Gary Arnold

Innovative, lavish and lacking. [30 Mar 1984, p.D1]

Sufficiently attractive and absorbing to sustain the fond delusion that Charles' pursuit of the mystifying Sarah might culminate in a revealing, conclusive confrontation. [02 Oct 1981, p.C1]

The most coherent thing about the new action thriller Blue Thunder is its eagerness to succeed and its rabble-rousing spectacle of stunt flying and aerial combat. Blue Thunder, a chase melodrama with police helicopter pilots as the good guys, transposes the salty tone of The French Connection and Dirty Harry to a chopper squadron in Los Angeles. [13 May 1983, p.B1]

A handful of funny brainstorms can be found rattling around the slapdash confines of Ice Pirates. [03 Apr 1984, p.C6]

A fitfully witty and reliably spine-tingling horror melodrama...While it works you over effectively, Poltergeist betrays a good deal of rather dubious, uncoordinated manipulation. [4 June 1982, p.D1]

The Karate Kid can't really brushoff the conventional showdown it's incited, so the movie adds the obligatory action payoff to its less expected and more substantial rewards. The filmmakers can't help overbalancing on melodramatic excess from time to time, but their mistakes never obliterate the civilized wisdom of Miyagi's outlook: "Have balance, everything be better." [22 June 1984, p.B1]

Although Richter's screenplay leaves certain large areas unexplored or unexplained -- including Brubaker's own psychological makeup and the precise linkage between the groups inside and outside Wakefield that have a vested interest in resisting reform -- there's not a bit of slack in the picture.

Despite its obviously derivative elements and lack of flair in certain areas, notably writing and casting, the movie is at worst an entertaining redundancy, a brisk and diverting pastiche of familiar science-fiction adventure hokum. [24 Dec 1979, p.C1]

Fortunately, the level of pictorial magic improves considerably as the movies rolls along. [28 March 1978, p.B12]

Like their previous movies, it emerges as an interesting disappointment, reflecting a cultivated and audacious taste in material inhibited by a stuffy approach to filmmaking. The advantage of their intelligent, literate, methodical style is that it may accommodate novel themes and impressive performances. [28 Jan 1982, p.C11]

Neither triumph nor fiasco, Strange Brew leaves plenty of room for improvement, but I hope Thomas and Moranis get the chance to demonstrate that they've learned a lot from the mixed assortment of nuttiness in their first movie comedy. [30 Aug 1983, p.B4]

The Wanderers is a well-made movie that leaves a so-what impression. [27 July 1979, p.B1]

After slapstick farces as exuberant and hilarious as Sleeper and Love and Death, it comes as a soft, fuzzy, mildly diverting letdown.

I suppose it's also less than inspired to portray a ballet company where the codpieces of the male dancers bulge out so far that the ballerina can cover the width of the stage using them as steppingstones. Nevertheless, some dumb, obvious gags have a way of working by impudently flaunting their dumbness and obviousness, and this appears to be a textbook example. In fact, for the juvenile public that should supply its best audience, Top Secret! may serve as a veritable primer of irresistibly terrible wheezes.

In a brilliant reenactment of what must be one of their definitive routines, these Furry Freak Brothers from opposite sides of town proceed to get acquainted over a joint the size of a blunderbuss muzzle. It's a new classic among comedy-team encourters: hilarious rapport at first toke. [11 Oct 1978, p.B1]

As derivative interplanetary clunkers go, Flash Gordon is good for a few laughs -- some of them intentional. [05 Dec 1980, p.F1]

One of the peculiar attractions of Easy Money is that it's suggestive enough to keep you amused even as it takes goofy, capricious detours. It's not what you'd call a classic or a class comedy act, but it has the kick of an embryonic pop phenomenon.

