David Ansen

Kloves doesn't want to play by conventional romantic comedy rules, but he hasn't quite figured out what to replace them with. After the first seductive hour, which dances on the edge of comedy and melancholy, The Fabulous Baker Boys grows increasingly frustrating. The audience is enjoying Klove's hip, knowing update of romantic conventions, but the director seems to think he's making "realism": he misjudges the gravity of his story, and his touch becomes more ponderous. [23 Oct 1983, p.84]

There's an inspirational, hang-on-to-your-dreams message, but it comes only at the very end of a long, grim, painful journey. Holiday cheer is not what this movie is offering.

Tom Hanks displays his usual comic finesse as Friday's rule-bending new sidekick, but it's Aykroyd's movie -- what movie there it. The fact is, ma'am, this Dragnet doesn't add up to much. [13 July 1987, p.60]

Unlike some other Landis movies, the harmlessly silly Three Amigos never wanders too far afield in pursuit of a laugh. It's a well-wrought giggle machine. [15 Dec 1986, p.83]

Alternately enrapturing and exhausting, brilliant and glib, this is a "Romeo and Juliet" more for the eyes than the ears. [4 Nov 1996, pg.73]

Clearly nobody will mistake this comedy thriller for a precision-made object -- the scenes seem held together with old shoelaces, and you could land a fleet of 747s through the holes in the plot. But two things are clear: the movie provides a generous helping of laughs, and Whoopi proves herself a screen comedienne with a long and bright future ahead of her. [20 Oct 1986, p.79]

Poor Affleck. He doesn’t just have to singlehandedly save the world from nuclear destruction, he has to erase our memories of Ford and Baldwin. That’s a tall order for any actor, and Affleck, an expert at playing cocky, callow yuppies, just doesn’t have the heft.

Though well acted, and handsomely shot by veteran Adam Holender, Fresh sacrifices real emotion for thriller contrivances. It's a tourist's drive through inner-city hell. [05 Sep 1994, p.69]

There's something decidedly mechanical about this intermittently gripping movie's bleak view of human nature.

Self-conscious to the point of suffocation.

It's no shameless Hollywood weepie, mind you, but an overestheticized, coolly abstracted weepie, which is not necessarily better. [19 Nov 1984, p.132]

The spectacle played out in Levinson's lyrical, dark-hued images never achieves the emotional whiplash the movie's after. Levinson's somber elegance and Toback's volatile aggression don't quite mesh: perhaps what this story needed was the fleet, gaudy ferocity of a Sam Fuller. Bugsy never makes the transition from the filmmakers' heads to the audience's gut.

Jarmusch continues to have a great eye for moody lowlife settings. But his minimalist dramaturgy, so resonant in Stranger Than Paradise, just doesn't give you enough to chew on. His iconoclasm is beginning to look like complacency. It's time this talented filmmaker put more matter in his mannerism. [04 Dec 1989, p.78]

Some snazzy expressionist cinematography and an overkill rock score cannot disguise the fact that Reckless is a totally redundant repackaging of every misunderstood-teen-ager cliche from "Rebel Without a Cause" right up to "All the Right Moves," with which it shares a bleak industrial-town setting. [06 Feb 1984, p.81]

Howard's fifth movie is a keen disappointment. Clever moments and bittersweet touches aside, it leaves you wishing a modern-day Preston Sturges had written the script. [17 Mar 1986, p.82]

In Parker's hands, Billy's story has become a virtuoso horror show-an exercise in emotional manipulation designed not merely to arouse chills but to turn the audience into avengers. Despite the remarkably controlled, honestly conveyed performance of Davis, Billy finally seems far less vivid than his prison friends-Randy Quaid's highly combustible American roughneck, the superb John Hurt's strung-out English junkie. Parker captures their camaraderie well, but he fails to convey any sense of day-to-day prison life-so keen is he to get to the assaultive highlights. [16 Oct 1978, p.76]

Beresford's nice little movie seems so afraid to make a false move that it runs the danger of not moving at all. [07 Mar 1983, p.78B]

Howard redeems this lumpy fantasy. Soft-spoken and mysterious, he presides over the movie with a dangerous, feline grace.

Dahl himself thought his book would be impossible to translate into film, and for all the ingenuity that's been thrown at the screen, perhaps he was right. This overgrown peach never ripens.

