Bill Cosford

Richard Mulligan attempts to provide comic relief for the comedy, in the role of a grizzled archangel, but it's a thankless task. The most interesting element of the film is its premise. [26 July 1985, p.D8]

It's fluffy stuff, lovingly made and instantly forgettable. [20 May 1988, p.5]

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]

No one creates fantasy like George Lucas, and there's nothing quite like a big, cornball fantasy to start the summer. This one is the biggest yet, and it is hard to imagine anyone not being entertained by it. It is, as we used to say around the galaxy a long time ago, a tour de force. [25 May 1983, p.D1]

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]

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

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]

My Favorite Year moves from bad joke to bad joke, but it does move. [08 Oct 1982, p.D9]

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]

Porky's Revenge is just what you'd think it is, only not as good. And folks, when a filmmaker promises a cheap, quick and dirty sex comedy and can't deliver, that's disappointment. [26 March 1985, 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]

Schrader, one of this country's most literate filmmakers, can be a show-off, and there are times in The Comfort of Strangers when we're more aware of style than story -- this piece is impeccably tailored, and it looks awfully good even when it isn't making sense. [17 May 1991, p.G11]

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]

Occasionally, this Bounty seems about to soar; the scene in which the ship first makes land at Tahiti, all throbbing drums, bare breasts and hooting sailors, is wonderfully rich if no less cliched. At other times, as when the Bounty leaves calm water for a gale in a split-second cut, the film seems almost amateurish. The rest of it occupies the middle ground between ho-hum and grand -- sure to disappoint those knowledgeable about the early films, still likely to engage those with two hours to kill. [05 May 1984, p.C5]

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]

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

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]

It's such a pleasure in so many ways that one feels like yelling, "Welcome back." Forget Scarface, all is forgiven. Body Double reminds us what it's like to be in the presence of an original, and that does not happen often at the movies, these days or any days. [27 Oct 1984, 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 final scene is so foul that even ya-hoos have trouble mustering much applause; it's the kind of film that makes you feel dirty. As for Bronson, whose box-office appeal has faded as the viciousness of his films has increased, Ten to Midnight is a kind of milestone: It's time to write him off. [22 Mar 1983, p.B5]

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

Craven packs routine teen-confrontation material into the plot as filler, and still has trouble getting to 90 minutes. His ending is contrived and nonsensical even by the standards of the form. [14 Oct 1986, p.B7]

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]

The Madonna that Keshishian has caught on film is as interesting for her ambition -- love me , desire me -- as any other quality. [17 May 1991, p.G5]

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]

A movie about lunatics with chainsaws that is neither funny nor frightening. [25 Aug 1986, p.C5]