Gary Arnold

Dismal.

Proves a welcome improvement on the original Conan the Barbarian, finding a tone of lighthearted preposterousness more suitable to the absurd heroic dimensions of the pretext. [03 July 1984, p.D9]

Instead of being touched by this anachronistic road allegory, one is merely puzzled. What prompted this material, redolent of so many failed counterculture romances of a few years ago, to surface at this time? [04 Nov 1977, p.D5]

Electric Dreams can be trusted to provide some idle amusement, particularly from "users" cautious enough to keep both their demands and levels of resistance set at low-to-modest -- probably the ideal setting for summer moviegoing in general, come to think of it.

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]

A blockheaded travesty that fancies itself a rollicking update of "The Pirates of Penzance."

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

Despite a lull here and a lapse there, this superproduction turns out to be prodigiously inventive and enjoyable, doubly blessed by sophisticated illusionists behind the cameras and a brilliant new stellar personality in front of the cameras -- Christopher Reeve.

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]

An engaging exercise in discreet, incisive and good-humored hokum. Although Rocky III is a vivid piece of popular filmmaking and a considerable bit of harmless fun, the star doesn't seem to derive as much pleasure from the experience as he should.

The interludes of terror are strictly functional and literal-minded: If it's not a murder spectacle, it's a tease that anticipates a subsequent atrocity. [25 Nov 1983, p.C2]

A Benji movie can't be the most boring thing under the sun, but while struggling to stay awake during something as tedious as "For the Love of Benji," now at area theaters, you begin to imagine that the minutes might pass more quickly and vividly if you were watching the grass grow or contemplating the horizons in Barstow or Wendover. [24 June 1977, p.B9]

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]

An unusually imaginative and adroit but also self-conscious remake, which transposes the setting from a disarmingly serene small town called Santa Mira to a systematically ominous, threatening San Francisco.

In the annals of overcompensatory anal-retentive joking, Rivers may have succeeded in carving out an even lower niche for herself.

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]

In the hands of a less amateurish director, The Philadelphia Experiment, now at area theaters, might have emerged as an ingratiating sleeper. [09 Aug 1984, p.D6]

The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again is content to deepen the rut left four years ago by its predecessor, The Apple Dumpling Gang, one of the dreariest Disney artifacts of the decade but a comfortable box-office success.

The new film, a fitfully amusing and perfectly harmless spoof of the morbid and masochistic cliches that sustain the typical soap opera, represents a mellow, spruced-up turn toward the mainstream. [06 Jul 1981, p.C3]

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

"Dragon" was apparently meant to be a big, rousing musical comedy-fantasy, but it's staged and photographed without musical-comedy energy, flair or coordination. [17 Dec 1977, p.D7]

Lumet and his inspired collaborators have succeeded in fabricating and navigating one majectic, rabble-rousing Mother Ship of a musical, a sublimely happy moviegoing experience. [27 Oct 1978, p.D1]

Recommended only to moviegoers so indiscriminately fond of the Panther series and starved for belly laughs that they consider it a privilege to watch director Blake Edwards sort through his old footage and sweep up after himself. If your indulgence is less than open-ended, this lame attempt to scrape a "new" feature out of a filmmaking backlog is likely to seem more deplorable than diverting. [18 Dec 1982, p.C4]

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]

In short, Magic is unworthy of its name. It's frightfully feeble and obvious. [11 Nov 1978, p.F11]