David Ansen

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

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.

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]

It's a gorgeous bad movie, the folly of a great visual stylist.

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]

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.

Octopussy, the 13th of the Bond adventures and the sixth to star Roger Moore, isn't as exhilarating as "The Spy Who Loved Me". But it's the most enjoyable since then, in large part because it's not trying to be the ultimate anything. [13 June 1983, p.77]

Think of it as an epic poem, in which Scorsese's swirling, headlong baroque camera searches paradoxically for the stillness at the meditative heart of Buddhism. [22 December 1997, p. 86]

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

It's one of the richest movie experiences of the year, a spellbinding American epic that holds you firmly in its grip for nearly three hours.

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.

It's hard to believe this is von Donnersmarck's first feature. His storytelling gifts have the novelistic richness of a seasoned master. The accelerating plot twists are more than just clever surprises; they reverberate with deep and painful ironies, creating both suspense and an emotional impact all the more powerful because it creeps up so quietly.

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]

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

A languorous, funny and lovingly detailed memory film.

That's the paradox that makes this parade of folly so much fun: it feels as if everyone involved is having a high old time, and their enthusiasm is contagious.

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

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

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]

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]

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

Relieved of his courting duties, Allen gives his funniest performance in ages.

A stunning crime drama that shares its protagonists' rabid attention to detail and love of adrenalin.

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]

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

DiCaprio is astonishing.

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]

Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy are both in peak form.