Bill Cosford

This is mildly amusing, and the scenes with Niven -- his last, and reportedly dubbed by impressionist Rich Little when Niven's illness had taken the strength from his voice -- are poignant. But there is no restoring the force that made the earlier Panthers work. [12 Aug 1983, p.C5]

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]

Could Lorenzo's Oil have been better? Easily. Does it still have real power? No question. [22 Jan 1993, p.G4]

It's genuinely terrifying, as scary as it is unexpected. [22 May 1987, p.D5]

Remarkably, director Albert Magnoli is able to use a single moment of melodrama to give this story a measure of depth. And from that point on, Purple Rain is improbably successful at tugging on the heartstrings as well as shaking the rafters. It winds up a love story, and one with power. [27 July 1984, p.D1]

There's power in this story, even if much of it does owe to a greatly sentimentalized time rather than to genuine virtue. In its new, leaner version, Ward's film does seem twitchy at times -- we're not always sure how the characters got to where they are, emotionally or physically. But it's sweet, too. [14 May 1993, p.G4]

That's what's wrong with Sweet Dreams. Its insights into this sudden, shortlived star are no more profound than those of a tabloid expose; it's bad-marriage gossip. [17 Oct 1985, p.B6]

Though there's a scene of racial discomfort (nothing more serious) and a few rather flat-footed references to anti-war feelings back home in Hamburger Hill, the sense of time and place is missing altogether. Hamburger Hill is an all-purpose war movie with the requisite noble message -- war is hell, and futile, too -- but it could be set anywhere. In those parts of the world where local audiences will not accept an American adventure movie with the Vietnamese as vanquished foe (parts of Southeast Asia were shown Rambo with subtitles that portrayed it as a anti-Japanese commando raid from World War II), Hamburger Hill will play with few problems...Unhappily, neither screenwriter Jim Carabatsos (who did Heartbreak Ridge for Clint Eastwood) nor director John Irvin is able to provide the story any tighter focus, either. [28 Aug 1987, p.D1]

The movie is happy and bright and thoroughly nice, and every now and then it's loud and funny and at least as large as life. And it could have been larger, and better. [22 Feb 1983, p.C5]

This is a silly movie, yes. But since it works as a humorous homage for students of Hitchcock and his B-movie masterpiece, and since it works as a high-grade slasher film for the rest of the audience, there's no hating it. In fact, this is the most likable gore film in years. [04 June 1983, p.D4]

Turner's performance is intriguing -- now we know that she can play not only a sexpot (Body Heat) but a sexpot hiding in a career woman's suit-and-tie and posing as a fleshpot. This is pretty interesting. [19 Nov 1984, p.C1]

JFK is staggering in its power. [20 Dec 1991, p.5]

Out of Bounds is a jazzy, raffish looking movie. It flirts with punk. It's also a fundamentalist summer-teen thriller, with two kids on the lam from everyone, and in L.A., too. The movie wants it both ways: stylish, safe. Mostly it's dumb. [28 July 1986, p.D5]

This is a movie that didn't have to be well made --its emotional impact has been assured by the daily news. But Jaffe took care. He made a solid Hollywood movie of a story that is terribly sad. He plays the heartstrings like a virtuoso, and that's not always a bad thing. [07 Feb 1983, p.C6]

It's a dreadful bore. [23 July 1993, p.G5]

This lovely movie, impeccably made in nearly every way, has entirely too much right about it to be resisted. [21 Feb 1986, p.D1]

It's a ridiculous story to be sure, filled with holes and not remotely plausible, but director Mark L. Lester knows enough to keep the speed up, and the dumb stuff is flattened by action. It's the kind of movie in which the audience waits happily for the little heroine to be cornered by villains, all to cheer at the inevitable roast. Lester, at least, is stylish enough to get away with it. [12 May 1984, p.C1]

Lester's film is so clearly about getting even rather than about troubled youth or any other societal problem that it seems, like Death Wish II and a hundred others, a waste of that energy. [16 Nov 1982, p.B4]

After you've seen Dave, go back and watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And be manipulated by a master. [07 May 1993, p.G5]

Giles Walker's direction is TV-slick and the performances predictably smooth. But there is nothing here you haven't seen many, many times before. [12 Nov 1993, p.G18]

There's a delightfully promising premise behind Halloween III -- something's wrong with the kids' masks -- but somehow Wallace gets sidetracked, and the movie wanders away. [30 Oct 1982, p.D5]

Only the quips aren't funny. Not much about the script is amusing at all. Worse, the director, Herbert Ross, who once had a reputation for grace, has been growing clumsier for years and now seems to have lost his timing. [14 Sept 1993, p.E6]

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]

An homage to the original so shabbily made and so witless that we can only hope it disappears into history -- and fast. [06 Apr 1984, p.D1]

The good news is that Aliens is scary and mean and just about everything a fan of the original could want. Bad news? There's a too-campy line of forced dialogue during the climax. And that's about it. This is your grade-A sequel, the movie equivalent of a hot "summer read." Aliens is 137 minutes long, and never drags. A solid hour goes by before there is any action, but the picture is never coy, either. [18 July 1986, p.D1]

As played by the sublimely dazed Keanu Reeves (Ted) and Alex Winter (Bill), the boys are appealing at first, but their witlessness wears thin quickly. So, too, the movie. Ignorance may indeed be a happy state, but you wouldn't want to live there, and even this short visit seems much, much too long. The film acknowledges its empty-headedness early, when the boys meet Sock-rates. [20 Feb 1989, p.C-6]

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]

Ward does manage to pump the film with tension in the climactic, will-the-Indians-beat-the-Yankees sequence, and I found Major League hard to resist in its last 20 minutes or so -- even though it's sappy enough to make Levinson's prettifying of The Natural seem positively dour by contrast. Maybe it's just the season. [7 Apr 1989, p.1]