Tom Shales

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Washington Post
For 26 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 38% higher than the average critic
  • 7% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 22.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Tom Shales' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 43
Highest review score: 100 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Lowest review score: 0 Shanghai Surprise
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 26
  3. Negative: 12 out of 26
26 movie reviews
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    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Shales
    Neighbors
    Once in the proper mood for Neighbors, however, the disappointing discovery is that there isn't a lot of movie there. Neighbors is by no means a laughless debacle like "Buddy Buddy," and as an ambiguous paranoid rattle around life's great cage, the film is funnier and less pretentious than "Being There." It's just too bad that it tends to send you home empty-headed.[24 Dec 1981, p.C1]
    • Washington Post
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Tom Shales
    Irreconcilable Differences
    The film aspires to some sort of commentary about the modern problems of career-minded spouses. Shyer and Meyers are trying to tap a modern vein but they don't know where to put the needle; all they get is water. This is a film with Perrier in its veins. [28 Sep 1984, p.C4]
    • Washington Post
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Shales
    On the Beach
    In retrospect, and viewed as either a once-topical curio or a nostalgic artifact from Hollywood's golden era, On the Beach doesn't seem lousy. It seems naively, even innocently, preachy. [28 May 2000, p.G01]
    • Washington Post
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Tom Shales
    Night of the Creeps
    Unfortunately, the film's stalking hordes of zombies aren't the only lifeless things about it. [03 Nov 1986, p.B2]
    • Washington Post
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Tom Shales
    All of Me
    The screwball side of All of Me cries out for a latter-day Howard Hawks. Alas, there is no latter-day Howard Hawks. Reiner is only a latter-day Reiner. [21 Sep 1984, p.C1]
    • Washington Post
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Tom Shales
    Body Bags
    There seem to be big gaping holes, and not just in the characters' carcasses. The only kind of scene Carpenter appears able to direct well is someone sneaking up on someone else. [07 Aug 1993, p.D4]
    • Washington Post
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Tom Shales
    Friday the 13th Part III
    As directed by Steve Miner and shot by Gerald Feil, the film's use of 3-D is spectacularly and viciously effective. (Gray-lensed Polaroid glasses are handed out at the door; this 3-D process works much better than that used on recent 3-D TV broadcasts.) Not only sabers and butcher knives are tossed into the movie house, however; there are also such relatively benign protuberances as popping popcorn, a leaping snake and a blue yo-yo. From the back of a van, a hippie reaches out with a joint, and very early in the film the audience gets poked at with a pair of rabbit ears atop a television set. An opening scene of sheets flapping on a clothesline is attractively eerie, and a later shot of a victim sitting on a pier that juts into a pool of water is actually pretty. The playfulness is so engaging it's really too bad that the gore has to be so unrelenting, but the producers of these films are now trapped in their own excess [17 Aug 1982, p.B1]
    • Washington Post

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