Bill Cosford

By the end, we can guess what Newman was up to, and how warm a story he meant to make. But nothing comes together until one of the characters is written out, and by that time, it is almost always too late. [02 Mar 1984, p.D1]

It is long. Very, very long...And it feels its length, feels every bit the 190 minutes of it. This is a problem for a movie. A movie can be any length at all if its audience remains unaware of its artifice, remains suspended in time. But in The Right Stuff, we are always aware that there's a movie going on, rather than lives on a screen; by the end, there is the feeling of having been dragged through recent history, feet first. The Right Stuff is exciting from time to time; it has its jolts and its snaps and its nostalgic tweaks. But there is more to a roller coaster than a bumpy ride, and The Right Stuff does not thrill. [16 Oct 1983, p.L1]

The Monster Squad is schoolyard-clever and cut to the rhythms of Saturday morning TV, within which limitations it's actually a lot of fun. It's a swell movie for kids under 13. [20 Aug 1987, p.C8]

The script is by Chris Columbus (Home Alone), who also directed, and it's as lazy as it is maudlin. [24 May 1991, p.G13]

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]

No more than a mild diversion. [21 March 1983, p.C6]

The sex parts are dumb -- they could have been lifted from a 1960s beach comedy -- but when Last Resort acts as a sendup of drinks (and life) by the colored bead at Club Med, it has its amusements. [04 Jun 1986, p.D4]

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]

Stories by Stephen King are traditionally brought to the screen in the worst possible shape, so it's gratifying to report that Cat's Eye, a King trilogy, is not a terrible movie. It's not going to go down in anyone's annals, either, but it's fun and, if you like cats, ultimately quite gratifying. [17 Apr 1985, p.B5]

The lead roles are played by Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. They're the reasons this movie works. Despite itself. [11 Oct 1991, p.G5]

The special effects used to illustrate these drawbacks are remarkable, but the movie around them isn't. There's precious little chemistry between Chase and Hannah, there's not much real menace in the over-the-top performance by Sam Neill as a CIA assassin, and there's nothing but a skin-deep gloss to Carpenter's direction. [03 March 1992, p.E4]

Cobra looks and sounds as bad as it does because Stallone hired George P. Cosmatos (Rambo), a hack with no ideas, to direct, and because Stallone wrote the screenplay himself. No excuses: This movie is just the way the highest paid and hence most powerful man in Hollywood wanted it. You take a long look at the thing, you keep that in mind: This is the film he meant to make. [24 May 1986, p.D1]

It's almost wonderful. For an hour or so, it is. Funny, scary, occasionally wonderful. On the strength of that first hour, this should be one of the summer's big pictures. Nonetheless, when WarGames goes wrong, it's a great disappointment. [3 June 1983, p.D1]

The presence of Culkin in the cast should not deceive parents: This isn't a kids' movie. It's just not much of a grownups' movie, either. [24 Sep 1993, p.G5]

One of the two flirtations is appealing -- Alda and Keaton tryst briefly, harmlessly, in one of the film's best scenes. The other, which asks us to believe that Huston finds Allen darned near irresistible, is more troublesome. On the other hand, it's Woody Allen's movie, and he gets to do what he wants; this time, apparently, he wants to dream. We go along, those of us who like him, because he's still funny and he's still smart. As for Manhattan Murder Mystery -- he has been funnier, and smarter. [20 Aug 1993, p.5]

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]

This would all be a lot more fun if Jason were ever in jeopardy, but since we know he can't be killed -- the best one can hope to do is bottle him up and store him, like toxic waste -- the charm of the film depends on action in the margins. Part VI, for instance, had a sense of humor; II and III had a splendid variety of weaponry. No jokes this time, however, and Jason contents himself for the most part with the ax blow, the tent-pole stab and the simple head-twist. He's old, and he has lost a step. [17 May 1988, p.B4]

Chetwynd's design, to show the POW plight in terms as dreary as its reality, works against the movie at almost every point. [20 May 1987, p.D8]

I guess Perfect is a movie about aerobics, journalism, ethics and love and a couple of hunks. It is even more stupid than it sounds. It is the stupidest thing I have seen this year, in or out of the movies. [7 June 1985, p.C9]

Not making any sense is not the same as unbelievably dumb, which The Final Chapter pretty much is. [18 Apr 1984, p.6]

The film seems just right for kids, though what older fans of Cruise ("Risky Business") and Scott will make of it is far less clear. [22 Apr 1986, p.B4]

A surprisingly dull and witless film. [21 Jul 1984, p.C1]

