Gary Arnold

One is left with the unpleasant impression that Little Darlings was animated by an idle longing to exploit its popular teen-age costars for cheap thrills. The depictions are discreet, but the context is obstinately smutty.

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]

Eyes is somehow too relaxing to be satisfying.

The major problem with the film is that the exposition is not nearly as clever as the premise. After warming to the idea behind the movie, one tends to cool off as it trudges toward a resolution.

The new movie adorned with this sure-fire title happens to be a tacky and disreputable attempt at a sophisticated comedy about women writers.

Like the Dustin Hoffman film Straight Time, Schrader's picture sustains a certain interest despite its faults. You stick with both movies because of the promise of something authentic and tragically revealing, even though the promise is never fulfilled. These films don't really work, but they're the sort of films that don't work in interesting ways. [24 Mar 1978, p.D1]

One of the most rousing and appealing animated features ever made by the Disney studio. [24 June 1977, p.B1]

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]

The setup is so conducive to hedonistic wish-fulfillment that it's a pity writer Dan Greenburg and director Alan Myerson lacked the wit to capitalize on it. [20 Nov 1981, p.C3]

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]

Time Bandits is a marvelous cinematic tonic, a sumptuous new classic in the tradition of time-travel and fairy-tale adventure. [06 Nov 1981, p.C1]

D.C. Cab jumps you in the spirit of a big, shaggy and affection-craving pooch. You may wish it weren't quite so sloppily demonstrative, but it's too full of zest and good will to be resisted. [15 Dec 1983, p.D1]

Some of the jokes are so raucously or goofily low-minded that you may laugh out of a kind of shocked weakness.

The tussle between David and The Needle seems to release a Pandora's Box of outrageous scenes. [24 July 1981, p.D8]

Writer-director Dearden, who earned his gruesome credentials as the screenwriter on Fatal Attraction, underlines his leading lady's lack of rudimentary skill by leaving the soundtrack full of dead air and amateurish articulation during numerous conversations. He's also repeatedly drawn to Hitchcock allusions that slip out of his grasp. [26 Apr 1991, p.E1]

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]

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]

Despite formidable competition, Looker makes a persuasive case for Stinker of the Year among suspense thrillers. [30 Oct 1981, p.C6]

Thanks to the heavy synthetic hand of director George Roy Hill, the potentially charming aspects of the kids' infatuation curdle into syrupy gruel.

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]

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

Given the source material, the film is as good as respectful adaptation could make it: a high-class soap opera, compulsively watchable despite a quality of insight eventually exposed as trite and dubious in the extreme. [26 Sep 1980, p.F1]

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]