David Ansen

Select another critic »
Newsweek
For 1,132 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 57% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 40% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

David Ansen's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 School of Rock
Lowest review score: 0 Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 682 out of 1132
  2. Mixed: 370 out of 1132
  3. Negative: 80 out of 1132
1132 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    The Hand
    The Hand is a moderately frightening, reasonably stylish exercise that ultimately doesn't seem worth the effort. Connoisseurs of schlock shock effects will not be satisfied by its tony illusion/reality games, and those looking for psycho/sexual illuminations will be one step ahead of the Freudian cliches. [27 Apr 1991, p.90]
    • Newsweek
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Spanglish
    Spanglish feels hemmed in, visually monotonous. There are signs that a lot has been cut, and in trimming his film Brooks may have squeezed too tight: his movie needs breathing space.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    W.
    Like all Stone movies, W. has energy and forward momentum--particularly in the pre-presidential sections, when Bush is in his loose-cannon phase. It's not boring, and Brolin is often remarkable.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    First Blood
    As a macho fantasy, First Blood is successful. But by the time it comes to its sobering, let's-put-this-all-in-a-sane-perspective conclusion, one has a right to feel powerfully misused. [25 Oct 1982, p.119]
    • Newsweek
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Black Widow
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    The Company of Wolves
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Innerspace
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Shoot the Moon
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Tin Cup
    The good news about the amiable but only partly satisfying Tin Cup is that it frees Kevin Costner from playing a monument and restores to us the loose, sparkling comic actor he used to be. [19 August 1996, p.66]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Click
    As a moral fable Click holds no surprises; as a Sandler comedy, it's unusually dark, occasionally touching and pretty funny.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    The Accused
    It powerfully manipulates our emotions of outrage and revenge but tends to sacrifice human subtlety for polemics. It leaves the thin aftertaste of a TV movie. It doesn't help that McGillis give a dull, leaden performance, rendering her side of the story more perfunctory than it needed to be. Foster must carry the show alone; she seems to compact a lifetime of hard knocks into this furious, touching performance. [24 Oct 1988, p.74]
    • Newsweek
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Juice
    Poised halfway between the action conventions of "New Jack City" and the personal grit of "Straight Out of Brooklyn," Juice doesn't have the pizzaz or the insight, to satisfy as either exploitation or art. Dickerson and his fresh young cast make it move; it just doesn't move very far.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Courage Under Fire
    The film seems to want us to pin a medal to its own chest.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Hollywood Shuffle
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Paris, Texas
    It's no shameless Hollywood weepie, mind you, but an overestheticized, coolly abstracted weepie, which is not necessarily better. [19 Nov 1984, p.132]
    • Newsweek
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Ocean's Twelve
    Busier, messier and thinner than its predecessor...the studied hipness can get so pleased with itself it borders on the smug.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Jumpin' Jack Flash
    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]
    • Newsweek
      • Posted Jun 28, 2017
    • 34 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Bewitched
    As long as it stays focused on showbiz, Bewitched is light, frothy fun. But Ephron insists on turning Bewitched into a love story, and that's when the fun starts to seep out of the movie.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    As Good as It Gets
    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.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    This may be a less than ideal “Earnest,” but it still has delights, not least of all Anna Massey’s Miss Prism, Cecily’s dotty tutor, and Tom Wilkinson’s Dr. Chasuble, her clergyman admirer.
    • Newsweek
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Raggedy Man
    A small, lovingly detailed story of wartime hardship and smalltown malice, Raggedy Man proceeds with a quiet, lyric, slightly sentimental charm, but it doesn't trust its own modest virtues. [05 Oct 1981, p.78]
    • Newsweek
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    Absolute Beginners
    The paradox of this razzle-dazzle movie is that it demonstrates the triumph of the advertising ethos it attacks. Still, it's bold and undeniably different (what other musical turns a race riot into a happy ending?). Under its brassy, celebratory surface it's selling a surprisingly dour message about the waylaid dreams of the teen revolution. [5 May 1986, p.78]
    • Newsweek
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 David Ansen
    The Devil's Own
    A topical thriller that manages to be watchable despite director Alan J. Pakula's best efforts to take all the fun out of it.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Hearts in Atlantis
    Slightly soggy.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Doubt
    Doubt stirs up a lot of stormy theatrical weather, but the stolid transfer from stage to screen does Shanley's play no favors.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Blow
    When George’s fortunes start to go from bad to worse, so does the movie.
    • Newsweek
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Road to Perdition
    Self-conscious to the point of suffocation.
    • Newsweek
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Streets of Fire
    On paper, this sounds like an ideal Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 HRS.) movie. On screen, it is little more than a stylishly designed but feeble parody that quickly turns into self-parody. [11 June 1984, p.81]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Oh, God!
