David Ansen

The script, by Richard LaGravenese and Marie Weiss, veers unevenly between sharp, sophisticated malice and crowd-pleasing low humor, but director Ted Demme (Jonathan's nephew) keeps the laughs coming at a brisk pace. [14 Mar 1994, p.72]

Until the very end, when the script turns to heavy-handed pontificating, writer John Hopkins and director Bob Clark spin a decent, gruesome yarn, tying together the Ripper murders, political radicalism, bizarre Masonic rituals, royal indiscretions and government cover-ups. [26 Feb 1979, p.81]

Robbins's gutsy directorial debut isn't seamless art, but so what? After a summer in Hollywood fantasyland, at last we have an American movie that rattles our cage-and pokes a sharp spear into the body politic. Now that's entertainment.

The wonder of Invictus is that it actually went down this way.

Judged purely as an adventure story, it delivers enough thrills and violence to keep the action crowd engrossed. It also has enough social resonance to take us right back into those dark; schizophrenic years. [21 Aug 1978, p.66]

The French Lieutenant's Woman is one of the most civilized and provocative movies of the year, but it falls just short of greatness. Perhaps Reisz and Pinter are too innately reticent to wring the last drop of emotional power from Fowles's story. [21 Sep 1981, p.96]

This affable, well-built comedy is Reitman's best since Ghostbusters.

Somewhat raggedly directed by Richard Benjamin from an often witty June Roberts script, Mermaids is a likable coming-of-age comedy that can't quite decide how real it wants to be. In its weakest moments, it abandons psychological logic for fits of the cutes. But see it for Ryder, Cher and Ricci: they make this oddball family memorable. [17 Dec 1990, p.70]

To Norman Jewison's credit, the film of Agnes of God releases some of the hot air and gets right down to melodramatic business. Opened up and streamlined by Pielmeier, reset in wintry Quebec and cleanly shot by Sven Nykvist, the movie is a respectably engrossing detective story in theological garb (and not unlike Jewison's 1984 "A Soldier's Story" in form). [9 Sept 1985, p.89]

With a volatile combination of passion and bad manners, Araki ushers an old formula into the age of AIDS, and gives it new meaning. [31 Aug 1992, p.68]

Dudley Moore is the comic bubble beneath her solemn sultriness, and Unfaithfully Yours, though a slow starter, eventually works up a full head of comic steam. [05 Mar 1984, p.81]

It's a marvelous premise, and Crudup's serpentine performance has a venomous grace. But Jeffrey Hatcher's screenplay too often sacrifices psychological insight for bogus theatricality.

There is enough enchantment in this big, generous, flawed movie for most everybody. [24 Sep 1984, p.85]

"The Search for Spock" is everything it ought to be: solemn and shlocky and rousing and heartfelt, like all good reunions. For those whose cup of tea this is, drink deep and enjoy. [11 June 1984, p.80]

What holds the movie together is the fiercely self-contained commitment of Day-Lewis's performance and the palpable chemistry between him and Watson.

The bottom lineis that "Footloose" has a lively, sweet, infectious spirit, and for that one is willing to overlook some clunky scenes, fuzzy motivations, gratuitous brawls and the failure to evoke this town with any sociological coherence. It works because Bacon, always a fine actor, and Singer make a golden and winning couple; because Lithgow invests his ogreish character with troubled and compassionate shadings; because of Christopher Penn's scene-stealing performance as Bacon's naive lug of a friend; because the rocking sound track features hot new songs like "Let's Hear It for the Boy," performed by Deniece Williams; and because everyone, fundamentalists excepted, will identify with the kids. [20 Feb 1984, p.78]

Director Castle has studied his Spielberg well. While the movie may be composed of borrowed parts, it remains bouncy and good-natured throughout. Guest has charm and a deft comic touch, and Stewart is lovely as his girl. [30 July 1984, p.80]

Flaws and all, this may be Spike's most purely enjoyable movie, and his best looking

You cheer the good guys, gasp at the cliffhangers, hiss the villains and leave the theater with an old-fashioned sense of satisfaction. It may not be great filmmaking -- it's certainly not for purists -- but it's definitely good fun. [24 June 1991, p.60]

