Richard Schickel, whose celebrated and prolific career spans 50 years, has been the film critic for Time and Life magazines, has written more than 20 books and has produced, written and directed numerous documentaries....
Richard Schickel, whose celebrated and prolific career spans 50 years, has been the film critic for Time and Life magazines, has written more than 20 books and has produced, written and directed numerous documentaries.
In addition to his new book, “Clint Eastwood, A Retrospective,” Richard Schickel is the author of definitive biographies of Elia Kazan, D.W. Griffith and Walt Disney. All told, he has written, co-written or edited 37 books. He has produced, written and directed an equal number of documentaries. His most recent film is “The Eastwood Factor,” premiering on Turner Classic Movies in May. His five hour history of Warner Bros, “You Must Remember This” premiered on “American Masters” in Sept, 2008, and his film about director Ron Howard ran on TCM later that year.
Among his other recent titles are “Spielberg on Spielberg,” "Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin,” “Scorsese on Scorsese,” “Woody Allen: A Life in Film” “Watch the Skies,” a history of 1950s Science Fiction. His reconstruction of Samuel Fuller’s “The Big Red One” won several awards in 2004. He reviewed movies for “Time” from 1972 through 2008. His latest film is "Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story" (2013).
He holds an honorary doctorate from the American Film Institute and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the British Film Insitute Book Prize, the Maurice Bessy prize for film criticism, thee National Board of Review’s William K. Everson award and the Telluride Film Festival’s Silver Medal for his contributions to film history.
Richard Schickel / TruthdigNov 20, 2010
The predominant image of this film—repeated in a dozen variants—is of a lone woman walking or driving the empty roads of this beautiful, unnamed country, seeking a salvation that is both practical and spiritual.The predominant image of this film is of a lone woman walking or driving the empty roads of this beautiful, unnamed country, seeking a salvation that is both practical and spiritual. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigNov 9, 2010
It’s not quite “Ozzie and Harriet with Security Clearances,” but there is something inescapably unedifying in watching the Wilsons bicker their way through the clichés of marital disaffection in a case that—let’s face it—was of small import in the context of the much larger crimes perpetrated by a pusillanimous power elite.The film is more about the deterioration of suburban decorum than it is about the deterioration of honor and probity in the upper reaches of American government. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigNov 6, 2010
A confession: I’ve never liked Eliot Spitzer He has his virtues: He is relentlessly—and not stupidly—articulate He has the right enemies, be they corporate titans or the endemically corrupt denizens of the New York legislature He is natty in his well-cut suits (by Hickey-Freeman, as the New York Times informs us) . Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigOct 17, 2010
“Carlos” is a fictionalized but persuasively believable biography of celebrity terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a man known for his indolence as well as support for a whole gamut of revolutionary causes. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigOct 9, 2010
I have now sat through Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job”— the nonfiction version of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”— and I still don’t fully understand our endless financial crisis This does not mean that “Inside Job” is a failureI have now sat through Charles Ferguson’s documentary and I still don’t fully understand our endless financial crisis. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigSep 25, 2010
The inherent problem with Oliver Stone's follow-up to his 1987 classic is that it does not have the courage of its own nastiest convictions. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigAug 19, 2010
Thanks to the Establishment’s truly spectacular mishandling of this case—will they never learn, you can live with screw-ups, never coverups?—Pat Tillman left the country of celebrity and entered the land of myth, innocently, even perhaps tragically.Thanks to the Establishment’s truly spectacular mishandling of his case, Pat Tillman left the country of celebrity and entered the land of myth, innocently, even perhaps tragically. Dig deeper ( 5 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigJul 30, 2010
"Countdown to Zero" is an intelligent, graphically sophisticated documentary film about what is almost certainly the most important issue confronting the world today -- nuclear proliferation. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigJun 25, 2010
The documentary "Restrepo" paints an empathetic portrait of U.S. soldiers at an Afghanistan outpost, but it keeps its audience at a distance. Dig deeper ( 4 Min. Read )
Richard Schickel / TruthdigJun 19, 2010
"Jud Süss" may be the most odious movie ever made And now we have a talking-heads documentary about it, “Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss,” the work of Felix Moeller, in which the children and grandchildren of the film’s director, Veit Harlan, are invited to comment on the patriarch’s noxious work Now there's a documentary about it that abounds in talk but fails to truly explore this 1940 product . Dig deeper ( 6 Min. Read )
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