Bill Cosford

The Rookie groans loudly and often under the load of its cliches. [07 Dec 1990, p.G11]

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]

The knock on movies like Wildcats used to be that they belong not on the big screen, but on TV. But times have changed. Wildcats isn't good television, either. It's just Goldie Hawn's latest. [10 March 1986, p.C6]

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]

This movie runs in great, lazy circles, covering its implausibilities with gags, and finishes with the let's-get-it-over-with patness of a movie- of-the-week. Goldblum's performance is the key: We never do figure out who he is beyond the easy guess that his cuckoldry was well-deserved. Sometimes he's in charge, outfoxing the thugs, and sometimes he's helpless, and a lot of the time he's just along for the ride. [12 March 1985, p.B4]

Supergirl was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, whose previous big credit was Jaws II. The two films have something in common beyond their status as sequels to successful originals; both have a curiously flat, almost stale feel about them. And both are as disposable as Supertissue. [21 Nov 1984, p.C1]

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]

Mazursky never makes the case for his hero's disaffection, and Cassavetes is not one of those screen presences for whom we are willing to fill in the blanks. [24 Sep 1982, p.D2]

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]

A View to a Kill, also like recent Bonds, is long. And though it is crammed with action -- car chase, boat chase, blimp chase, you lose track -- it begins, by the second hour, to seem quite long indeed. [24 May 1985, p.D5]

It's not nearly as good as you figure it will be, but it is a full-bore, flat-out fantasy, and outside of the Disney animated jungle, we don't find many of those anymore. [18 Dec 1992, p.G5]

SpaceCamp is perfectly harmless and perfectly dull, but it comes at a time when NASA could use an esteem booster. For all those who get just a touch queasy at the Top Gun lesson, in which shooting down planes in peacetime is presented as role-model behavior, SpaceCamp offers a nonviolent corrective. [6 June 1986, p.D6]

A Kiss Before Dying is nothing if not devious. But it's also a textbook example of incompetent direction. [29 Apr 1991, p.C5]

Kline is OK. Mastrantonio isn't, really -- she plays Priscilla on the edge of a groundless hysteria. Kevin Spacey, fresh from a tightly controlled performance in Glengarry Glen Ross, loses it here. But the real villain is the ramshackle story. It's just a mess. [17 Oct 1992, p.4]

Though the quality of animation remains dismal, Care Bears II has many pretty pictures; they just don't move very well. Kids under five, particularly little girls, seem enthralled nonetheless. [31 Mar 1986, p.D6]

Parts of The Bodyguard are inadvertently hilarious, as in a romantic encounter involving Houston, Costner and a samurai sword (she unsheathes it so very, very carefully). Others just seem to go on, and on, and on -- at two hours and five minutes, this one is easily a half-hour too long. [25 Nov 1992, p.E4]

Yes, it's junk. But it's funny junk, and it seems even to suggest a filmmaking intelligence (when was the last time you saw a shot from inside a human mouth as a giant tongue depressor closes in?) [26 Oct 1992, p.C6]

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]

Easily the best thriller of this or any other recent year...It's the film that marks him as a genius, that proves the auteur (or authorial) theory of filmmaking all by itself. It's the movie that shows a distinctive stamp, the movie that could not possibly have been made by anyone else. And most important, Vertigo is immensely entertaining. It has great peformances from its stars, an overtly Wagnerian score from the celebrated Bernard Herrmann and a plot that is almost hopelessly complex. Almost. [23 Dec 1983, p.D1]

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]

Hot Dog...The Movie! involves soft-core quickies and schoolyard one-liners and is not much fun at all. [14 Jan 1984, p.C7]

If the story were not already stupid and cynical, the casting would kill the film in any case. Garner is utterly lost as a top sergeant; he doesn't even swear well, and some of the movie's most uncomfortable moments are those in which he tries. [16 Mar 1984, p.D10]

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

Roberts looks great bathing under a waterfall. It's just that no one had the heart, during this production, to tell her that it was stupid. And so, while all about her are laughing up the short sleeves of their safari jackets or rattling their Zambooli spears in impatience, Roberts plays Sheena as high drama, as best she can, which isn't so good. [18 Aug 1984, p.C1]

Smokey aims very low and still doesn't hit. [17 Aug 1983, p.D4]

As time goes on, and more King comes to the screen, The Shining, once widely disparaged, looks better and better. At least that film translated some of King's terror; subsequent adaptations, Pet Sematary included, do little more than animate the gore. [24 Apr 1989, p.C6]

It's hard to figure how the combination of director Carl Reiner, comedian John Candy and a movie with the title Summer Rental could come to nothing. [10 Aug 1985, p.D7]

It's a routine, who's-the-slasher melodrama, and for all its visual allure -- Stone and Baldwin bump and grind, in living color and in third-generation, off-monitor black-and-white -- it drags, and drags. [22 May 1993, p.E1]