Bill Cosford

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

Beauty and the Beast is so funny, exciting and suspenseful that its obvious moral (appearance can mean nothing; it's what's inside that counts) is engaging rather than perfunctory. [22 Nov 1991, p.G11]

Rarely do you see first-rate melodrama welded to first-rate political satire. [13 May 1988, p.D5]

Brother's Keeper is fascinating. It doesn't answer all the questions, but it illuminates life in a small, strange and in some ways wonderful place. [16 Nov 1992, p.C3]

Platoon lacks the sweep, the heroic (and anti-heroic) vision of Apocalypse Now, and it lacks that film's signal strength, which was its evocation of the visceral appeal, the sheer romance of war, at least to those not fighting it. Some of Coppola's images in Apocalypse Now were among the most beautiful in contemporary film. Platoon is merely terrifying. [16 Jan 1987, p.6]

The key to the movie's success is that it was made by people who know and doubtless even enjoy rock in all its infinite, often tedious variety. This distinguishes Spinal Tap from the usual run of spoof, created at a distance by bemused outsiders (Johnny Carson in a mop-top wig, etc.). Reiner and company actually understand the media they are lampooning; the result is not only funny, but lethal. [27 Apr 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]

This is a story that in hindsight we can see was waiting for Scorsese to come along. He did. The result is wonderful. [17 Sept 1993, p.G5]

Perhaps because we see so few musicals at all, the Streisand model seems welcome on any terms. But there is also a great deal of warmth in the picture, and it has what one-man shows do when they are working right: It has conviction, and a sense of the artist's vision. This movie was not made by committee, and hence it is free in a way that few American films are. [09 Dec 1983, p.D12]

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]

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]

Ribald, wry and even, from time to time, suspenseful, The Name of the Rose is actually a movie-movie -- rich in Hollywood convention, dense with images, with muscular performances (the principals play their types to the maximum), with good, old- fashioned movie stuff. Never a dull moment. How very unlikely. [24 Oct 1986, p.D1]

There is not a moment in Goodbye, Children that fails to ring true. It's a beautiful film. [05 Feb 1988, p.C8]

Pryor is so lacking in energy that Wilder steals most of the movie from him. For the first time in his career, Wilder actually seems robust, but it's only because he's performing opposite a ghost. It's quite sad. [12 May 1989, p.DW5]

Tootsie is full of good movie writing, and such are its pleasures that you wonder early on why all comedies can't be this good. The problem is that it's hard to do; the trick is that Tootsie makes it look easy. [17 Dec 1982, p.D14]

It's not a wonderful family, and the lives thus illuminated aren't sweet at all. But the movie is both things. In his sheer affinity for the human, Leigh approaches the great Jean Renoir. What fun to watch. [21 Feb. 1992, p.5]

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]

Hail, Spartacus. You're no Kane, you're not even Lawrence. You're a movie dinosaur, lumbering and overpraised. But it's good to have you back. [8 May 1991, p.D1]

Jones brings the character around in a big, flashy performance, and there's not a moment when he isn't fun to watch. Not all of The Fugitive makes sense, though.[6 Aug 1993, p.G5]

The story was adapted by Laura Esquivel from her novel, a bestseller in Mexico. Arau, the actor turned filmmaker, tells the story with the equivalent of a saucier's night out -- the film is physically lovely, and never so sumptuous as when it is concentrating on Tita's creations in and out of the kitchen. [02 Apr 1993, p.G4]

Unlikely as it seems, considering the source, Hope and Glory may be John Boorman's most affecting film. It is surely his most entertaining. [27 Nov 1987, p.D1]

The atmospherics here are impressive. There's an undertone of comic dread in most of Cox's scenes, so artfully established that you wonder where it came from. In this respect, Cox seems a more playful variant of Wim Wenders, whose Paris, Texas might have been this funny had it not taken itself so seriously. Of course, Cox isn't Wenders -- he doesn't have the narrative skills yet. But Repo Man is without qualification the most interesting film yet about people driving around and getting into trouble. And there does seem to be a metaphor in there somewhere. [4 Apr 1985, p.4]

It is a masterpiece of design. The animated backgrounds are voluptuously illustrated, and the action often proceeds at dizzying speed, while an elaborate fabric of subtle visual cues steer the narrative. [25 Nov 1992, p.E1]