This slick, handsomely produced thriller only gets the pulse half racing.

Andy Tennant's flimsy but generally likeable comedy is tailor-made for Smith's cheerfully suave comic style, and the movie goes out of its way to avoid any hint of sleaziness.

The film seems to want us to pin a medal to its own chest.

After the taut and troubling Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World feels like a breather. As usual, you can expect solid, no-fuss craftsmanship, but it's best to set your expectations down a notch.

Escape From New York gets more conventional as it goes along, settling for chases and narrow escapes when it could have had wild social satire as well. Carpenter has a deeply ingrained B-movie sensibility--which is both his strength and limitation. He does clean work, but settles for too little. [27 July 1981, p. 75]

In the antic, melancholy comedy The Royal Tenenbaums, the singular Wes Anderson (“Rushmore”) abandons his native Texas for a storybook vision of New York.

Damon's Ripley is considerably different from the charming sociopath in Patricia Highsmith's novel or the smooth lothario played by Alain Delon in the 1960 French thriller "Purple Noon."

Harron sets the stage expertly, but her lack of a point of view ultimately enervates the movie. [6 May 1996, p. 78]

It’s sad to see such stunning work self-destruct. You walk out haunted by the movie that might have been.

But Smooth Talk, alas, is two movies, and the parts don't mesh. What begins as subdued, plotless realism -- everything up to Arnold's late entrance -- then lurches into Gothic melodrama. Arnold is a literary conceit, Connie is real: thus their portentous mating ritual seems more contrived than inevitable. Smooth Talk feels like an anecdote that's been stretched out of shape. [24 March 1986, p.77]

John August's trickily structured script owes an all too obvious debt to "Pulp Fiction," but Liman's film is more like kiddie Tarantino.

Townsend explodes the industry's tunnel vision in a series of skits, the best of which are explosively funny. His vision of the Black Acting School, run by white instructors ("You, too, can learn to walk black"), captures the movie's message in a raucous nutshell. He also gives us a memorable black street version of a Siskel-Ebert-type critic show called "Sneakin' in the Movies." This supercheapo flick ($ 100,000) is a hit-or-miss affair, but it comes as a tonic: no one's made this movie before. [6 Apr 1987, p.64]

Nice as it is to see these actors again, the trouble with this less than necessary sequel is that it merely attempts to duplicate the experience of the original, with the inevitable loss of freshness. We get geriatric high jinks (instead of break-dancing, a basketball game), another dose of extraterrestrial sex between Steve Guttenberg and Tahnee Welch, saintly Antareans in peril, deathbed scenes and another spaceship liftoff. As the man once said, deja vu ain't what it used to be. [29 Nov 1988, p.87]

Penn's eye for landscapes is stunning, and his affection for outsider lifestyles is tangible. Hirsch, who carries the film on his increasingly emaciated shoulders, performs heroically, but there's an edge missing. The ideal casting would have been the young Sean Penn.

As anthropology, it's fascinating, and everything about the production is first class. But the human drama at the heart of this movie is stillborn.

Brando's performance is enormous fun, but it's not just a joke. He's hilarious and gently mesmerizing at once, and director John Frankenheimer savvily adjusts the tone of his movie to fit Brando's daft brilliance...Let's face it -- this is one nutty movie. It's not exactly "good," but I sure had a good time.

It's hobbled by the too-familiar conventions of the musical biopic: with so many chapters of Charles's life to cover, Hackford's movie never finds a rhythm, a groove, to settle into. It wins its battles without winning the war.

The heart of the movie is in the Rocky-Rusty relationship, and as long as Bogdanovich sticks with Cher and Stoltz, his film is genuinely moving and largely free of cant. Far more problematic is the portrait of the biker gang who, for all their rowdiness, are about as threatening as Santa's elves. [04 Mar 1985, p.74]

Spielberg doesn't differentiate between the good ideas in the script and the bad ones: everything is given an emphatic, production-number treatment... His ultraslick, seductive technique can be a pleasure to watch in itself, but it can't disguise the fact that "Always" is a decidedly uneternal fantasy. [1 Jan. 1990, p.60]

Along the way, not just the storytelling but the original intention has gotten muddled. You leave The Alamo uncertain of what you're meant to feel: is this a celebration of patriotic sacrifice or an illustration of war's futility?

