Gary Arnold

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.

The Outsiders works itself up into overstylized tizzies during things like the rumble sequence, but its overall energy level is alarmingly faint, and the failure to add new dimensions or new material to the Hinton original suggests an exhausted imagination.

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]

His witty, endearing performance in the title role of Hal Needham's terrific new pick-me-up, Hooper, a rousing and sweet-tempered sentimental comedy about the professional vicissitudes and fellowship of movie stuntmen, should finally secure Reynolds a preeminent position in the affections of contemporary moviegoers.

While you don't come out of this movie feeling pleased, you may come out feeling mysteriously affected, muttering to yourself, "This one is on to something . . ." [19 Nov 1981, p.C15]

Utterly delightful. [26 June 1981, p.D1]

Happily, director Peter Medak is aware of the fundamental absurdity of his ghost story. In fact, he's taken considerable care to compensate with virtuoso displays of scenic and atmospheric suggestiveness. The Changeling has a stylistic gusto and polish that were conspicuously missing from The Fog and The Amityville Horror. [28 Mar 1980, p.F1]

Best Friends turns out to be exceptionally authentic and endearing--the most original and keenly observant romantic comedy to emerge from Hollywood since the underrated All Night Long. [16 Dec 1982, p.C1]

Ridley Scott has made a triumphant directing debut by creating a film that looks beautiful but never loses sight of the capacity for animosity and conflict lurking in the human psyche. [08 Mar 1978, p.D1]

John Huston's movie version of Under the Volcano, which opens today at the West End Circle, seems to run out of pictorial ideas shortly after the credit sequence, a "dance of death" with skeleton dolls that establishes the setting in and around Cuernavaca, Mexico, on Nov. 1-2, 1938, during the Day of the Dead ceremonies. [13 July 1984, p.E4]

Diverting, polished chase thriller. [28 Sep 1979, p.E1]

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]

The level of unintentional mirth in Silent Rage is convulsive enough to endear it to connoisseurs of the preposterous. Still, the movie may be too much of a dumb delight to retain a shred of credibility. As an exercise in brawling action combined with blood-curdling terror, it represents a botched experiment. [2 Apr 1982, p.C6]

It could be the basis of a genuinely interesting drama, for stage or screen, about conjugal relations in the theater. Obviously. John Cassavetes is the last person in the world likely to perceive or write that drama. [15 Apr 1978, p.C9]

Arthur is one of those rare contemporary entertainments that can be used to contradict people who habitually complain, "They don't make 'em like they used to!" This time they have. [17 July 1981, p.B1]

George Romero has done it again. Martin, an eerie, sardonic updating of the traditional vampire legend, should secure Romero's reputation as a modern master of the horror film. [10 May 1978, p.B1]

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]

Shoot the Moon leaves you with more than fresh respect for Parker and Keaton. It also suggests that American family life has just begun to be depicted with true candor and sensitivity on the contemporary screen. [19 Feb 1982, p.D1]

Used Cars, a mean, spirited farce about cutthroat rivalry between ruthless used-car salesmen somewhere in the Southwest, recalls the worst tendencies of "Ace in the Hole" crossed with the worst tendencies of "One, Two, Three." It's assiduously nasty and hard-driving too, a double-duty excess. Director/co-writer Robert Zemeckis has undeniable energy and flair, but it's being misspent on pretexts and situations that seem inexcusably gratuitous and snide.

A sporadically funny, marginally interesting fiasco that might have evolved into a memorable romantic comedy.

Candleshoe isn't immobilized by wholesomeness, as Disney movies go, it's unsually spirited as well as pleasant. [11 Feb 1978, p.E1]

Despite its excesses, "The Howling" has some tricks and jokes worth howling about. The sexual undercurrents in the werewolf myth have been made playfully explicit, especially in the sultry, voluptuous form of Elisabeth Brooks, cast as a nympho werewolf named Marsha. When she ambushes a victim in the woods, they change forms in the course of coupling strategically obscured by a blazing campfire in the foreground -- a deliberate howl of a sex scene. [13 March 1981, p.C1]

Higgins can't keep his mind from wandering. Foul Play never begins to make sense as a mystery - Dudley Moore and the 3-foot-9 Billy Barty, become the butts of grotesquely conceived and staged sight gags.

Both The French Connection and The Exorcist gave Friedkin a reputation as a talented manipulator, but it appears that he may have begun to overestimate the appeal of manipulation for its own sake. The characters and episodes in Sorcerer seem totally arbitrary. They're used to implement certain pictorial or inconographic notions, but they're never developed dramatically.

Between the splendid cast and the unsavoriness of the period details, True Confessions generates so much absorbing human interest and persuasive texture that the miscalculated plot seems a minor letdown.

The doting phoniness of the text has probably been aggravated rather than improved by a formidable casting coup -- uniting Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn for the first time in their illustrious careers and creating the shallowest heartwarmer in recent memory. [22 Jan 1982, p.C1]

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

Well supplied with both raunchy humor and star appeal, particularly in the person of Burt Reynolds, the film seems certain to become a crowd-pleaser.