Hal Lipper

Mo' Better Blues is not only about artistry unfulfilled. It is artistry unfulfilled. It is perfection without a meaningful plot. It lopes along, pleasantly, never reaching fruition. [03 Aug 1990, p.18]

Gibson and Glover never have been more at ease. Their camaraderie and complementing comic styles grow increasingly engaging. There's too little of peroxide-dipped, gold earring-plated Pesci, who takes Lethal Weapon 3 to a higher comic plane whenever he's present. [15 May 1992, p.5]

Like most of Hill's movies, Johnny Handsome plays like an outline: a good idea in need of development. [29 Sep 1989, p.7]

Spike Lee's cinematographer Ernest R. Dickerson demonstrates he has the juice to be a top-notch director with Juice. His directorial debut commands respect. What it needs is a deeper story to match its fine acting and visual panache. [17 Jan 1992, p.5]

Whatever raffish charm Reeves and Swayze exhibit is lost in the superficial gloss of Iliff's screenplay and Bigelow's direction. [12 July 1991, p.7]

Although The Bear is as handsome as Quest for Fire - the story of an Ice Age tribe moving up the evolutionary ladder - it is also as turgid. [27 Oct 1989, p.12]

Surprisingly, though, Army of Darkness is slowest during its extended special effects sequences and best when human low-lifes are groveling in the squalor of the 13th century. [19 Feb 1993, p.8]

Alien is the most artful entry in the drool-beast series. It gets serious points for cinematography, editing and design. But it hardly generates the requisite shocks its predecessors have so skillfully delivered. [22 May 1992, p.8]

Memphis Belle is the most superficial, jingoistic, stereotyped World War II movie in years. [12 Oct 1990, p.6]

Lean on Me is the type of cloying, crowd-pleasing drama you can't help but like - a little bit - even if its situations are contrived and its direction is stilted.

Indeed, there's so much cutting between Hackman on the ground and Glover in the sky, the overwhelming feeling at the end of Bat 21 is relief that the viewer was able to get through the ordeal without a dose of Dramamine. [21 Oct 1988, p.6]

Powaqqatsi is a melange of images and music, so beautiful and mesmerizing that it's completely possible to overlook Reggio's message. [09 Jul 1988, p.1D]

It's all art direction and no content. There's nothing for Morticia and Gomez to do. [22 Nov 1991, p.7]

A half-baked FBI drama in the 48 HRS.-Lethal Weapon buddy-buddy mode. [12 Feb 1988, p.7]

Ironweed doesn't work despite the stellar performances of Nicholson as former baseball pro Francis Phelan and Meryl Streep as his pal, Helen Archer, the former musician whose booze-ravaged voice still bears the air of cultivation. [12 Feb 1988, p.5]

This tender tale of two sisters coping with their free-spirited mother in innocent 1963 is just too cute. It needs some chinks in its gossamer-glazed armor. [14 Dec 1990, p.12]

Caton-Jones' North Sea sensibilities seem askew for Doc Hollywood. He's operating from movie memories, and movies rarely have been kind to Southerners. With Doc Hollywood, which already is exaggerated, he overplays its hand. [02 Aug 1991, p.19]

Although Throw Momma From the Train has its moments, it's largely a leaden affair. A trifle amusing, perhaps, but never worthy of the talents of DeVito and co-star Billy Crystal. [11 Dec 1987, p.7]

My Girl isn't a must-see, it isn't as lyrical or as deeply moving as it should be, but it is a rare family film. It addresses serious subjects with honesty and earnestness. And it has a heroine worth crying for. [29 Nov 1991, p.5]

While Alive is a superb ensemble piece with a half dozen other notable performances, its strength lies with its spirituality. [15 Jan 1993, p.8]

A suggestion: Mr. Pyle should stop writing screenplays Pacific Heights is more tedious than a lease's fine print and tour the country lecturing on the dangers of landlording. [28 Sept 1990, p.6]

The Mission, grand prize winner at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, recognizes the bounds of the picture experience and strives to stretch beyond. [16 Jan 1987, p.1D]

Scott retains his sense of mood and tension. Despite the script's predictable and flawed nature, he elevates Someone To Watch Over Me to the point that it emerges as a surprisingly satisfying piece of filmed entertainment. [9 Oct 1987, p.3D]

The Package has its shortcomings - notably its disjointed beginning and some implausible miscalculations by the conspirators toward the end - but it generally hums at a healthy clip with twinges of Big Brother paranoia. [25 Aug 1989, p.12]

Gardens of Stone is not a great picture. But it is a good one, made by a visionary director who strives to address film as literature. This is an absorbing companion piece to Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which treats the war in allegorical terms. [12 May 1987, p.1D]