While Airplane II, proves to be a breezy and tolerably consistent follow-up to its successful prototype, a parodistic copy that relied less on jokes from the original might have seemed a shade fresher. [11 Dec 1982, p.C1]

At its best, My Bodyguard recalls the freshness and authenticity of Breaking Away -- and for a while seems that it is going to be even better. That impression proves premature. After building up to a stirring, climactic turning point, Alan Ormsby's original screenplay falters in the stretch. [15 Aug 1980, p.C1]

It's a half-baked stopover in the big house, relying on Eastwood, rather than a particular prison theme, for focus and continuity. For better and worse, Eastwood's peculiarly intimidating personality - solitary, sarcastic, fearless - has become its own predominant, suggestive theme. Escape From Alcatraz is poorly orchestrated, but the Eastwood melody still comes through, laconic and clear. [22 June 1979, p.C1]

Schrader's second feature, Hardcore, is more confidently made than his first, Blue Collar, but it slips into a similar category: absorbing but unsatisfying. [10 Feb 1979, p.C1]

Despite the flailing around, the picture fitfully accumulates a handful of modest highlights and silly brainstorms. [03 Feb 1984, p.E6]

Something is missing, and you feel that its absence prevents both the characterization and movie from going decisively over the top.

An inconsistent but good-natured ramble, Bustin' Loose looks like a secure investment for Richard Pryor fans.

Taking frantic aim at a fairly promising target -- American jurisprudence -- And Justice for All makes a trigger-happy, scatterbrained spectacle of itself. Although it shatters all over the screen, this would-be topical satire may strike enough chords among rabble-rousing yahoos to become a hit of sorts. Profoundly depressing sorts, that is. [19 Oct 1979, p.B6]

Although their film resolves itself into a lurid shambles, screenwriter Gerald Ayres and director Adrian Lyne demonstrate a certain flair for foxy exploitation. [19 Apr 1980, p.C3]

The disappointing thing about Streets of Fire is that it can't deliver on the promise of a tangy, sexy evening of stimulation. The failure is aggravated by the exorbitant scale of the production, which seems much too lavish for an atmosphere of B-movie squalor. [01 June 1984, p.B4]

The movie proves a curiously harmless pet of a black comedy: It barks and snaps at you in fitfully funny ways, but it's essentially tame, pipsqueaky and more than a trifle antiquated. [05 Nov 1982, p.D1]

After a fairly promising getaway, Romancing the Stone gradually chases its tail into enough melodramatic dead ends to deteriorate into an expendable runaround, all too easy to shrug off as a miscalculated clone of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A powerful period setting might have taken up the slack, but Lynch doesn't impose the past as vividly as the theme demands. Nor does he place us in a position to appreciate Merrick's fears and longings as if they were our own. [17 Oct 1980, p.C1]

Well, cloddish as it is, Tank doesn't put any obstacles in the way of separating the good guys from the bad guys. And while you might justly call it stupefying, it's never boring. [28 Mar 1984, p.B17]

Milius and his co-writer, Kevin Reynolds, commit a fatal blunder by jumping into combat sequences before we've scarcely had time to take in the idyllic heartland setting, a rural Colorado town called Calumet. [10 Aug 1984, p.B4]

Cannery Row is expendable and creaky, a lavishly mounted antique.

Mr. Mom has its share of bright lines and funny moments, but if you bring anything beyond trifling expectations to this role-reversal farce, starring Michael Keaton and Teri Garr as a couple obliged to switch homemaking and breadwinning duties, it will be difficult to avoid feeling shortchanged. [20 Aug 1983, p.C1]

Directing from his own screenplay, Alan Alda displays an alarming aptitude for the comedy of manners at its most trifling and synthetic. [22 May 1981, p.F1]

A more modest, down-to-earth disappointment than Firefox, it benefits from a fair amount of incidental entertainment value, much of it supplied by a distinctive and often humorous supporting cast. [18 Dec 1982, p.C4]

Zieff & Co. give it a game, good-humored try, but I don't think they're in jeopardy of being celebrated as inspired farceurs. [14 Feb 1984, p.D8]

Stallone hasn't done himself proud in Paradise Alley. The film could still use a director, a scenario writer and someone to discourage the star from lapsing into happy-go-lucky imitations of Lee J. Cobb. Still, there's something likeable about this zany manipulator. [10 Nov 1978, p.E1]

Black Sunday takes such a plodding literal-minded approach with an extravagant thriller premise that we have more than enough time to watch the gears working and all too often jamming. [01 Apr 1977, p.B1]

Patchy, underbudgeted pop-music satire a la This is Spinal Tap but lacking its professional assurance. [30 Jun 1994, p.M28]

Iceman proves an intriguing premise that is allowed or encouraged to go daftly astray. [13 Apr 1983, p.B10]

