Bill Cosford

Kudos to the production team for finding a perfect chimp for the lead role. Little Virgil has a look of such perfect solemnity and clearness of intent that not only do we not doubt that he could fly a plane, but we begin to suspect that he could craft a better script as well. [17 Apr 1987, p.D1]

This movie Mozart seems little more than a wild and crazy music-maker, whose biggest problem was that his compositions had "too many notes." And that, as Forman's Mozart might say, ain't much. [20 Sep 1984, p.C1]

What the movie is all about is Twin Peaks with the sex, violence and "colorful" language left in...Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is not David Lynch at his most challenged and hence most inventive. The rigid restraints of television, with its prudish codes and goofy winks at prurient-life-as-we-know-it, may now be seen as Lynch's real muse. The movie, lurid as it is, reads like a perverse set of CliffNotes to the series, the details recapitulated explicitly but without a dram of passion. [2 Sept 1992, p.E1]

Because of James Belushi, Taking Care of Business is bearable. Even funny. [17 Aug 1990, p.G5]

Someone involved with Prizzi's Honor, the new film from John Huston and starring Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner, doubtless thinks it's a fine satire, a comedy so black it will have us all squirming. There's no other explanation for the long stretches of time the movie spends on "idle," all that potential power, going nowhere. [14 June 1985, p.D1]

Richard Jordan, who can be uniquely menacing (see: The Mean Season, Flash of Green) is here reduced to lampooning himself in leatherette storm-trooper garb. Charles Durning, looking wonderfully rumpled as the warden of the orphanage, does as little as possible in the heat. The skating stunts are routine. [2 Dec 1986, p.B4]

Paris, Texas is thus a curiosity. On balance it seems overblown and rickety, as substantial as tumbleweed. And it seems to be less than the sum of its two major parts, the script by Shepard and the images by Wenders. Still, it's an essential entry into the Wenders file, full of hollow portents and signs signifying little. And it would be worth seeing for Stanton's performance alone. [8 Feb 1985, p.8]

Basically, it's an inversion of an already proven formula, a kind of Fatal Attraction's Revenge, with every bit of business save the parboiled rabbit, and you can see the ending coming up Main Street. [08 Feb 1991, p.G5]

The movie isn't really about America and Japan at all; it's about set-ups for gags. [14 Mar 1986, p.D2]

Although we see many strange things happen (and some of them are seen through wondrous-looking special effects), we never have a clue as to what's really going on, and why. [24 June 1985, p.B6]

We get the feeling that whatever it is Scorsese and Price have to say about these marvelous characters, it is not anything very interesting.

Ruby in Paradise, which is really about nothing more than a woman's quest to succeed as a cashier in a boardwalk gift shop, never rises about the nearly staggering banality of its plot line. [12 Nov 1993, p.G15]

A decent ride. It has a boogeyman, exploding teen-agers and blood by the vat; it's part of the oeuvre. It is also, alas, no significant advance of the sub-genre some of us feel, however improbably, attached to. Teens-and- slash may be a form full ofhack work and dim bulbs, but so long as that form stays within reach of young and relatively unsullied directors, there is hope. [6 March 1985, p.C5]

De Palma does some borrowing, too. He always does. Pick your Vietnam War favorite -- Platoon, Apocalypse Now, et al. -- and you'll find an "homage" in Casualties of War. But you won't find the scale or depth that either the war or the genre deserve. It's a big disappointment. [18 Aug 1989, p.G5]

To the extent that it has a serious theme, the film is about the tug of mortality and the demands it makes on simple humanity -- courage, selflessness, the sharing of wisdom. There's not enough of this, not by far. But it's something. The rest of Cocoon -- The Return is hash. [23 Nov 1988, p.D1]

The whole thing means to come down to big, round tears and mass sniffles, but though Spielberg invokes as many golden-era cliches as he can recall, he never gets the romance really working. It's tough being compared to Spielberg, and perhaps unfair if you happen to be Spielberg, but this is easily his least substantial film to date. Some tears, yes. No sparks. [22 Dec. 1989, p.G5]

Schepisi and his writers don't get what they should have from the business of traumatic culture shock; they spend too much time on twaddle. [13 Apr 1984, p.D1]

It's a movie of surpassing flatness, all surface, all monotone. Pace? It's as if the director, Alan J. Pakula, had dialed in half speed on the first day of shooting and never checked the throttle again. [27 July 1990, p.G5]

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the movie equivalent of a tired stand-up comic's air-travel routine. It strikes some resonant chords indeed, but it never quite leaves the ground, either. And given the stars here, that's a real bungle. [25 Nov 1987, p.D1]