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Teachers
    Just about every scene written for JoBeth Williams, as an idealistic lawyer pushing the lawsuit and falling in love again with her old teach Nick Nolte, strikes a stridently false note, and in the final 20 minutes the movie totally self-destructs. Too bad. The cast is good and so are Teacher's intentions. A strong principal should have whipped this show into shape. [08 Oct 1984, p.87]
    • Newsweek
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Ong Bak
    The storytelling is cheesy, but action fans won't want to miss the debut of the Next Big Thing in martial arts.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Hollywood Homicide
    Inside this numbingly formulaic action comedy there's a small, quirky movie not screaming hard enough to get out--the kind of movie that director and co-writer Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham,” “Tin Cup”) could have had some real fun with.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Last Samurai
    There are pleasures to be had in the handsome, heroic The Last Samurai. But they' all on the surface.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    101 Dalmatians
    But the tale has been squeezed to fit the mold of director John Hughes, which for long stretches makes it feel as much like the third "Home Alone" as the second "Dalmations."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    3 Men and a Baby
    Nimoy and his writers prefer blandness to satire; an E.T. without toilet training, little Mary has been sent to earth to prove that even playboys have big hearts. A feel-good fantasy for baby boomers, Three Men and a Baby is so aggressively innocuous you may be ready for beddy-bye time long before it's over. [30 Nov 1987, p.73]
    • Newsweek
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    America's Sweethearts
    Resoundingly so-so.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Apt Pupil
    In the end, artifice overwhelms art. Apt Pupil is too serious to work as a genre movie, and too contrived to be taken seriously. [12 October 1998]
    • Newsweek
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Force 10 from Navarone
    Force 10 is funny, but not quite funny enough: too often one laughs at its implausibilities without knowing if the filmmakers are in on the joke. The old-fashioned script by Robin Chapman has just enough tongue in cheek so that the cliches can be taken as irony, but Guy Hamilton's direction tips the balance toward cliche. An old hand at engineering actors in and out of impossible pickles, Hamilton keeps the action going, but the surprises are so mechanically executed that they rarely amaze. [18 Dec 1978, p.85]
    • Newsweek
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Phantom of the Opera
    It's sometimes hard to tell the characters from the candelabra. This lavish screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is so chockablock with decorative detail the human figures are often competing with the decor for attention.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    I Shot Andy Warhol
    Harron sets the stage expertly, but her lack of a point of view ultimately enervates the movie. [6 May 1996, p. 78]
    • Newsweek
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    My Stepmother Is an Alien
    Basinger almost redeems this mess: whether feasting on battery fluid or learning to kiss from a tourist-guide hologram, her earnest ditziness is out of this world. [02 Jan 1989, p.58]
    • Newsweek
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
    The storytelling seems occasionally disjointed, but more important, for all the special-effects wizardry, that touch of film magic never surfaces.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Sunburn
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Leatherheads
    The great '30s comedies had edge, bite and relentless forward momentum. Leatherheads is laid-back, amiable and terminally tepid.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Step Brothers
    I don't want to sound like a party pooper (or deny that there is something wickedly funny about seeing these middle-age adolescents beating the crap out of a playground full of little bullying kids) but there's something depressing about the never-ending celebration of eternal adolescence in recent American comedies.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Fog
    The Fog needs more suggestive magic to sustain its farfetched premise. There's no doubt that Carpenter has talent to spare, but he's misjudged his gifts this time. The Fog ought to come on little cat feet, but its tread is heavy and literal. The harder it tries, the sillier it gets. [03 March 1980, p.68]
    • Newsweek
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Outland
    It doesn't help matters that Connery has been given a cardboard wife and child who--fed up with dingy space colonies-abandon him early on. They're ingredients, not characters. Once again, Hollywood's superlative technology has been squandered on an undernourished screenplay. [01 June 1981, p.91]
    • Newsweek
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    More American Graffiti
    In lieu of dramatic depth, Norton's film relies on its wonderful sound-track music to suggest the emotional truth of the era. Anyone who went through the '60s listening to Heat Wave and 96 Tears, to Cream and the Byrds and Aretha Franklin, will be instantly aroused: the memories they prompt are more stirring, troubling and complex than anything More American Graffiti chooses to show us. [27 Aug 1979, p.63]
    • Newsweek
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Ransom
    Slick and violent and reasonably tense, Ransom holds your attention without being the least bit interesting. [11Nov1996 Pg. 74]
    • Newsweek
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Tokyo Pop
    As a quirky travelogue, Kubui's movie has an unassuming appeal, but the characters remain too sketchy to elicit much passion. [16 May 1988, p.83E]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Cocoon: The Return
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    I Heart Huckabees
    Ultimately, Huckabees doesn't work. But it sure does stimulate. This is just the kind of "failure" we could use plenty more of.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Cable Guy
    It can't risk real pathos, or real horror, and still be a Jim Carrey movie, so the most it achieves is a kind of unsettling creepiness. Strange movie: Carrey is working his gifted butt off, and we're not allowed to laugh.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Frida
    Why does this chronicle of a passionate life refuse to catch fire? For all of Taymor’s flashy embellishments -- surreal dream sequences, constructivist collages come to life -- it trudges through the Kahlo chronology with the dutiful step of a conventional Hollywood biopic.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Lethal Weapon
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Con Air
    The saving grace of Con Air is its sense of its own absurdity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Go
    John August's trickily structured script owes an all too obvious debt to "Pulp Fiction," but Liman's film is more like kiddie Tarantino.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    If only the laughs were bigger, smarter and more frequent than they are.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The World According to Garp
    For all its isolated lovely touches--there's a wonderful moment of repose while Garp listens to Nat King Cole on his car radio--the movie leaves a cold, sour aftertaste. Some of this can be attributed to the uncertain tone of Hill's direction--overly broad here, too remote there--but much of it goes back to Irving. [26 July 1982, p.77]
    • Newsweek
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
    It's ersatz classicism, in its inoffensive way as much a dead end as Stardust Memories. Allen seems to be biding his time, waiting for the "real" Woody Allen to figure out what a real Woody Allen movie will be. [19 July 1982, p.70]
    • Newsweek
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    It’s not half bad, with cool locations and a great stunt leap from the top of a Hong Kong high-rise.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    End of Days
    It's not as cool as it sounds.
    • Newsweek
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Love Affair
    But once the couple clinch their bond -- just when the story gets really shameless -- the life drains out of the movie. Love Affair takes such pains to dodge vulgarity it forgets to put anything in its place.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Light of Day
    Light of Day has the virtues of sincerity, but that may also be what keeps it so relentlessly mundane. [09 Feb 1987, p.75]
    • Newsweek
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Wanted
    Wanted has one good plot twist in store (though it makes little sense), and its sense of humor about its own silliness keeps the fantasy afloat for a while. But as the body count rises, so does the portentous tone, and the relentlessness of Bekmambetov's overamped style becomes oppressive.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Romeo + Juliet
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Smooth Talk
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Crash
    An ambitious, intense, but overdetermined exploration of the varieties of ethnic intolerance.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Crow
    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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Goodbye Girl
    It's precisely at the finish line that Simon's calculations misfire and The Goodbye Girl collapses like a house of cards. The movie could have told us something about the wrenching collision of careers and romance, but it plays it safe, and in the end pays for it. [05 Dec 1977, p.109]
    • Newsweek
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Warriors
    Director Walter Hill has only the faintest interest in realism. His New York City is merely the backdrop for a bone-crunching fantasy that has more to do with science fiction and musicals than social commentary. When it's good - which is not often enough - it suggests what The Wiz, under happier circumstances, might have been. [26 Feb 1979, p.81]
    • Newsweek
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Hustle & Flow
    Howard redeems this lumpy fantasy. Soft-spoken and mysterious, he presides over the movie with a dangerous, feline grace.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Evita
    It's gorgeous. It's epic. It's spectacular. But two hours later, it also proves to be emotionally impenetrable.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Unbreakable
    This time out, Shyamalan the writer lets Shyamalan the director down badly.