Iceman may boil down to a disappointingly sentimental/mystical concept, but Schepisi is such a fluid, exciting filmmaker that you remain thrilled by his images even if you're dismayed by the direction the plot takes. [16 Apr 1984, p.92]

Films about great theatrical divas (so temperamental! So divine!) all strike familiar notes. This Somerset Maugham adaptation is no exception. But Annette Bening, playing the queen of the '30s London stage, makes it worth another go-round.

Though some viewers are sure to take offense, between the scattered laughs the movie's most remarkable achievement is its run-of-the mill dullness. [10 Nov 1986, p.86]

Gangs is a dream project Scorsese has wanted to make for 30 years. You have to honor its mad ambition. But sadly, it feels like a dream too long deferred.

Too facile to resonate deeply. Shouldn't a movie celebrating Nash give you some idea what his mathematical work is about? Fishier still is the suggestion that the cure for paranoid schizophrenia is love.

It succeeds in bringing O'Barr's comic-book vision to life, but there's little else going on behind the graphic razzle-dazzle and the moody, ominous soundtrack.

This Man in Black is, frankly, a bit of a wuss. As a love story, Walk the Line can seduce. As a biopic, it treads awfully familiar Overcoming Adversity turf.

It's gorgeous. It's epic. It's spectacular. But two hours later, it also proves to be emotionally impenetrable.

Of the three, Real Genius comes tantalizingly close to being a real, and interesting, movie. If only Coolidge weren't hemmed in by the formulaic plot. [26 Aug 1985, p.62]

The storytelling seems occasionally disjointed, but more important, for all the special-effects wizardry, that touch of film magic never surfaces.

Employing an unconventional structure full of funny flashbacks and talking-to-the-camera monologues, Singles is brimful of clever bits and likable performances. Why, then does it seem so weightless? Something slick and generic has slipped into Crowe's work: too much of "Singles" feels like television. His sympathy for the youth culture now feels not so much uncanny as canned. You want to like a movie this inventive, this friendly, and you can't deny Crowe's talent. But "Singles" is all approach: it never seems to arrive. [21 Sept 1992, p.78]

It calls attention not to the fate of the earth, but to the numbing effect of bad, manipulative art. [14 Nov 1983, p.98]

As tempting as it may be to herald Romero as the Swift of schlock, his shopping-mall metaphor is really little more than a clever gag. The director's technique has been refined since his "Living Dead" days, but his grasp of characters is still pretty crude, and he reveals himself to be an all-too-predictable liberal moralists when he singles out the woman and the black as the true heroes. These objections should not-and won't-keep Romero loyalists away. For blood, guts and chuckles, most horror fans will undoubtedly find Dawn of the Dead finger-lickin' good. [7 May 1979, p.90]

The loving exhumation of an earlier cinematic style suggests that the director is looking to regain his own moviemaking innocence, to make the kind of picture that moved him as a child. But you can't go home again -- not on secondhand, sentimentalized memories. In transferring Hinton's teens to the screen, Coppola and screenwriter Kathleen Knutsen Rowell have idealized them to the point of cliche. [4 Apr 1983, p.74]

The film, adapted by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin and directed by Ivan Passer, captures Thornburg's tense, moody vision of life on the California edge, but it runs into trouble as a mystery. Fiskin has radically altered the last third of the book and has come up with a new ending that is far too ambiguous, abrupt and silly. One feels let down that so much comes to so little...Yet the film's sad twilight glow lingers. Cutter and Bone and Mo get under your skin. [6 Apr 1981, p.103]

Scott's finesse can't entirely disguise the mechanical nature of Nicholas and Ted Griffin's script, which has one too many twists for its own good. Fun while it lasts, but it's a bit of a con job itself.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension doesn't play it safe. For that alone you may want to bless its demented little heart. Buckaroo Banzai may not work, but that's the risk of high-wire acts. At least it's up there trying. [20 Aug 1984, p.75]

Black Widow is an honorable attempt to rewire a favorite formula, but it doesn't go far enough. If you're going to play "Persona" games with the film noir, you've got to risk a dive off the deep end. [16 Feb 1987, p.72]

Doubt stirs up a lot of stormy theatrical weather, but the stolid transfer from stage to screen does Shanley's play no favors.

