David Ansen

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]

Thanks to everyone involved, the movie radiates a hundred pleasures.

As breezy and charming an entertainment as any barnyard ever produced. [6 July 1981, p.75]

If you like your summer popcorn movies laced with a little poisoned butter, Gremlins is not to be missed. [18 June 1984, p.90]

I expected to laugh; I didn't expect to be moved.

Fascinating but repetitious, Better Living Through Circuitry nevertheless does a good job describing the scene.

This is a fleet, funny family entertainment that should tickle parents as well as tykes.

Screenwriters Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon have devised some lovely and hilarious variations on Rodgers’s irresistible premise.

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.

Jerry Schatzberg's gripping, darkly satiric Street Smart, written with great savvy by David Freeman, keeps you in a state of agitated suspense as it springs one booby trap after another on its compromised and foolish hero. [06 Apr 1987, p.66B]

The word for The Changeling is chilling. Medak doesn't pummel the audience with gore and Exorcist-type shock tactics. More than once, he raises real goose bumps using nothing more extraordinary than a bouncing rubber ball. [31 Mar 1980, p.82]

Thematically, The Krays bites off more than it can chew: It's hungry for significance. But the horror of the twins' tale holds you in its clammy grip: it's a high-class creep show. [26 Nov 1990, p.80]

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]

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.

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]

There’s much to argue with, but this unconventional, oddly beautiful film resonates in unexpected ways.

The Syrian Bride would be an out-and-out comedy were it set anywhere but in the Middle East.

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]

The journey requires patience and the willingness to suspend your expectations of what a Burt-and-Goldie movie ought to be. This is a movie about what happens to a Fun Couple when they're not having fun. [27 Dec 1982, p.61]

Comedy and suspense, satire and shame are all mashed together--with breezy confidence.

It's hard not to be impressed by Kerry's courage and calm leadership--and to wonder if that guy will show up again.

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]

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.

What keeps you in your seat is the acting. Keener, crisply and coolly playing against type, commands the screen. [24 August 1998, p. 58]

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]

A far more accomplished anthology than Creepshow, Cat's Eye assumes an honorable but not exalted position in the multimedia King empire. But expect as many giggles as goose bumps. [06 May 1985, p.73]

As a history lesson (Depression 101), Cinderella Man feels a bit secondhand. As a true-grit tale of redemption, however, it lands one solid body punch after another.

Zwigoff doesn't hype up the gags, and his deliberately deadpan style gives even farfetched jokes an edge of reality.

Whether you regard her as a symptom or a cure for a culture still locked in its eternal battle between the puritanical and the prurient, [Madonna's] out there at the barricades. In Truth or Dare, she's at her button-pushing best.

Gillespie’s movie walks a delicate line through a minefield of potential bad taste. Directed with patient, low-key sensitivity, it never goes for a cheap laugh at its protagonist’s expense.

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.

Instead of losing myself in the story, I often felt on the outside looking in, appreciating the craftsmanship, but one step removed from the agony on display. Revolutionary Road is impressive, but it feels like a classic encased in amber.

A delightful surprise... Jewison does his best work in decades. [21 Dec 1987]

Creepily beautiful, acted with relish, Barton Fink is a savagely original work. It lodges in your head like a hatchet. [26 Aug 1991]

There are inspired moments in this edgy, unstable comedy.

What makes The In-Laws so engaging is not simply the escalating madness of Andrew Bergman's story (such whimsy could easily grow tiresome), but the deadpan counterpoint supplied by the two stars, who navigate their way through mounting disasters with an air of hilariously unjustified rationality. Bergman's script was tailor-made for Falk and Arkin, and they make the most of it. [02 Jul 1979, p.68]

Gremlins 2 has its horror-movie side, but the grisly is definitely subordinate to the gags. Only a snob could resist such a generous level of lunacy.

Woody Allen is back in sharp comic form, though it's likely that his abrasive black comedy Deconstructing Harry will alienate as many people as it tickles.

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]

A vital entertainment that struts confidently between comedy and drama.