    • Newsweek
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Babel
    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.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Outsiders
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Bobby Deerfield
    Even though Alvin Sargent's script lacks both grace and plausibility and director Sydney Pollack has succumbed to pretentions of European artiness, star chemistry might have made this love story catch fire. [03 Oct 1977, p. 71]
    • Newsweek
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Big Daddy
    Just because Sandler's Sonny makes little sense as an actual human being doesn't mean he won't make you laugh.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Lovely Bones
    How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    The longest, grimmest and least funny of the trilogy.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Halloween II
    The plain fact is that Halloween II is quite scary, more than a little silly and immediately forgettable. [16 Nov 1981, p.117]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Dogs of War
    he Dogs of War doesn't begin to deal with the moral complexity it promises: it keeps settling for easy, melodramatic solutions. Irvin is obviously a gifted storyteller, but he's shackled with the wrong story: it's a shame he couldn't have scrapped more of Forsyth's original plot and made a real movie about mercenaries and the Third World. [23 Feb 1981, p.61]
    • Newsweek
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Nurse Betty
    There are inspired moments in this edgy, unstable comedy.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Big Trouble in Little China
    Tthough it is action packed, spectacularly edited and often quite funny, one can't help feeling that Carpenter is squeezing the last drops out of a fatigued genre. Ten years ago this would have been one wild and crazy movie; in this era of ruthlessly efficient entertainments, it's a rather one-note evening. [14 July 1986, p.69]
    • Newsweek
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Baby Mama
    Baby Mama is rescued by two scene-stealing veterans: Sigourney Weaver as the smug, patrician owner of the surrogate company, and a priceless, ponytailed Steve Martin as the self-infatuated New Age owner of Round Earth. These two aren't onscreen a lot, but the movie seems most fully alive when they are.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Miami Vice
    It's filled with Mann's signature macho verisimilitude, but essentially it's the stuff of what, in saner fiscal times, would have been a B movie. Miami Vice delivers the thrills, atmosphere and romance it promises, but it doesn't resonate like major Mann.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    Before it degenerates into Indiana Potter and the Chamber of Doom, the movie holds promise -- it hints at why the Harry Potter movies aren’t half as wonderful as they ought to be, why they feel created from the outside in. Magic isn’t made by committee.
    • Newsweek
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Alexander
    Sometimes stunning, ultimately stupefying epic .
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Phenomenon
    Soft to the point of squishiness, Phenomenon is rescued from terminal bathos by Travolta's radiant conviction.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Single White Female
    Single White Female gives the viewers the adrenaline rush they paid for, but it promised more. The formula betrays the fine work of Leigh and Fonda, whose characters are much too interesting to find themselves stranded in a tony but ultimately tired slasher movie.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Nine Months
    Complacently conventional...it threatens to turn an interesting actor into a self-parodying commodity.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Conan the Destroyer
    Veteran director Richard Fleischer brings to the Conan sequel some of the endearingly stolid craftsmanship of his old movies, while avoiding the lip-smacking sadism of the original. The movie is consistently dumb, though not hard to watch, but it would be a lot more fun if someone had bothered to give Conan a personality. [02 July 1984, p.45]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Proof of Life
    This slick, handsomely produced thriller only gets the pulse half racing.
    • Newsweek
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Seven
    A style so chic, studied and murky it resembles a cross between a Nike commercial and a bad Polish art film.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Popeye
    This is high-risk chemistry, and the results are bizarre. The bulging forearms and corncob pipe are in place, but this Popeye hates spinach. The plot hinges on his Oedipal search for his Pappy (Ray Walston), the songs and minimal dances are designed for singers who can't sing and dancers who can't dance, and this gruff icon of pug nacious, all-American goodness has been set adrift on an abstract isle that can perhaps best be described as backlot Ionesco. Popeye's air of alienated whimsy makes for an odd family movie indeed. [22 Dec 1980, p.72]
    • Newsweek
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Some Kind of Wonderful
    Hughes is just treading lukewarm water. Stotz is the blandest of his teen heroes yet. [16 Mar 1987]
    • Newsweek
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Alamo
    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?
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Electric Dreams
    The viewer is diverted, but not terribly involved. As a romantic partner, hardware has considerably less resonance than Cary Grant. [06 Aug 1984, p.74]
    • Newsweek
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Anger Management
    Unless you’re 15 at heart, you may need anger management yourself after sitting through this aggressively crass comedy, which alternates between mean-spirited slapstick and arbitrary uplift.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Fat Man and Little Boy
    Fat Man and Little Boy casts a wide net, but it never really traps its subject. The screenplay simply isn't up to the job. Only in the last half hour, as Trinity approaches, does dramatic fission occur. [30 Oct 1989, p.75]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Family Stone
    Lurching uncertainly from slapstick to tears, The Family Stone works hard to warm the cockles of our hearts. The cast is attractive. The sentiments are commendable. But the love Bezucha wants us to feel for the family couldn't possibly compete with the love they already feel for themselves.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Escape Artist
    The Escape Artist is chockablock with intriguing ingredients, none of which pays off. It's a true oddball, but as much as one would like to encourage iconoclasm in Hollywood, a movie this incoherent can only induce exasperation. [14 Jun 1982, p.88]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    She-Devil
    Director Seidelman thrashes about in search of a tone: there's no weight to her images; the plot twists seem arbitrary and contrived. By the end you've lost interest in Ruth's revenge and can't wait until Streep gets back on screen. Watching her prod her face into new shapes in the mirror, contemplating a face-lift, you momentarily forget you're watching a mediocre movie and marvel at real comic witchcraft. [11 Dec 1989, p.88]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    A Dirty Shame
    Never mean-spirited, A Dirty Shame has some big laughs, but it's a one-joke movie that shows its strain well before the finish line.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Semi-Pro
    The semifunny Semi-Pro is amiable enough, but you never feel there's much at stake.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Incredible Hulk
    For me, there's a problem with The Hulk, always has been, though it hasn't seemed to bother the tale's legions of fans. When the sensitive, physically unprepossessing Banner/Norton turns into the gargantuan, muscle-bound, growling Hulk, there's a total disconnect.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Les Misérables
    Hugo's themes may be timeless, but in this version the viewer is all too aware of the passing time. [04 May 1998, p.81]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Little Darlings
    The potential for a funny, touching satire about teen-age sexuality is here, but it emerges only fitfully in director Ronald F. Maxwell's rather patronizing, sitcom approach. One can imagine what a Milos Forman or a Francois Truffaut could have done withthe giddy ambience of sex in tentative first bloom, but texture, verisimilitude and spontaneity are nowhere to be found in Maxwell's clean, postcardlike scenes, which seem strangely underpopulated. [24 March 1980, p.78]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Sum of All Fears
    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.
