The genius of Bates’s performance is the delicate balance that can tip without warning from sweetly cheerful to psychotic rage.

| Jul 26, 2022

The film hasn't any depth to speak of, but is consistently shrewd enough not to go totally obvious ways. And the audacity in casting Kathy Bates as the dotty fan pays considerable dividends.

| May 9, 2017

Bates turns Wilkes into the nastiest nurse to reach the screen since Louise Fletcher tormented Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 12, 2013

Like any good work of popular culture, Rob Reiner's film of Stephen King's best-selling book Misery functions on more than one level.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 12, 2013

Popular moviemaking -- elegantly economical, artlessly artful -- doesn't get much better than this.

| Oct 14, 2008

From start to harrowing finish, it is blissfully apparent that Rob Reiner can indeed turn his hand to virtually anything.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 25, 2007

Bates has a field day with her role, creating a quirky, memorable object of hate.

| Sep 25, 2007

A skillfully pared-down (if psychologically thin) horror thriller.

| Sep 25, 2007

Reiner captures just the right level of physical tension, but for the most part wisely emphasises the mental duels. Terrific.

| Jun 24, 2006

Will scare the bejeebers out of you!

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 23, 2003

Misery is a blunt instrument that fractures the kneecaps more often than it tickles the funnybone.

Full Review | May 20, 2003

Where it is significantly elevated is in the terrifyingly convincing performance by Bates as a schizophrenic psychopath.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

It is a good story, a natural, and it grabs us.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

A weak handshake of a movie, it is slightly repellent -- hardly gripping, much less knuckle-whitening.

| Jan 1, 2000

Kathy Bates has a gift for playing cheerily hostile, paranoid misfits.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 30, 1990