Eagle flops around trying to sustain a premise that defies suspenseful elaboration from the outset. No one with his wits about him believes the conspirators will succeed in capturing or shooting Churchill. More to the point, who would want them to? We're asked to suspend disbelief for the sake of a gimmick that not only insults common sense and general knowledge but also betrays old loyalties and convictions. [26 Mar 1977, p.B5]

A would-be endearing romantic entertainment that becomes an exercise in futility, Racing With the Moon concentrates a considerable amount of pictorial polish, acting talent and sincerity on a trifling amount of content. [24 Mar 1984, p.C1]

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy promises to take off every so often, but the material proves too slight for buoyant fancy. [16 July 1982, p.C1]

A dinky, lackluster offering. [10 July 1981, p.B4]

Without a Trace provides little sustenance. It keeps serving up overprepared tidbits of torment when you'd prefer to get down to a main course. [04 Feb 1983, p.C4]

Although Psycho II is obviously a travesty masquerading as a sequel, it's impossible to tell how deliberate the ludicrous aspects of the masquerade were meant to be. In fact, the best sustained mystery element of the show derives from stylistic sloppiness and confusion.

Obliged to launch the hero on an effective counterattack down the stretch, Wallace goes through the motions proficiently enough for exploitation thriller purposes. He should have quit while he was ahead, but Halloween III demonstrates a reasonable ability to control comic-horror effects on his first derivative try. [27 Oct 1982, p.D9]

Tender Mercies fails because of an apparent dimness of perception that frequently overcomes dramatists: they don't always know when they've got ahold of the wrong end of the story they want to tell. [29 Apr 1983, p.B1]

What accounts for the curious appeal of such a pretentiously amateurish scare movie? Surely not the raggedy direction of Robin Hardy, obviously struggling with his first feature. It must be the softcore sex, the illusion that Summerisle is an out-of-the-way paradise where you can get all the action you crave. [26 Nov 1980, p.B9]

Its elaborate and meticulously re-created period settings and moods prove far more interesting and diverting than the undernourished characterizations and love stories that flutter and sputter across the foregrounds. [19 Apr 1984, p.D6]

None of Hill's dynamism will save The Warriors from impressing most neutral observers as a ghastly folly. It seems a little demented to choose gang warfare as a pretext for showing off virtuoso technique. [10 Feb 1979, p.C7]

Movie tradition sets awfully high standards for these sorts of fatalistic, criminally compromised sibling relationships. Rourke and Roberts don't quite measure up. [23 June 1984, p.C1]

The aim is oddball romantic comedy, with himself and Mia Farrow embodying a funny-grotesque mismatch; unfortunately, the obligatory demonstration of attraction and compatibility between these characters escapes Allen; the affair degenerates into a mawkish botch. [27 Jan 1984, p.D1]

Interiors imposes a portentous formality that seems deliberately starved of sensuous appeal. It's obvious that Allen has serious intentions, but they're expressed in bloodless, superficial, derivative ways. [29 Sept 1978, p.D1]

A knuckleheaded but amiable summer trifle, Stroker Ace is aimed straight at Burt Reynolds' vast heartland public.

Demon Seed might have been a genuinely witty and terrifying thriller if someone had taken advantage of the story's glaring sadomasochistic implications. Nevertheless, Cammell plays it dumb at a thematic level, ignoring the sci-fi sexual bondage satire staring him in the face. [08 Apr 1977, p.B11]

Priceless it ain't, but if the kids are determined to enjoy it, the brain damage should be minimal. [18 Apr 1981, p.D3]

The Dogs of War can be recommended only as a desperate snack for rabid tastes.

While literate and coherent in digest-of-history terms, the chronicle of Gandhi's remarkable career as a mass political organizer and spiritual inspiration distilled from the biographical record by Attenborough and screenwriter John Briley remains grievously doting and squeamishly evasive.