    • Newsweek
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Semi-Tough
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Dawn of the Dead
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Party Monster
    There isn't an ounce of genuine affection on display. Fenton and Barbato already made a documentary of the same title about Alig, and their fascination with this vapid, charmless pied piper of decadence remains a mystery.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Rendition
    Manages to take an urgent, important topic and turn it into standard Hollywood melodrama. What a waste.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
    This is one of the silliest movies ever made--and lots of instantly forgettable fun.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Pushing Tin
    You're not sure where it's headed, but with an ensemble this good the aimlessness seems invigorating. It's when the plot kicks in that Newell's movie gets less interesting. It's frustrating to see such a promising premise, and such a delightful cast, wasted.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    A decidedly mixed bag.
    • Newsweek
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Eye of the Needle
    Eye of the Needle never really catches fire. Marquand and screenwriter Stanley Mann may have overestimated the strength of their story: they serve it up unembellished, with competent but imperhat...Eye of the Needle isn't a bad film, just an unnecessary one: it was a better movie as a book. [3 August 1981, p.50]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Mr. Brooks
    The movie becomes a crazy quilt of competing stories, none of them properly developed. You could cut half the major characters out of Mr. Brooks and never miss them.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Alive
    Marshall is a good technician, but there's no sense of artistic adventure in his sometimes exciting, sometimes draggy movie.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Bobby
    You don't have to have lived through the period to find this wrenching. And you don't have to doubt Estevez's sincerity to find it emotionally opportunistic.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Blow Out
    De Palma has brought back Travolta's edge and intelligence. Relieved of having to give a star turn, Travolta seems happy to buckle down and do a straight-ahead, no-frills acting job. [27 July 1981, p.74]
    • Newsweek
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Independence Day
    The dialogue is tacky, the characters stock and the special effects no improvement on anything George Lucas did 20 years ago.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Hardcore
    For all its neon-lit expressionism and portentous, dread-inspiring music, Hardcore has almost nothing to say about its subject. Schrader doesn't explore any moral conflict, he just gives off attitudes - and banal, shopworn attitudes at that. [13 Feb 1979, p.57]
    • Newsweek
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Heartbreak Ridge
    Clint's latest doesn't try to do much of anything that hasn't been done before, and better. [15 Dec 1986, p.83]
    • Newsweek
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Dragonslayer
    A dark slice of sword and sorcery that could have used some of Walt's old storytelling sense. [13 July 1981, p.81]
    • Newsweek
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
    Branagh's two Shakespeare films have been triumphs-meaty, moving and fun. Bard-less, the director flounders. His Frankenstein gives off the same hollow echo that Dead Again did, the same mixture of stylistic flair and insincerity.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    Comes off as surprisingly unmagical, with characters you only half care about.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Fresh
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Running Scared
    The comedy gets crushed just as surely as our heroes' cop car does in a compactor. This is a shame, because Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal, who play the daredevil cops who banter their way through these bullet-strewn streets, are two extremely likable performers who deserve a director more attuned to their charms. [30 June 1986, p.60]
    • Newsweek
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Producers
    The theatricality is off the charts. Lane aims for the balconies; Broderick tones it down for the camera a bit.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Hannibal
    Strikingly devoid of suspense. It’s not always clear who’s the protagonist and who’s the antagonist. Nor is it scary—at its most intense moments, it’s merely yucky.
    • Newsweek
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Love's Labour's Lost
    Labour teeters on the edge of the amateur. Yet it's hard not to root for its moonstruck spirit, or to succumb to the panache of the pastiche.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Quantum of Solace
    Quantum of Solace isn't frivolous or cheesy, but it isn't all that much fun either.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Unlawful Entry
    The audience is asked to be appalled by the cop's brutal methods, and then cheer when the hero reverts to the same law-of-the-jungle tactics to save his marriage. Revenge, in these movies, must be sweet, and the rule of the box office says the bloodier the better. [6 July 1992, p.54]
    • Newsweek
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Beloved
    Demme is understandably reluctant to linger on the horrors of slavery, but it's a dramaturgical mistake. The quick, shocking flashbacks of Sethe's brutalization by her white masters don't do the job--they're horrific, but with a B movie luridness.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Dragnet
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Pretty in Pink
    Fortunately for Hughes and director Howard Deutch, Juliet is played by the fetching 18-year-old Molly Ringwald, an actress capable of revealing adolescent angst with amazing grace. Unfortunately, Romeo is an underwritten blank who resists all of actor Andrew McCarthy's efforts to make him charming. The manic Mercutio role goes to Juliet's bosom buddy The Duck (Jon Cryer), an ehibitionist cutup who loses the girl he adores to a guy who doesn't deserve her. "Pretty in Pink is a gentle and well-meaning sketch of teen peer pressures, but its dopey, feel-good ending leaves you suspecting that what you've really been watching is Much Ado About Nothing. [17 March 1986, p.82]
    • Newsweek
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Into the Wild
    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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Indian Runner
    After its compelling first hour, The Indian Runner gets self-indulgent and repetitive. But Penn has the gifts of a real filmmaker -- an eye, an ear and a heart. [23 Sep 1991, p.57B]
    • Newsweek
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Poltergeist II: The Other Side
    It groans under the burden of explanations and exposition, not to mention moral homilies. Family love can conquer evil, according to director Brian Gibson's sequel, which is very nice to know but not why anybody will plunk down money to see this movie. [02 June 1986, p.75]
    • Newsweek
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Mystery Train
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Bustin' Loose
    Bustin' Loose has a fair share of laughs, none of which is supplied by Tyson, who is totally wasted in an oppressively upright role and lacks the light touch that might have transformed it into something more quirky. For his first effort as producer, Pryor earns a mixed report. He's given himself a good showcase, but his gifts as a dangerous, subversive comic are undermined by his desire to make Uplifting Statements. [01 June 1981, p.91]
