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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    • 46 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    The Da Vinci Code
    The film has an exciting visual texture that gives body to Brown's bestseller-ese prose, and uniformly strong performances that give dimension, depth and interest to characters that the author never entirely brought to life. In this sense, I found it much more entertaining and satisfying than the novel.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    A Mighty Heart
    Visceral, alive and very scary.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 100 William Arnold
    The Sixth Sense
    I haven't been so captivated, chilled and surprised by a movie in years.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    Masculine Feminine
    It's cumulatively entertaining, and a fascinating and nostalgic time capsule of its era. Watch for the cameo by Brigitte Bardot.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 William Arnold
    Match Point
    An unpredictable, unusual, consistently engrossing drama of a kind that has almost disappeared from Hollywood.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 William Arnold
    Gray Matters
    Some of it works, most of it doesn't. But the real problem of the movie is that it's so utterly lacking in freshness and originality. This is exactly the kind of formulaic indie gay comedy that was so overdone in the '80s and '90s that it became a film festival cliché.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 William Arnold
    Summer of Sam
    Lee's control and storytelling flair have never seemed more assured and there are moments so powerful and thrilling we feel we're in the hands of a master filmmaker at the peak of his powers.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Warriors of Heaven and Earth
    The film plays like a Hollywood-influenced Japanese samurai movie, though nothing as subtle as Kurosawa's best, and with white subtitles that often are hard to read against the white of the Gobi.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 58 William Arnold
    Shark Tale
    It's overblown and greedy and feels like more of a merchandizing scheme than a movie.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 25 William Arnold
    Trespass
    Trespass has no story drive; its principals are cardboard caricatures and its production values are as cheap and amateurish as a bad home video. [26 Dec 1992]
    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 William Arnold
    Intimate Strangers
    At age 37, she's (Bonnaire) developed into a consummate film actress and a unique star whose enigmatic persona has never had a more exhilarating showcase.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 William Arnold
    Bowfinger
    One terrific comedy that doesn't let up for an instant... a total hoot.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Bread and Tulips
    A sweet-spirited, extremely well-cast little comedy.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 William Arnold
    Entrapment
    It is strangely paced (especially in the beginning), always confusing to follow, and extremely awkward as a romance.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    The Cat's Meow
    The fact is no one has a better understanding of the corruption of ego and power, or is more qualified to encapsulate it in a defining moment of Hollywood Gothic.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    The Patriot
    Has a flag-waving dumbness at its core.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 William Arnold
    The Naked Kiss
    In a Fuller film, you're never quite sure where you're going. Whether Fuller was an authentic artist may be open to debate, but it's impossible to deny he was a first-rate storyteller. [15 May 1998]
    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack
    Elevated out of the music-documentary genre to become something of an intriguing mystery -- and one with no neat solution.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Snow Falling on Cedars
    As good as it is in many ways, the film is not as emotionally gripping as it should be, and comes off as a rather predictable liberal statement.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 William Arnold
    About a Boy
    Hugh Grant is one of the true phenomena of new millennium moviemaking. In an era in which the broadest and most scatological comedy imaginable rules, he's built a career for himself as a sophisticated light comedian very much in the style of his hero, David Niven.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 91 William Arnold
    Valkyrie
    The movie works like a clock. A few minor quibbles aside (the casting of Hitler, for instance), Valkyrie is a highly intelligent and deeply engrossing historical drama and, frame for frame, the year's most suspenseful nail-biter.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 25 William Arnold
    The Watcher
    It's lively but fails to disguise the fact that his (Charbanic) script is a dud and his career in videos has taught him little about the art of narrative storytelling.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 42 William Arnold
    Committed
    The real problem here is that director Krueger has no flair as a writer or a director for inspired screwball comedy.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    As a revenge thriller, the movie is serviceable, but it doesn't really deliver the delicious guilty pleasure of the better film versions.
    • 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.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 25 William Arnold
    Fatal Instinct
    Carl Reiner's Fatal Instinct is about as awful a movie parody as you'd ever want to see, but the guy certainly deserves some points for persistence. [29 Oct 1993]
    • Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    • 49 Metascore
    • 67 William Arnold
    Harrison's Flowers
    It's a chillingly cautionary tale. Less an anti-war than a pro-order film, it tells us that the veneer of civilization is paper thin.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 25 William Arnold
    Intermission
    Unfortunately, this latest effort is so mean-spirited and nasty that you wish Farrell hadn't bothered.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 58 William Arnold
    Happy Times
    Clearly not Zhang's forte, his directorial touch is neither light nor magical enough to bring off this kind of whimsy, his characters often seem contrived and unbelievable, and his movie comes off as slightly forced and naggingly unsatisfying.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 42 William Arnold
    The 40 Year Old Virgin
    Judd Apatow brings no cleverness or wit to his one-joke situation, and he can't give it the kernel of credibility that even a low comedy needs to sustain itself for a feature length.
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