Old-fashioned isn't necessarily bad. In Lean's case it can be immensely entertaining, because he knows how to build a story. At 76, he is still quite vital a force behind the camera, and he makes A Passage to India, born a comedy of manners, into high melodrama. [11 Jan 1985, p.D1]

In the guise of a loving homage, Making Contact manages to steal shamelessly and for the most part ineptly from its betters -- Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Poltergeist, Carrie. There is barely an original moment in the film, which is nonetheless almost incomprehensible. [02 Sep 1986, p.B5]

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

Given the rather cramped capacities of his crowd, this makes Estevez a prodigy of sorts: His Wisdom isn't good, but like Estevez' work as a performer, it's never quite bad enough to write off. [5 Jan 1987, p.C1]

Harry is more fun, and he is less the fascist. Considering the genre -- bloody crimebusting and to-hell-with-your-rights- pal -- these are no small blessings. [12 Dec 1983, p.C6]

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the dopiest and most congenial in the series, an indication that the producers have at last acknowledged that what they're dealing with is not science fiction or adventure, but a kind of cosmic fluke. [27 Nov. 1986, p.F1]

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]

Hamburger, like Police Academy and a dozen others before it, is essentially a basic-training sitcom with some softcore on the side. And like the films it imitates, Hamburger is an example of a perfectly good comic premise -- there's weirdness in modern food technology, bet your syntho-chicken nuggets there is -- botched by a script aimed at just that segment of the audience that is theoretically banned from attending R-rated films. [20 March 1986, p.B6]

For all its anything-goes, Death Becomes Her never really cuts loose. The director, Robert Zemeckis, had big hits with the three Back to the Future films and with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Clearly, he's comfortable with pricey effects. But maybe that's all he knows. There's a great, slashing satire inside this movie, whining to be let out. [31 July 1992, p.G5]

See The Killer for its sheer, gushing exuberance -- if you think you can take it. [26 Apr 1991, p.13]

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]

Though Breakin' follows the Flashdance formula as if it were blazed in concrete, working from a script that would make a 12-year-old snicker, it is so exuberant and lighthearted that it works. [09 May 1984, p.B5]

Roger and Me is a documentary about the effect of auto- plant closings on the Rust Belt city of Flint, Mich., but wait! Don't be scared. This film will not harm you, it will not bore you. In fact, it will leave you charmed and amazed. [13 Jan 1990, p.E1]

An amiable bit of fluff that is noteworthy largely for its sumptuous production design and its pairing of two of the screen's most popular "lightweights," Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. [07 Dec 1984, p.D14]

The direction, by Jim Sheridan, is tough-edged. [27 Oct 1989, p.G7]

The original was good enough so that a residue of curiosity about the Freelings remains; we want to know what happened next. But a sequel is a sequel is a sequel, and this amiable movie is very much a II. [23 May 1986, p.D1]

Otomo's vision is as dark as his palette is vivid. [15 Nov 1991, p.G17]

Slacker is not always so purposefully creepy, but it's often as darkly funny; none of its characters is what you'd call normal, but the film's off-kilter view is such that they seem utterly in tune with their odd lives and odder times. [29 May 1992, p.5]

It's still quite sexy, but hardly erotic. The director, Zalman King, not only has seen entirely too many in the goofy Emmanuelle series, he appears not to know just how stupid those movies are and so has made little more than a knock-off of them. [4 May 1990, p.13]

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]

Once you get past the initial hurdles, Iron Eagle has the kind of sappy charm and a variety of overblown performance that shapes kids' movies. It is not plausible for a second, but neither, on the face of it, was Bambi. [22 Feb 1986, p.C7]

Mostly, though, the movie is a hack sitcom romance in which the big question is how long it will take Tom Selleck to confess his love for Nancy Travis, Mary's mom. [21 Nov 1990, p.D1]

Breathless, on the other hand, earns its style -- it uses that style against its characters, so that the film's good looks serve as background while the characters, trying to live up to the scenery, grind themselves down. 18 May 1983, p.B1]

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]

A decent cast, led by Peter Weller (as the geologist/hero) and Rambo vet Richard Crenna (as Doc), grapples gamely with the script and hauls down the paychecks. [21 Mar 1989, p.C7]

The jokes? Passing gas, large breasts, schoolyard double entendre -- the usual run of recess humor. On the faces of most of the cast, one can clearly read despair, occasionally even irritation. They know: If you're much over 10, Police Academy 5 isn't going to keep you awake. [23 March 1988, p.C7]

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]

The movie is long and sad, but it also seems small. You get the feeling that, like the lives of its protagonists, it could have been more. [11 Jan 1992, p.E1]