    • Newsweek
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The End
    The End initially promises to answer in disturbing comic form, mixing pathos and pratfalls to fashion a pitch-black comedy about a man freaking out on the edge of oblivion. But in the face of such a risky subject, director-star Reynolds and writer Jerry Belson get cold feet. [22 May 1978, p.72]
    • Newsweek
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Rhinestone
    The movie feels like a half-hour skit blown up, like its stars, to unwieldy proportions. [02 Jul 1984, p.45]
    • Newsweek
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    RoboCop 2
    Kershner's accomplishment in the first half of RoboCop 2--which offers up the original's mixture of crunching action, dystopian satire and depraved villainy--is the genuine pathos this conflicted tin man evokes. But a curious thing happens to this sequel. It forgets what it's about. In the last third of the movie, the character of RoboCop vanishes behind his visor, the script loses its focus, and the special effects take over.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Toys
    The failure of Barry Levinson's Toys is of a different order: it's the kind of folly only a very fine filmmaker could make, a labor of misguided love.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Peacemaker
    Director Mimi Leder fills the mindless-action-movie quota quite stylishly. The trouble is, The Peacemaker thinks it has a mind.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Alien 3
    Just at the point when Alien 3 should kick into high terror gear, it becomes clear that this hushed, somber sequel doesn't know how to deliver the goods. Fincher has style to spare -- and the sets, cinematography and special effects are all first rate -- but the nuts and bolts of storytelling elude him. [1 June 1992, p.73]
    • Newsweek
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Stardust
    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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Lust, Caution
    There’s a great, piercing story here, but too often you feel you’re watching it through the wrong end of the telescope.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    The fans who have kept John Berendt's nonfiction tale on the best-seller list for more than three years may come away feeling they've seen "Perry Mason" on Valium. [1 December 1997, p.87]
    • Newsweek
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Oscar and Lucinda
    It has a lovely score by Thomas Newman, stunning production design, striking costumes and gorgeous cinematography. Unfortunately, it just doesn't jell.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Then She Found Me
    There's a quirky, honest movie struggling to emerge from Then She Found Me (April's Jewish heritage is refreshingly portrayed, and there are lovely, scattered moments when the characters surprise you), but Hunt, in her directorial debut, can't seem to decide whether she'd rather make a spicy ethnic dish or bland comfort food.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Bride & Prejudice
    This clumsy attempt to merge Jane Austen's classic with Bollywood musical conventions falls painfully flat.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Passion of the Christ
    Instead of being moved by Christ's suffering, or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Lady in the Water
    Unfortunately, this narf's a drag: she talks like a fortune cookie and doesn't really do anything. Still, the multicultural cast is fun, the images have a painterly beauty and there are some beguiling comic touches before the story sinks into a swamp of solemn metaphysical glop.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Dead of Winter
    Dead of Winter is played straight and not without style, but the material (by Marc Shmuger and Mark Malone) is such implausible, antique claptrap it's hard not to think of it as camp. [23 Feb 1987, p.79]
    • Newsweek
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    City Slickers
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    The Good German
    Attempting a frame-by-frame duplication of Warner Bros. '40s filmmaking--even the extroverted acting style apes the period--Soderbergh has produced a movie so self-conscious that it's drained of all life.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 David Ansen
    Cradle Will Rock
    Robbins eschews leftist diatribes for a bold cartoon version of history. It's as crowded and energetic as a big parade...and just about as subtle.
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Foul Play
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Striptease
    Unfortunately, no one seems to have clued Demi in on the joke. Never known for her light touch, she appears to be act-ing (earnestly, humorlessly) in some other movie altogether, a dreary melodrama about a noble mom fighting for her child.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    A Knight's Tale
    Maybe you have to be 14 to find all of this terribly clever.
    • Newsweek
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Supergirl
    Though Helen Slater makes a bad first impression, she's not a bad Supergirl by the end, being likably straightforward, guileless and sweet. And unlike Reeve, who looks exactly the same whether he's Clark Kent or Superman, Slater makes you believe that people wouldn't know brunette Linda Lee was actually blond Supergirl. That may not be a major cinematic achievement, but it's about the best that Supergirl has to offer. [26 Nov 1984, p.119]
    • Newsweek
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Runaway Bride
    It's not just that the movie is formulaic; it's disingenuous. It relies on Roberts's smile to erase all misgivings. But all the stardust in the world can't disguise the fact that this is more package than picture.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    1941
    Spielberg has brought forth a farce that is both relentlessly spectacular and spectacularly unfunny. [17 Dec 1979, p.111]
    • Newsweek
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Eyes of Laura Mars
    Almost perversely, Laura Mars breaks the easiest of movie promises: here is a movie about the Beautiful People that hasn't bothered to make them beautiful. [14 Aug 1979, p.62]
    • Newsweek
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Creepshow
    Romero and King want to be as unsophisticated as possible, while maintaining a sense of humor, and they succeed all too well. The characters, story lines and images are studiously one-dimensional. For anyone over 12 there's not much pleasure to be had watching two masters of horror deliberately working beneath themselves. Creepshow is a faux naif horror film: too arch to be truly scary, too elemental to succeed as satire. [22 Nov 1982, p.118]
    • Newsweek
    • 32 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Wild Life
    Penn is a real talent, but it seems downright unfair to cast him in a part designed to compete with the memory of his brother Sean's role in Fast Times. This is one for the kids; had it tried harder, it could have been one for everyone. [08 Oct 1984, p.89]
    • Newsweek
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Mission to Mars
    It's a gorgeous bad movie, the folly of a great visual stylist.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    A Beautiful Mind
    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.