In keeping with a morality tale on the excesses of wealth and power, it is extravagantly confusing, grandiosely paranoid, flamboyantly absurd and more than a little fun. Though it utterly lacks the internal consistency that "good" movies require, as a wild-goose chase it maintains a certain lunatic fascination. [04 Jun 1979, p.76]

Prick Up Your Ears is a bold piece of work -- satiric, melancholy, free of cant. It's a post-Orton movie in every sense: without his work at the theatrical barricades 20 years ago a movie like this wouldn't have been possible. [20 Apr 1987, p.89]

Entertaining but farfetched, Spy Game might have looked less meretricious a few months back. But the real world has sabotaged its pretense of authenticity. Enjoy it for what it is, a fleet, handsome fantasy of globe-hopping blond demigods.

With Dillon in the movie, you might expect another girl-chasing beach movie. But the evocation of the nouveau riche club, and of adolescence itself, is closer to early Philip Roth than to Spring Break. [31 Dec 1984, p.65]

Ultimately, Quills descends into overwrought melodrama. But at its bright and bawdy best, it bubbles with subversive wit.

Director Michael Lehmann ("Heathers") nimbly keeps this airy concoction afloat.

It’s a movie for movie lovers -- playful, hip and light as a feather.

The Jerk is a kind of post-psychedelic Jerry Lewis movie -- Broad, dirty and juvenile, but definitely hip to its own dumbness. Half the jokes fall flat on their face, but when they score they're laugh-out-loud funny. Almost invariably, the best routines are non sequiturs -- off-the-wall riffs where Martin fixates with dopey brilliance on a subject that has nothing to do with the plot. [17 Dec 1979]

A powerful and moving experience -- once it overcomes its clunky, badly written and clichéd first act.

Where the original gave you something to chew on, the sequel is more interested in chewing on you.

As drama, The Dark Crystal comes fully alive only at its rousing climax, and it's hampered by the Ken Doll blandness of our hero. As a bestiary, however, it is bountiful -- a prodigious and amusing parade of things that do much more than go bump in the night. [27 Dec 1982, p.61]

While there are few huge laughs, the very lack of pushiness in Harold Ramis's direction comes as comic relief. [8 Aug 1983, p.55]

Subtlety is not the draw here: condom jokes and toilet humor alternate with car crashes and machine-gun killings. Yet the movie has a bouncy, comic-book appeal: sadism has rarely been so good-natured. [17 July 1989, p.53]

A thriller set on an Indian reservation in the 1970s, Thunderheart has both passion and power, enough to compensate for its sometimes murky plotting and a fair dose of melodramatic hokum.

It may sound sordid, but Arteta manages to bounce from brutality to comedy with only a few missteps -- and without the sweaty moralism that usually attends melodrama. The low-budget Star Maps may not be fully realized, but it's fully alive. [28 July 1997, p.69]

Presumed Innocent is a slow fuse of a movie. It never quite explodes with the resonance Pakula intends. It tries too hard to be important. But the story it tells is a good one, and once it's got its hooks in you, there's no turning away. [30 July 1990, p.56]

It's preposterous, but never dull: Scott whips the action into a taut, tasty lather.

The Stepfather has its thin, B-movie stretches, but it's a smart B movie, with a sly satirical edge. And when the bottom falls out of Jerry's dream, watch out: the movie gets downright hair-raising. [27 Feb 1987, p.79]

Director Charles ("The Mask") Russell is no James Cameron. He can produce a requisite amount of suspense and mayhem..., but his filmmaking is strictly B-movie generic. [01 Jul 1996 Pg.62]

Improbable as some of the plot may be, Lumet's movie -- directed with artful simplicity -- strikes powerful emotional chords. Running on Empty also happens to be the year's best teen romance: quirky Lorna (Martha Plimpton), in stubborn rebellion against her family's Wasp propriety, is a delightfully real teenager. [03 Oct 1988, p.57]

Doesn't add up to any big deal. But it's a likable, lively little ditty -- one theme, some clever variations -- that never wears out its welcome.

This movie is so unself-consciously wholesome it's almost Gumpian.