It's to Crystal's, King's and Williams' credit that they give engaging performances considering the cliched nature of the script. And, it's a measure of first-time director Winkler's fortitude that he plows through the material and keeps Memories of Me bouncing along when a less imaginative director would have abandoned the picture to its own devices. [07 Oct 1988, p.9]

Blue Steel is a horror movie masquerading as a cop thriller. It's a compelling, preposterous mixture of Fatal Attraction and Halloween, about a rookie cop who becomes romantically involved with a psycho killer. [16 Mar 1990, p.7]

Rarely has a children's picture been so stagnant, so bereft of passion. [18 Dec 1987, p.8]

Dream Team might strike some viewers as insensitive, particularly after the care that was accorded persons with psychological disorders in Rain Man. But crass fun is a major component in Dream Team's tasteless charm. In fact, what this movie needs is less taste and lower regard for standard plot formulas. [07 Apr 1989, p.6]

Narrow Margin cares more about characters than pyrotechnics or double-digit body counts. Its emphasis is on relationships, dramatic situations and settings, and how these combine to create a deeply satisfying yarn. [21 Sep 1990, p.6]

Cher rips through this material, dragging the audience behind her. It's because of her that Suspect is so intoxicating and that the lapses in Roth's script are practically forgotten in the excitement. [23 Oct 1987, p.1D]

Overboard is predictable, yet charming. Russell exudes a natural earthiness that lends itself to this type of material. Hawn plays gamely along. While Overboard recalls director Marshall's (Nothing in Common) sitcom days, the movie is shot with the sort of graininess that can never be mistaken for television. It could look a lot better. [18 Dec 1987, p.7]

The problem is this sporadically funny farce takes 40 minutes to snap into gear and then it struggles to maintain momentum. [12 June 1992, p.5]

Punchline, a movie about the pain and sacrifices of being a comic, is a lot less pretty and less believeable than it should be. It's also a lot more manipulative.[7 Oct 1988, p.8]

No Man's Land takes the showroom approach. It doesn't get its hands dirty. It embellishes what you'd see if you stood in the waiting room of a Porsche dealership and peered into the service bay. A little more grease is in order. [23 Oct 1987, p.3D]

What ultimately is so distressing about The Last Boy Scout is that, despite its loathsome attitude, it is an outstanding action thriller. It sets its sights a hair above the gutter and hits bullseye every time. [13 Dec 1991, p.5]

Hook is so enormous, so cumbersome, that it resembles a complex machine inching its way across the resplendent three-moon Neverland landscape. It's a brilliant technical achievement, but it hasn't much of a soul. [11 Dec. 1991, p.3D]

Reynolds can't sustain the movie's pacing, nor can he blend the disparate elements of this sweeping epic. Yet, there are touches that make Robin Hood enormously entertaining. The battles with flaming arrows, catapults and a forest city of catwalks and tree houses under siege are masterfully recorded. [14 June 1991, p.6]

Extreme Prejudice is an exceptionally bad movie, despite a powerful introduction in the tradition of Hill's bloodiest ventures, Southern Comfort, The Long Riders and 48 HRS. [24 Apr 1987, p.1D]

With its clunky, overworked script (credited to a non-existent Joseph Howard) and Emile Ardolino's predictable direction, Sister Act is a spry but witless comedy aimed at mainstream audiences. [29 May 1992, p.6]

Cadillac Man's beginning and ending are superb. (The hearse sequence is classic.) But the movie, like most of the salesmen's waists, sags heavily at its midpoint. [18 May 1990, p.6]

Newman is terse and quietly assured as Groves. He gives Fat Man and Little Boy its rigid backbone, its sense of purpose. Regrettably, he spends a fair amount of time off screen and away from Los Alamos. [20 Oct 1989, p.6]

Carpenter returns to his roots, which is to say he's gouging eyes and summoning demons. He's doing it in a wonderfully rough-hewn, low-budget style that fondly recalls Halloween, the granddaddy of slasher movies. [24 Oct 1987, p.1D]

Funny Farm is one of the dullest, most predictable movies in Chevy Chase's and director George Roy Hill's spotty careers. It's on par with Chase's Modern Problems and Hill's A Little Romance. This picture is not destined to be fondly remembered in their memoirs. [3 June 1988, p.8]

Jerry Lee Lewis' rise and repeated falls from grace are the makings of a great movie waiting to happen. Great Balls of Fire isn't that movie. [30 June 1989, p.18]

Ricochet isn't worthy of Lithgow's or Washington's talents. But having committed to the movie, these actors have gotten what they deserved. [05 Oct 1991, p.3D]

Bridges is supremely creepy, while Sutherland is worse than grating, and, while this version doesn't hold up to its Dutch predecessor, it's impossible to deny The Vanishing's power. [05 Feb 1993, p.6]

A disastrous follow-up to Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, one of the seminal movies of a generation. [28 Sep 1990, p.7]