    • Newsweek
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    James and the Giant Peach
    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.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Big Wednesday
    The whole movie has the air of a sermon delivered over an empty grave. In surfers' terms, Big Wednesday is a wipe-out. [14 Aug 1978, p.62]
    • Newsweek
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    National Lampoon's European Vacation
    Director Amy Heckerling cripples half her jokes by telegraphing the punch lines: a sight gag at the top of the Eiffel Tower involving a tossed hat and a little dog would be a lot funnier if we hadn't seen it coming. Some of the jokes seem 25 years out of date: one hardly has to go all the way to France these days, much less cross a state line, to encounter a racy topless bar. [12 Aug 1985, p.71]
    • Newsweek
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    O
    The actors attack their roles with commitment (Hartnett’s understatement is impressive), but their fervor can’t hide the movie’s implausible, often confusing storytelling.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Racing with the Moon
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Beowulf
    The most interesting thing about Beowulf, alas, is its technology. It's the work of a man who has fallen in love with his toys, but I miss the wicked satirist who made "Used Cars." And the truth is the motion capture in Beowulf comes across as an unsatisfying compromise between animation and live action.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Talk Radio
    Talk Radio feels like a sketch inflated beyond the breaking point. Sure, it's disturbing. So is watching Morton Downey Jr. Stone seems to believe that he's lifting the lid off the creepy-crawly American unconscious. Perhaps. Or maybe Talk Radio is just a movie in love with the hysterical sound of its own voice.[9 Jan 1989, p.54]
    • Newsweek
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Coma
    Shorn of its medical shock value, Coma is nothing more than Nancy Drew Goes to Surgery, a creaky blend of red herrings, ominous stares, stale cliff-hangers and doom-laden music. [06 Feb 1978, p.86]
    • Newsweek
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Rollover
    Rollover wants to be a thriller, love story and economics lesson rolled into one, but in trying to do so much, it shortchanges each element. The screenplay (by David Shaber from a story by Shaber, Howard Kohn and David Weir) doesn't hang together. [14 Dec 1981, p.125]
    • Newsweek
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Curse of the Pink Panther
    A dispiriting attempt to wring a last gasp of mirth from an already dangerously overextended series. [22 Aug 1983, p.73]
    • Newsweek
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Night Shift
    Actually it's relatively clean, downright affirmative (the girls get insurance plans and 90 percent of the take) and resoundingly unfunny. [2 Aug 1982, p.63]
    • Newsweek
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    All the King's Men
    This stiff-in-the-joints movie has little feel for its setting or period, and crucial chunks seem to have been left on the cutting-room floor. Robert Rossen's Oscar-winning 1949 version has nothing to fear.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Cuba
    By the time this atmospheric but thoroughly muddled story reaches its conclusion, the film has totally self-destructed. [31 Dec 1979, p.49]
    • Newsweek
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Protocol
    Herbert Ross directed this murky-looking film, and Buck Henry wrote it from a story by Charles Shyer, Nancy Meyers and Harvey Miller. They have all had better days. [31 Dec 1984, p.65]
    • Newsweek
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Daredevil
    Torn between moody grandiosity and cartoonish mayhem, Daredevil tries to have it both ways, and succeeds at neither.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Omen
    The Omen is a dumb and largely dull movie. No true connoisseur of kitsch will confuse the work of writer David Seltzer and director Richard Donner with the masterpiece of psychic manipulation contrived by William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin in The Exorcist, not to mention what the diabolical Roman Polanski made out of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby. [12 July 1976, p.69]
    • Newsweek
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Reckless
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Target
    Forget "Bonnie and Clyde"; even compared with "Night Moves," which also starred Hackman, Target disappoints. [18 Nov 1985, p.94]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Doc Hollywood
    Corny and sweet, Doc Hollywood has its genuine charms, but they'd be a lot more charming if Caton-Jones and the screen-writers allowed them to sneak up on us. Instead, the movie oversells its whimsy and fits its quirkiness into a sitcom formula that's as preordained as the hero's moral rejuvenation.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Frances
    First-time director Graeme Clifford, a former editor, hasn't set out merely to exploit this lurid legend, and he tries to suggest the multiple layers of the story, but he simply doesn't do his job well. The film has no rhythm, it's stagy and inauthentic-looking, and the patchwork script has that tinny ring that so often infects movies about real people. [06 Dec 1982, p.152]
    • Newsweek
    • 12 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Avengers
    This is an elaborate production, but all the jazzy sets and explosions in the world can't disguise the story's complete lack of urgency.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Always
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    We're No Angels
    Though Penn and a heavily mugging De Niro earn their share of chuckles, you leave this comedy scratching your head at the nutty incongruity of the endeavor. What were these talented people thinking? [25 Dec 1989, p.74B]
    • Newsweek
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Land Before Time
    Visually, the Bluth effort is disappointingly drab and murky, and the story line may prove too thin to keep the little natives from restlessness. [28 Nov 1988, p.87]
    • Newsweek
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    My Science Project
    Car-crazy John Stockwell stumbles upon a time-warp machine that unleashes forms from the past and future (dinosaurs, Nazis and mutants) upon his local high school. The principal pleasure in this last comic adventure is Dennis Hopper's science teacher, a tie-dyed-in-the-wool '60s activist who can't forget Woodstock. Forget the rest. [26 Aug 1985, p.62]
    • Newsweek
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Pursuit of Happyness
    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.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Redacted
    if you're trying to make us believe we're watching "reality" by using a faux documentary style, you need actors who never look like they are acting, and this is where Redacted stumbles.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Soul Man
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Dogville
    Von Trier, however, undercuts the universality of his own message with his meretricious closing credits, set to David Bowie's "Young Americans," which explicitly turns Dogville into an anti-American screed.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Heroes
    Both Henry Winkler and Sally Field have talent to spare, but there's just so far you can go with roles like these, and director Jeremy Paul Kagan, unable to settle on a tone, isn't any help. Winkler is too fresh and appealing by half - he acts like a man who's seen combat only on TV; he can't take us inside his pain. Field has to push her gamin charm to make up for the holes in her character, and she comes off actressy. When Ford is onscreen, the tinny echoes of old movies die away and Heroes takes on - briefly - the resonance of real life. [14 Nov 1977, p.78]
    • Newsweek
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Chaplin
    Richard Attenborough's glumly misconceived Chaplin trudges its way through the great comic's long, brilliant, scandal-ridden career without ever catching fire. [28 Dec 1992, p.56]
    • Newsweek
      • Posted Jun 30, 2017
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Mona Lisa Smile
    Newell, no hack, tries not to milk the cliches shamelessly, and that may be the movie's final undoing. Lacking the courage of its own vulgarity, Mona Lisa Smile is as tepid as old bathwater.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    28 Days
    This is a movie afraid of its own shadows.