What makes the story seem larger and more important than it is are the quality of the performances -- uniformly first-rate -- and the deftness of the director, Neil Jordan, for opposing the several cultures and thereby causing a clash. [8 Aug 1986, p.D1]

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]

But much of what happens in Husbands and Wives isn't just stock Woody. It's stock Hollywood, too. [18 Sept 1992, p.G5]

Leigh is obviously a major talent of the English film resurgence, which may already have peaked but nonetheless offers hopes of its own. His loose way of making films -- the wandering camera, the scenes that seem to invent themselves as they go along -- somehow accommodates a genuine comic intelligence, which usually requires the tightest of controls. [2 June 1989, p.7]

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]

It's a big, likable movie without quite enough jokes, but the stars take turns with the burden, carrying the thing in relays. They're fun to watch. [16 Dec 1986, p.D4]

The good news is that Aliens is scary and mean and just about everything a fan of the original could want. Bad news? There's a too-campy line of forced dialogue during the climax. And that's about it. This is your grade-A sequel, the movie equivalent of a hot "summer read." Aliens is 137 minutes long, and never drags. A solid hour goes by before there is any action, but the picture is never coy, either. [18 July 1986, p.D1]

Homicide fails, finally. But its early success is so complete that the film is a must-see anyway. It changes the rules for cop movies. And when it is good, it is brilliant. [18 Oct 1991, p.7]

Fast, well made and utterly inconsequential -- The Terminator is a vintage "B," and it's good to know that Hollywood can still crank them out. [29 Oct 1984, p.C6]

Now that it has been set to film, it seems somehow dated as well. The greed of the 1980s, thematic backdrop for Mamet's original, is presumed gone. Glengarry Glen Ross looks almost . . . quaint. [02 Oct 1992, p.G5]

Local Hero is almost magical, it is so unexpected. It is whimsy raised a power or two by the skills of a filmmaker who looks at life slightly askew. He sees enchantment in small, off- center encounters, and gets the enchantment onto the screen. [05 Apr 1983, p.D5]

Ivory's version of A Room With a View is impeccably turned out and wonderfully funny once the rhythms are established, which does not take long. The performances are splendid, from Helena Bonham Carter's moon-faced Lucy to the Cecil of Daniel Day Lewis (who can also be seen in a role so different -- the loutish punk of My Beautiful Laundrette -- that it hardly seems possible he is the same actor). As expected, Maggie Smith (as Charlotte) and Denholm Elliott (George's free-thinking father), nearly steal the film. [4 Apr 1986, p.D1]

Strange as it sounds, the failure of this tawdry little odyssey into mammalia is that it doesn't make any sense. The smallest effort by writer, director or producer could have meant a movie with laughs as well as the capacity to anesthetize adults. [02 Aug 1983, p.C5]

That Burton darkness, gentle and sweet though it may be (he's David Lynch through a Disney looking-glass), was said to be the one element that kept Batman Returns from becoming the most popular movie of all time. Maybe so. But this time, it's simply perfect. [22 Oct 1993, p.G4]

Richly enjoyable on its own terms: modest, funny and sad. It is Woody Allen at the top of his art. [28 Jan 1984, p.D1]

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

Penny Marshall proves deft at blending the silly stuff with enough action to generate a bit of suspense; the mix is that of Beverly Hills Cop. And the script, though the work of a whole crowd -- almost always a bad sign -- has marvelous moments. [10 Oct 1986, 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]

Chocolat is as beautiful as it is solemn. It's a meditation on memory and on the nature of innocence in the face of great, irresistible change, but its glory is in the quiet development of its several characters. [12 May 1989, p.5]

This lovely movie, impeccably made in nearly every way, has entirely too much right about it to be resisted. [21 Feb 1986, p.D1]

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]

The result is a movie that's funny and touching, yes, but also has something to say about family, and about the deceptions we practice in the name of harmony. Ang Lee seems to know something about the subject, and his movie is knowing and wise, too. [17 Sep 1993, p.G5]

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

If the idea was merely to make a high-gloss entertainment about the last days of mob glamour, Bugsy succeeds. But it leaves one final question unanswered: So what? [20 Dec 1991, p.G5]

