Dave Kehr

This mild 1984 comedy about a mermaid (Daryl Hannah) who falls in love with a New York City yuppie (Tom Hanks) isn't at all hard to take (John Candy, in a supporting role, is hilarious and original, and Hannah has a pleasant naive charm), but its appeal is based almost entirely on regression—a thematic regression to infancy (now endemic to the American cinema) and a stylistic regression to the most lulling kind of TV blandness. No wonder it's relaxing: it's a lullaby.

The director, Ted Kotcheff, does a good job with the violence and suspense, working well with the wide-screen format, and he seems fully aware of the dark, subversive implications of the material, even if the screenplay doesn't allow him to resolve them successfully.

Sam Wood's direction is limited to forced perspective compositions and hollow, incantatory line readings, but the craggy landscape shines under Ray Rennahan's Technicolor cinematography.

In its brash, enthusiastic tackiness, From Beyond is a show that would do any carnival proud. [27 Oct 1986, p.5C]

Delirious in its excess, but never less than ferociously intelligent and operatically emotional, Underground represents one of those rare, exhilarating moments when an outsize artistic vision is fueled by an apparently unlimited budget. Not to be missed.

There isn't a lucid moment in it (and much of the dialogue is rendered unintelligible by Russell's subversive direction), but it has dash, style, and good looks, as well as the funniest curtain line since Some Like It Hot.

There's some fun potential here, but Marvin's direction is plodding enough to snuff it fairly quickly. Yet Charlie Sheen, promising in his second-banana appearances in Lucas and Pretty in Pink, emerges with his promise intact. Sheen already has the reserved but powerful manner of a Wayne or an Eastwood; with a little more maturity, he could be a contender.

Has everything but a personality. [15 July 1988, Friday, p.A]

The film, too artfully conceived to deliver many overt shocks, often feels long and aimless.

"Damage" is a fruit bowl reduced to a raisin. [22 Jan 1993, p.B]

Though the slow, obvious "Two If By Sea" probably won't do much to advance Bullock's standing as America's current sweetheart, it shouldn't do irreparable damage to it, either. [13 Jan 1996, p.21]

The film embraces proletarian chic but still gets its laughs by abusing waitresses.

Cher plays a footloose, life-loving mother of two fatherless daughters who sports a bouffant hairdo and, at one crucial point, a Mylar mermaid costume that looks as if it were constructed, on a bet by designer Bob Mackie, entirely out of common household objects. The part isn't much of a stretch for America's reigning queen of wacky non-conformity, though it should please her established fans while scraping the nerves of the unconvinced as lightly as possible.

The result was one of Bergman's most haunting and suggestive films.

Well-meaning and hopelessly bland, You'll Get Over It, instantly drops into the tone of didactic realism that rules most television fiction, drawing easy moral lessons from a scrubbed-up simulacrum of everyday, middle-class life.

It's a movie of a thousand pleasures - of glinting insights and sly twists. [19 Aug 1988]

The gags are slighted in favor of John Denver-style homilies, mouthed by John Denver, while the film collapses under the weight of missed narrative connections, the apparent victim of excessive recutting.

There is enough stylish sex and amusing character work (the supporting cast includes Ed Lauter, Mickey Rourke, Joe Pesci, and Helen Kallianiotis) to carry the day.

Despite its flaws, the film remains a fascinating souvenir of a vanished avant-garde.

A very sophisticated, very effective piece of work spun from primal images, with an excellent cast.

Following Bollywood's tradition of excessive generosity, Mr. Gupta tosses in too much of just about everything, resulting in a two-and-a-half-hour film that may exhaust some viewers.

The opening and closing passages of this 1954 adaptation of Lerner and Loewe rank with Vincente Minnelli’s finest, most purely cinematic work—magnificent orchestrations of textures, colors, and movements. What comes between is soggy: a stiff and literal interpretation of the book, filmed on obvious sound stages with a “natural splendor” you could put your fist through.

Perhaps too simple and damply nostalgic to rank with Mulligan’s best work, but still illuminated by an intense identification with adolescent confusion, beautifully communicated by Mulligan’s subjective camera technique.

Only the engaging lightness of the two lead performances prevents the film from falling into utter treacliness.

Not great filmmaking, but indispensable to students of 40s pop culture.

Though we are largely spared Leonard Nimoy's stentorian presence as a performer, we must endure his miscalculations as a director: the dialogue scenes are often hilariously turgid; the action scenes—when Nimoy can be bothered to descend from his podium and film them—are zanily maladroit.

Malle's slow, deliberate direction tends to flatten out the script's emotional rhythms—he's stern and arty where a lighter sensibility might have been more appropriate—but the film is still a shimmering success.

Lewis's long takes and sure command of film noir staples (shadows, fog, rain-soaked streets) make this a stunning technical achievement, but it's something more--a gangster film that explores the limits of the form with feeling and responsibility.