Hal Hinson

Its intentions seem fairly modest, and so are its achievements. It's a modestly enjoyable diversion.

I don't care what Dylan said, everyone must not get Stoned.

With its desensitizing blood lust, RoboCop 2 contributes yet another ugly note to this already demoralizing season of sadism. If things continue as they have until now, the body count at the movies may reach into the millions.

Arguably one of the two or three best musical films ever made, and, along with Singin' in the Rain, the wittiest and most sophisticated of the '50s Technicolor musicals. [25 June 1987, p.B7]

The spirit of the film, though, is snazzier and more playful than Crichton’s rather thin, humorless schematic. The subject is serious; thankfully, the movie is not.

This brilliantly naive, low-budget shoot-'em-up presents every action as if it were brand spanking new.

A colorful, buoyant, loving tribute to the notion of girlfriends forever.

A pretty dry cracker.

Roman Polanski's Frantic is taut, intelligent filmmaking, and highly accomplished in a way that doesn't substitute flash for coherence or the pleasures of a well-told story. In other words, it's everything that Lethal Weapon and a half dozen other recent Hollywood thrillers weren't. [26 Feb 1988, p.B1]

Though the movie suggests that Hearst was brainwashed -- or at least coerced through fear to act as she did -- it maintains a safe distance from any definitive position. In the end, we have not come any closer to an understanding of Patty Hearst. But ambiguity, in this case, isn't an indication of complexity; it's a refuge. It's an admission of failure.

As a writer, Baumbach loves smart, glib talk, and he has a sharp ear for fast-paced, overlapping dialogue; as a director, though, he prefers long takes that allow his characters to work out their feelings.

A movie made by filmmaker working in sync with his times -- an exciting, disturbing, provocative film.

An unpredictable, occasionally amusing, wildly uneven portrait of a neighborhood struggling to hold on to its identity.

As it unreels, The Ref keeps getting dumber, and, unfortunately, it simply wasn't that brilliant to begin with.

Despite the movie's suffocating sense of chic Soho hipness, it touches on all the square cliches about the tragic life of the misunderstood artist.

He's made two features, "The Unbelievable Truth" and now Trust, and both are cool, strikingly original case studies of middle-class anomie.

In Sleepless, though, we're as stuck on these people as the director is, and it puts us in a receptive, forgiving mood. We fall -- and I think a lot of people will fall hard for this movie -- even though we know we shouldn't.

If Eastwood had any emotional depth as an actor, the character's anguish might come through.

The whole production is like a wake. Rest in peace, Bernie. Please.

It's a package, plain and simple: stars plus a high-concept premise, stripped down, no options. No personality, either.

Dugan has a brisk, imaginative comic style; he sets up his gags well, so that there's still some surprise in the punch lines when they come.

David Mamet's Homicide is a brilliant muddle: compelling, exhilarating and, at the same time, profoundly dubious. Certainly there is greatness in it. And just as certainly the moral ice it skates on is precariously thin. It leads us into a forest of dark contradictions, then leaves us stranded, dazzled but bewildered, elated but perplexed.

Irony is the movie's escape hatch. It allows the filmmakers to stage maudlin bits and, at the same time, signal the audience that they're too cool to actually believe in them. Their cool is all-purpose, and it carries with it a note of genuine nastiness. They manipulate us into a sentimental response, then kick us in the teeth for buying it.

Freeman lays out the father-son dynamics with great skill and very little fuss. There's no hysteria in his approach; instead, he sticks to the facts, relying on his cast to provide the emotion. The result is a surprisingly powerful, insightful film. The dramatic curve of the narrative may not seem entirely fresh, and some of the characters are simplistic, but the movie still gets to you.

This is a movie you can like a lot if you accept that it's not going to approach things in a conventional manner. [22 Jan 1998, p.B7]

I doubt if I could stand to be in the same state as anyone who liked the new Anthony Michael Hall film "Johnny Be Good." If Chuck Berry were dead, he'd be spinning in his grave.

Watching the Care Bears' Adventure in Wonderland, the latest of the teddy superstars' animated movie escapades, is like being pelted mercilessly for 75 minutes with Lucky Charms. It's nonfatal (unless you have a sugar problem, in which case you're likely to lapse into a coma), but it's not exactly my idea of fun either.

The movie is an orgiastic celebration of big, sloppy emotions; it's the film equivalent of "Feelings." And what we're supposed to take from it is a renewed faith in the indomitable strength of women. But with all this big acting and all these stars elbowing for space in front of the camera, the film comes across as something quite the opposite of what was intended, not a tribute to femininity but a kind of grotesque parody -- a corn-pone variation on "The Women."