    • Newsweek
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Taps
    Taps aspires to be both a movie for the conservative '80s and a youth-in-revolt, anti-military movie of the '60s. The contradictions break the dramatic spine of director Harold Becker's film, which grinds to a predictably violent climax without ever having made its basic premise believable. How many teen-agers do you know who would sacrifice their lives for a military school? [28 Dec 1981, p.65]
    • Newsweek
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
    All the state-of-the-art technology in the world is no help to an actor saddled with Lucas's tinny dialogue.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Easy Money
    First-time director James Signorelli and his four screen-writers fall right into the trap of imitative fallacy -- they want to show us a vulgar, tacky character and do it by producing a vulgar, tacky movie. [22 Aug 1983, p.73]
    • Newsweek
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold
    There have been and will be worse sequels than City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold, but there are few that seem so unnecessary. Slickers II, directed by Paul Weiland, is so harmless it's numbing: a little male bonding, some sagebrush slapstick, a couple of decent quips and a gift-wrapped moral. I kept wondering how the filmmakers mustered up the energy to go to work every morning. [27 June 1994, p.54]
    • Newsweek
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Heartburn
    Heartburn deflates before your eyes: it's less a slice of life than a slice of lifestyle. [28 July 1986, p.70]
    • Newsweek
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
    It's like nothing you've seen before. Yet, over all, the story it tells seems predictable, secondhand, and its "profound" revelations hackneyed. [12 Sep 1983, p.88]
    • Newsweek
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Over the Top
    If you can lose like a winner, can you win like a loser? And if it doesn't matter if you win or lose, how come Sly always wins? Maybe these ambiguities will be resolved in his next opus, when Sly, playing Oldsmobile Cutlass, enters the high-stakes arena of championship horseshoe pitching. [23 Feb 1987, p.79]
    • Newsweek
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Kids
    Unlike Clark's extraordinary books of black-and-white photography, Kids is stunningly anti-erotic, though not untainted by sensationalism. By condensing all this inflammatory material into a 24-hour time frame, Clark and 19-year-old screen-writer Harmony Korine create an overwrought narrative that's sometimes tedious in its relentlesshess.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Tough Guys
    The movie wants to make a serious point that old folks shouldn't be treated as children; the message would be easier to swallow if the moviemakers didn't treat the audience the same way. [20 Oct 1986, p.78b]
    • Newsweek
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Romper Stomper
    Once the shock value rubs off, this hyped-up movie reveals itself to be as empty as the desperate boys it pretends to explore. [05 July 1993, p.57]
    • Newsweek
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Village
    The entire solemn, portentous edifice that is The Village collapses of its own fake weight. Just about everything that makes Shyamalan special misfires here.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Haunting
    The more the computer-generated images take over, the sillier The Haunting gets. By the end, the computers have chased all the scares away.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Get Smart
    In this distressingly generic spy spoof, it's not Maxwell who's clueless, but the filmmakers.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Big Top Pee-wee
    Though sprinkled with comic gems, Big Top Pee-wee runs out of gas in the home stretch. Kleiser, of Blue Lagoon fame, is too bland for the job -- the tame Big Top finale makes you yearn for the cartoonish pizzazz of Big Adventure director Tim Burton. [01 Aug 1988, p.54]
    • Newsweek
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Head in the Clouds
    A paint-by-numbers old-fashioned romantic epic, Head in the Clouds is neither romantic nor epic, but it does succeed at old-fashioned.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Random Hearts
    An adult love story that's trying for stiff-upper-lip poignancy.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Testament
    It calls attention not to the fate of the earth, but to the numbing effect of bad, manipulative art. [14 Nov 1983, p.98]
    • Newsweek
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Postman Always Rings Twice
    If they merely wanted to retell a good tale, they've failed. The first half of "Postman" succeeds in building up an atmosphere of dread and throttled desire as Nicholson and Lange circle their prey (John Colicos). But after the dramatic turnarounds of the trial, the film goes slack. Just when Mamet's script should be tightening the screws, it grows diffuse, introducing unnecessary characters while unaccountably lopping off Cain's original ending, without which the title is inexplicable. Rafelson's increasingly plodding, stagy direction doesn't help: he emphasizes the mechanics of Cain's plot when it needs to be disguised. [23 March 1981, p.81]
    • Newsweek
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Hook
    A good half hour too long, and badly in need of some scares, Hook is a huge party cake of a movie, with too much frosting. After the first delicious bite, sugar shock sets in.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Backbeat
    Get back, get back to where you once belonged, you want to shout. But the movie is stuck in the wrong groove.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Beach
    Gorgeous but curiously weightless.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Cadillac Man
    Watching Robin Williams's new movie, Cadillac Man, spin hopelessly out of control, you know intuitively that there was no single storyteller at the wheel, but a committee of back-seat drivers inflating a small, decent idea into an incoherent, opportunistic concept. Trying desperately to speak to everyone, these star packages have no voice of their own. They're not really movies -- they're product. [28 May 1990, p.72]
    • Newsweek
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Bright Lights, Big City
    The fact is, you are not the kind of novel who should be turned into a move. Without McInerney's deft, witty prose to divert and amuse us, where's the beef in "Bright Lights"? [4 Apr 1988, p.72]
    • Newsweek
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    F.I.S.T.
    The wrong people made this movie, and its failure rankles. It's a handsomely designed, beautifully photographed production full of good actors who have been asked to play their roles in unfailingly hackneyed fashion. [01 May 1978, p.89]
    • Newsweek
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Top Gun
    For all its reliance on old movie cliches, Top Gun is devoid of a strong dramatic line. It's a disjointed movie about flying school bracketed by two arbitrary action sequences... The likable Tom Cruise is simply miscast -- he's not the dangerous guy everyone's talking about, but the boy next door. Nor, for all the erotic posing, is there any real spark between him and the more sophisticated McGillis. Cruise seems to think that if he stares at her hard enough chemistry will result. [19 May 1986, p.72]
    • Newsweek
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Moscow on the Hudson
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Best Defense
    Best Defense, already split in two by its dual story lines, lurches about desperately in search of a tone and a target. [30 Jul 1984, p.80]
    • Newsweek
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Forgotten
    It's poppycock, but well directed: Ruben delivers two or three guaranteed jolts, which almost make up for the copout of an ending.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Gung Ho
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    What Women Want
    Has its heart in the right place, but its funnybone is out of joint.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    King of the Gypsies
    When they are all brought together in one of the movie's many badly staged group scenes, King of the Gypsies hilariously resembles nothing so much as a Hollywood costume party. [28 Dec 1978, p.86]
    • Newsweek
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Champ
    The Champ is overcalculated to a fault. Like suspense, sentimentality should sneak up on you unexpectedly; when it's poured out like slop in a trough, it kills the appetite. This movie is so busy spilling its own tears that my own seemed quite superfluous. [09 Apr 1979, p.87]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Sylvia
    The film's claustrophobic, color-coordinated dourness yields little illumination, and as the surging violins accompany our heroine's un-raveling mind, the movie comes queasily close to romanticizing suicide. I knew I was supposed to feel something, but what?