It's too civilized by half and never quite funny enough. [31 Jan 1986, p.D1]

The director was Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl), about whom people have been using the word "potential" for a decade or so. Trapped inside Real Genius, there's a real director trying to get out. [7 Aug 1985, p.D5]

F/X doesn't have the surprises when it needs them. [8 Feb 1986, p.C7]

If anything, the 1983 To Be or Not to Be is more tasteless, while a great deal less engaging, than the original. [16 Dec 1983, p.E20]

But whether even kids will be able to take The Outsiders seriously is a hard question. Whether by fidelity to his source or by director's embellishments, Coppola has come up with a story about tough kids who appreciate sunsets and recite Robert Frost from memory, about members of a mid-American urban underclass who ponder their situations with the dispassionate acumen of sociologists. The Outsiders is about "greasers" who are not greasy, and it seems likely that even kids will see through it. [29 March 1983, p.5]

It's as if Dante sought so hard to parrot his producer that he wound up parodying, and all involved should have known better. There's a current of menace to Dante's work that sets him apart from Spielberg, and a measure of innocence in Spielberg's quite apart from anything Dante has done. [8 June 1984, p.1]

It's not very good, but there are redeeming features. [24 Apr 1987, p.D1]

In the old days -- when Hollywood knew how to make funny movies, and knew how to make cheap, sentimental potboilers, and knew the difference between the two -- City Slickers would have kept Laurel and Hardy busy for maybe 80 minutes. This version lasts nearly two hours, and the filler is all man-meets-cow, man-loses-cow. [7 June 1991, p.G-5]

John Cassavetes has been making exquisitely personal films -- or agonizingly personal ones, depending on one's tastes -- for years now. Sometimes, they are intimate dramas (Faces, Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence). Sometimes, they are dark comedies in melodramatic dress (Gloria). And sometimes, as in the newly released Big Trouble, they are just a mess. [19 Apr 1986, p.D1]

As it is, much of this movie is simply incomprehensible, however enthusiastically it was designed and is performed. If it were only a little better, one might even spend some time trying to figure what to make of it. [24 Apr 1985, p.B6]

The Cotton Club never seems to go anywhere, so that we are caught up short when it seems to have gotten somewhere. Then it's over, finished in Hines' blaze of glory, and a few minutes later one wonders what one has seen. It's big and colorful and terribly thin. [14 Dec 1984, p.E18]

Though the charter of the Enterprise charges its crew to "go boldly where no man has gone before," the marketing strategy of Paramount Pictures clearly mandates that the film go quietly in a predictable fashion to a place where the mass audience will feel comfortable. This Star Trek II does, with its familiar faces and lovable homilies. The film seems bound to be one of the summer's big hits. Kids will love it, and dozing adults will at least find it endurable. [5 June 1985, p.C4]

It's a bloodless film, however; a spy story that actually drags for long stretches in the middle. And even though it's based on fact, there's rarely any drama in it. These are odd failures. [25 Jan 1985, p.D6]

A lot of the charge, the pow and zap of Earl's life seems to be missing. The performance has but a single note, and after the novelty of Newman as cracker wears off, there's not much else there. [13 Dec 1989, p.D1]

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid thus has considerable appeal to movie buffs for whom the black-and-white semi-classics of an earlier era are familiar treasures. For the rest of us, it is a senior thesis -- variations on a single theme, executed carefully but always to the same effect. [21 May 1982, p.D2]

The very premise is a test of one's tolerance for the cutes. The rest of the film is merely strange. [6 Apr 1984, p.D1]

Alice is certainly handsome to look at, and as usual Allen's camera is placed impeccably -- if he's overrated as a screenwriter, Woody Allen has yet to receive his due as a director. Still, what's wrong with Alice is in the script, and Allen wrote that, too. [25 Jan 1991, p.G5]

White Hunter, Black Heart looks good, but it's as humorless as Eastwood himself increasingly appears to be. [21 Sep 1990, p.G5]

When the action founders on cliches and implausibilities, there are only the characters to fall back on. And this time, they're papier-mache. [13 May 1983, p.C2]

Carlito's Way reminds you a little of De Palma's remake of Scarface -- it has that jazzy, coke-frazzled bang and crash to it, the feeling of too many people chasing too many highs. But it's nowhere near as successful. It's not as shocking. It even feels . . . dated. [12 Nov 1993, p.G5]

