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Stephen Schiff

Stephen Schiff's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).
Publications:

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) 91% EDIT “Terminator 2 is too long, too repetitive, and too self-important, but it does deliver the goods.” – NPR's Fresh Air Dec 8, 2025 Full Review The Wiz (1978) 38% EDIT “Sidney Lumet has concocted a film that jerks along from one grandiose set-piece to another, skipping the intimate, in-between moments that might have lent it all some rhythm, unity or momentum.” – Boston Phoenix Nov 18, 2025 Full Review Dracula (1979) 64% EDIT “Langella delivers a subtle, almost balletic performance whose mesmerizing precision makes much of the rest of the film look pretty overwrought.” – Boston Phoenix Oct 23, 2025 Full Review Tron (1982) 60% EDIT “TRON is new and unprecedented, but it's also one of the most boring movies of the year. ” – Boston Phoenix Oct 2, 2025 Full Review Superman: The Movie (1978) 87% EDIT “We put our money down because we wanted to "believe." For the most part, however, we do -- despite the cheap effects and too-quiet flying.” – Boston Phoenix Jul 8, 2025 Full Review Superman II (1980) 88% EDIT “...much of its charm lies in its comic-book-ness: the simplicity of the fights and stunts, the unified crowd reactions -...all these give Superman II something that Richard Donner couldn't give the first movie.” – Boston Phoenix Jun 25, 2025 Full Review Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 93% EDIT “Sound like fun? It is, mostly. But The Empire Strikes Back doesn't hit the exhilarating highs that its predecessor reached... Trash is fun, but "Empire" ruins our pleasure in it by straining for substance.” – Boston Phoenix Apr 23, 2025 Full Review Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) 91% EDIT “Spielberg is not really a great director and he hasn't made a flawless film: Close Encounters' piety gets a bit sticky at times... No matter: Close Encounters is still the most moving spectacle in decades.” – Boston Phoenix Apr 3, 2024 Full Review Alien (1979) 93% EDIT “There hasn't been a monster movie this scary since Jaws, and nothing else in the science-fiction genre can touch it; it turns your muscles into coleslaw. It's also kind of dumb. ” – Boston Phoenix Nov 16, 2023 Full Review Raging Bull (1980) 92% EDIT “Raging Bull feels like a tragedy, all right, but it's hollow at the center. I can't imagine anyone's seeing it without being awed; I also can't imagine anyone's really cherishing it. ” – Boston Phoenix Oct 10, 2023 Full Review Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) 94% EDIT “[Raiders] is at once comfortably familiar-and absolutely new, a wild assemblage of bric-a-brac and spare parts that suddenly, unexpectedly takes off into the stratosphere.” – Boston Phoenix May 2, 2023 Full Review 9 to 5 (1980) 70% EDIT “A movie that's neither carefully observed enough to pass for satire, nor daring and iconoclastic enough to make it a subversive comedy.” – Boston Phoenix Mar 3, 2023 Full Review The Deer Hunter (1978) 86% EDIT “The Deer Hunter is terrific: an utterly satisfying look at how the myth of the great American hero was consumed by the war it created -- Vietnam. ” – Boston Phoenix Aug 30, 2022 Full Review Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) 90% EDIT “In writer-director Robert Benton's hands, it becomes something more: a coruscating tragedy, an agonizing search for values, and a story that's as convincing a testimony to the drama of ordinary lives as any I know. ” – Boston Phoenix Aug 5, 2022 Full Review Chariots of Fire (1981) 84% EDIT “There's no tension in this movie, no grit or suspense. And though one basks in the details of Cambridge life just after World War I, our pleasure depends on our believing what we see, and Colin Welland's screenplay rings false at every turn. ” – Boston Phoenix Jul 18, 2022 Full Review Ordinary People (1980) 90% EDIT “Does anybody need to be told yet again that bourgeois life mummifies people -- or that madness can await those who fight the smugness and placidity? ” – Boston Phoenix Jul 15, 2022 Full Review Tess (1979) 81% EDIT “It's not art at all. It's art-like. Tess feeds on a sort of romanticized self-pity. If indeed Polanski sees himself mirrored in Tess's story, it's not as the resilient, sensual, quietly outraged character that Hardy imagined, but as a victim.” – Boston Phoenix Jun 17, 2022 Full Review Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) 84% 3/4 EDIT “A careful, touching adaptation of the autobiography of the country singer Loretta Lynn, which floats along very beautifully for an hour and then falls to pieces. ” – Boston Phoenix Apr 7, 2022 Full Review Julia (1977) 73% EDIT “Engrossing, moving and well-crafted, the film takes risks without flaunting them and, despite its Major Motion Picture stodginess, succeeds in expanding what's permissible in big-budget Hollywood product.” – Boston Phoenix Oct 8, 2021 Full Review True Confessions (1981) 71% EDIT “Spanning the world of the priest and the world of the cop, True Confessions is at once terribly refined and terribly with it -- holier-than-thou and hipper-than-thou at the same time.” – Boston Phoenix Oct 8, 2021 Full Review To Be or Not to Be (1983) 55% EDIT “It's the best Brooks movie since Young Frankenstein.” – Vanity Fair Jan 27, 2020 Full Review The Eyes, The Mouth (1982) EDIT “The movie is at once feverish and majestic; its characters keep scooting between damnation and transcendence.” – Vanity Fair Jan 27, 2020 Full Review Terms of Endearment (1983) 81% EDIT “It's bad enough when a movie uses terminal cancer as a premise; it's even worse when it uses terminal cancer as a payoff.” – Vanity Fair Jan 27, 2020 Full Review Dance With a Stranger (1985) 91% EDIT “There's a very good reason to see this movie, and her name is Miranda Richardson. Dance with a Stranger is her first picture, and while her portrayal of Ruth stops just short of being great, it's undeniably virtuosic.” – Vanity Fair Jul 10, 2019 Full Review Wetherby (1985) 67% EDIT “The trouble with Wetherby is that, unlike Pinter's creepy exercises, it turns out to be that dreary thing, a wellmade play: a theatrical puzzler with a solution that, when it arrives, seems at once obvious and not particularly helpful.” – Vanity Fair Jul 10, 2019 Full Review
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