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Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).
Biography:

In addition to writing about movies for Salon, my writing on film has also appeared in Sight and Sound, Details, and the Boston Phoenix

Favorites:

My favorite film of all time is "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" A random sampling of some others would be Rules of the Game, The Godfather, Parts I and II, The Lady Eve, L'Atalante, A Hard Day's Night, The Wild Bunch, Last Tango in Paris, The Lady Eve

Location:

Boston

Official Website:

http://www.salonmagazine.com

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Stand by Me (1986) 88% EDIT “In Stand by Me, Reiner once again sets out to be sensitive and decent and inadvertently gets turned around.” – Boston Phoenix Jan 13, 2026 Full Review Desert Hearts (1985) 77% EDIT “The delightful surprise of Desert Hearts is that director Donna Deitch and screenwriter Natalie Cooper have shaken off the rhetoric and predictability of this [woman finding herself] subgenre to come up with a loose, funky romance.” – Boston Phoenix Oct 11, 2025 Full Review Toy Story (1995) 100% EDIT “It's consistently entertaining, and I had a good time watching it. ” – Boston Phoenix Sep 9, 2025 Full Review High and Low (1963) 97% EDIT “The pleasure of High and Low is in feeling your mind work as every action leads to another action, each in turn opening up new complexities. Yet the movie never seems like a cerebral exercise: it offers a great filmmaker in peak control.” – Boston Phoenix Aug 13, 2025 Full Review Child's Play (1988) 64% EDIT “Instead of developing this potentially amusing idea, Holland just replays the usual Barbie-on-the-rampage scenario. ” – Boston Phoenix Jun 5, 2025 Full Review The Karate Kid Part II (1986) 49% EDIT “It’s as if the movie had turned into the most primitive kind of Western.” – Boston Phoenix May 28, 2025 Full Review Withnail and I (1987) 84% EDIT “Withnail must be one of the most complete put-on artists the movies have seen in a long time -- he even manages to put one over on the director” – Boston Phoenix Apr 4, 2025 Full Review Spaceballs (1987) 52% EDIT “[Brooks's] latest, Spaceballs, is more uneven than History of the World was, and without the naughty charge. Spaceballs never works up a full head of steam, but it does have some inventive shtick, as well as a few flashes of Brooks’s comic genius.” – Boston Phoenix Apr 11, 2024 Full Review White Men Can't Jump (1992) 75% EDIT “There's more wit, maturity, brains, and entertainment in "White Men" than in any commercial movie released so far this year. It's a jumper from outside, fast, clean, and a thing of beauty. ” – Boston Phoenix Aug 31, 2023 Full Review Elvis (2022) 77% EDIT “Thrillingly, director Baz Luhrmann makes the remarkable response to the singer feel like the only possible option to being offered this much pleasure, this much freedom.” – Esquire Magazine Oct 11, 2022 Full Review Bullet Train (2022) 52% EDIT “If Brad Pitt's remaining performances are numbered, I would hate like hell to think of what we missed just so that we could have this.” – Esquire Magazine Oct 11, 2022 Full Review Blonde (2022) 43% EDIT “A garish expressionistic illustration of what was already in Oates’ novel: claptrap Freudianism, victimization feminism, and the moral shock over the squalidness of Hollywood.” – Esquire Magazine Sep 30, 2022 Full Review Sidewalk Stories (1989) 79% EDIT “[Sidewalk Stories] has the feel of a whim carried through to its wrongheaded conclusion.” – Boston Phoenix Jan 24, 2022 Full Review Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) 86% EDIT “It's a flawed, contradictory movie -- aggressive and tender, stiff and graceful, clichéd and fresh, sophisticated and naive, traditional and modern. It's also, I think, a classic.” – Salon.com Nov 18, 2021 Full Review Lost & Found (2017) 73% EDIT “"The trick is just in understanding how to invite the spirit into the reality of each situation." Forty-seven years after it was filmed, this is the possibility of deliverance that Amazing Grace holds out to us.” – Los Angeles Review of Books Jun 24, 2019 Full Review Spotlight (2015) 97% EDIT “Spotlight joins the ranks of the great American muckraking pictures, from I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang to On the Waterfront, All the President's Men, and The Border.” – Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 18, 2019 Full Review Paterson (2016) 96% EDIT “Driver marries the surface stoicism of the classic male hero with the rich inner life of a man of deep feeling. And that's why we feel so close to him.” – Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 18, 2019 Full Review Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) 60% EDIT “Malek holds the movie together through its shaky passages.” – Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 18, 2019 Full Review The Bad News Bears (1976) 97% EDIT “At a time when sports movies can't be just sports movies anymore, it's both startling and soothing to take a second look at Michael Ritchie's Little League comedy The Bad News Bears.” – Slate May 30, 2018 Full Review Personal Shopper (2016) 81% EDIT “Stewart is in nearly every scene, and she's phenomenal.” – Newsweek Feb 28, 2018 Full Review The Wizard of Lies (2017) 73% EDIT “It's not a terrible piece of work, but the most you can claim for it is a kind of bloodless competence.” – Newsweek Dec 28, 2017 Full Review The Villainess (2017) 85% EDIT “What is entirely new about The Villainess is that it marries its revenge scenario to a melodrama of maternal sacrifice, with the film's terrific star, Kim Ok-bin, suffering more than Joan Crawford ever did.” – Newsweek Aug 24, 2017 Full Review An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (2017) 80% EDIT “The movie is a piece of advocacy, and it succeeds at that: The conclusive science presented is powerful evidence that there is only one side to this story.” – Newsweek Jul 28, 2017 Full Review Lady Macbeth (2016) 89% EDIT “It is so calculated that you can see every shock from 3 miles out, and if it weren't for cold cruelty, Lady Macbeth would have no life at all.” – Newsweek Jul 21, 2017 Full Review War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) 94% EDIT “A consistently intelligent, morally thoughtful and often beautiful picture.” – Newsweek Jul 13, 2017 Full Review
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