The movie isn't skillful enough to back up its satiric presumptions. Though it obviously aims to be sassy and uninhibited, Airplane! never approaches the comic heights achieved unwittingly by "Airport '75" and the peerless "Concorde -- Airport 1979." [3 July 1980, p.C11]

The Tin Drum is likely to be remembered as another conspicuous example of why the urge to film certain books ought to be resisted. [25 Apr 1980, p.C1]

Peckinpah is a filmmaking heavyweight, but in Convoy all he's doing is fighting off the boredom and frustration that grow out of coping with stupid material. [28 June 1978, p.E4]

Rocky II doesn't merely recall its Oscar-winning predecessor, a modestly produced but astutely calculated inspirational fable about the rehabilitation of a down-and-outer. It slavishly repeats the plot of Rocky, achieving differentiation only in dubious forms: soap opera detours, delaying tactics and an ugly new mood of viciousness surrounding a rematch between the boxers. [15 June 1979, p.B1]

Authenticity isn't everything and "Diner" ends up an oddly disappointing nice try. [5 March 1982, p.B1]

A picture as secondhand and conventional as The Woman in Red can't generate much enthusiasm, but it displays more buoyancy and incidental comic appeal than one anticipates. Wilder's judgment hasn't proved especially sound, so perhaps it's commercially prudent to pin him down to an apparently reliable pretext or scenario. Still, the results would probably have been more satisfying if his nervous keepers had permitted this sometimes misguided but endearing mutt of a funnyman a slightly longer leash in a slightly roomier kennel. [16 Aug 1984, p.B2]

At once emotionally sound and cinematically promising, this sort of obsession can degenerate into spooky nonsense unless it's handled with care. Weir's attraction to the mysterious seems authentic enough, but he's still not expert at rationalizing and sustaining psychological mystery stories. Both "Picnic at Hanging Rock" and "The Last Wave" lack consummate strokes of manipulative artistry. They leave you hanging on the brink, but the drop isn't very deep. [14 March 1979, p.B1]

While perfectly presentable and agreeable, especially if you are in an undemanding frame of mind, Krull remains a thin, dogged exercise in extravagant adventure. [03 Aug 1983, p.B1]

The director appears to be stuck with rather drab shots from inside the racers showing one car creeping ahead and then falling back. The effect is not exactly thrilling, but the audience is obviously eager to be thrilled and more than willing to do its imaginative share. Greased Lightning never generates enough momentum to meet the audience half-way. [16 July 1977, p.E5]

When he finally takes the screen for a prolonged routine, Lee reminds you that he was indeed a thing of beauty in motion. However, if it's the missing Lee footage you've come for, there's no reason to catch the first hour or so of the film [26 May 1979, p.C9]

One of the worst ideas in Murder on the Orient Express was the repeated reenactment of the murder scene. Death on the Nile compounds this vulgarity by visualizing almost every speculation Poirot entertains about his fellow passengers. The redundancy of it all becomes ridiculous. [29 Sep 1978, p.D1]

Unfortunately, screenwriter David Shaber hasn't laid the sort of tracks that can support a clever or gripping vehicle. The rickety foundation might be finessed by swift, dynamic direction -- the sort of approach William Friedkin brought to The French Connection or Walter Hill to The Warriors, an urban thriller Shaber also helped fabricate -- but newcomer Bruce Malmuth isn't agile enough.

Despite this sporadic funny stuff and the enthusiastic cast members, "Zorro" degenerates into a ponderous trifle. By turns, Peter Medak's direction seems stuffy and scattered and Hamilton's Spanish and English accents keep getting lost on the soundtrack. [25 July 1981, p.C9]

Producer Ray Stark, screenwriter Neil Simon and director Jay Sandrich obviously intended to whip up a frothy, madcap entertainment in the tradition of the screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s. Their failure to "make one like they used to" incurs a double liability: In addition to wasting resources and disappointing expectations, Seems Like Old Times -- now at area theaters -- appears to trifle with an older and better movie.

The result is a curios, unsatisfactory pastiche of documentary tidbits acquired from Reichenbach and speculative filler supplied by Welles himself, who appears prowling around in his Felliniesque hat and cape, performing a couple of magic tricks and mostly pontificating about himself, Hughes, Irving, de Hory and the nature of art and illusion in the editing room or a the dinner table.

By the time the film is over, the movie has degenerated with a jaundiced vengeance. Fosse's sour, grandstanding cynicism imposed an intolerable burden of self-pity on his talent, our compassion and the tradition of the backstage muscial.

Condorman is ingenious enough when it comes to mechanical resources. Its undoing is personality resources.

Witty as they sometimes are, Romero's ironies aren't subtle or devastating enough to justify lengthy comtemplation. "Dawn" seems like a good 80-minute horror premise stretched out at least half an hour too long. Moreover, the excess running time appears to be filled by repeated shootings, clubbings, stabbings and munchings, always vividly depicted, rather than further character exploration or mordant strokes of humor.