It is a startling film in structure, style and story, but most of all in the simplicity of its plot -- which, once revealed (and that takes a while) is a horror story for cineastes. [03 Feb 1983, p.C8]

This is one mean little movie, fully deserving of some sort of warning badge to keep out the faint of heart and blue of nose. It's not, by any stretch of the imagination, pornography, so disregard the onetime X (the film is being distributed without a rating). But make no mistake: Henry will give you the creeps. [10 August 1990, p.G13]

Could Lorenzo's Oil have been better? Easily. Does it still have real power? No question. [22 Jan 1993, p.G4]

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]

Campion tells this longish story with a reverent touch and a painterly eye, tipping over into artiness only occasionally. [20 Sep 1991, p.G5]

What Salaam Bombay! thus lacks in polish it makes up for with deadpan authenticity. Watching the film is like being a witness to an event that is dark, intimate and frightening. There's something voyeuristic about the experience, and something deeply compelling as well. [17 Mar 1989, p.6]

Even if it were not physically beautiful -- and Ju Dou is as enthralling to look at as any Chinese film the festival has shown -- it would hold you: Its love story is as compelling as its politics, though not nearly so tragic. [05 Feb 1991, p.D8]

Firefox is no masterpiece, and it's not even a startling picture within its genre -- Cold War mischief. But it's briskly entertaining and, until the nyet-effect of all those stereotyped Russians catches up with us, even believeable. [21 June 1982, p.B4]

Poltergiest is no nonstop scream express; at times it pulls its punches (Spielberg wants that PG rating), and at times its effects are bigger than life and less than terrifying. But like Spielberg's Jaws, which was a perfect genre movie, Poltergeist does what it's supposed to do about as well as it can be done.

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]

The film sequences of Earth from orbit, of the moon from the lunar lander, then of Earth again are breathtaking. They're disquieting, too -- the feeling of remoteness seems to boil up from the moon's surface as the explorers hop and stumble about in the lunar dust. You get that sense, during these best moments in the film, of the remarkable achievement it was. The thrill is back, in other words. [1 June 1990, p.G9]

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]

Glory leaves you with not just the sense of its characters' triumph over injustice, but their destruction by the very system that empowered them to begin with. There's no escaping that story, either -- even if Glory doesn't really tell it. [12 Jan 1990, p.G5]

The Freshman isn't big at all, but it's no bauble, and it's no genre piece. It's quite unhinged, in fact -- the film seems continuously on the verge of spinning off into madness. It never does, which is kind of too bad. But it's never dull, and it's never cute, and it's not at all what Brando thought it was. [27 July 1990, p.G5]

Near Dark never drags. When it is funny, it can be wonderfully dark, and when it's scary it is wonderfully mean. Bigelow has a rough-trade sensibility that shows through just often enough. None of the romance of the vampire legend for her and Red; just blood and guts and weird trouble from that odd family down the road. The ensemble cast (three of whom, Henriksen, Paxton and Goldstein are veterans of Aliens) treats it all like red-blooded fun, the effects are swell, and Bigelow is just mean enough to bear watching. [9 Oct 1987, p.D1]

Though there is certainly more to the film than its voluptuous second half -- Babette is an agent of redemption in more ways than one, for instance -- there's no overlooking the simple appeal of the climactic serving. [10 Feb 1988, p.D6]

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]

The movie doesn't really earn its big, overwrought finale, and after it's over it appears quite full of holes. But it's a handsome curiosity. [31 Aug 1990, p.G5]

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]

Spike Lee is one of a handful of great filmmakers working in mainstream movies today, and he has a moral vision that is pure and simply uplifting. See his movie. See it often. [7 June 1991, p.G5]

It's little more than an amiable exercise in nostalgia, but it's nicely performed and handsome to look at. [25 Mar 1988, p.C1]

Mississippi is full of good will, but it's not preachy, and its story of romance in an ethnic broth is fascinating when it's working right. [14 Feb 1992, p.5G]

Nelson is immensely appealing, and Busey plays off him well. The two of them ride around, locked into the wacky feud and having a bit of fun with Old West mythology. The movie is sad, entertaining and often beautiful. [25 Mar 1983, p.C1]

