William Arnold

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Seattle Post-Intelligencer
For 1,340 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 65% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

William Arnold's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Where the Day Takes You
Lowest review score: 0 The Musketeer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 866 out of 1340
  2. Mixed: 356 out of 1340
  3. Negative: 118 out of 1340
1340 movie reviews
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per page
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    In Bruges
    A perfectly titled and thoroughly engaging -- if at times gleefully violent -- black comedy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    The Door in the Floor
    It works as a fascinating and often very funny character study/satire of a famous author, though it loses interest the harder it tries to be profound and falls apart completely toward the end.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    Mondovino
    There's no question where filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter's sympathy lies, but he makes his case leisurely, without hysteria and with much playful screen time devoted to the various interviewees' pet dogs.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    Unfortunately, the film assumes viewers have such a vast knowledge of Fellini's life and films that it's likely to play best to graduate film students.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Stir of Echoes
    (Bacon's) most believable, heart-wrenching and charismatic lead performance in many years.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    An Ideal Husband
    Makes the translation with all its wit, incisive dialogue and eccentric characters intact, and then some.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Fahrenheit 9/11
    The sum of all this is moderately rousing and deliciously irreverent in the Moore style, but not earthshaking as journalism, and devoid of anything that the average person doesn't already know from reading the newspaper.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    Charlie Wilson's War
    A witty, literate, wryly sophisticated parable of American politics: just the kind of movie that Hollywood, in its search for the global audience, supposedly doesn't make anymore.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 William Arnold
    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    Harry IV is an intelligent, visually seductive and mostly very satisfying fantasy epic of the first order.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 William Arnold
    I Vitelloni [re-release]
    Its elements all come together with an unforced perfection, every scene feels real and alive in a way that many of his more surrealistic later films do not, and Leonard Maltin, for one, has argued that I Vitelloni is no less than Fellini's masterpiece.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 William Arnold
    Finding Neverland
    It's a real pleasure to find a movie as calm, measured and dead-on in its impact as Finding Neverland.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 William Arnold
    Mrs Palfrey at The Claremont
    A true gem: perhaps the most thoroughly charming, and completely satisfying, independent film I've seen in the past two or three years.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    The Pink Panther
    Martin, who hasn't really clicked in a movie in years, hits the target this time with an Inspector Clouseau who is even more relentlessly annoying (and strangely endearing) than Sellers managed to be in his last several outings.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 William Arnold
    Open Range
    It's a gorgeously atmospheric, perfectly cast, beautifully crafted oater of the old school, made with heaps of integrity, no gimmicks and few concessions to the box office. Its only real flaw is that it strains a bit too hard to be a "classic" western.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
    One of the American cinema's rare excursions into pure autobiography: the movie is Montiel's own coming-of-age story, with little or nothing disguised as fiction.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 42 William Arnold
    Stranger Than Fiction
    The bad news is that Ferrell's modestly likable performance is the ONLY good thing about this misguided comedy that's so tiresomely written, badly acted by a stellar cast and ploddingly directed (by art-house whiz Marc Forster) that it just never quite gets off the ground.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
    Even though he's strikingly played by Rockwell, Barris comes off as such a distasteful character and the silliness is so unrelenting that the movie wears you out. Long before it's over, you feel yourself reaching for that gong clapper.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    The Russia House
    Director Fred Schepisi has done an admirable job of making all the characters and their various interests clear, and he gets a fine, deglamorized and convincing performance from Pfeiffer as Connery's love interest. [22 Dec 1990]
    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    Solaris
    Philip Messina's claustrophobic sets and Cliff Martinez's elegantly creepy score add to the film's distinction and work off Clooney's performance and Soderbergh's staging to create an hypnotic spell and suggest a cosmos full of spiritual possibility.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    Trust
    The movie whips itself into being a surprisingly effective love story. [16 Aug 1991]
    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    Frequency
    A suspenseful, fascinating movie that milks the premise for all it's worth.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    World Trade Center
    The lack of stellar performances gradually becomes a virtue of the movie as we forget we're watching actors in roles, and Stone builds a documentarylike veracity that gives the saga of the trapped cops and their loved ones a riveting immediacy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    Darfur Now
    The kind of movie you're glad somebody had the guts to make, but you don't really want to endure.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    Shadow Magic
    Never quite builds the compulsive emotional power it needs to be an unforgettable personal drama.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    Something's Gotta Give
    Its script is sharp, its dialogue is acerbic, its stars could hardly be better and, in its more sparkling moments, it exudes some of the flavor and charm of the later Hepburn-Tracy comedies.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    White Hunter Black Heart
    White Hunter, Black Heart may not be a spectacular success, but it contains Clint Eastwood's best work as an actor and director in years, and is worth seeing. [21 Sep 1990]
    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Me You Them
    Develops its own unique charm.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    Auto Focus
    The film is so explicit (endless swinging parties and porno scenes, more bouncing breasts than a Russ Meyer movie) that it finally becomes the thing it fears.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 25 William Arnold
    Deuces Wild
    In its best moments, resembles a bad high school production of "Grease," without benefit of song.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    Rush
    The film uses '70s rock songs especially well to establish mood and act as the bridge between sequences. Director Zanuck's use of actors is also hard to fault. She gets strong, no-nonsense supporting performances from Gregg Allman, Sam Elliott and Max Perlich; and Jason Patric and the always-reliable Jennifer Jason Leigh could not be more believable as the tragic, doomed, criminally naive lovers. [10 Jan 1992]
    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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