Hook is largely failed by his earnest, workmanlike cast of boys who seem painfully aware that Lord of the Flies is an Important Movie. [16 Mar 1990, p.12]

It is a fairly conventional cartoonish farce, like his 1986 horse racing comedy A Fine Mess. And despite Blind Date's emphasis on excess, its final cut seems uncommonly restrained. [27 Mar 1987, p.4D]

You're safe this Christmas. There are no more obnoxious, senile or terminally stupid relatives to go around. Clark Griswold has invited them all to his house. Know what? They're no more fun to watch at his place than they are at yours...This sort of predictable, lowest-common-denominator humor is entertaining to a degree. It fulfills expectations. [1 Dec 1989, p.7]

A stylish though formulaic whodunit that swathes old cliches in new wrapping. [6 Nov 1992, p.6]

It's a feather-light fantasy bouyed by faith, hope and good will. [15 Dec 1989, p.12]

Switch is a movie in search of an ending, much like Edwards' other lesser comedies. It covers an incredible amount of ground without getting anywhere. [10 May 1991, p.6]

For all their bantering about being losers on the verge of falling in love, there's very little chemistry between Ringwald and Downey. [21 Sept 1987, p.1D]

It's a stunning, dazzling motion picture that somehow, almost unaccountably, has the magnetism of a slab of corned beef. [20 May 1988, p.6]

The movie's pageantry and visual grandeur are its most impressive elements, along with Depardieu's command as Columbus. [09 Oct 1992, p.20]

Predator has a certain comic-book quality that, combined with its parody of movies like The Magnificent Seven, is very appealing. It provides the action, suspense and technical wizardry that summertime audiences crave. [12 June 1987, p.1D]

At the film's beginning, each of these characters seems hopelessly dated and repressed. It's as if they walked out of a 1940s romance. Yet that's the beauty of Only the Lonely. Innocence has its virtues, as Columbus' bittersweet comedy demonstrates. [24 May 1991, p.14]

Pink Cadillac is the most amiable and mindless Eastwood comedy in years. That it's even marginally entertaining is a substantial feat, given John Eskow's predictable script, which has more pings than the Caddy's engine. [30 May 1989, p.1D]

That's Home Alone 2's biggest shortcoming. Hughes merely moved his movie to a new locale and wrote a retread. [20 Nov 1992, p.5]

Toy Soldiers is a lame-brained action-adventure casting a quintet of Tiger Beat heartthrobs as prep school pranksters battling Colombian narco-terrorists who overrun their alma mater. [26 Apr 1991, p.12]

Beaches, adapted from novelist Iris Rainer Dart's hankie-wringer, is truly horrid. Its only redeeming qualities are heartfelt performances by Midler and Barbara Hershey, as pen-pal buddies since pre-adolescence. [13 Jan 1989, p.6]

Dafoe is every bit as commanding as he was in Platoon or The Last Temptation of Christ. But the essence of this movie is as difficult to grasp as its title, White Sands. [24 Apr 1992, p.9]

Dante's movie is so helter-skelter, that he can't generate the uncomfortable mood the moment requires. It's the balloon principle. The 'Burbs is so full of hot air it simply blows up in its own face. [17 Feb 1989, p.6]

Rather than embellish the original movie, the filmmakers have merely strived to re-create it. [22 Mar 1991, p.6]

She-Devil is insipid. It is a hustle-bustle comic fantasy that insists on shoveling forced humor down viewers' throats. The movie is devoid of charm. [8 Dec 1989, p.6]

It is sophomoric, yet very funny. And until its weepy, reconciliatory ending, it moves with locomotive force. It's the type of movie that makes critics feel guilty about liking it, yet there's no refuting its charm. [02 Oct 1987, p.1D]

Above the Law is action trash. But it's great action trash, running fast and furious from the first frame to the last. It's entirely possible - in fact, advisable - to forget the movie's right-to-left-wing political swings and just watch Seagal rage. [22 Apr 1988, p.7]

If the saccharine quality of movies could be translated into seismic activity, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael would level Los Angeles. [12 Oct 1990, p.13]

Goldberg has honorable intentions. But like Tammy Faye's make-up, it's impossible to see beneath his movie's overwrought facade. [27 Oct 1989, p.7]

It never digs very deep. But it's palatable and well-meaning. It's a Disneyland version of a big-issue movie. Nothing great. But we could do worse. [07 Feb 1992, p.7]

A relatively inane movie about good will and unfounded distrust. [06 Nov 1987, p.3D]

Basic Instinct has the action and gore of Verhoeven's Total Recall and the cool sheen of his equally bloody RoboCop. Verhoeven can deliver style in spades, but Eszterhas' jumble of confusing plot twists and conventional movie cliches proves fatal. [20 Mar 1992, p.29]

Raising Cain is monumentally bad. It is De Palma's Howard the Duck. [07 Aug 1992, p.10]