Cloak and Dagger does have its charms. It also has its tense moments, and an unforced sentimentality that helps it end on just the right note. And it's nicely performed. [10 Aug 1985, p.6]

The production has a Disney-ish, well-scrubbed feel to it, and were it not for a sprinkling of obscenities would be G- rated. But Russkies is never quite right, even as pap. [06 Nov 1987, p.D5]

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

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]

Newell never gets the movie to soar as fairy tale, which is quite clearly what it means to be. And so this fantasy is at its best when it's down and dirty. And that's odd. [17 Sep 1993, p.G4]

It's a character study and a stunted romance involving characters played by Tom Hanks and Sally Field, and in that strange couple's brackish chemistry the film founders and sinks. [7 Oct 1988, p.E1]

This is a big, beautifully designed movie in which the filmmakers' intelligence is everywhere; it's the product of a special vision. And Brian De Palma continues to be good news from Hollywood. [3 June 1987, p.D1]

Jaglom isn't the first to suggest that food is at least as powerful as sex when it comes to enhancing life, or screwing it up. But he's the first to bring his giddy blend of documentary and farce to bear on the subject. Mmm-mmm, good. [08 Feb 1991, p.G12]

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]

The sole mystery is the apparent collapse of Carpenter's skills as a storyteller. Prince of Darkness is shapeless and almost utterly lacking in rhythm, as if it had been slashed and then badly reassembled, like a Carpenter victim. [28 Oct 1987, p.D8]

Trouble in Mind is an earthbound fantasy to match the soaring nightmares of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. It's one man's dream of romance, melodrama, life by street lamp. One surrenders on Rudolph's terms. Surrender is sweet. [21 March 1986, p.D6]

This little melodrama is nicely put together and thoroughly entertaining. Plus, the scenery's great. Remember when that was enough? [26 Sep 1990, p.D3]

First Blood is no more than a man-bites-town retread, in which Vietnam and its aftermath are merely the angle. [27 Oct 1982, p.B6]

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]

In most respects Police Academy 2 is witless, which complaint is admittedly akin to inspecting a Hefty bag and being dismayed to find trash. [03 Apr 1985, p.D7]

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]

Perhaps Rudolph is sending out a message about love, a la Rohmer, or maybe he's just having a strange kind of fun. Choose Me is just entertaining enough, in its eccentric, soap- operatic way, so that it doesn't matter. [21 Dec 1984, p.D22]

It's not a movie for the easily distracted, but it has its rewards for those who pay attention. [19 Dec 1983, p.C6]

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

There are times when a B-movie is made so carefully and performed so robustly that the audience wants it to work and goes with it, roots for it; those are the times that directors grope for, even with A-material. The Verdict may be only a B-movie in a three-piece suit, but this is one of those times, and everybody's going to like it. [21 Dec 1982, p.C7]

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]

Schlesinger works at the story's dark heart -- the stranger within -- with elegance and a fearsome wit. It's one of those movies that starts scaring you even before anything has happened, and it's a treat. [28 Sept 1990, p.G5]

Burnett is probably the most interesting here, but not by much. John Ritter is fun, Marilu Henner is sexy enough to hold her own even while Nicollette Sheridan, who is lovely, colts about the stage in lingerie. Julie Hagerty, as a steadily more nervous stage manager, is the scariest and funniest; Denholm Elliott, the barely reformed boozer who chases every bottle that turns up backstage (and many, many do), is a hoot...The whole thing vibrates with its dark possibilities: Utter humiliation awaits at every turn. Bogdanovich's movie doesn't move at the speed of the live performances of Noises Off that I have seen -- I'm not sure it could, without sacrificing comprehension. But it moves fast enough. If you can't laugh at Noises Off, you're just not mean enough. [21 March 1992, p.E1]

Still of the Night is a restful thriller, soft and dreamy and largely undisturbing. Like the wee hours themselves, the movie seems to stretch its time beyond the normal frame of minutes; here, 90 of them go by at the pace of an entire evening. [17 Dec 1982, p.D14]

By the time John Hurt shows up, in the role of the villain, the fun's over. Crawford tries for sardonic and falls short, into lazy. Lane's pace is way off; his adventure seems to take forever to get under way, and the jokes aren't enough. Good pulp is better than this. [04 June 1986, p.D1]

Think for a moment about a film that depends for much of its appeal upon a romance between Michael J. Fox and Helen Slater. No, not as May-December or even July-August, but June-June, as in peers in love. It's Smurf-meets-girl -- not just a mismatch, but a confusion of species. [10 Apr 1987, p.D1]