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Still of the Night
    A thriller in which a psychiatrist solves the murder by interpreting a dream? There hasn't been such a dime-store Freudian gimmick since the days when there were dimestores. [22 Nov 1982, p.118]
    • Newsweek
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Amityville Horror
    I suspect a lot of people will be scared - and thus satisfied - by The Amityville Horror, a film that stoops to some of the oldest and cheapest tricks of the trade in its dogged pursuit of goose bumps. It's a crude haunted-house movie that depends for much of its tension on the possibility that the events that befell George and Kathleen Lutz might be true (though there is considerable evidence that Jay Anson's best-selling book was more fiction that fact). [13 Aug 1979, p.75]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Damien: Omen II
    Damien is a strikingly handsome film - full of plush offices and country homes reeking of Old Money, all lovingly captured in Bill Butler's burnished-gold cinematography - but it hasn't an ounce of suspense. There's really no story here, just a catalog of increasingly baroque murders. [19 June 1978, p.75]
    • Newsweek
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    American Pop
    That American Pop is a work of anti-nostalgia does not make it any less banal than the sunny trip-down-memory-lane formulas it mocks. For all his very real skills as an animator, Bakshi's limitations as an artist are all too clear in American Pop. There's something perversely small-minded about a saga of pop music that resolutely refuses to convey any sense of the joy of making music. Bakshi's ears hear only the downbeats. [16 March 1981, p.94]
    • Newsweek
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Concorde... Airport '79
    As the credits roll by, you may suspect you have wandered into a fund-raiser for the Actors Guild. [13 Aug 1979, p.75]
    • Newsweek
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
    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]
    • Newsweek
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The Fourth Protocol
    The Fourth Protocol, based on a Frederick Forsyth thriller, ought to be gripping, but it is merely diffuse, mechanical and overlong. So much windup, so little delivery. [14 Sept 1987, p.82]
    • Newsweek
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 David Ansen
    The River
    Rydell and his writers compose a kind of Farmers' Book of Job as they pile one misery after another on the Garveys. But all this suffering does not turn them into real people. They're those old Hollywood standbys, Mr. and Mrs. Indomitable Human Spirit. [31 Dec 1984, p.65]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Steel Magnolias
    The densely populated movie, pumped up with unnecessary crowd scenes and a handful of utterly extraneous male characters, is as garish and busy as a TV game show. As directed by Herbert Ross, it is so intent on persuading the audience that it is having a heartwarming emotional experience you almost expect TelePrompTers to flash in the theater, instructing you to laugh and cry. [27 Nov 1989, p.92]
    • Newsweek
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    The Thing
    There's a big difference between shock effects and suspense, and in sacrificing everything at the altar of gore, Carpenter sabotages the drama. The Thing is so single-mindedly determined to keep you awake that it almost puts you to sleep. [28 June 1982, p.73B]
    • Newsweek
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Neighbors
    The ads for Neighbors call it "a comic nightmare"; it's more like a sour case of creative indigestion. [21 Dec 1981, p.51]
    • Newsweek
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    The Final Conflict
    Not only the silliest chapter in the Omen trilogy, it's the dullest and most inept. [30 Mar 1981, p.83]
    • Newsweek
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
    It is perhaps not presumptuous to take the blind man as the director's image of his ideal viewer, but here, I think, Allen becomes overly cautious. Had the man been blind and deaf, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure would have achieved the stature of a true masterpiece. [11 Jun 1979, p.99]
    • Newsweek
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Honkytonk Man
    Eastwood has no more singing talent than Citizen Kane's mistress, and this oh-so-well-intentioned movie takes more than two tepid hours to show us the boy becoming a man, the man achieving his dream and somebody singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot over his grave. They'll have to come for to carry you home after this one. [27 Dec 1982, p.62]
    • Newsweek
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    The 'Burbs
    Attempting a slapstick satire of suburban paranoia and xenophobia, Dante lavishes his considerable skills on a one-note, repetitive Dana Olsen screenplay which, at best, contains enough invention for a 20-minute skit. [06 Mar 1989, p.58]
    • Newsweek
      • Posted Jun 29, 2017
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Three Men and a Cradle
    3 Men and a Cradle has precious few laughs. Shot in a strangely grave, twilight style ill suited to the sitcom premise, the movie plods dully from one foreseeable irony to the next. [26 May 1986, p.72]
    • Newsweek
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Less Than Zero
    My advice to moviegoers: Just say no. [16 Nov 1987, p.108]
    • Newsweek
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Pale Rider
    By the time Pale Rider wends its solemn, deliberate way to the final showdown, all of its tantalizing potential has bitten the dust. The woefully inadequate screenplay by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack takes every mundane turn available, reneging on its mythical promises. [1 July 1985, p.55]
    • Newsweek
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Hollywood Ending
    You know a romantic comedy is in trouble when you root for the hero not to get the girl.
    • Newsweek
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Endless Love
    With pretty Martin Hewitt as David and pretty Brooke Shields as Jade, what you get is an overwrought teen make-out movie. [27 July 1981, p.74]
    • Newsweek
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Heaven's Gate
    An epic vision isn't worth much if you can't tell a story. This, in a nutshell, is the problem at the heart of the three-hour-and-39-minute debacle called Heaven's Gate. In his painstaking quest for period authenticity and his reliance on the operatic set piece, Cimino has lost all sight of day-to-day reality--and all sense of dramatic truth. [01 Dec 1980, p.88]
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Die Another Day
    Flat, distressingly witless -- To put it bluntly -- the thrill is gone. Nobody did it better. But that was then.
    • Newsweek
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Irreversible
    Irreversible takes an adolescent pride in its own ugliness. “I Stand Alone" told me something about the world; this one tells me more than I want to know about the calculating mind of its maker.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Meteor
    Director Ronald Neame, who once made good movies, has instructed his actors to shout as much as possible. The rest is special effects -- and not very special ones at that. [05 Nov 1979, p.101]
    • Newsweek
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    The Villain
    Though kids may enjoy The Villain's harmless high jinks, most adults will feel that, at 90 minutes, this cartoon is about 80 minutes too long. [06 Aug 1979, p.56]
    • Newsweek
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    The January Man
    Writer John Patrick Shanley, whose mix of comedy and romantic whimsy produced intoxicating results in Moonstruck, mixes thrills, social satire and romantic whimsy in The January Man and gets mush. The whodunit is spectacularly implausible, the comedy misjudged, the romance forced. [30 Jan 1989, p.70]
    • Newsweek
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Extreme Prejudice
    Hill is a modern-day Peckinpah. But is there really a need for this pointless, graphic violence in the 1980s? Is this escapism, or is it just a distasteful, needless reflection of what has become horrifyingly common in the real world?... Only small boys will be able to keep a straight face. [4 May 1987, p.77]
    • Newsweek
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
    Downright repetitive! [30 May 1983]
    • Newsweek
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 David Ansen
    Cruising
    What Friedkin's film is about is anybody's guess. If he just wanted to make a thriller, he has made a clumsy and unconvincing one. If he wanted to explore the psychology of his characters, he has left out most of the relevant information. If he intended to illuminate the tricky subject of S&M, he hasn't even scratched the surface. "Cruising" is quite effective in working up an atmosphere of dread: the ominous bar scenes are butch grand guignol, full of sweaty flesh, menacing shadows and barely glimpsed acts of degradation performed by glowering, bearded men in black leather and chains. But who are these people and why are they doing all these kinky things? Friedkin isn't interested in explaining his milieu; he merely offers it up as a superficially shocking tableau for the titillation and horror of his audience. [18 Feb 1980, p.92]
    • Newsweek
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »