Gary Arnold

Indeed, you come out of Back Roads feeling more familiar with the configuration of Sally Field's spinal column and chestbone than the character she's struggling to embody.

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

One of the snazziest, wittiest productions in the history of the serial.

A round of misfires from title to denouement, the new comedy "Modern Problems" is a modern problem for moviegoers: the latest rummy example of that strange abomination, the unfunny "fun" movie, victimized by utter confusion about its genre, tone and audience. [30 Dec 1981, p.B6]

The finished film obliterates whatever promise of novelty and human interested existed in the basic idea of Belinski's culture shock. If the rabbi's odyssey was embryonically appealing, the filmmakers have nurtured it along pact from an elephant trying to hatch a robbin's egg. [27 July 1979, p.B1]

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]

Eager to seem warmhearted and endearing, Author! Author! is frustrated by Pacino's conspicuous resistance. If anything, this uncharacteristic vehicle illustrates his inability to lighten up an emphatically gloomy, brooding screen presence. [19 Jun 1982, p.C1]

After getting off to a wretched start, the film settles down in mid-passage and grows unexpectedly appealing. Down the stretch it reverts to faltering form. The best policy might be to go about 30 minutes late and leave about 15 minutes early. [7 Aug 1981, p.C1]

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]

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]

The Funhouse begins with a lamely facetious reprise of the shower sequence from Psycho and slides steadily downhill there. [18 Mar 1981, p.B4]

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]

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]

If you aren't feeling so generous, it's pretty obvious that the movie is not only a stinker but an inexcusably corrupt stinker, dependent on the indulgence of a public slavish or naive enough to feel honored when old pros content themselves with smugly amateurish shtik. [29 June 1984, p.B5]

An acceptable scene-setter, Carpenter reveals glaring inadequacies as a storyteller. [15 Feb 1980, p.C3]

One may feel limitations on the dramatic side, but Bridge is an unqualified pictorial achievement.

At once warmly earthbound and nobly starstruck, it should give receptive spectators a savory pick-me-up. [13 July 1984, p.E1]

The title, of course, leads one to expect the long-awaited movie version of David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, but the actuality is closer to tattered but dopily diverting remnants from The Karate Kid, Road House and Rocky IV. [14 Nov 1989, p.E3]

Christine does indeed suffer from the preposterous, low-octane nature of the devil-car pretext. But this satanic nonsense is saved from strictly facetious appeal by a few sensational pictorial effects, notably the sights of Christine speeding after a victim while engulfed in flames or miraculously repairing her own battered body, and by the no-nonsense performances of an excellent cast, especially Keith Gordon as the obsessed and transformed Arnie Cunningham.

Profanely funny, wised-up and heroically antiheroic, North Dallas Forty is unlikely to please anyone with a vested interest in glorifying the National Football League.

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]

More American Graffiti suffers from a terminal case of the cutes. Made with the approval of George Lucas, the director of American Graffiti, and perhaps with his misbegotten collusion, More American Graffiti succeeds in making a blithe mockery of its predecessor. [03 Aug 1979, p.D4]

Oh, God! Book II revives that excruciating game of false piety in which Hollywood humorists grovel for brownie points in eternity by presuming to be God's chummiest press agents. [03 Oct 1980, p.C1]

An admirably crisp, incisive counter-terrorist thriller, the most proficient and entertaining movie of its kind since Richard Lester's Juggernaut.

The conventions that worked for High Noon break down in the high-tech atmosphere of Outland and the story seems trite and dinky. [23 May 1981, p.C6]

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

Over the Edge is an oafishly made movie that claims to deal with a documented case of adolescent unrest in an authentic upper-middle-class social setting, then manipulates the situation only for hypocritical suggestions of teen-age vice and picturesque sprees of teen-age violence. [04 Mar 1982, p.C13]

A generous entertainment of its kind, Any Which Way mixes plentiful portions of gauche, robust action and comedy with frequent musical interludes. [17 Dec 1980, p.E1]