Ihave it on good authority that Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides is a wonderful book. People rave about it. But Barbra Streisand's lumbering, tearjerker adaptation gives little hint of that. This movie is long and full of pain, and it's driven by the most syrupy musical score I can recall. [25 Dec 1991, p.1]

Soapdish is a spoof of soap operas, and the problem should be apparent from the start: It is very, very difficult to parody that which dwells already in the land of self-parody. [31 May 1991, p.G5]

So it's all pretty silly. But it does move along, and the range of weapons is formidable. Steve Carver, who did Norris' An Eye for an Eye, knows how to handle action, though Lone Wolf might have been more convincing had he let any of the bad guys shoot straight. [5 May 1983, p.B10]

Sounds like Dirty Harry, looks like Dirty Harry, plays like Dirty Harry. The big difference is that Norris is not so mean as Eastwood, nor so interesting. Eastwood's Harry is flawed, even philosophical in his grumpy way; Norris' Sarge is just a nice guy who can kill you a hundred different ways. [06 May 1985, p.B6]

So. All this virtuosity, lots of thumps and crashes and even a few empty moments in the desert night. Signifying: Not so much. Not in the movies, which throw a glare even into the corners, which are empty here. Fool for Love has the look of a project that was a lot of work for director, writer and actors. It's not so much fun for the rest of us, either. [28 Feb 1986, p.D3]

Though there's a scene of racial discomfort (nothing more serious) and a few rather flat-footed references to anti-war feelings back home in Hamburger Hill, the sense of time and place is missing altogether. Hamburger Hill is an all-purpose war movie with the requisite noble message -- war is hell, and futile, too -- but it could be set anywhere. In those parts of the world where local audiences will not accept an American adventure movie with the Vietnamese as vanquished foe (parts of Southeast Asia were shown Rambo with subtitles that portrayed it as a anti-Japanese commando raid from World War II), Hamburger Hill will play with few problems...Unhappily, neither screenwriter Jim Carabatsos (who did Heartbreak Ridge for Clint Eastwood) nor director John Irvin is able to provide the story any tighter focus, either. [28 Aug 1987, p.D1]

Ladyhawke would be harmless fun if, in fact, it were more fun. [12 Apr 1985, p.D2]

Brooks as Brooks is the funniest observer of contemporary mores in Hollywood. Brooks behaving himself, as in Defending Your Life, is just another clever fellow. [05 Apr 1991, p.G5]

Douglas' performance is surprisingly dull, and he has a script to match (by Diane Thomas). Moral: Remaking Raiders is harder than it looks. [04 Apr 1984, p.B6]

The movie is sweet and reflects Disney's usual care, but there's nothing in it to match that title. [23 June 1989, p.H11]

The World According to Garp is another of those films that fairly cries out for Robert Altman, who makes movies the way John Irving writes books. Altman doesn't seem to be making movies any more, so this is as close we're able to get to Garp, and it's not close enough. [23 July 1982, p.D10]

The movie is facile and manipulative, but it can't hide the gifts of Jackie Gleason in the role of Hanks' father. [30 July 1986, p.D6]

It's a gentle and wholly implausible comedy with an appealing character carrying the load -- no more. [27 Sept 1986, p.D3]

One thing it's not, despite the several lesbian love scenes that earned the film its NC-17, nee X, is "steamy." Nor is it provocative or even, Kaufman's best intentions notwithstanding, particularly erotic. It's a handsome bore. [05 Oct 1990, p.G5]

Prostitution is hardly a new topic for film, of course, but Working Girls was directed by a woman, working with a largely female crew, and that is unusual. So is Borden's technique, which is almost anti-technique. It's the film's strength, and its weakness. [27 Mar 1987, p.D5]

Empire of the Sun seems to end a half-dozen times -- always a bad sign. Its merits notwithstanding -- and Spielberg probably can't make a bad film -- in its own way this movie is as ego-heavy and ponderous as Ishtar. It's literary, all right. Empire of the Sun is a weighty tome indeed. [11 Dec 1987, p.D1]

A thoroughly wholesome, if not particularly entertaining, experience. [17 Jul 1992, p.G5]

Night and the City is the most disappointing big- expectations movie of 1992. It's hard to overstate the magnitude of its failures. There is almost nothing right about it. [23 Oct 1992, p.G5]

It is not in most respects more than an ordinary thriller, however; were it not an Eastwood picture, it would be instantly forgettable. [17 Aug 1984, p.D1]

Rose made the perfectly splendid and terrifying Paperhouse, a film-festival thriller from 1988, which Candyman resembles not at all. Paperhouse scared you because it was quiet and subtle and eerie. Candyman is just Barker stuff -- all hook, no suspense. [19 Oct 1992, p.C6]

