Bill Cosford

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]

You don't find many teen films about blues singers. You find hardly any about characters who don't smirk for 90 minutes before stumbling onto the meaning of life in the final passages. In Crossroads, it's the absences that are most refreshing. [14 March 1986, p.D1]

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]

Oscar, the new Stallone vehicle, is dreadful for an hour or so, then merely bad. By the time it's bearable, the picture is almost over. And by the time it's over, no regrets. [26 Apr 1991, p.G5]

Electric Dreams seems to take forever to establish its premise and its characters, who (computer excepted) are nonetheless rather one-dimensional. [23 Jul 1984, p.C6]

School Ties is powerful, but it cheats, too -- and the inspiring climax is telegraphed well in advance. What seems worse, though, is the movie's timidity on ground that has been well tested since A Gentleman's Agreement almost 50 years ago. [18 Sept 1992, p.G4]

The film is even slower and less engaging than is standard for its undistinguished genre. [22 Nov 1983, p.B5]

And so it goes, cleverly, amiably -- infidelity made fun. Wilder seems to have a firm hand on the controls, and the movie works best when he indulges his talent for physical comedy, which is considerable. It works less effectively when we have time to think about what is going on, and how many times we have seen it before, but the pace is quick enough that these times are few. [17 Aug 1984, p.10]

When it's working Blind Date is frenzied and very funny. It's a return to form for Blake Edwards, who has made a good many bad movies over the past 10 years. And in Willis and Basinger there is the kind of team that, back in the good old days, would have launched a series -- not sitcom/sitdram, but big-screen. [27 Mar 1987, p.D1]

The movie is bloody and gruesome and quite harmless, just the way they made them "in the good old days." [02 Aug 1985, p.C7]

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]

Interesting. Not worth the trouble, but interesting. [22 Apr 1988, p.C5]

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]

My Girl, nominally a story about a gently wacky family but actually a no-holds-barred assault on the tear ducts, is one of those movies you want to hate -- but I don't think it's possible. [27 Nov 1991, p.D1]

Mulcahy has style to burn, but he may well have used the script to light it, for Highlander almost never makes any sense. [11 Mar 1986, p.B4]

The film works as contemporary fable, cautionary tale and perversely driven love story all at once. There's a gratifyingly wide streak of humanism running through it. And there's that "chemistry." Malkovich and MacDowell, bubble, bubble. Yes, indeed. [26 Apr 1991, p.G11]

It was pretty interesting a couple of years ago, too, when a variation of it was the premise for The Final Countdown. The big difference is that the earler film wasn't bad, and this one is. [03 Aug 1984, p.C9]

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]

Though even Blake Edwards, the director behind the Panthers, could not make the connective material in this film work well, there is so much joy in the vintage Sellers that Trail of the Pink Panther rates as one of the funniest films of this year. Sellers' outtakes are funnier than most of the new material on film today. We shall not see the like of him again soon. [21 Dec 1982, p.C7]

Ironweed is the love story of two bums, the swan song of a haunted man, a character study of abiding humanity. It's a sad movie. Beautiful, too. [12 Feb 1988, p.C1]

This is, in other words, an adventure film for the 6-to-12 set, a movie for the void left by Disney's forays into the elusive teen market. All but the most easily frightened children should enjoy it; all but the most easily diverted adults are likely to find it tedious. [01 Aug 1983, p.C6]

The film isn't perfect. Seidelman is still pretty much brand-new at this, and there are times when the movie seems about to slip through her fingers, run off into the streets and flow farther, irretrievably, downtown. And the ending has the patness of a studio contrivance; one guesses that had Seidelman been in complete control, something more ambiguous might have resulted. Still, what fun: Good, and good for you, too. Hollywood reaches out and gives someone with talent a chance to make something genuine and offbeat. It's a great system. [01 Apr 1985, p.C4]

The Journey of Natty Gann is one of those dead earnest, richly satisfying "family adventures" with which the Disney name has long been associated, despite the fact that the studio has made very few successful ones. It's the kind of film we think Disney is supposed to make, regardless of whether the studio actually does. [25 Oct 1985, p.C1]

The whole four hours or so of the two films is as handsome a package as France has produced in years. [30 Dec 1987, p.D6]

Though Polyester is mild for John Waters, it remains a film not for everyone. But it is a satire of an energy and breadth rarely seen on today's screens. It is recommended, but only for the strong. [03 Dec 1982, p.D1]

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]

The movie is sweet and reflects Disney's usual care, but there's nothing in it to match that title. [23 June 1989, p.H11]

There are not as many jokes as a 95-minute movie needs, however, and most of the good one-liners are doled out to the supporting players rather than to Dangerfield, who goes ahead and rolls his eyes anyway. He's a good sport about it, but his fans are going to wish instead for one of those "concert" movies, such as the ones that showcase Richard Pryor. And those without an abiding affection for Dangerfield are going to wonder what the rest of us have been laughing about. [23 Aug 1983, p.C5]