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Terrence Rafferty

Terrence Rafferty's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) 93% EDIT “Everything in this movie makes heavenly sense.” – Sight & Sound Mar 24, 2020 Full Review Casualties of War (1989) 82% EDIT “Casualties of War is the strongest, the simplest and the most painful of all the Vietnam movies because it isn't about how terrible it is not to understand what's going on around us -- it's about the agony of seeing terrible things too clearly.” – Sight & Sound Jan 11, 2020 Full Review Do the Right Thing (1989) 92% EDIT “[You] need to see it for yourself. It's a very unusual movie experience -- two hours of bombardment with New York-style stimuli.” – The New Yorker Sep 6, 2018 Full Review Let Him Have It (1991) 84% EDIT “The picture never seems abstract or tendentious; it's always grounded in something real. Medak's direction is sensitive and blessedly straightforward, and he does remarkable work with the actors.” – The New Yorker Oct 28, 2014 Full Review Wild Wild West (1999) 16% EDIT “The movie is exhausting, utterly without feeling, and pointless -- though Smith looks great in his Western outfit.” – The New Yorker Jun 17, 2014 Full Review The Doors (1991) 57% EDIT “For a while, the obviousness and flat-out vulgarity are sort of entertaining, and it might be possible to enjoy the movie as a camp classic if you could ignore the mean-spiritedness that keeps breaking through.” – The New Yorker Jun 17, 2014 Full Review My Own Private Idaho (1991) 81% EDIT “Van Sant takes a lot of chances, and, visually, the movie is so imaginative, so fiercely alive, that it carries us along. But when the over-all design of the picture becomes clear, we feel cheated rather than enlightened.” – The New Yorker Jun 2, 2014 Full Review Days of Thunder (1990) 37% EDIT “Like the previous Simpson-Bruckheimer pictures, it's designed to give audiences an overdose of the thrill of victory; it wants us to jump out of our seats, pumping our fists in the air and roaring for the hero to pulverize his opponents.” – The New Yorker May 20, 2014 Full Review Singles (1992) 79% EDIT “This is romantic comedy of the wispiest kind, but the picture is generous, graceful, and consistently funny.” – The New Yorker May 19, 2014 Full Review The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991) 77% EDIT “Nielsen combines B-movie earnestness, exuberant mugging, and a trouper's slightly desperate cheerfulness: he turns this rather alarming character into a sweet, ebullient lunatic -- albeit one who's hell on innocent bystanders.” – The New Yorker May 6, 2014 Full Review Disclosure (1994) 58% EDIT “The presence of Douglas, who has made a career of being pursued by beautiful, dangerous women, turns this sexual-harassment thriller into instant camp.” – The New Yorker Apr 25, 2014 Full Review Legends of the Fall (1994) 61% EDIT “At first, the picture plays like East of Eden with a bonus brother; it gets sillier as it goes.” – The New Yorker Apr 2, 2014 Full Review White Men Can't Jump (1992) 75% EDIT “Harrelson's performance is rich, subtle, and delicately funny. And Snipes is just amazing: everything he does seems to leap off the screen.” – The New Yorker Apr 2, 2014 Full Review In the Name of the Father (1993) 94% EDIT “The picture turns into a kind of stylized morality play about the right and the wrong ways for Irishmen to respond to distorted portraits of their character, and it's terrifically effective.” – The New Yorker Feb 28, 2014 Full Review The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 95% EDIT “Jonathan Demme's thriller is artful pulp -- tabloid material treated with intelligence and care and a weird kind of sensitivity.” – The New Yorker Aug 12, 2013 Full Review Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) 89% EDIT “Sure, it's compelling; the nature of the material guarantees that. But it doesn't seem to be telling us much more than that the world is a scary place and murder is ugly. We knew those things. This is tabloid chic.” – The New Yorker Aug 12, 2013 Full Review Dave (1993) 95% EDIT “After the promisingly nasty beginning, the filmmakers settle into a sort of campaign mode, lulling and flattering the audience with a fairy-tale vision of the common man's victory over the Washington establishment.” – The New Yorker Aug 2, 2013 Full Review Presumed Innocent (1990) 86% EDIT “A ponderous adaptation of Scott Turow's cunningly plotted mystery novel.” – The New Yorker Jul 31, 2013 Full Review The Lion King (1994) 92% EDIT “Between traumas, the movie serves up soothingly banal musical numbers (composed by Elton John and Tim Rice) and silly, rambunctious comedy.” – The New Yorker Jul 31, 2013 Full Review Thelma & Louise (1991) 87% EDIT “The feminist justification that the script provides for the heroines' behavior doesn't make their actions any less preposterous. But you can recognize the crudeness of the movie's narrative devices and still have an awfully good time.” – The New Yorker Jul 30, 2013 Full Review Babe (1995) 98% EDIT “[It's] a comedy of animal manners that is much funnier and much cannier than any recent movie about human relationships: a lovely, stubbornly idiosyncratic fable of aspiration and survival.” – The New Yorker Jul 30, 2013 Full Review Apollo 13 (1995) 94% EDIT “The film, despite its raggedness, is stirring. In the end, this failed mission seems like the most impressive achievement of the entire space program: a triumph not of planning but of inspired improvisation.” – The New Yorker Jul 30, 2013 Full Review In the Line of Fire (1993) 96% EDIT “The movie has a clear, simple thriller logic that's far more satisfying than the static variations-on-a-massacre construction of Eastwood's Dirty Harry pictures and spaghetti Westerns.” – The New Yorker Jul 30, 2013 Full Review What's Love Got to Do With It (1993) 97% EDIT “Fishburne's astonishing portrayal of Ike is what holds the movie together. The actor builds, in precise increments, a devastating portrait of a macho control freak; he even finds a kind of ghastly humor in the character's madness.” – The New Yorker Jul 29, 2013 Full Review Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) 91% EDIT “The picture is full of spectacular action sequences and dazzling special effects, but the narrative doesn't have the snap of the original's: it's lumbering and monotonous, and it carries a heavy-handed anti-nuke message.” – The New Yorker Jul 29, 2013 Full Review
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