The movie never feels as strong as its ideas. It has a kind of movie-of-the-week gloss to it -- no weight, no power, all going-through-the-motions. There are a couple of reasons for this, and both involve Hoffman in the title role. [02 Oct 1992, p.G5]

I suppose if you haven't seen Rocky or its many imitators, The Karate Kid might have its modest charms; there's a good bit of man-to-boy philosophizing in it, on the order of "To thine own self be true," and that's harmless enough. But there's a measure of laziness in this whole idea that is dismaying, that borders on cynicism. One wonders what went through the minds of the filmmakers as they prepared to make a film that has been made so many times before. By the look of The Karate Kid, some quick-play box-office may have been the highest aspiration. [26 June 1984, p.B3]

Hot Shots isn't quite that bad, but given the material -- the military mind is certainly, in military parlance, a target-rich environment -- it ought to be funnier. [31 July 1991, p.D1]

Parker is flashy and gory and fun as usual. If only there were more to the thing. Then Angel Heart might not seem so dumb. [06 Mar 1987, p.D1]

It seems very much an exercise in time, place and character, without much soul, as if Demme expected the period to provide most of the romance. [17 Apr 1984, p.B5]

Nothing here for the time capsule, make no mistake. But the Boz seems to have found a calling. [21 May 1991, p.C1]

The Star Chamber has the slippery feeling of a movie made with optional endings, and the narrative sag of pulled punches. You can tell it was meant to be a thoughtful action picture, a B-movie with smarts. But it's too slick, and ultimately it's too careful. [6 Aug 1983, p.7]

Penn and Oldman booze and brawl and fight a losing battle. Their worst enemy, alas, is their director's self-indulgence. [05 Oct 1990, p.G5]

The Bear is a big, polished children's film, nothing more. [27 Oct 1989, p.G5]

The single redeeming feature of Child's Play is the manner in which the doll is slowly transformed into semi-human form. Scene by scene it turns into a half-pint, rubbery version of Jack Nicholson. And that's scary. [09 Nov 1988, p.D6]

Under Siege is never at all convincing -- everything about the battleship (except the exterior shots) seems small and understaffed. There are supposed to be 30 bad guys, but they appear to outnumber the crew, and the interior scenes of the battleship's command stations are barely more ambitious than Star Trek's bridge. [12 Oct 1992, p.C3]

Inside Benny and Joon, a love story that celebrates dysfunction and the cutes, though not necessarily in that order, there's a character drama whispering to be let out, but that's no help. Long before you get around to liking this little movie, you'll hate it. And that's always a problem. [16 Apr 1993, p.G5]

The premise is marvelous, the music more than adequate (assuming you're a metal fan), the performances appropriately dumb. And it's seasonally funny. [28 Oct 1986, p.D5]

No ears for dialogue around here, either: Several characters observe that the invention "blew my socks off," an expression so odd that we expect it to lead to a comic payoff. But there is none, and there's not much to the movie, either. [30 Sept 1983, p.D1]

The sad thing about Rising Sun is that for all the controversy surrounding the book, it plays as just another cop drama set against an alien landscape. As so often happens in Hollywood these days, the alien locale is Los Angeles, an L.A. under assault from within and without. Rising Sun the movie doesn't have all that much to say about that condition. It sticks to the safe stuff. [30 July 1993, p.G4]

Even at 85 minutes, Throw Momma From the Train seems flabby; it's out of jokes before an hour is up. [11 Dec 1987, p.D5]

Pretty in Pink is not a bad film, but for those who do not come to it predisposed to re-indulge the agonies of young love, it is less than memorable. [3 March 1986, p.C6]

The whole film feels bloated, as Joffee makes his point, makes it again, and then returns to it as if for reassurance. [16 Jan 1987, p.5]

Falling in Love isn't consistently dull; it's funny in spots, particularly during an opening montage of scenes in which the principals are doing their Christmas Eve shopping, and almost meet a bunch of times. But the shift from not meeting to meeting does not generate much drama. [21 Nov 1984, p.C1]

"Overworked" is the word for much of the movie. The Mean Season has the feel of a project much tinkered with, so that it seems both laborious and scattered. For a melodrama it moves too slowly, and for a thriller it is too obvious; you can see the seams, see the film's gears move when its works should be invisible. [15 Feb 1985, p.D1]

This is a nearly universal theme and might provide the spine for a funny comedy. [29 July 1983, p.C1]