A mannered, gratuitous exercise in Grand Guignol dreadfulness that was made by and with unknowns. [03 June 1978, p.B6]

There isn't much conceptual or stylistic integrity in Tightrope. It's calculated to function at the most expedient and spurious levels of nightmarish artifice. [17 Aug 1984, p.D1]

A dreadfully earnest but fatally uninspired effort to compress the aftermath of an epic catastrophe, massive nuclear war, into a small-scale family memoir.

Fred Walton, who directed Stranger, seems more skillful at orchestrating creepy atmospherics than John Carpenter was in Halloween. At the same time, he's scarcely clever or stylish enough to make Stranger a thriller worth going out of your way for. [20 Oct 1979, p.F6]

Like so many modern movies, The Bounty appears interesting and even spellbinding when preoccupied with settings and textures, but maddeningly obtuse when obliged to clarify basic dramatic conflicts. [17 May 1984, p.E8]

Days of Heaven leaves one wanting more: either a totally revolutionary approach to pictorial storytelling or traditional dramatic interest....It may be artistic suicide for Malick to continue his style of pictorial inflation without also enriching his scenarios. If he doesn't, he's likely to be remembered not for his undeniable pictorial talent but for his eccentricity. [5 Oct. 1978, p.B10]

It never ventures close enough to the victims to inspire profound reflections on the pity and terror of it all. [12 Nov 1983, p.C1]

The plot synopsis bears may a suspicious resemblance to "Alien." [6 Nov 1981, p.23]

My Favorite Martian never achieves anything that resembles farcical consistency, let alone farcical bliss, but it has enough playful nonsense scattered around a hit-and-miss scenario to rationalize a kiddie matinee excursion. [12 Feb 1999, p.C16]

The movie version of The Onion Field offers a compelling buildup of suspense and apprehension, culminating in the shocking murder of a young policeman. But it gradually begins to diminish in force, transforming a gripping, realistic reenactment of a murder case into a prosaic and somewhat baffling grind. [19 Oct 1979, p.B1]

Southern Comfort sets up a potentially compelling switch on The Most Dangerous Game, but Hill's tactical maneuvers prove too diffuse and uncoordinated to carry out a successful variation. [16 Oct 1981, p.B1]

One detects flickering intentions of enlarging on the formula material -- especially in the byplay between the actors playing narcs -- but the prevailing mood of the entertainment is decidedly bargain-basement. [11 Oct 1979, p.D15]

The rapport that ought to evolve between Gloria and her juvenile charge never quite makes it from the filmmaker's imagination onto the screen. [10 Oct 1980, p.E7]

Social consciousness and cultural respectability are allowed to make deep inroads on the raunch, since the kids are suddenly congregated around the Drama Club and devote their major conspiratorial campaign to discrediting a bigoted preacher who threatens to interfere with the term play. [2 July 1983, p.C3]

Doug Trumbull has spent years maneuvering a potentially stirring mystic pretext to the threshold of realization, only to balk and stumble at the act of finally crossing that threshold. [29 Sept 1983, p.D1]

The premise and star remain out of whack until the rambling, diffuse screenplay finally struggles beyond basic training.

Never makes a subatomic particle of melodramatic or psychological sense yet nevertheless provokes an overwhelming proportion of women spectators into screaming fits. [19 Aug 1981, p.C1]

Regrettably, director Hal Ashby has allowed both the protagonist, folk-singer Woody Guthrie, played with surprising canniness and authority by David Carradine, and the Depression setting to drift away in pictorial reverie and dramatically evasive heroworship. [16 Feb 1977, p.B1]

As a movie concept, Dragonslayer seems to have so much going for it that it could scarcely miss. Yet it does miss in crucial respects. [27 June 1981, p.C1]

It couldn't have been easy, of course, to orchestrate the continuity of an adventure movie in which most of the action takes place in an essentially invisible setting, but it's Lisberger's failure to orchestrate this aspect of the show that ultimately causes the picture to sag. Fascinating as they are as discreet sequences, the computer-animated episodes don't build dramatically. They remain a miscellaneous form of abstract spectacle. [10 July 1982, p.C1]