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Sheila Benson

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

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Big Top Pee-wee (1988) 31% EDIT “The movie becomes mired in plot and the fun wind downs. The writers don't investigate the circus milieus with the unflagging inventiveness they tackled the farm setting. You find yourself willing the material to charm you as much as it did in the opening.” – Los Angeles Times Dec 11, 2025 Full Review The Abyss (1989) 76% EDIT “Not a single surprise of dialogue or character awaits you.” – Los Angeles Times Dec 5, 2025 Full Review Desert Hearts (1985) 77% EDIT “The movie is all for risk, in the name of attraction; for all its love of risk, it is a remarkably old-fashioned, cliché-ridden work.” – Los Angeles Times Oct 13, 2025 Full Review Tron (1982) 60% EDIT “The actors do what they can, which is precious little considering the film is not about them. ” – Los Angeles Times Oct 5, 2025 Full Review To Sleep With Anger (1990) 93% EDIT “Glover gets straight down into the soul of Harry with a generous, brilliantly detailed performance.” – Los Angeles Times Sep 22, 2025 Full Review Superman III (1983) 31% EDIT “Superman III has about half the invention, the sparkle and the originality you might hope for.” – Los Angeles Times Jul 8, 2025 Full Review Superman II (1980) 88% EDIT “Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder give their roles a careful delineation, and they have the support of a delightful script.” – Los Angeles Times Jun 27, 2025 Full Review Starman (1984) 83% EDIT “Allen and Bridges seem to work perfectly on each other's wave-lengths.” – Los Angeles Times May 13, 2025 Full Review Twice Upon a Time (1983) 80% EDIT “Lovers of animation may have a field day... there are brilliant fragments here from lovely intelligence, but it doesn't add up to a complete whole.” – Los Angeles Times May 9, 2025 Full Review Postcards From the Edge (1990) 83% EDIT “Wickedly funny backstage snapshots of moviemaking... can’t hide [the film's] emotional starvation. While we chortle at the one-liners--and Streep’s running, grumbling delivery of them -- the real work seems to happen too fast and offscreen.” – Los Angeles Times Apr 29, 2024 Full Review Birdy (1984) 84% EDIT “It may not satisfy hard-line lovers of the book, who may argue that William Wharton's eccentric characters should have remained between its covers, but for those who do not know the novel, or for less rigid William Wharton-ites, it is a risk well taken.” – Los Angeles Times Dec 16, 2023 Full Review Smooth Talk (1985) 94% EDIT “What makes Laura Dern’s performance the event that it is--one of the finest, most sustained and most shatteringly observed we’ve had this year... it’s rare to have this variety of insights about adolescence from an actress so nearly that age herself.” – Los Angeles Times Nov 26, 2023 Full Review Cocoon (1985) 82% EDIT “The movie is about treasure. Treasure wasted: the experience of our older people. Treasure reclaimed: the fealty of a captain for his crew.” – Los Angeles Times Nov 12, 2023 Full Review Ladyhawke (1985) 68% EDIT “The actors are extravagantly good: Hauer, as always, with a sense of intelligence behind his physical exploits; Pfeiffer, strong and exquisite, and Broderick, embroidering on his role as go-between, is irresistible, comic and wistful by turns.” – Los Angeles Times Oct 13, 2023 Full Review Moscow on the Hudson (1984) 74% EDIT “There is enough magic -- enough original and deeply touching characters, portrayed by new and wonderful actors in the first half or perhaps two-thirds of Moscow to carry you over its rocky final section.” – Los Angeles Times Aug 22, 2023 Full Review The Color Purple (1985) 73% EDIT “For the film's existence alone we can be grateful, and it contains at least three memorable performances, but the transition has been at a harrowing cost to the tone and scale and even the underlying theme of Alice Walker's book. ” – Los Angeles Times May 25, 2023 Full Review Crossing Delancey (1988) 82% EDIT “From its first romantic encounter, as two pairs of eyes lock across a crowded room, to its last tremulous one, Crossing Delancey is unqualified pleasure, bound on every side by love.” – Los Angeles Times May 16, 2023 Full Review Yentl (1983) 69% EDIT “Yentl is a debut that its exacting star can be justly pleased with. ” – Los Angeles Times May 12, 2023 Full Review Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) 94% EDIT “There was the almost exhausting excitement of the film itself. And at the same time a second emotion, a rush of gratitude which almost brought tears for the contagious joy and -- not to be corny about this -- the strength of the film's positive vision.” – Los Angeles Times May 4, 2023 Full Review Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) 77% EDIT “[Spielberg and George Lucas] remember acutely the combination of delight and shivery terror that the Saturday-matinee movie serials produced. But, ironically, with The Temple of Doom they've outdone themselves, and it's the kids who are the losers.” – Los Angeles Times Apr 18, 2023 Full Review Creepshow (1982) 66% EDIT “The movie has the visual style of the E.C. Comics down pat... But it's what's contained within all this perfectly realized style that's the letdown. ” – Los Angeles Times Aug 9, 2022 Full Review Terms of Endearment (1983) 81% EDIT “In this pungent and beautifully observed film, the most completely satisfying of this and many another year, life is fascinating, tender, hilarious, catastrophic, healing, warm and, in the main, a faintly absurd predicament in which to find oneself.” – Los Angeles Times Jul 20, 2022 Full Review Gandhi (1982) 89% EDIT “The subject itself is so compelling, the telling of it in this straightforward, earnest, intelligent manner is so absorbing that, although it feels odd not to leave the theater torn apart by the story, there is a certain peace in that, too. ” – Los Angeles Times Jul 19, 2022 Full Review Chariots of Fire (1981) 84% EDIT “Majestic is a semi-embarrassing word, but it applies. So does masterful, exultant, triumphant and joyful.” – Los Angeles Times Jul 14, 2022 Full Review Amadeus (1984) 90% EDIT “Shaffer does not pretend that this is a biography of Mozart; he calls it a "fantasia on fact," and taken in that frank vein, it is bewitching. ” – Los Angeles Times Jul 11, 2022 Full Review
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