Raiders of the Lost Ark | Review by Richard Schickel
Richard Schickel called Raiders of the Lost Ark a return to form for Spielberg, demonstrating a competence not seen since Jaws. He described it as a film Walt Disney would have made…
Richard Schickel
The Candidate | Review by Richard Schickel
We have never been overburdened with movies about electoral politics, probably because the process of running for office in this country is in itself such a highly entertaining pastime, at least for…
Trading Places (1983) | Review by Richard Schickel
Trading Places is one of the most emotionally satisfying and morally gratifying comedies of recent times. Eddie Murphy demonstrates the powers of invention that signal the arrival of a major comic actor,…
A Chaplin Overwiew – by Richard Schickel
It is, I think, a measure not merely of Chaplin’s art, but of his really incredible ego, that one simply cannot find an article that presumes to criticize him—or even to view…
The Shining (1980) – Review by Richard Schickel
By taking a book by an author who is at the center of the craze for the supernatural, and turning it into a refusal of and subtle comment on that loopy cultural…
Stanley Kubrick: The Unbearable Brevity Of Being
Kubrick’s virtuosity as a filmmaker, and the range of his subjects, have served to disguise his near-obsessive concern with these two matters—the brutal brevity of the individual’s span on earth and the…
Interview with Frank Capra (1973) – by Richard Schickel
Frank Capra is a brave man. He might be called a premature auteurist, since long before that critical theory was enunciated he believed that the director was the logical person to be…
Deliverance (1972) | Review by Richard Schickel
Four prosperous businessmen decide to spend a weekend canoeing a wild river running through essentially untamed country before it all disappears, flooded over by a hydroelectric project already abuilding downstream.
THE GODFATHER: THE RESURRECTION OF DON BRANDO – Review by Richard Schickel
There’s nothing fun or funny to be found here. It offers us only the absorption of good acting and good storytelling combined with a plausible anthropology of a strange, terribly relevant culture.…
BARRY LYNDON: KUBRICK’S GRANDEST GAMBLE – BY RICHARD SCHICKEL [TIME MAGAZINE]
In a December 1975 cover story, TIME Magazine examines Barry Lyndon and the many paradoxes of Stanley Kubrick, covering the filmmaker’s Herculean task in bringing the 18th century novel by William Makepeace…
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1972) – Review by Richard Schickel
For a director like Stanley Kubrick, a novel like Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange must have seemed an irresistible challenge. Kubrick is essentially a daring imagist, yet he has twice before been…
THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS – REVIEW BY RICHARD SCHICKEL
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis has correctly been hailed as a return to the old, great form of its director, Vittorio De Sica.
EYES WIDE SHUT: ALL EYES ON THEM – Review by Richard Schickel
The theme is sexual obsession. The stars are Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. The director is Stanley Kubrick. Who could look anywhere else?
Brutal Attraction: The Making of Raging Bull – by Richard Schickel
Raging Bull began as Robert De Niro’s obsession, but the only man he believed could film it, Martin Scorsese, wasn’t interested—until the director’s near-fatal collapse gave him a visceral connection with the…