Dave Kehr

Using a style heavily indebted to music videos - lots of fast cutting, odd angles and gratuitous camera movements - Hopkins keeps the energy level up, though his manner is a bit too choppy to keep all of the diverse elements together. [11 Aug 1989, p.B]

Little remains of the original but its weakest element - its overelaborate intrigue - and Hackford seems only to scramble it further.

Taking off from the format of a typical teenage sex comedy, Brickman deepens the characters and tightens the situations, filming them in a dark, dreamlike style full of sinuous camera movements and surrealistic insinuations. Brickman found a tone I hadn't encountered previously - one of haunting, lyrical satire.

Taylor Hackford directed, with occasional sharp, manic bursts, but the film is sluggish and sloppy overall, burdened with a dismally redundant plot line.

Insistently grotesque, relentlessly misanthropic and spectacularly tasteless, Death Becomes Her isn't a film designed to win the hearts of the mass moviegoing public. But it is diabolically inventive and very, very funny.

It's quite funny at times, and the expert direction is never less than vigorous, though in retrospect it seems to have marked the end of Meyer's most appealing period—his comic spirit was more expansive before he learned the word camp.

Redeemed a bit by Adrien Joyce’s Preston Sturges-inspired screenplay, Nichols’s film is nonetheless as unfunny as Carnal Knowledge, and just as vicious.

A shaky, uncertain film that nevertheless touches a few raw nerves.

Complex, knotty and at times even uncomfortable; its world has a weight and heft that makes its ultimate romanticism seem genuinely transcendant, genuinely magical. [14 April 1989]

Theory of Flight follows the standard inspirational formula. [23 Dec. 1998, p.43]

Eternal damnation to the wretch at Universal who printed the opening titles over the most brilliant establishing shot in film history—a shot that establishes not only place and main characters in its continuous movement over several city blocks, but also the film's theme (crossing boundaries), spatial metaphors, and peculiar bolero rhythm.

Desperately, depressingly in thrall to the Farrelly formula.

On the one hand, the action stuff is surprisingly imaginative and well filmed; on the other, the characters are the usual bunch of self-parodic dodoes that the post-Spielberg action cinema has accustomed us to, so it's impossible to believe in the situations anyway.

Revels in directorial assertiveness, including an omniscient narrator and an intrusive use of slick, magazine-style graphics to identify characters and spell out slogans.

It could be [Lubitsch's] finest achievement, and it's certainly one of the most profound, emotionally complex comedies ever made, covering a range of tones from satire to slapstick to shocking black humor.

It's a good character for Dangerfield, one that veers him away from the “I don't get no respect” pathos that comes too easily to him, and enough attention is paid to the minimal plot to integrate Dangerfield's classically constructed one-liners into something like a dramatic situation. This is what they mean by “a good vehicle.”

An original and insinuating black comedy from Winnipeg, Canada, where something very strange seems to be going on. The pastiche is nearly perfect, played with an utter sincerity that makes it impossible to tell just where the jokes are coming from.

Woody Allen's first film as a director, in which he plays Virgil Starkwell, Public Schmuck Number One. This ragged collection of gags and sketch fragments was reportedly pieced together from an incoherent mass of footage by ace film doctor Ralph Rosenblum.

Elvis made a few better films (including Peter Tewksbury’s The Trouble With Girls and Don Siegel’s Flaming Star), but none that drew so well on the bad-boy side of his personality.

It's meant to be open, heartwarming and real, but beneath its often attractively performed surface, the clichés are grinding as heavily as in any ''Rambo'' picture [21 Oct 1988]

Held back throughout by the self-conscious, overly explicit dialogue and the judgmental, moralistic undertone that throbs throughout.

There are several solid laughs and some excellent supporting performances. But this is a film to be wary of.

Altogether, an unusually honorable achievement in a form (the remake) where originality is a dirty word.

I don't find the film light or joyful in the least—an air of primal menace hangs about it, which may be why I love it.

Dean's alienation is perfectly expressed through Ray's vertiginous mise-en-scene: the suburban LA setting becomes a land of decaying Formica and gothic split-levels. An unmissable film, made with a delirious compassion.

Strains for a jazzy, Oliver Stone-ish look, but at its heart it is a placid and conventional moral tale about the dangers of wandering too far off the pathway.

Combining the sports obsessiveness of "SNL's" venerable "Da Bears" routine with the buddy bonding of Wayne and Garth, Mike and Jimmy might make great sketch material. But as the central characters in a feature film, they wear thin quicker than a cheap suit. [19 Apr 1996, p.65]

Working in broad, often melodramatic strokes, Mr. Allouache paints a deeply pessimistic portrait of his native country.

Gregory La Cava's improvisational style received its highest critical acclaim for this 1936 film, a marginally Marxist exercise in class confusion during the Depression.

George Cukor gives it the royal treatment with a splendid supporting cast.

Blake Edwards's 1962 film is largely a formal study, a good excuse to explore some offbeat locations in San Francisco (including Candlestick Park at the climax). Nice work, but Edwards has done better.

One of the most emotionally devastating movies of the decade.

While "Dumb and Dumber" possessed a bracing, genuine vulgarity, this new film is more often merely disgusting as it piles up jokes involving various bodily discharges and the unpleasant things that can be done with them.

None of the characters has been written with any personality, and none of the actors succeeds in discovering any. [05 Mar 1993]

Spectators will indeed sit open-mouthed before the screen, not screaming but yawning.

Ms. Kampmeier never brings her themes into tight focus. At one moment, the film is a detailed but familiar attack on smothering small towns and oppressive family structures; at another, it's a fable of feminist empowerment with an oddly fervent religious background.

The Coens have technique and they have taste; what they do not yet have is the ability to move beyond their handsome imagery to the human center of their material. [5 Oct 1990, Friday, p.C]

Provides more than enough sentimental catharsis for a satisfying evening at the multiplex.