Anyone who feels immune to the charisma of Elvis Presley should immediately see This Is Elvis. If you are not transfixed by his sexual aura, his liquid musical ease, his promiscuous stylistic range and his mysterious mixture of shyness and vulgarity, chances are you've been living at odds with the second half of the twentieth century. [04 May 1981, p.44]

What Mad Hot Ballroom lacks in depth, it more than makesup for in charm and vibrancy.

Ambitious, unsettling, funny and perhaps too smart for its own good. With so much on its satirical agenda, it tends to spin out of orbit. [9 Nov 1987]

If the truth be told, my eagerness to sit through a sequel to "Romancing the Stone" only slightly surpassed my desire to revisit my periodonist. Surprise: The Jewel of the Nile, the further adventures of romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) and adventurer Jack Colton (Michael Douglas), is a good night at the movies. [16 Dec 1985, p.82]

The tale is a bit too insular and claustrophobic for its own good: in the end these characters lack the depth and complexity to resonate deeply. The pleasures of The Dreamers stay mostly on the surface. But when the surface is as stylish and sexy as this, it's hard to complain.

The viewer finds himsel falternating between awe at the director's courage, energy and dedication, and horror at his monomania. [18 Oct 1982, p.95]

Frances McDormand, as the lone female union rep, and Richard Jenkins, as Josie’s angry miner dad, cut through the predictability.

Droll, sweet-tempered and lackadaisical, it's a shaggy-dog story with Nicholson playing the shaggy dog. It turns Western conventions on their heads not out of satirical anger but simply to charm the pants off the audience. A little less coyness, and a lot more John Belushi (as a Mexican deputy), would have helped. Still, at a time when most comedy comes straight out of the bathroom, the quirky, civilized pleasures of Nicholson's film are not to be sneezed at. [09 Oct 1978, p.94]

Plausibility is not the movie's strongest suit, but Phil Alden Robinson's enjoyable caper makes up for its gaps in logic with its breezy tone and its technological razzledazzle.

This visually stunning movie serves up generous dollops of designer creepiness.

The remarkable thing about Jarrold's movie is how much of the book it manages to capture.

This demented toyshop of a movie is a bit of a mess, but it's a visionary mess. Of how many sequels can that be said?

The preposterous plot is riddled with holes, and Patton, as the psychotic homosexual aide, badly overplays his hand. Nonetheless, Australian-born director Roger Donaldson does a bangup job tightening the suspense screws inside the Pentagon. Costner, much more vibrant than he was allowed to be in "The Untouchables," brings great dash and conviction to material that probably doesn't deserve it, and Hackman finds pockets of humanity in his badguy role. The result is taut, stylish and, for those willing to suspend about three tons of disbelief, a good deal of fun. [24 Aug 1987, p.60]

Goes on too long, and much of it is hooey, but it’s hard not to have a good time.

When the dust settles, you may well suspect you've been taken for a sentimental ride, which is not what one normally expects from director John Huston. What he does bring to Evan Jones and Yabo Yablonsky's proficient script is his confident, unhurried pacing and his ease in mixing the professional actors and professional soccer players into a seamless ensemble. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]

Defies any expectations you bring to it. There are sights in Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's eye-opening documentary that will confirm and confound both right and left.

Director Stuart Rosenberg and screenwriter W. D. Richter have a strong, grim, angry story to tell, and the urgency of their convictions overcomes the frequent clumsiness and confusion of the telling. Unsparing in its evocation of brutality, and unswerving in its commitment to Brubaker's radical, uncompromising ideals, the film at its best provokes a powerful sense of tension and outrage. [23 June 1980, p.75]

Of course, hanging over this ironic tale is the deeper historical irony--that many of the "good guy" rebels Charlie is funding (and we're cheering) will become our mortal enemies...It's as if "Titanic" ended with a celebratory shipboard banquet, followed by a postscript: by the way, it sank.

For a number of reasons The Duchess isn't all it could have been. It's fun, but falls short of fabulous.

If The Pope doesn't fly Sinatra-high or dig Scorsese-deep, it is an appealing commercial movie with a gritty sense of the city, an effective narrative drive and a very watchable cast of pungent performers. [25 June 1984, p.68]