At his wittiest, Carpenter is very funny indeed, and the undisguised commentary of They Live is as entertaining as it is pointed. But at his clunkiest, Carpenter directs with all the deftness of a hod-carrier, and his set pieces drop like bricks -- wham!, plop! [9 Nov 1988, p.D6]

None of the three is at all frightening, and though the final tale makes use of some nifty makeup effects, they're ones we have seen many times before. [11 May 1990, p.11]

The film just has no edge, that's all. Brooks lets it go maudlin in the first half-hour or so, and for the balance we're left wondering what ever happened to the guy who made Blazing Saddles. [29 July 1991, p.C1]

This version was directed by Gene Saks, who is Simon's stage director, and who presumably knows what he wants. Getting it is another story -- Saks seems to have been so concerned with cooling down the play, taking the "theater" out of it, that he let the warmth go, too. [25 Dec 1986, p.B1]

Moments of life intrude, particularly with the periodic appearance of Eli Wallach as a superannuated hitman, a truly bizarre performance (he's got a sawed-off shotgun but his eyes are so bad it doesn't matter). And there are times when the sheer vitality of the two stars -- particularly Lancaster, who has not lost a thing -- promises to lift the movie. But it's too flimsy, and we're left with two stars in search of a story. For a while, it's fun watching them hunt. Then it's just a chore. [3 Oct 1986, p.D2]

The principal appeal remains the series' principal weakness as well. These films are all about the blurring of the boundary between dream and reality, which strikes at the heart of what film is all about. But this also means that at regular intervals, someone wakes up to find that it was all a dream, one of the hoariest and least satisfying devices in the history of bad drama. [15 Aug 1989, p.C5]

There's an odd meeting of pathos and caper-comedy in Family Business, an uneasy blend of comedy and drama that never does seem to figure out what it's up to. The movie darts in one direction, then another. When it loses its way, it slows to a plod. It's a bust. [15 Dec 1989, p.5G]

Children will at least be diverted. Adults, after they tire of trying to detect the hidden strings, are likely to find Batteries Not Included too manipulative to tolerate, but predictable enough that they can safely nap for long stretches. [18 Dec 1987, p.D1]

The best-developed theme in 2010, in fact, is anti-climax. Many scenes have one, the entire movie seems to be one. And we still don't know what the deal is with that monolith. [7 Dec 1984, p.D1]

Much of it makes no sense whatever, and the most interesting element is watching Neeson and Adam Baldwin, who plays a psychopathic Mafia underboss, steal the picture from under Swayze's nose. [7 Nov 1989, p.C8]

Oshima, the director who was once celebrated for the elaborately scandalous eroticism of In the Realm of the Senses, is here merely impenetrable -- though whatever it is that Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is about, Oshima does seem to mean it. [30 Sep 1983, p.D2]

Though Rosenthal is slick enough to lure us into the big Rocky climax, his movie isn't serious enough, or good enough, not to leave a bad taste in the mouth after it's over. [27 Mar 1983, p.L4]

here are strange sensibilities at work here, yes. Just not working hard enough. [23 July 1993, p.G7]

Those opening minutes, in which Hawn plays a heavy, are some of her best work. The rest we've seen before, a lot. Overboard is overlong, and stale as can be. [18 Dec 1987, p.D6]

Whoopi Goldberg gives a first-rate performance in Clara's Heart, enough to atone for the sins of her Fatal Beauty period. But it's nifty work in a lost cause. The movie is sickly sweet, shot through with the kind of confectioner's sentiment that Hollywood used to crank out on assembly lines until the formula slid into disuse. [21 Oct 1988, p.E10]

The most interesting aspect -- the only interesting aspect, really -- of Housesitter's creaky script is the concept of the psychopathic liar, as played by Hawn, who can invent whole life stories under pressure. It's the film's central conceit that the capacity to delude others with long and preposterous fabrications is the one sure sign of character. [12 June 1992, p.G7]

Hook is shot through with Big Theme, and it's splashy- looking and big of heart, as you'd figure a Steven Spielberg take on Peter Pan would be. But it's not the mega-movie that combination seemed likely to inspire, either. It isn't magic. [11 Dec. 1991, p.D1]

The idea, apparently, was to combine elements of E.T., Gremlins and run-of-the-mill slasher films, while keeping the whole thing palatable for pre-teens. Only Steven Spielberg has been able to make this combination work, and even he has had trouble with it; director Stephen Herek, who also worked on the Critters script, is the wrong Steve. [30 Apr 1986, p.C7]