This thriller draws its effectiveness less from the intelligence of the direction (by Terence Young) than from the unbridled sadism of the concept: Audrey Hepburn is a blind woman in unknowing possession of a doll stuffed with pure heroin. Alone in her New York apartment, she's terrorized by a gang of thugs that includes slobbering psycho Alan Arkin and smooth-talking Richard Crenna.

No one member of the ensemble cast stands out, though one member stands effectively outside it - cult director Sam Raimi, of the "Evil Dead" series, doing a hilariously deadpan Jerry Lewis imitation as Stick, the camp's addled handyman. Just what Raimi is doing in the film is a mystery explained only by the press notes: turns out that Binder and Raimi are old Tamakwa campmates. [23 Apr 1993, p.C2]

Strange, funny and powerfully moving… Burton has found a way to move through camp to emotional authenticity, to communicate-through a concentration of style and an innocence of regard-a depth and sincerity of feeling that his deliberately (and often, comically) flat characters could not summon on their own. [14 Dec 1990, Friday, p.C]

Directed by John Schlesinger, Eye for an Eye is a repellent, cynical piece of work a movie that exploits violence while pretending to deplore it. [12 Jan 1996, p.33]

A talky, plodding film that seems likely to bore children and adults in equal measure. [11 Dec 1992, p.B2]

The American distributor of John Woo's amazing Hong Kong feature, The Killer, is taking the easy way out and selling the picture as camp. But this movie is no joke: It's one of the most intense, passionate pieces of filmmaking you are ever likely to see. [10 May 1991, p.H]

Jetsons: The Movie is a throwaway; with a little effort, it might have been something else. [6 July 1990, p.C]

A beautiful example of Chaplin's ability to turn narrative fragments into emotional wholes. The two halves of the film are sentiment and slapstick. They are not blended but woven into a pattern as eccentric as it is sublime.

As long as Hughes is content to provide a simple, flexible format for Candy, Uncle Buck is very entertaining. Hughes seems to have relaxed his usual controlling, compulsively tidy style, taking full advantage of the improvisational talents of his star.

The looniest movie of the season and also one of the most engaging. [7 Nov 1988]

Half the film passes while Pierson fumbles with the exposition—setting up an intricate internecine war for control of a Gypsy clan—and then he fumbles the action. Pointless, messy, rambling; no atmosphere and no energy.

In these risk-averse times, it is a pleasure to see a film that fails by attempting too much. Frustrating and demanding as it may be, La Commune (Paris, 1871) is essential viewing for anyone interested in taking an exploratory step outside the Hollywood norms.

The silliness still outweighs the steaminess. [1 May 1990, p.2]

Very well edited by Laura C. Murray and set to an effective score by the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, People Say I'm Crazy is a small film but an extremely affecting one.

Prelude to a Kiss is an exquisite film that will long stand on its own. [10 Jul 1992, p.C]

Michael Ritchie keeps his dead-end cynicism in check and produces a genuinely funny comedy about a Little League team managed by a lovably drunken Walter Matthau. Sometimes Ritchie goes too far in avoiding the family-movie cliches the subject invites and indulges in some pointless vulgarity, but all in all, it's one of his best films.

Robert Wise’s direction is no more accomplished here than in The Sound of Music or any of his later big-budget projects, but Boris Karloff in the title role is surprisingly subtle—at times.

The picture is obsessed with strength and the use of physical force, though its attitudes are often slippery.

The definitive road movie (1958), the well from which all the genre’s subsequent blessings flow.

Stanley Donen's follow-up to Charade is not quite the tour de force the earlier film was, but even with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren standing in for Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, it's a slick and satisfying entertainment.

With its general spirit of tabloid scandalmongering and frequent cutaways to an oddly enhanced Melanie Griffith in scanty panties, the point of reference seems less Victorian fiction than Victoria's Secret.

Miriam Hopkins, of the original cast, is around to lend a sense of continuity to the remake, but Wyler still seems unable to confront the material. This is Mature, Adult drama, and hence something of a bore.

She (Baur) has clearly earned the trust and respect of her subjects, the first qualification for any responsible documentarist, and they have repaid her with an intimate glimpse into their singular lives.

Might have been better off as a documentary, with less of Mr. Eyre's uninspired dramatics and more of his sense of observation and outrage.

Though much of Naked Lunch is flip, hip and hilariously funny, it never wanders far from a profoundly melancholic undertone - Cronenberg's unshakable sense of loneliness, isolation and anxiety. [10 Jan 1992]

It may be questionable history (though the film is anything but jingoistic), but it is superb filmmaking, personal and vigorous.

The film is very proud of itself, exuding a stifling piety at times, but it works as well as this sort of thing can, thanks to accomplished performances by Fredric March, Myrna Loy, and Dana Andrews, who keep the human element afloat. Gregg Toland's deep-focus photography, though, remains the primary source of interest for today's audiences.

This is a tiny, vulnerable, rather treacly film at heart, one that would probably float away were it not for Ms. Rue's generous presence.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is anything but light, though it very nearly is unbearable.

Too soft, too indistinct and too deliberately unambitious to rouse strong feelings one way or the other. It occupies two hours of your time, then melts without a trace. [21 Nov 1990, p.C1]

It's easy to drift away from the story and become absorbed in Minnelli's impossibly delicate textures, but there is a little something here for everybody.

Milius has nothing to say: this 1982 film only hints at the romantic heroics of "The Wind and the Lion" and has none of the personal quality of "Big Wednesday."

Apted's tedious, literal-minded approach doesn't come close to solving the problems of a knotty, best-seller plot—the characters are reduced to telling each other what happened. Some action-movie slam-bang would have been more satisfying, if ultimately no more coherent.

Based on the comic strip created in 1936 by Lee Falk, The Phantom is a handsomely produced, numbingly impersonal adventure film that fails to do anything new with the format. [7 June 1996, p.49]

The visual style--the orange-and-blue color scheme, the elegant 'Scope compositions, the graceful tracking shots, and the shrewd use of shallow focus--has been reproduced almost perfectly from John Carpenter's original, yet the wit and intelligence are gone.

George Stevens, a tireless moralizer and part-time embalmer of American myths (Shane), directed this melodramatic adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy, and what does not seem facile in it seems overwrought.

You can see what an impact sound must have had in 1927, because it certainly wasn't the movie that made this production a phenomenon...It's ragged and dull until the magical moment when Jolson turns to the camera to announce, “You ain't heard nothin' yet”—a line so loaded with unconscious irony that it still raises a few goose bumps.

A Walk in the Clouds might have been helped by a more charismatic starring couple. They lack the character to stand up to such veteran scenery chompers as Quinn and Giannini. Instead, Reeves and Sanchez-Gijon seem like quivering Bambis in a lion's den. [11 Aug 1995, p.37]

The extraordinary child actress Ana Torrent (Cria) made her debut here at the age of five. Much in the film is derivative, but Erice excels in precise evocations of childhood feelings.

Verhoeven does not explore the dark side, but merely exploits it, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Director Taylor Hackford shapes some engaging performances (the surly, withdrawn Baryshnikov of the early scenes is an intriguing figure) but never extricates himself from the plot machinery; this 1985 feature takes off only in the brief but well-filmed dance sequences.

The performers never find the right spin on the dialogue, and DeSimone never finds the right rhythm in his pacing, to make these deliberate cliches take off into comedy. A stodgy literalness in DeSimone`s approach suffocates the joke.

Has a great deal going for it. [16 October 1998, p. 57]

A lively, well-made schlock thriller that will doubtlessly be forgotten in two weeks, but in the meantime should provide a few pleasant evenings for fans of the genre.

Comedy doesn't have to be refined or original to be entertaining, but it ought to have a little flair. The gags of this "Academy" are blunt and literal, delivered without the careful set-ups or rhythms that, in the hands of a Laurel and Hardy, can make physical comedy into its own kind of poetry. [22 Mar 1988, p.C3]

The integrity of his performance overcomes the formlessness of the narration, turning this loose study into something solid and affecting.

Despite a strong cast, an exceptional performance by Tom Hanks and several strong moments, Punchline never makes the transition from concept to movie. Directed and written by David Seltzer ("Lucas"), it's a film that must strain mightily to cast its promising but vague subject-stand-up comedy- into dramatic terms, and it dips more than once into soapy contrivance. [30 Sept 1988, p.A]

Pretty silly. The Hot Spot certainly is, and it's occasionally quite entertaining for it, though the picture never really achieves a dimension beyond that of a Playboy Party Joke. [26 Oct 1990, Friday, p.I]

John Cromwell, an excellent filmmaker in other circumstances (The Fountain, Since You Went Away), doesn’t have the taste for extremes that film noir requires; he softens the emotions and dims the motivations.

It isn't easy when you're up against the likes of Reed, writer Graham Greene, and producer David O. Selznick, but Welles still manages to dominate this 1949 film, both as an actor and as a stylistic influence. What's missing is the Welles content.

Ms. Moreau, still an imperious presence at age 75, makes no effort to look or sound like Duras -- this is one sacred monster stepping in for another.

Light years ahead of Randal Kleiser's 1978 original, this 1982 sequel employs the Shakespearean marriage plot so beloved of classic musicals, in which two mismatched couples are straightened out and the songs express the moral distinctions of love and sex.

Without exaggerating their lovability or condescending to their foolishness, Mr. Siegel makes vivid, likable people out of his three protagonists as they affect one another and are affected in turn.

Neil Diamond's remake of the 1927 Jolson vehicle isn't very good, but neither is it the vacuous, sentimental ego trip it's been painted as.

This is Middle-aged Sherlock Holmes in schoolboy drag, and the audience is expected to chuckle appreciatively as the old material is trotted out.

It's a perfectly competent film, but the title quantity is the one thing this dry and earnest movie hasn't got.

A photographer for magazines like Vanity Fair and GQ, as well as a veteran director of commercials, Mr. Jones brings a trained eye to this, his first documentary. The low gray skies of Chicago prove once again to be a boon to photography, and the city has seldom looked better than it does here, in its chilly, minimalist beauty.

As a director, Mr. Ratliff wisely rejects the temptation to make fun of his subjects, most of whom seem to believe sincerely that they are doing the work of God.

It has a lack of ambition and energy that is almost total: It's the most this movie can do to roll over and ask for a little more lotion on its back. [22 July 1987]

I can't remember another film that took so little care with the details of ambience: the cruddy sets and flat, underworked sound track drain any sense of life from the project, to the point where it looks like the cheapest kind of TV—canned theater.

This is compelling stuff, but there is something deeply distracting in the use of recreated material.

Walking Tall has no more fat on it than the Rock himself, a hulking yet curiously ingratiating presence who seems the most likely candidate to replace Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as America's favorite living comic book character.

It's one of the most consistently funny films in the “Road” series, though by this late point (1945) the manic unpredictability of the early films has settled slightly into formula.

Although the last part of the film becomes repetitive and slightly confused, Eastwood manages the picaresque plot with skill, and his visuals have a high-charged, almost Germanic quality. Wales also possesses a touching emotional vulnerability that marks another significant step away from Eastwood's often-overcriticized macho image. All in all, a very creditable film.

Boorman deserves credit for trying out some new ideas, even if most of them backfire. Visually, it's fascinating—sort of a blend of Minnellian baroque and Buñuelian absurdity—but the dialogue is childish, the story is incomprehensible, and the metaphysics are ridiculous. Still, an audacious failure is preferable to a chickenhearted success. More than worth a look, if only out of curiosity.

Time hasn’t been terribly kind to this 1931 gangster drama, which suffers more than it should from the glitches of early sound. But James Cagney’s portrayal of a bootlegging runt is truly electrifying (he’d already made three films, but this one made him a star), and Jean Harlow makes the tartiest tart imaginable.

Even the imaginative gore can't hide the musty scent of Todd Farmer's screenplay.

Though ordained from the beginning, the three-way showdown that climaxes the film is tense and thoroughly astonishing.

Cukor doesn't try to hide the stage origins of his material; rather, he celebrates the falseness of his sets, placing his characters in a perfectly designed artificial world. Every frame of this 1964 film bespeaks Cukor's grace and commitment—it's an adaptation that becomes completely personal through the force of its mise-en-scene.

It's all very zany. Occasionally it is even madcap. You would almost be tempted to smile at times, albeit weakly, if it weren't for Mr. Miike's habit of pounding home every joke with exaggerated reaction shots.

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.

Prince of Darkness is a real tour de force, and a welcome return.

Alan Rudolph redreams the dream of film noir in this dense, beautifully executed, highly stylized romantic fantasy.

Fawcett isn`t half bad--she works hard and doesn`t commit any egregious technical faults--but she doesn`t have the resources to give her slimly written character a sufficiently commanding inner life, and it`s difficult to get beyond her sunny, fashion-model good looks. It`s another sad case of the clown who wanted to play Hamlet.

Starts to seem less like a political documentary than a one-sided "Battle of the Network Stars," with the younger generation clearly winning the charisma challenge.

A tedious, not-at-all titillating exploitation film.

It is enough of an act of optimism just to raise the specter of heroic nobility, something that Virgil Bliss accomplishes with subtlety and poignancy.

The definitive Ben Hecht screenplay.

If the film's diffidence is its greatest charm, it is also, in the end, its greatest limitation-it's a movie that seems afraid to declare itself, to make the big move that might propel it from the pleasant to the memorable. [03 Aug 1990]

It's a mad whirl, and Rodman his hair changing color like a traffic light seems right at home in it. [4 Apr 1997, p.49]

Stylistically it’s one of Ozu’s purest, most elemental works: no camera movement, very little movement within the frames, and hardly any apparent narrative progression. Appreciating Ozu is a matter of temperament—for some, his films are unbearably dull; for others, they are works of a unique serenity and beauty.

The movie is more interesting than achieved: it's the most forthright statement of the transference theme in Hitchcock's work, but it's also the least nuanced.

Still Robert Altman's best moment, this 1971 antiwestern murmurs softly of love, death, and capitalism.

The tear-jerking is so determined and persistent that your ducts feel as if they'd been worked over with a catheter. But despite its great length, the film never makes sense of its central relationship, between Jon Voight's washed-up prizefighter and Faye Dunaway's chichi fashion designer.

The new film does little but repeat the gags and situations of the first movie, with a slight change of venue. [20 Nov 1992, p.A]

Although Rafelson backs off a bit from the implications of his drama with a climax that substitutes surprise for suspense (and makes the film's serious plot problems rise abruptly to the surface), Black Widow remains a haunting artifact, a film that springs, rich and strange, from a personal night world. [6 Feb 1987, p.AC]

Raffill and Steve Feke take credit for the original screenplay, though Steven Spielberg might have a different opinion. [15 Aug 1988, p.2]

Kaufman wants to be bold in his depiction of lovemaking, but he keeps copping out, cutting away from the deed to such time-worn metaphors as booming bongo drums, pots that boil over on stove tops and African dancers gyrating wildly. Were Kaufman's frankness ever to equal the "passion and honesty" he praises in Miller's work, the film would merit at least an NC-21, if not 41. [05 Oct 1990, p.I]

Whether he's working in nonfiction or science fiction, Mr. Cameron remains an artist of great instinctive power. In Ghosts of the Abyss, he uses every means of probing that modern science has put at his disposal -- electronic, mechanical, sonic -- only to find that the tragic reality of the Titanic, its myths and its meanings, remain tantalizingly beyond his reach.

A fine, freewheeling musical.

The French original was a clever Hitchcock homage with a murder at its center. For reasons unknown, the murder plot has been dropped from the remake (though a few confusing traces of it remain), which leaves Wicker Park without much real urgency to drive its extremely contrived plot.

Requires a bit more energy and originality to set it apart from the run of the indie pack.

A frightening and consistently inventive horror story... It's busy on the surface and empty in the center, but somehow it works.

If only director Nicholas Meyer had grasped the implications of his tale more fully and enthusiastically, this might have become a classic piece of cornball SF poetry, but as it stands the tepid acting and one-set claustrophobia take a heavy toll.

A dark, brutal, exhilaratingly violent film, blending comedy and horror in a manner that suggests Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun.

It’s a funny film, and it’s even charming in a shaggy way, but there isn’t a light moment in it—Cassavetes demands that comedy be played as passionately as drama.

Like his father, Mr. Brown has the magical ability to take his public on a two-hour vacation. It's the next best thing to being there, and you don't need to worry about sand in your beer.

Cast against type as a sleazy psychopath in John Schlesinger's Pacific Heights, Michael Keaton seems to be having a very good time - a much better time, probably, than the ticket-buying public will have. [28 Sept 1990, p.C]

Jacques Tati’s 1953 masterpiece features some of the funniest and loveliest slapstick imaginable, yet it is also a work of impressive formal innovation, casting off the tyranny of a plotline in favor of loosely associated tones, episodes, and images.

If you can push past the flag-waving, this Warner Brothers effort from 1942 is a superior entry in a dubious genre, the musical biography. Michael Curtiz's direction is supple and intelligent, but what makes the movie is James Cagney's manic blur of a performance.

Though the episodes are monumentally predictable, there's something in the dedication of the cast that maintains a minimal interest. [11 Mar 1988, p.L]

One of the best of a bad genre, Franklin J. Schaffner’s Sweeping Historical Romance manages some moderately intelligent historical observations amid its lavishly re-created period decor and the puppy-dog pathos of the two central characters (Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman).

There's not much for the viewer to do during God, Sex & Apple Pie except check off the obligatory plot points -- taking comfort in the thought that as each cliché appears, the film is one step closer to the blessed relief of its closing credits.

The screenplay (by Lewis John Carlino, of The Great Santini) collapses into musty moralizing in the second half, and director John Frankenheimer throws in the towel.

A masterpiece, minimalist cinema at its finest and most complex.

Nothing special, but it's a decent example of a vanished genre—the small character comedy.

By and large Mr. Hoch's portrayals are as harsh and authentic as a police photograph, but an occasional touch of sentimentality creeps in.

The film's frequent longeurs, compulsive over-explicitness and unshakably morose hero seem like so many insistently ''literary'' qualities, ostentatiously laid over a cute, cartoonish vision that suggests not so much Anne Tyler as the affectionate quirkiness of ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show.'' [6 Jan 1989, Friday, p.A]

Weathers turns out to be a disappointingly weak lead whose low-key likability doesn't make up for his lack of anger and drive-crucial attributes for any action hero. And Baxley is surprisingly stingy with his action sequences.

Very little sense of the performers' humanity emerges from behind their stage roles, perhaps because Bogdanovich has directed the supposedly spontaneous dialogue to sound just as forced and theatrical as the scripted lines. [20 March 1992, p.2]

Perhaps the greatest and most revolutionary of Bresson's films, Balthazar is a difficult but transcendently rewarding experience, never to be missed.

An exhilarating update of "Flash Gordon," very much in the same half-jokey, half-earnest mood, but backed by special effects that, for once, really work and are intelligently integrated with the story.

The situation—a mother and daughter switch personalities for a day—is rife with possibilities, but since this 1977 comedy is a Disney film, said possibilities are scrupulously squandered...Not so bad as Disney goes, but it's better left to the kiddies and other forgiving types.

In spite of its many flaws, the film never loses its focus on its fascinating central figure.

David Cronenberg's The Fly is that absolute rarity of the '80s: a film that is at once a pure, personal expression and a superbly successful commercial enterprise. [15 Aug 1986]

In spite of its limitations as art, White Palace is never less than watchable, thanks largely to the resources of its two stars and the dense supporting cast Mandoki has assembled - a cast that includes fast, effective turns from Kathy Bates, Renee Taylor, Eileen Brennan, Jason Alexander and Steven Hill. Mandoki has come a long way from the almost comic mawkishness of his first )feature, "Gaby - A True Story," and though his sentimental streak is never exactly inconspicuous, he has learned to balance it with a well-timed wit. [19 Oct 1990, p.D2]

It's a baffling, unconvincing experience, though it has a few moments of mild charm.

Enjoyable and even exciting at the start, Dog Day Afternoon degenerates into frustration and tedium toward nightfall—an experience no less painful for the audience than for the actors.

Ultimately this is a film of rare and pleasing smoothness—Hollywood as it was meant to be.

A superb entertainment, it also has something to say.

Burt Reynolds showed signs of becoming a very personal filmmaker with this police thriller, his third outing as a director. It has the wistful faith in innocence and the extreme moral outrage of Gator coupled with the subversive infantilism of The End; what Reynolds lacks in technique (which is plenty) is nearly compensated for by the almost embarrassing intensity of his feelings. The context is extremely violent, which makes the intimate moments—between Reynolds and the girl and Reynolds and his buddies—stand out in agonizingly stark relief.

The sheer outrageousness of its attitude is enough to make Heathers a very welcome relief in a field dominated by sanctimonious and second-hand virtue. [31 March 1989]

A decent piece of do-good cinema...Director Norman Jewison stages their confrontations for effectively flashy, immediate effects, though he unnecessarily neglects the action-movie underpinning.

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.

Dawson, though, burrows into his role with all the zeal of a perennial second banana recognizing the opportunity of a lifetime. It's the one naturalistic performance in this cartoonish film, carrying with it the implicit authority of years of firsthand experience shaped, perhaps, by some late-night introspection. [13 Nov 1987, p.B]

Reducing one of the most compelling cultural icons of the century to a comic book character, this $22 million project makes a passable kiddie show, and not much else.

It is a shock and a pleasure to see an American film that doesn't wallow in complacency, but instead suggests—however fleetingly—that disappointment is also a part of life. Curtis is particularly impressive in the strength and maturity she brings to a role written as pure fantasy.

When a movie runs 134 minutes, it's best to keep something in reserve; Lumet does not, and Q&A expires long before it ends. [27 Apr 1990, p.C]

This Frankenfilm comes lumbering out of the laboratory of the Danish director Harald Zwart, any trace of personality surgically removed and replaced by a fully road-tested cliché.

The film runs through most of Leni Riefenstahl's bag of tricks as it builds up a patriotic frenzy, yet the crazed flag-waving would be a lot easier to take if it weren't so clearly a commercial calculation meant to salvage what is otherwise a crass, careless, shamelessly padded film.

The acting is too eccentric and the narrative drive too weak to satisfy fans of the genre, but Herzog's admirers will find much in the film's animistic landscapes and clusters of visionary imagery.

LaLoggia clearly loves his chosen medium: He has a passion for filmmaking-for ferreting out unusual angles, for planning elaborate camera movements, for designing elaborate special effects-that sometimes leads him way over the top. Yet it's the extravagance of his gestures that gives Lady in White its character and imaginative force. [22 Apr 1988, p.A]

As much as the film may try to peddle warmth and solidarity, it remains disturbingly cold and impersonal, limited by the formulaic writing of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White and stymied by Ortega's apparent distance from his cast. [10 Apr 1992]

At the time, its way of wringing thrills from genre conventions at the same time it mocked them seemed imaginative and original; but in the light of Carrie (1976), Obsession (1976), and The Fury (1978), it seems more like a dead end—the mark of a superficial stylist unable to take anything seriously, including his own work.

The enigma not only remains, but, cloaked in Schrader`s mysticism, seems more impenetrable than ever.

Beautifully wrought, darkly funny and finally devastating, My Own Private Idaho almost single-handedly revives the notion of personal filmmaking in the United States. [18 Oct 1991]

The Secret of My Success is crushingly bland. Bland, yes, but somewhat chilling, too--particularly in the way Ross and his screenwriters (Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr. and A.J. Carothers) zero in on their teenage target audience by indulging in the grubbiest of grubby fantasies.

This is fundamentally a recruiting film whose intent is to interest other African-Americans in exploring their spiritual traditions. It displays no real curiosity about its subject except to insist that it is the true path to enlightenment. Mr. Harris's stylistic gifts are quite evident; his reportorial instincts are a bit more muffled.

By no means a bad film, just a disappointingly bland and superficial one.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil is a strange concoction - a bad taste comedy with a big, beating heart. [12 May 1989, p.B]

Foster and McGillis never quite make the transition from ideological mouthpieces to fully developed dramatic figures. [14 Oct 1988, p.C]

As Angelo, Mr. Kirby has a boyish charm, which is probably the best that can be said for this film as well.

There are still some astonishingly tender moments, including looks exchanged between Swayze and Moore that seem magically divorced from this summer of exploding jets, severed limbs and homicidal children. [13 July 1990, Friday, p.D]

Hysteria, however skillfully maintained, should never be mistaken for art-a caution that applies equally to Stone and his subject. [01 Mar 1991]

In the end, about all Arachnophobia has going for it is the irrational fear the title refers to: a pre-existing fear Marshall does little more than exploit. It doesn't take a lot of skill to make people jump when you shove a spider at them. Nor does it really seem fair.

Not quite good enough to jump out of the pack of Asian swordplay movies but is too well crafted to sink into utter anonymity.

The material is simple and irresistible, and Sydney Pollack stages it well (though without transcending the essential superficiality of his talent).

The film shows very little of the nar-rative assurance that has character-ized Jordan's previous work. [21 Nov 1988, p.2C]

Schaeffer thickens the general air of narcissism by directing Parker's Lucy essentially as a female version of himself, with the same puckish sense of humor and undertone of self-pity. Stiller's Bwick is an entertaining invention, an art-world variation on The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince though he, too, turns out to be mainly a foil to Joe's wonderfulness. Clearly, Eric Schaeffer has at least one really big fan. [8 March 1996, p.40]

This film, which tries to use chaos creatively-by shaping it and sculpting it-finally seems little more than a well-filmed mess. [4 Dec 1987, p.B]

Like most of his British films, Blackmail is a sign of things to come rather than Hitchcock at his height, but it shouldn’t be missed.

George Roy Hill's 1969 film moves with steady, stupid grace from oozy sentimentality to nihilistic violence.

For all her prolificacy, Agatha Christie relied too often on one particular plot twist, and as soon as you recognize her old favorite here, the film loses all interest—it has nothing going for it apart from the mystery, which, of course, is no way to make a mystery movie.

Moving without being mawkish, charming without being coy.

Peter Cushing carries most of the ho-hum script as Dr. Van Helsing, though the well-lit color photography, central to the Hammer formula, can't compare with the shadowy magnificence of Nosferatu (1922) or Dracula (1931).

The characters have a fullness and vitality rare in American films of that period, but Towne has so much trouble establishing information visually that the film emerges as choppy, confused, ill-proportioned.

It doesn't display an ounce of planning or simple craftsmanship (the Jamaican locations are photographed to look like the banks of Lake Calumet), but with a cast like that, it can't help but have its moments.

Using telephoto lenses to bring us close to the characters, Techine directs Wild Reeds with an impeccable sense of tempo, unhurried by narrative pressures. The actors seem to find exactly the right, internal rhythm for each scene the leisurely rhythm of people discovering each other and discovering themselves. This is certainly one of the year's best films. [30 June 1995, p.54]

Dr. Giggles strains for the kind of charnel house humor that once was the glory of 1950s horror comics like Tales from the Crypt. But Coto's imagination, like Dr. Giggle's rusty scalpels, isn't all that sharp, and the picture soon peters out into a flat, predictable series of stomach-churning unpleasantries. [26 Oct 1992, p.5C]

Has the sense of gritty, practical politics of a Japanese samurai epic combined with the high-flying stunt work and magical special effects of a Hong Kong romp. Ultimately this film by Yojiro Takita is satisfying on neither level, but not for lack of trying.

City Hall can't decide whether to be melodrama or sociology. In the end, it isn't enough of either. [16 Feb 1996, p.49]

Michael Ritchie's 1985 mystery comedy has the pleasant, modest feel of a Fox B picture from the 30s—a Charlie Chan with a sense of humor... It does make for a decent evening's entertainment.

Assembled by Gene Kelly, it jerks and sputters along through an overedited collection of songs, dances, comedy routines, and dramatic excerpts, with a strong tendency toward camp. Gene should know better.

A thematic analysis can only scratch the surface of this extraordinarily dense and commanding film, perhaps the most intensely personal movie to emerge from the Hollywood cinema.

This dark, melancholic film is a reminder -- never more necessary than now -- of what the American cinema is capable of, in the way of expressing a mature, morally complex and challenging view of the world. [7 Aug 1992]

The punky energy of the earlier films has given way to a self-conscious striving for significance, obscuring Miller's considerable kinetic talents in favor of a lumpy didacticism.

Consistency isn't the chief virtue of Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle, but at its best this ragged satire is bracingly, caustically funny. [27 Mar 1987, p.F-C]

Loses its way in rhetorical excess and blatant sentimentality.

Mr. McElhinney has created a movie that is not without the flaws endemic in low-budget productions but still projects an amazing degree of stylistic assurance and originality.

"Dragon" has an appeal beyond the buffs. Beyond the particulars of biography, it's a timeless human story told with heart and verve.

One of the smartest and funniest films of the year, at least for those who care about its subject. Every regular filmgoer should. Through the story of a talented but naive film school graduate (Kevin Bacon`s Nick Chapman) who suddenly becomes the hottest property in Hollywood, Guest assembles a deadly accurate sociology of the contemporary film industry-and its accuracy makes The Big Picture both hilarious and terrifying.

As written by Randy Feldman and produced by the Batman team of Jon Peters and Peter Guber, Tango & Cash clearly wasn't meant to be interesting. It was meant to be Lethal Weapon-that is, a high-tech, ultra- violent, brain-dead buddy cop movie. In Konchalovsky's hands, however, Tango & Cash is more than interesting. It is, in fact, really weird.

Not first-rank Scorsese, but still impressive.

James Jones's antiwar novel was blandly realized by the usual bunch of Hollywood do-gooders in 1953...Sominex is cheaper and probably safer.

The picture is a rip-roaring melodrama, a tale of lust, murder and revenge, rendered in broad strokes and vibrant hues that make Hollywood Technicolor look almost timid. [12 Apr 1991, p.C]

There is no visible conviction in Penn's staging, but he does have a good time prowling through the cluttered decor (which comes complete with menacing stuffed animals and secret passageways), while coaxing some gaudily entertaining, highly theatrical ham-work from Rubes and McDowell. [06 Feb 1987, p.N]

The Fourth Protocol was a great in-flight read, and it will probably be a great in-flight movie, too-though in a theater it looks a little pale and overextended. [28 Aug 1987, p.FC]

An amiable adventure illuminated at odd moments by some genuine inventiveness. [21 Dec 1986, p.12C]

One of the most technically proficient of David Cronenberg's early gnawing, Canadian-made horror movies, though it lacks both the logic and the queasy sexual subtext that made his still earlier work - "Rabid," "They Came From Within" - so memorably revolting.

Ward, a gruff, amiable presence, has the stuff of an appealing blue-collar hero, but he hasn't got a chance with the feeble setup the filmmakers have given him: he's made the butt of meathead jokes for 60 minutes (as he tries to cope with the rigors of Chiun's training) and then plopped down in the middle of a slipshod intrigue, where his success has more to do with luck than any of the skills he has supposedly mastered.

Like a series pilot, Stand and Deliver has a strong character, a promising situation and not a lot of story-it seems to be setting things up for future episodes.

There is little here to hold the attention of anyone older than 9. For families in search of entertainment, it may be time to find Nemo again.

Wilder trades Cain's sun-rot imagery for conventional film noir stylings, but the atmosphere of sexual entrapment survives.

Michael Mann (Miami Vice) produced this exercise in fascist chic, and it plays like a TV pilot filled out with a few cusswords and strokes of excess violence.

The surprising emotional amplitude of Stakeout, its generosity and conviction, proves that it's still possible to achieve something of value within the tight formulas of commercial filmmaking. It needn't all be "Cobra" and "Lethal Weapon"--not as long as directors like John Badham can find room to move. [5 Aug 1987, p.C3]

Mr. Freundlich's naturalistic sensibility gets in the way of the film's broad fantasy elements, turning what might have been a stylized romp like Robert Rodriguez's "Spy Kids" into something a little too real for comfort.

Proof positive of just how mediocre 70s mediocrity could be—any quasicompetent Hollywood hack of the 40s could have gone to town with this story, but under Yates's direction it merely lurches along, from one predictable danger to another.

Surly, incoherent, and provocatively mysterious.

Where the "Friday the 13th" movies demand nothing less than virginal purity as a condition of living through the last reel, Deepstar Six, which seems intended for a slightly older crowd, is willing to settle for a firm commitment to monogamy. [13 Jan 1989, p.O]

The resulting compromise does not produce a perfect film, but it is a fine record of a classic production and an important reminder of an event that has not stopped echoing in American culture.

Trust seems ultimately a matter of touches-some cute, some surprising, some even fairly expressive, but none more than superficial. [16 Aug 1991]

Like Father Like Son has the cheap, florid look of a rejected television pilot, and the same air of anything-for-a-laugh desperation. [02 Oct 1987, p.J]

Donald Sutherland works small and subtly, balancing Jane Fonda's flashy virtuoso technique.

The film has less to do with politics, women's or otherwise, than with a very conventional notion of the redemptive power of mother love. Which would be all right if director Hal Ashby had managed to mount it effectively—he hasn't though, and the results are dramatically incoherent.

The film feels too formulaic and too familiar to produce the transgressive thrills of early underground work.

Armstrong is usually a strong and original director of actors (her 1979 "My Brilliant Career" launched the inimitable Judy Davis). But here, her taste seems to have deserted her. [31Dec1997 Pg.30]

Cokliss's direction strains for a stylishness it doesn't achieve, yet his fundamentally straightforward style brings out the abstract design of the plot. Is this the first cubist thriller?

A comedy with a curious tone of depressive whimsy. It manages, somehow, to be both aggressively cute and oppressively sordid. [11 Dec 1987, p.G]

Like any good work of popular culture, Rob Reiner's film of Stephen King's best-selling book Misery functions on more than one level.

