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(thank you to Ben from The Most Important Movie Site Ever for bringing this critic to our attention)
Insofar as I can determine, the only basis by which this man rates movies is: "were they made before I started reviewing?" If yes: they're good. If no: they're bad. Just guess how many films are blasted by him, since he's been around since the mid-70s. Oh, wait, an addendum: "Are you a comedy? If so, with very few exceptions, you are bad, regardless of when you were made." Oh yes, and one more: "Are you an art film made before 1970? Then you are great. If you're an art film made afterwards, you're awful."
To add insult to injury, he constantly attempts to make jokes, which all turn out to be outdated, stupid, and some even unintentionally racist. Whenever a movie tries to be artful or create a lot of imagery, he just attaches a comment "that's straight out of commercials" (lately, he's been adding "videos" as well). His reviews once and again reflect how out of touch Shepard is with current society.
Furthermore, by reading his reviews you can rarely understand why he hates most movies so much. In many cases he praises a film all the way through, even quotes it, and then just nitpicks on some small detail, and gives the whole film one star. Uh?
He rates from 1 star to 5 stars, plus a special mark that he reserves for "antipathies". You have to laugh when only 3 or so movies A YEAR get more than one star, and that's only because they got two stars (and they're not even the movies that you think)! Just maybe one film will get three stars, and it STILL isn't the one you think (most likely, it's an old style movie, but not necessarily; he gives Mimic four stars, for example, and Fargo five).
Some notorious bad ratings:
Star Wars **
The Empire Strikes Back *
Return of the Jedi *
The Shawshank Redemption *
Silence of the Lambs *
Alien AND Aliens **
The Godfather **
Saving Private Ryan **
American Beauty *
Goodfellas * (described as "A strong contender as Martin Scorsese's most negligible, most dispensable, most redundant movie.)
The Great Dictator **
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest **
Halloween *
El Topo *
Scarface ('83) [antipathy]
Psycho (original) ** (Bates' house is referred to as "a Disneyland haunted house")
Schindler's List *
Good Will Hunting *
Twelve Monkeys *
A Clockwork Orange [antipathy]
Scream *
Apocalypse Now *
Terminator 2 *
Seven **
Reservoir Dogs **
Die Hard (the entire trilogy) [antipathy]
Airplane [antipathy]
Clerks *
sex, lies, and videotape *
She's Gotta Have It *
Misery *
E.T. *
Titanic [antipathy]
The Shining [antipathy]
A Simple Plan **
Bad Lieutenant *
The Sixth Sense **
Sling Blade **
Dances With Wolves *
Some Like it Hot *
Rosemary's Baby *
Dazed and Confused *
Speed [antipathy]
Raiders of the Lost Ark *
The Manchurian Candidate *
Swingers *
Amadeus *
When Harry Met Sally... * ("the famous faked-orgasm scene in a crowded deli only shows that a faked orgasm is apt to look faked indeed")
Being John Malkovich *
The People vs Larry Flynt *
American History X [antipathy]
Gods and Monsters *
Hard Boiled *
Basic Instinct [antipathy]
All 3 Monty Python movies *
The Deer Hunter *
Evil Dead *
Army of Darkness *
Raging Bull *
Eraserhead *
The Thin Red Line *
Awakenings *
Dead Poets Society *
To Die For *
The Matrix *
Austin Powers *
Close Encounters of the Third Kind [antipathy]
Gone With the Wind **
Hard Eight *
The Paper [antipathy]
Natural Born Killers [antipathy]
Children of a Lesser God [antipathy]
Dark City [antipathy]
Man Bites Dog [antipathy]
The Professional *
Beetlejuice *
Pleasantville *
The Patriot *
The Talented Mr. Ripley *
Elizabeth *
Richard III [antipathy]
Point Break [antipathy]
Nightmare on Elm Street [antipathy]
Fast Times at Richmond High [antipathy]
Badlands **
Pi *
Jacob's Ladder [antipathy]
Beverly Hills Cop *
Casablanca *
Phenomena *
Perhaps you agree with some of these ratings (I know I agree with the Casablanca one - although I'm of the opposite opinion on every other review), but without a doubt in this relatively short list I have managed to mention quite a few of your favorite all-time films... which this guy hated. Or perhaps not. But perhaps you also enjoy running in front of the mayor's office naked after drinking from the toilet bowl (which I suspect may be a passtime of Shepard).
-PM