Noyce orchestrates the suspense with impressive visual flair, using the constricted setting to great advantage. But an hour into the tale impatience sets in when it becomes clear that neither he nor screen-writer Terry Hayes has anything more in mind than pressing our fear buttons. Ultimately, this is just a waterlogged damsel-in-distress movie. [17 Apr 1989, p.72]

What keeps this movie honest is the characters, each of them a mass of conflicting instincts, virtues and vices. You know Gonzalez Inarritu comes from outside Hollywood because he doesn't divide the world into heroes and villains.

The period details are dryly elegant and painstakingly authentic. Yet the film feels underfed - there's not enough meat on the bones of the plot to warrant such opulence. [30 Jan 1978, p.55]

The comic setup is smart, and the undertone of seriousness makes the first part of "City Slickers" genuinely amusing. But when the movie decides to get seriously serious it wears out its welcome fast. Did we really pay to see a male-sensitivity-training movie on horseback? [24 June 1991, p.60]

I might buy Babel if it had any real interest in its characters, but it's too busy moving them around its mechanistic chessboard to explore any nuances or depths.

There are inspired moments in this edgy, unstable comedy.

Director Neil Jordan includes some graphic and grisly maninto-wolf transformations (done better in An American Werewolf in London), but his ambitious fantasy never really works up a good fright. [06 May 1985, p.73]

Arthur is not the best comedy of the season, which is a pity because it has the best comic team--Dudley Moore as a childish, perpetually soused millionaire named Arthur Bach and John Gielgud as his snobbish, reprimanding and adoring valet, Hobson. [27 July 1981, p.75]

The storytelling is cheesy, but action fans won't want to miss the debut of the Next Big Thing in martial arts.

It's no soap opera: it's serious, unsentimental and novelistic in its preference for anecdotal detail over melodramatic plotting and filled with fresh, acute and moving moments. Shoot the Moon can also boast of excellent performances and Parker's most controlled direction to date. Yet these many virtues don't add up to a completely satisfying film. [25 Jan 1982, p.75]

The preposterousness of the premise (concocted by writers Perry Howze and Randy Howze) is the appeal of Chances Are. The problem is the execution. Where "Heaven Can Wait" seduced you into belief with its expert comic timing and romantic urgency, director Emile ("Dirty Dancing") Ardolino's fantasy grows increasingly labored as it piles improbability upon psychological impossibility. [20 March 1989, p.83]

To anyone who has seen half the movies he appropriates, and can therefore guess every twist of the plot miles before it happens, Foul Play's frenetic eagerness to please is about as refreshing as the whiff of an exhaust pipe on a hot city afternoon. [24 July 1978, p.59]

Coming from director Carl Reiner, whose Where' poppa? had flashes of real comic fire, one expects more than Hallmark platitudes wrapped in Vegas banter. [24 Oct 1977, p.126]

It is entirely forgettable except for Grodin, who once again compensates for having the most anonymous face in movies with his sly, expertly timed comic delivery. [10 Sep 1979, p.76]

This scary, eye-opening documentary looks back from a post-9/11 vantage point to see how Ike’s prophecy has come horribly true.

With such a broad satirical target, it's a shame that Ritchie's aim goes awry. Because Semi-Tough covers fresh territory, you keep rooting for it to connect. [28 Nov 1977, p.98]

Lethal Weapon will undoubtedly strike gold. But for those weary of overwrought macho displays -- My pistol's bigger than your pistol is the true theme -- this strenuously "fun" movie is a pretty joyless affair. [16 Mar 1987, p.72]

This is funny? Yes, as Pryor does it--not as knee-slapping farce, mind you, but as the painful comedy of endured humiliation of which he is the master... But it's high time Pryor stopped redeeming badly made movies and surrounded himself with talents equal to his own. [12 Apr 1982, p.87]

The Wrath of Khan is a small soap opera about a man coming to terms with age and death and a son he had never acknowledged. It's really On Golden Galaxy, and it would have made a lot more sense as a modestly produced hour of television. [7 June 1982, p.53]

Like "Airplane!", the film is teeming with funny ideas. Unlike "Airplane!", the majority do not come off...Top Secret! is mildly amusing at best. [25 June 1984, p.69]

A dark slice of sword and sorcery that could have used some of Walt's old storytelling sense. [13 July 1981, p.81]

The Falcon and the Snowman lurches about awkwardly, withholds crucial information and lacks a strong point of view. It is nonetheless fascinating, a kind of darkly comic illustration of the banality of contemporary evil. Penn is reason enough to see the film. [04 Feb 1985, p.15]

The movie tries too hard. Too bad. This coulda been a contender.