Even Pee-wee seems subdued. The man-child whose suit cuffs are intimate with his ankles and elbows is growing up. Kids may still adore him. But adults will find his persona worn at the edges. [23 Jul 1988, p.1D]

This is a fun picture, even if it's overly sentimental and has the feeling of an extended Amazing Stories segment. Director Dear is a master Spielbergian craftsman. Now, all he has to do is demonstrate some originality to establish himself as a quality film maker. [5 June 1987, p.1D]

RoboCop 2 moves fast and looks great. How much you like it depends on your tolerance for machine-gun mayhem. [22 June 1990, p.6]

Director John G. Avildsen and screenwriters Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue do an amiable job balancing humor and pathos while investigating the ultimate nightmare of every sexually active unmarried adolescent. [16 Jan 1988, p.1D]

As hollow as it is hip. [5 Feb 1988, p.8]

Hardware runs more precisely, it crawls aimlessly as the robot, pieced together from household appliances, attempts to slice, dice, drill and saw Jill to death. There's no tension, no suspense, no climax. [14 Sep 1990, p.7]

The Power of One emerges as a broadly painted piece of rhetoric. It means well and has an undeniable dramatic pull, but its relegation of blacks to the sidelines and its creation of a white savior are unforgivable. [10 Apr 1992, p.10]

Chevy Chase only knows how to play Chevy Chase. Unless he jettisons his smug routine and learns to act, he will always be his and his movies' biggest liability. [17 March 1989, p.6]

Final Analysis is overwrought, overwritten, overscored pseudo-Hitchcockian drivel. With more twists than Lombard Street has curves, this San Francisco-set psychological thriller is the biggest disappointment of the new year. [8 Feb 1992, p.3D]

While the movie's technical aspects are first-rate and Stallone manages more than a monosyllabic performance, Over the Top can't overcome its sense of deja vu or provide any reason for Hawk's suitability as a parent. [14 Feb 1987, p.5B]

The Believers is the type of movie that generates shocks more successfully than it tells a story. [10 Jun 1987, p.1D]

Three Fugitives, which for all purposes is one extended chase, has a few chuckles, though nothing to justify its existence.[27 Jan 1989, p.11]

Envisioned as a surrealistic painting come to life, it is a delight to behold, yet it fails miserably as a compelling piece of storytelling. It is a listless, largely vapid tale, even though it has been revised over a dozen years by writer-director Barry Levinson. [18 Dec 1992, p.21]

Deceptions drive A Kiss Before Dying. Too bad they're too implausible to impart any sense of believability in this bloody fantasy. [26 Apr 1991, p.10]

Its logic is so simple, its emotion is so heartfelt, its editing and composition are so fluid, it seems to be a perfectly-crafted contemporary drama. Yet, in retrospect, it's a difficult movie to stomach. The problem with Brothers' script is that he and Yates paint characters with unbelievably broad strokes. [06 Oct 1989, p.12]

Director Alan J. Pakula generates a degree of suspense, even though the story's implausibilities and overall stupidity of Kline's and Mastrantonio's characters are stupefying. Everyone in this movie is a prig, including a frail E.K. Marshall as Richard's defense attorney who doesn't believe his client's innocence and Forest Whitaker as a private eye who lets Richard do the investigating. [16 Oct 1992, p.5]

Some of the more tender moments - Farmer and Marron dancing at a country bar and gently probing each other's secrets - are particularly affecting. Less successful is a sequence purportedly set at the Academy Awards that wreaks of artificiality. The utter fecklessness of the segment is so jarring that it isn't until the climax that The Bodyguard pulls itself together.

In an era when racism appears to be on a violent comeback, Amos & Andrew is worse than offensive. It's a cinematic travesty. [05 Mar 1993, p.8]

It's amazing how much slobber $ 20-million will buy. [28 July 1989, p.6]

Action director John Badham has made the ultimate smash-and-crash chase movie. It's practically brain dead. It uses a hackneyed premise to string together as many stunts as possible, all the while borrowing from Badham's, Gibson's and Hawn's movies. [18 May 1990, p.7]

Neophyte Joanou's camera is airborne so often it gives the impression Three O'Clock High was filmed between traffic reports by Chopper 8. It's an example of virtuoso film making solely for the sake of virtuosity. [9 Oct 1987, p.3D]

If imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, then 3 Ninjas is a lovers' rhapsody. If duplication is theft, then Disney is guilty of grand larceny. [07 Aug 1992, p.8]

The Secret of My Success is Ross's most engaging romantic comedy since California Suite. Interestingly, it uses some of the best elements of his less successful movies: the pictorial splendor of Pennies from Heaven, the fusion of music and image in Footloose, the unbridled comic delivery of Protocol, the sense of character from Max Dugan Returns. [10 Apr 1987, p.1D]