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 Coens abhor sentimentality, but behind the comic-book grotesqueries there's a disarming sweetness. Like "Blood Simple," this wild-card comedy knows where it's headed every inch of the way. It's a hoot and a half. [16 March 1987, p.73]

Thanks to Ejiofor's wonderful performance--his easy, commanding body language wordlessly convinces you of his character's nobility--and Mamet's knowing take on the arcane world of Brazilian jiujitsu, Redbelt never loses its muscular hold on your attention.

Brilliant, but shallow.

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

It's not to be missed in any language. In a year that has given us such marvelous animated movies as "Ratatouille" and "Paprika," this vibrant, sly and moving personal odyssey takes pride of place.

Gloria is pure, unembarrassed jive--a hipster's lark of a movie--and Rowlands give a great jive artist's performance, straight-faced and charged with sly conviction. [06 Oct 1980, p.72]

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

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 film is mostly successful in transporting the viewer to another age: the costumes, the body markings, the fierce Mayan masks, all feel right. And keeping the dialogue in subtitles was a smart move. Even better are the faces, which never fail to fascinate. But for all the anthropological research that went into the movie, what is Apocalypto trying to say?

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 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]

Blake Edwards's riotous, deeply felt "10" proves just how many fresh turns are left on this well-traveled road and demonstrates again that a gifted writer-director can convert the most conventional commercial formulas into a movie as personal, in its way, as "Apocalypse Now." Edwards provides the side-splitting slapstick one expects from the maker of five "Pink Panther" movies, but he gives us something more: an introspective, bittersweet comedy of manners about a man whose voyeurism prevents him from seeing himself...This is the sort of classical Holly wood comedy that will still look good in 30 years. [15 Oct 1979, p.133]

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]

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

Zaillian's meaty movie, at once bleak and hopeful, speaks volumes about the maddening distance between justice and the justice system.

It’s as formulaic as "The Sum of All Fears," but it feels fresher, hipper, less inflated.

The screenplay (by Bill Bryden, Steven Phillip Smith, Stacy and James Keach) is basically an assemblage of bits and pieces that doesn't build toward any real emotional payoff. Yet The Long Riders is still the best Western in many years -- it has the laconic elegance of a ritual. [02 Jun 1980, p.87]

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.

Holofcener gets the milieu beguilingly right, but the abrupt ending leaves you wanting more.

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]

Demme has lots of fun, and, aided by a fresh, talented cast, he artfully modulates his moods from raunchy farce to somber pathos. [17 Oct 1977, p.102]

The Turning Point has its flaws - some overwritten scenes and lapses into staginess and sentimentality - but they are those of heady excess and are easily forgiven. One has the sense of a project perfectly matched to the people who made it. [28 Nov 1977, p.97]

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]

Lucas manages to turn the audience's familiarity to his advantage: like a jigsaw puzzle whose final form has always been known, the fun is in discovering how the last pieces fit.

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]

Dick Tracy is a class act: simple, stylish, sophisticated, sweet.

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]

If Forgetting Sarah Marshall doesn't reach the inspired heights of "Knocked Up" or "Superbad," it runs a very respectable second.

A thick stew of sex, violence and suspicion, Lee's movie -- spiked up with a virtually nonstop soundtrack -- definitely has the power to jangle your nerves.

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]

Keeps you hanging on every twist and turn of its wilder-than-fiction plot.

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]

Over the Edge is a rabble-rouser--and a good, tough, darkly funny movie to boot. [28 Dec 1981, p.65]

This hothouse tale of grief, sex and betrayal is told with a cool detachment that renders it commendably unsentimental--and slightly remote.

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

A tale this outrageous would seem to demand a more freewheeling style, but Shelton never really lest his hair down. His movie peaks too early: it feels over when Long loses the gubernatorial election; the last half hour seems redundant. But if Blaze isn't quite the movie it could have been, it's much too good a tale to pass up. [18 Dec 1989, p.68]

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.

The uncontestable triumph of Goblet of Fire, however, is Brendan Gleeson's Alastor (Mad-Eye) Moody, the grizzled new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

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]

A one joke movie? Perhaps, but it's such an engaging joke that anyone who loves old movies will find it irresistible. And anyone who loves Steve Martin will be fascinated by his sly performance, which is pitched exactly between the low comedy of The Jerk and the highbrow Brechtianisms of Pennies From Heaven. [24 May 1982, p.85]

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