Bill Cosford

This is a story about the banality of evil, and it succeeds all too well -- these people are ordinary, and that's what makes them scary. Guncrazy is, finally, a romance, but not before it's tough as nails and terribly knowing. You won't forget it soon. [13 Feb 1993, p.E5]

The new Steven Seagal film is, of course, almost unbelievably stupid and vile, but there's something else going on as well this time. Something new. Something . . . tedious. [16 Apr 1991, p.C5]

My Chauffeur has moments of pure daffiness, unhinged stuff. But it is also the most ineptly made comedy in years, so badly made that it is ultimately unwatchable. [20 March 1986, p.B6]

Like most Norris vehicles, The Delta Force is long on spurious action and short on production values. It's also silly, but it's more than that. Rambo asked, "Do we get to win this time?"; Norris' Delta Force gets to go back and win last time. [19 Feb 1986, p.D8]

Witless and dull, Penelope Spheeris' feature-length hillbilly saga is the product of no less than four screenwriters. It's scary to think what it might have been like had it been written by only one or two of them -- I mean, what does a half-joke sound like? [15 Oct 1993, p.G5]

It's not awful; it isn't dull. But The Golden Child is a kids' film, and there are times when Murphy himself seems uncomfortable, as if he knows he's making a movie he wouldn't pay to see. [13 Dec 1986, p.B1]

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]

In the hands of director John Lafia, who uses many tricks of the genre (none of them his own), this is all less horrifying than it sounds, and a good deal funnier. [09 Nov 1990, p.G5]

Chuck Norris, whose action dramas are often unintentionally funny, edges into spoof territory with Firewalker, and the result is inadvertently dull. It's a curious cycle, a kind of primordial rhythm of bad moviemaking.[2 Dec 1986, p.B4]

The Hotel New Hampshire, in which John Irving's novel comes to the screen, is such a mess that it does not feel like a film at all. It's a kind of endurance contest, an epic bout with the cutes, in which the audience is made to confront a long, quirky line of performers playing oddball "types," and is then given only a handful of platitudes by which the explain the experience. "Sorrow floats" is the story's most profound statement, though there are others. [3 Apr 1984, p.C5]

Man bites dog in Turner & Hooch, the new Tom Hanks vehicle, and it's a tender moment. But there's precious little else going on in this tired little action comedy, which is so bereft of ideas that it winds up borrowing from Lady and the Tramp, among other familiar sources. [28 July 1989, p.G5]

Three O'Clock High is one of those ideas that must have sounded wonderful at one point, and to be fair it still sounds better than the pop-out plots of most teen-explo projects. It turns out, however, to have surprisingly little range. Once the story is under way, there's nowhere for it to go but home room, lunch and out the door. [13 Oct 1987, p.C7]

As for comic rhythm, director Nadia Tass has no clue. [10 Aug 1991, p.E1]

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]

Road House makes Cocktail look like a documentary. [19 May 1989, p.6]

The film's highlight is that rarest of action sequences, the boat-car chase (happily for River Rescue, there's a good highway right by the water!). Striking Distance, which was directed by the aptly named Rowdy Herrington (Road House ), has few other surprises. [18 Sept 1993, p.G5]

When The Guardian isn't goofy, it's as dull as plywood and just as thin. [01 May 1990, p.C4]

Hershey isn't bad in the role of the victim; she looks durable and acts like a survivor. And Furie does throw in a couple of nifty scares between the rapes, which are gratuitous and disturbing. The rest of the film is by-the-numbers B-movie thriller. [09 Feb 1983, p.D6]

Born American was made in Finland, a first feature by two Finnish directors. Their government reportedly stopped financing the project in mid-production and eventually disowned it. The guess here is that the reason for this was not so much fear of offending the Great Red Neighbor as it was simple embarrassment. [01 Sep 1986, p.D5]

The most remarkable failure of the film is that the principals don't seem even to like each other very much, despite their habit of facing the future arm in arm. There's a lot of cute flesh up on the screen, signifying nothing. [28 June 1985, p.D1]

Unfortunately, The Corsican Brothers isn't very funny. This does not exactly make us nostalgic for other, less purposeful C- and-C films, but it does serve as a sad reminder that their first, Up in Smoke, for all its excesses, was funnier than anything they have been able to manage since. [30 July 1984, p.C5]

Applegate is fun to watch; I'll bet she can act, though nothing here tests her. Stephen Herek may even be able to direct. But on this evidence, who could tell? [08 June 1991, p.E5]

And because it is less bound by formula -- less stupid, if that can be comprehended -- than Porky's, Screwballs is funnier. That is not saying much, but Screwballs was not conceived as a film for scholarly inquiry. If you like naked women posing as high-school cheerleaders, your moment has arrived.

This is a problem for a story located deep underwater, because without an immediate, photogenic threat, the movie literally has nowhere to go. The hard-working cast, led by Greg Evigan, Miguel Ferrer and the psychedelically named Taurean Blacque, lurches from bulkhead to air lock on cue, but accomplishes little beyond contributing to a growing sense of claustrophobia. [16 Jan 1989, p.7]

Mann deserves credit for trying new stuff, of course; The Keep is nothing if not ambitious. But it isn't anything more, either. [20 Dec 1983, p.D5]

It's all as foolish as can be, and tedious in the bargain. The Clan of the Cave Bear acts as a parody of the earlier, more accomplished Quest for Fire, but since even that film was funny despite itself, this is not much of an accomplishment. On the evidence, it is hard to tell which way Hannah, who was Ron Howard's mermaid in Splash, is traveling on the old evolutionary ladder. [27 Man 1986, p.C6]

At its heart, however, Soul Man is a one-gag story propelled by sitcom material; there are times you'd swear you were watching Lucy. And because the filmmakers really aren't up to their premise, the movie ends on a note of forced harmony that's enough to make the blood run cold. It's a reminder that even good white liberals still aren't sure how to act around black people. Which, come to think of it, would make a fine, socially "relevant" comedy. Perhaps Hollywood will make it someday. [27 Oct 1986, p.C4]

The unfortunate aspect of Class, which is glossier than Private Lessons and marginally more believable than My Tutor, is that its laughs are built around the suffering of a prime candidate for intensive therapy. Thus while the kids are watching one movie -- boy loses virginity, ya-hoo -- adults in the audience will be watching another -- wife and mother has an emotional breakdown at the hands, literally, of a 14-year-old. The latter, of course, is not funny. [25 July 1983, p.C6]