Director Guy Hamilton's movie is rather more effective as an advertisement for Majorca than as a thriller, and the idea of Ustinov as Poirot remains more enticing than the reality, but you could do a lot worse. Think of it as a languid cocktail party with a terrific guest list. [22 Mar 1982, p.85]

The dialogue is tacky, the characters stock and the special effects no improvement on anything George Lucas did 20 years ago.

Tony Bill's first film as a director has moments of genuine charm and humor, it doesn't overinflate the adolescent agonies of its 15-year-old hero, Clifford Peache (Chris Makepeace), and it has a nice feel for the indignities and intimidations of a boy's high-school life. But it rings true only when it stays in the classrooms and hallways of the Chicago public school to which Clifford has just been transferred. When it follows him home to the posh hotel where he lives with his father (Martin Mull) and his grandmother (Ruth Gordon), My Bodyguard suddenly feels like a pilot for a bad sitcom. [25 Aug 1980, p.74]

Not every movie -- even one based on an unproduced Kurosawa screenplay -- has to be about Life itself. Oh well, enjoy it for the thrills, and don't worry about trying to keep a straight face. [30 Dec 1985, p.62]

Mazursky's satiric edge has always been leavened with heart. But now that his edge is gone he's wearing his heart on his sleeve and his dramaturgy has gone flabby. [16 Apr 1984, p.93]

As Good as It Gets works: by the end you'll no doubt be won over by its cranky hero. But for those of us who cherish the quirkily unformulaic Brooks of old, it's a tainted victory.

The most incendiary movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time. It's a mess, but one worth fighting about.

Violence belongs in Dracula - the problem is simply that Badham is not good at it. Virtually every big action scene is confusingly staged and clumsily edited. It is particularly sad to report that Olivier is terribly misused. [23 Jul 1979, p.70]

Hughes may deserve more plaudits as a social worker than a filmmaker, but you have to admit his hokey situation plays. The reason is the five terrific young actors, who bring more conviction to these parts than they perhaps deserve.

With a little more trust in its characters, Innerspace could have been a truly memorable comedy. Short comes into his own as a screen funnyman, and Quaid works salty miracles within his physically confined role. But when it's over it's a relief, like climbing off a roller coaster. The best comedies leave you wanting more; Innerspace leaves you wanting less. [13 July 1987, p.60]

Sean Penn, Elizabeth McGovern and Nicolas Cage are three attractive, gifted young actors whose combined talent, if properly used, could set a movie ablaze. Nothing of the sort happens in Racing With the Moon, a movie that wants badly to be taken as tender and understated when in fact it's merely dull and trite. [02 Apr 1984, p.85]

Lili Fini Zanuck's directorial debut is impressively gritty and intense, and she avoids finger-wagging, but for all her good efforts, the movie suffers from deja vu: we've been down this road before. [13 Jan 1992, p.67]

Sweetness is not a quality one normally associates with Clint Eastwood, but true sweetness is precisely what Bronco Billy aspires to -- and occasionally achieves. At once sentimental, arch and harmlessly good-natured, Eastwood's latest is a romantic comedy in which Clint appears as the fast-drawing, trick-riding star of his own Wild West show. [23 June 1980, p.77]

An ambitious, intense, but overdetermined exploration of the varieties of ethnic intolerance.

Wonderfully cast and acted, Parents establishes an intriguing comic metaphor about the dark side of the nuclear American family but unfortunately doesn't know where to take it. In the end, the wafer-thin script capitulates to the routine horror-movie conventions it's been battling against. But at least until then it puts up a good fight. [13 Feb 1989, p.79]

Aims for a "Princess Bride" mix of whimsy and wonderment, the sardonic and the romantic, with only sporadic success. Both visually and narratively cluttered, the film diverts more than it enchants.

Since somebody this year was bound to make a movie called Valley Girl, let's be grateful the job fell to director Martha Coolidge, who has a light, satirical touch, and screenwriters Wayne Crawford and Andrew Lane, whose modest exploitation movie is thoroughly good-natured. [09 May 1983, p.85]