Dave Kehr

John Badham, a last-minute replacement on the project, impresses with his Spielberg-inflected direction of the young actors and his efficient management of competing plot levels. But much of the credit should go to Lawrence Lasker, Walter F. Parkes, and Walon Green, whose screenplay deftly links the boy's sexual and moral maturation with a similar development on the part of the computer, thus accomplishing the thematic goal of “humanizing” technology that all the video-game movies—and video games themselves—have been striving for.

Sluggish, repetitive, and strangely timorous, with little of the zap and imagination of the Pythons' television work.

Though the costumes are beautifully designed, the chateau locations carefully chosen and the dialogue full of curling locutions, something cloddish and naive still comes through in Frears' direction, and not only because he can seldom get his shots to match. [13 Jan 1989, Friday, p.A]

It's a highly stylized, roaringly dynamic action film that shuns plot and characterization in favor of a crazy iconographical melange—it's like the work of a western punk trucker de Sade...The climactic chase, with its deft variation of tempo and point of view, is a minor masterpiece.

The action and sentiments are familiar to the point of cliche, and there isn't much life in Gillian Armstrong's academic direction—she keeps pushing ideas over events, and meanings over emotions. But Judy Davis, as a teenage girl who dreams of transcending her rural background to become a cultivated, independent woman, grants the film much charm and passion.

Although the film is fast and consistently clever, it is more deeply flawed than any other Hitchcock film of the period, failing to find a thematic connection between its imaginative set pieces.

For those looking for a vacation from the irony and the cruelty that have invaded so much of American popular culture, this scruffy little Indian film is a delightful getaway.

Lawrence Kasdan's 1981 noir fable is highly derivative in its overall conception, but it finds some freshness in its details. All in all, this evokes the spirit of James M. Cain more effectively than the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice did.

Penny Marshall, the sitcom actress ("Laverne and Shirley") turned filmmaker ("Big," "Awakenings"), manages to make even such elementary material seem labored and phony. The film, which was shot in and around Chicago last summer, is a major disappointment.

A rueful, reflective companion piece to "Born to Lose."

Made in 1937 by a relatively young and innocent Alfred Hitchcock, this British feature tends to be overshadowed by The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, but actually it’s only the uncharismatic casting that holds it back from being one of the most entertaining of Hitchcock’s English films.

Well-intentioned tripe, directed with made-for-TV solemnity by John Korty.

This story of a party girl (Audrey Hepburn) in love with a gigolo (George Peppard) allows Edwards to create a very handsome film, with impeccable Technicolor photography by Franz Planer. [Review of re-release]

The sinister mise-en-scene is compromised only by a few overripe lines from screenwriter Steve Shagan, and Reynolds reveals himself as an actor of depth and complexity.

There is enough intelligence and craftsmanship in the execution of Hoosiers to make it seem, if not exactly fresh, at least respectably entertaining. [27 Feb 1987, Friday, p.A]

A strong and subtle horror film.

The picture has its moments of chilling insight, though essentially it is one more quaint early-70s stab at an American art cinema that never materialized.

Roemer's comic style draws brilliantly on the '60s vein of twitchy psychological realism first explored by Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and his humor is backed by a fine eye for sociological detail. [16 Feb 1990, p.C]

This is a uniquely plausible portrait of life in England, yet its appeal isn't limited to social realism—it also has a twist of buoyant fantasy and romance.

Zuniga's support is winningly low-key.

Sid & Nancy is a movie that features head-bashings, drug overdoses, stabbings and a more-or-less constant round of pointless, stupid violence, and yet its most prominent quality is its sweetness. This is a love story--an unlikely, perverse, disturbing love story, but a genuine one.

From his long experience in television, [Reiner] has learned how to create characters with just enough depth to hold together but not so much that they become too individualized, too stubbornly complex. [12 July 1989, Tempo, p.1]

Boys N the Hood wants to be “The Learning Tree'' and “Super Fly'' at once, an ambition that doesn't seem quite honest. [12 July 1991]

Rudolph’s off-center characterizations and looping dramatic rhythms keep the tone complex and varied, and the film has a lovely choreographed quality that’s only slightly marred by some indifferent cinematography.

A film of honorable ambitions severely compromised by a creeping show-biz phoniness.

Warren Beatty's shapely 1981 epic, based on the life of radical journalist John Reed, is a stunningly successful application of a novelistic aesthetic—a film that makes full and thoughtful use of its three-and-a-half-hour length to develop characters, ideas, and motifs with a depth seldom seen in movies.

Postwar Disney (1953) and not quite up to snuff. Disney's depersonalizing habit of putting different teams in charge of different sections of the story really shows up here, with work ranging from the flat and cloying (the animation of Peter himself) to the full-bodied and funny (Captain Hook and his alligator).

The movie is never less than entertaining, but it fails to satisfy—it gives us too little of too much. Oddly, much of its pleasure is in the acting, which up to this point hadn't been Carpenter's strong suit: Donald Pleasence, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton offer excellent turns.