Bill Cosford

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Even with sex, Big Top Pee-wee seems dry and juiceless. [22 Jul 1988, p.C7]

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]

Ultimately Three Fugitives is too sweet for its own good. It has moments of real hilarity, and moments of oh-please. Veber, we know, can do better. [27 Jan 1989, p.C5]

The movie is best when it sends up the whole culture of child stars and commercials -- "I wanna grow artistically," says one well-paid brat. "I wanna work with Michelle Pfeiffer." But it loses its edge, and soon Life With Mikey is awfully close to the thing it sets out to lampoon. [4 June 1993, p.G5]

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]

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]

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

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]

Gag delivery is by shotgun and, as happens when there is even a minimum of talent involved in such projects, some of the material is on target. And some of it is awful. [27 Mar 1984, p.B5]

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]

Offers a few strange twists on well-used material. [12 Sep 1983, p.C5]

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]

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]

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]

There is more truth to the lives of people alone than Hiller and his writers have cared to admit, and, consequently, more humor. The Lonely Guy is short on both. [31 Jan 1984, p.B5]

One has the sense before Dune is well under way that it is the kind of film that may reveal itself over several viewings -- and certainly, there seems to be $47 million worth of things to look at. But fidelity to the source can be a trap, and Lynch fell into it; his movie is big and splashy and nearly nonsensical. [14 Dec 1984, p.E1]

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]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

Mel Brooks has never been a finesse comic, and no one expects him to hit with every gag. But this film reminds you how far his films have slipped behind the shotgun comedies of the Zucker brothers (David and Jerry) and Jim Abrahams, collectively and singly, who have built on Airplane! to a broad- gag frenzy. [28 July 1993, p.E2]