At times it doesn't make a lick of sense, and at times it's as shaky as a Poindexter memory. But it's full of goofy developments and paranoid fantasies; it's the perfect movie for its place in time. [14 Aug 1987, p.D1]

Burden of Dreams would stand on its own as a "how-the-film- was-made" documentary and as an inquiry into the strange nature of film as the most collective of art forms. Fortunately for Blank and for us, the film that Herzog wound up finishing, Fitzcarraldo, is a triumph artistically as well as logistically. [15 Oct 1982, p.D1]

It's a stand-up-and-cheer kind of movie -- hence the Rocky comparison -- with the unlikeliest of heroes. [30 Mar 1988, 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]

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]

The Road Warrior shows what happens when filmmakers learn something on their way to the sequel. Though the action here follows a predictable course (it's high-tech Shane), the milieu is fascinating, the story sophisticated where Mad Max was crude. [25 May 1982, p.D5]

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]

For all its flaws, Bob Roberts is a singular achievement, a political film in a time when moviegoers want anything but. It's a bold move. Vote Tim. [18 Sep 1992, p.G10]

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]

Frears uses the story of one relationship, intimate but exploitive, to mirror England's racial strife. By turns tender and angry, it's a film of distinctive, commanding voice. [28 Mar 1986, p.D2]

The only problem with the movie is that it really has little to say beyond the acknowledgement of young love. By contrast, Benjamin's Racing With the Moon, was so careful not to be clever -- in the process telling a good deal more about real feelings -- that The Sure Thing feels lightweight. It's nicely made and well-acted, and it is a bauble nonetheless. [1 Mar 1985, p.C11]

Watching Eastwood and Costner is a pleasure (even though they don't have much screen time together). In Costner's case, it's an unexpected one. Give him a role with weight, apparently, and he can carry the load. [24 Nov 1993, p.E1]

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 has the ring of small, unspectacular truths and a devotion to characters that is quite rare in contemporary film, and is genuinely the kind of movie "they" don't make anymore. This makes Stand by Me special. It does not make it a wonderful movie. [22 Aug 1986, p.D1]

After you've seen Dave, go back and watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And be manipulated by a master. [07 May 1993, p.G5]

This may be a film for children, but its achievement is no less serious. For only when animation approaches reality this closely does its liberation from reality -- its celebration of a fantasy world in which anything is possible, including talking mice and swashbuckling rats -- have its impact on us. [20 July 1982, p.C6]

What we have here is a story out of early American history as retold by American pulp fiction, staged by a director with a sure touch for melodrama. [25 Sep 1992, p.G5]

Like Apocalypse Now, The Killing Fields tries to show the Southeast Asian war as a lethal spasm of recent history, wholly predictable but nonetheless quite unexpected, and all the more terrible for those elements. And like Apocalypse Now, this film succeeds in the almost surreal business of recalling a nightmare. At its best, The Killing Fields is unforgettable. [18 Jan 1985, p.D1]

Frears displays a complete mastery of the mechanics of a thriller, such that his movie is terrifying even when it pauses for breath. [08 Feb 1985, p.D8]

It's about a weird little kid, and it's an engaging mix. It is successful in recreating the frissons of adolescence and in slapping the myths around. The film also sports an ending that is pure tearjerker, but at least it earns the mush. [2 Apr 1986, p.D6]

Minimalist, yes; post-modern self-conscious, to a fault. But giddy, fanciful and at times simply obvious. [21 Nov 1986, p.D10]

In some ways, Misery is the ultimate writer's inside joke -- the author as slave to a single, maniacal editor. This is not a great film, but it's good enough to invest the word deadline with a whole new meaning. [30 Nov 1990, p.G5]

It's a sturdy Streep vehicle. [11 Nov 1988, p.C1]

What Spielberg does is use the Lucas tricks to propel an old-fashioned fantasy, played broadly enough so that the laughs come as easily as the thrills. [23 May 1984, p.B1]

When it comes time to paint a view of Southern California from the perspective of outsiders looking in and expecting miracles, Nava's touch is marvelously sure, the satirical edge all covered in chrome. Nava's is the kind of talent that a low budget cannot hide. [30 Mar 1984, p.D6]