A tedious, lamebrained horror movie, which begins with the promising premise of a haunted house in the suburbs (poltergeists in the barbecue pit?) and quickly degenerates into a display of pretentious camera angles by director Stuart Rosenberg.

Crimes of the Heart feels random, vague and sluggish. The incidents don't build upon one another, but merely collapse into an undifferentiated heap. [12 Dec 1986, p.A]

It's 88 minutes of solid, inventive music, filmed in a straightforward manner that neither deifies the performers nor encourages an illusory intimacy, but presents the musicians simply as people doing their job and enjoying it.

The film may be a relic now, but it is a fascinating souvenir - particularly in its narcissism and fatalism - of how the hippie movement thought of itself. [Review of re-release]

A Cry in the Dark has been conceived as a director's film-a movie that works through imagery and narrative rhythm, through visual and aural resonance. But when Streep enters a movie (and it isn't something she can help by now) it immediately becomes an actor's film, a movie about performance-her accent, her gestures, her walk. Meryl Streep upstages Ayers Rock. [11 Nov 1988, p.A]

Minnelli's comedy had its serious underpinnings: by the end of the film, a girl had become a woman. By the end of Ms. Gordon's film, the girl is still a girl, but a girl with much cooler stuff, including a stately home, a butler and a cute British boyfriend.

It's the sort of film that can only be watched in stunned disbelief, as it lumbers from one misfired, unpleasant sequence to the next. The nicest thing that can be said about Nothing but Trouble is that there is nothing else like it, thank goodness. [19 Feb 1991, p.7C]

The issues deepen in a subtle, natural way: the film begins as a trifle and ends as something beautiful and affirmative. A classic.

A very minor contribution to the great corpus of Iranian cinema that has emerged in the last 20 years.

Buried somewhere in the screenplay are some Robert Altman-esque satirical intentions, in which the wildly corrupt college football recruitment process is offered as a panoramic image of frenzied American venality. But Bud Smith's broad, colorless direction removes whatever sting the material may once have had, edging the action instead toward sub-"Police Academy" slapstick-flying pizzas, exploding fire extinguishers, mass fist- fights that break out for no discernible reason. [25 March 1988, p.D]

The Witches of Eastwick is filmmaking of a very high order; it's also a great time at the movies.

What the film resembles more than anything else is one of the miniature human-interest profiles that the networks have taken to inserting between the events in their Olympic coverage.

A flat, stagy, artificially cheerful affair that falls far short of the memorably creepy Laurel and Hardy version of 1934.

Alan Pakula's pedestrian 1976 recap of Watergate is a study in missed opportunities.

Hughes invokes the classical unities of time, place, and plot symmetry, yet he trashes his careful structure every time he needs a gag - destroying the integrity of his characters, shattering the plausibility of his situations.

As a screenplay Tequila Sunrise is a very impressive piece of work. But as a movie, it's knotty and confused. [2 Dec 1988, p.B]

The film is at once a sort of Indian "Stella Dallas," which finds the heroine making sacrifice after sacrifice on behalf of her family, and a "Gone With the Wind"-style epic of social change.

Director Robert Zemeckis displays such dazzling cinematic know-how that it's genuinely depressing when this film falls off into the usual self-ridicule.

Unfortunately, Frank Perry's unbelievably ham-handed direction obscures most of what is craftsmanly and pleasant in Isaacs's work, pushing the material toward a smug, sloppy, heavily early-70s satire on the horrors of suburban life. A very mixed bag, but those who've missed a storytelling sense in American movies might want to have a look.

Imagine "Twins" with the Danny DeVito part played by a dog, or "Lethal Weapon" with the mastiff standing in for Mel Gibson. [28 July 1989, p.A]

RoboCop 2 is every bit as sadistic as its 1987 predecessor but considerably less effective.

He's (Marco Filiberti) his own best audience, and Adored is best left to his own enjoyment.

It’s no masterpiece, but it’s certainly something to see.

The writer and director, David Barker, discards the didactic tone of so much American independent filmmaking in favor of a character study that leads to no easy conclusions.

Paul Newman in his first ascendancy, as the favorite antihero of the Kennedy era. Martin Ritt directed, putting a little too much dust in the dust bowl for my taste.

The plotting of this 1978 biopic is contrived, and director Steve Rash's feeling for Buddy Holly's time and place is virtually nil, but Gary Busey's performance is astonishing—less as an interpretation than as a total physical transformation.

This film contains one of Hitchcock's most famous set pieces—an assassination in the rain—but otherwise remains a second-rate effort, as immensely enjoyable as it is.

Generally low-key and likable, thanks mainly to a talented cast.

Though clearly meant as a heartwarmer in the longstanding holiday tradition, the film comes off as strange and sour.

Out of five directors—John Huston, Ken Hughes, Robert Parrish, Joseph McGrath, and Val Guest—only McGrath manages to connect with this brontosaurian James Bond parody.

Spencer Tracy does his cuddly curmudgeon turn as Clarence Darrow; it's a lazy, vague performance, but its wit provides the only crack of light in the film's somber, gray overcast.

The coarse material, from a screenplay by Seth Winston and Michael J. Nathanson, is roughed up even more by Dragoti's abrasive exaggeration, both of performance (there's a terrifying sequence in which Hicks finally gets her long dreamed-of engagement ring and goes into a frenzy of triumph and delight) and of visual style (visits to the office of sinister shrink Wallace Shawn are filmed in weird expressionist off-angles). [14 Apr 1989, p.D]

A mildly amusing Japanese appropriation of 1950's American detective movies.

Mr. Guttenberg's direction of "Cat," is competent and unadorned, bringing out whatever qualities the text possesses -- mainly good-naturedness.

The new film is a fast, funny, engagingly unpretentious 88 minutes that, moving between martial-arts dustups and random satirical jibes, achieves a more successful mix of action and humor than the first. There is plenty for adults here as well as children.