeds messily and imperfectly. Saint Frances is unpredictable in a very human way.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Emma.
    You’d think we would be Emma-ed out by now. Not so. The new adaptation, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, and directed by Autumn de Wilde, is here, and it’s wonderful!
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Buffaloed
    With a screenplay by Brian Sacca, who grew up in the Buffalo area, Buffaloed is a showcase for the mega-talented Deutch, who tosses herself into the role like a maniacal fidget-spinner, all flash and charm.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    The Assistant
    The Assistant, a very good film, is especially good on power dynamics.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Gentlemen
    Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen plays like a tall tale, a yarn heard at the corner pub, filled with exaggerations and embellishments, where the storyteller expects you to pay his bar tab at the end. And maybe you won't mind doing so.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 38 Sheila O'Malley
    Dolittle
    A wild whirlwind of a mess, without any coherence, without even a guiding principle.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    Les Misérables
    Les Misérables is a gripping experience, tense and upsetting.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Cats
    Cats suffers from a problem common in contemporary filmed musicals. The musical doesn't trust the audience, doesn't trust that the dancing in and of itself is exciting enough to hold our interest.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Sheila O'Malley
    Uncut Gems
    Delusion feeds addiction, and addiction needs a constant supply of delusion. Uncut Gems shows this electrified-fence feedback loop like no other film in recent memory. It's excruciating and exhilarating.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Sheila O'Malley
    The Disappearance of My Mother
    Barrese follows his mother everywhere. She bikes to teach her classes, and there's lots of thought-provoking footage of her lectures and small conferences with students. These are some of the best sequences in the film.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Queen & Slim
    Queen & Slim is not interested in "neutral tints" either. Or "understatement." I appreciated the "big mood" of it all, even in those sequences that don't quite work. I responded strongly to the film's sense of scope and scale. The "rhetoric" of Queen & Slim reverberates with anger and love and mourning.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
    Is the human brain built to absorb so much of "the world"? How do we filter anything? Matt Wolf's new documentary, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, is an interesting meditation on these ideas, as well as a character study of a fascinating news-junkie with a mission.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Sheila O'Malley
    Honey Boy
    Shia LaBeouf wrote the script, and based it on his own childhood. This means he is, in essence, playing his own father. The performance is so good, so in-the-trenches, it feels like it's an act of channeling rather than mimicry or even imitation.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Sheila O'Malley
    Adopt a Highway
    The look of buried terror and resentment in Hawke's eyes tells the deeper story. Still, Adopt a Highway wanders ("Ella" is just the first chapter) and the redemption narrative isn't so much heavy-handed as it is super-imposed.
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