Bill Cosford

The bad guys are genuinely creepy, the victims likable enough to engage sympathy, and the conflict among the the crooks a kind of wild-card element. If they still made "film noir," the brooding crime fiction of Hollywood in the '40s and '50s, it would look something like this. You have to feel good for Elmore. [7 Nov 1986, p.D2]

The Natural is dense with Boys' Life stories and grand heroics, and it sometimes wanders from black comedy to serious icon-bashing and back again. But mostly it's good fun. At the end, everyone in the audience is swinging imaginary bats. It's a great movie for summer. [11 May 1984, p.D1]

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]

FernGully -- The Last Rainforest is pretty much what you'd expect, only better. It's an animated feature aimed straight at kids and bulging with environmental consciousness, well made and just scary enough to get its point across. [10 Apr 1992, p.G5]

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]

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]

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]

Largely devoted to whatever laughs may be coaxed from the sound of a freshman belching and the sight of some mighty mature-looking coeds removing their blouses. There's some nose-picking, too, but not enough to save the picture. [20 July 1984, p.D6]

We hear a lot about the great hunger for "wholesome" films, but it is rare that one is successful; wholesomeness and treacle seem to have become confused in the Hollywood mind. The Man From Snowy River is different. It's a lesson in how such films should be made. [26 Jan 1983, p.B8]

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]

Tootsie is full of good movie writing, and such are its pleasures that you wonder early on why all comedies can't be this good. The problem is that it's hard to do; the trick is that Tootsie makes it look easy. [17 Dec 1982, p.D14]

Carpenter keeps it sweet. This means muting his fabled skills as an "action" director in favor of plumbing the cutes, and it means that Starman isn't the grown-up entertainment that it could have been. But it's not your everyday romance, either, and it's hard to hate. [14 Dec 1984, p.18]

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]

It throbs with innocence; like prom night itself, it's an instant good memory. And like its creator, the always surprising John Waters, it's sideshow weird. They don't make 'em like this anymore. They never did, either. [6 Apr 1990, p.G5]

B-movies are the great anchor of American film. They're what we do best. And Night of the Comet, like Blood Beach and The Howling before it, honors the form even as it fails to transcend it. Things go bump in the night, characters exchange improbable dialogue and a good time is had by all even as the world comes to an end. [28 Nov 1994, p.B6]

It does contain some curiously overwrought dialogue. People say "Go for it!" a lot, but then Louden will observe, with the bright eyes of a man on the edge of a modest revelation: "The nice thing about working out all the time is that you have a lot of nocturnal emissions." Don't laugh; this line actually stirs something deep inside the heroine, and Carla's eyes, like the sensibilities of an entire audience out in the seats, go suddenly, irretrievably soft. [16 Feb 1985, p.C7]

So Woody Allen has turned nostalgic for at least a movie. He remembers the old days. He knows it's a cliche to think of those old days, whenever they were, as simpler, sweeter times. But Allen can turn the cliche on its head, and convince us that they were indeed, if not more innocent, more interesting times. And not just for him. [30 Jan 1987, p.D1]

Chained Heat is your basic visit to the snakepit, with a few twists. One is the presence of Linda Blair, as the innocent (she's in for vehicular homicide, "an accident," which makes her cell-hardened fellow inmates snicker with anticipation). Another is that rarely in the history of either movies or the penal system have prison officials and guards been seen to be quite this despicable. [30 May 1983, p.D5]

So TRON is an adventure story, with the requisite (and understated) love triangle at its heart. But it is also a story of remarkable special effects, and this is the stuff you haven't seen before. [09 July 1982, p.C1]

Frears displays a complete mastery of the mechanics of a thriller, such that his movie is terrifying even when it pauses for breath. [08 Feb 1985, p.D8]

What Hunter does is to re-create, starting from the moments after the crime has been committed, the milieu in which its horrifying aftermath might plausibly have taken place. Without violence or suspense, River's Edge is horrifying. [29 May 1987, p.D5]

Perhaps because we see so few musicals at all, the Streisand model seems welcome on any terms. But there is also a great deal of warmth in the picture, and it has what one-man shows do when they are working right: It has conviction, and a sense of the artist's vision. This movie was not made by committee, and hence it is free in a way that few American films are. [09 Dec 1983, p.D12]

Lee is better at topical parody than he is at intimate character drama, at least so far. Another is that movies about jazz are never very good, and Spike Lee, talented as he is, couldn't do much to change that. [03 Aug 1990, p. G5]

It's like an afternoon at the quarter slots -- lots of effort, small payoff. [11 Oct 1982, p.B6]