Hal Lipper

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]

How much you enjoy Presumed Innocent depends on whether you read Scott Turow's exhilarating legal thriller about a prosecutor charged with murdering a colleague who was briefly his lover. If you haven't, director Alan J. Pakula's adaptation will leave you dazzled and drained long before the final twist. If you have, you'll appreciate Pakula's faithful, though overly restrained, approach to Turow's 1987 novel that sold 1-million hardback copies and spent 44 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. [27 July 1990, p.6]

One of the finest pictures released this year. [13 Nov 1987, p.1D]

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

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]

Lethal Weapon 2, which is based on a story by Warren Murphy and series' originator Shane Black, is nearly as good as the original. It has its flaws. The story too closely parallels the original, a Golden Triangle conspiracy that had more mercenaries running around Los Angeles than the Third World. [08 July 1989, p.1D]

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]

While The Stepfather doesn't transcend the limitations of most slice-and-dice movies, it comes close. And has fun trying.

It waffles. In the end, it emerges a distinctly pro-soldier, possibly anti-war movie that supports America's overseas doctrine, whether it be right or wrong. One shudders to think what they might create if asked to portray the United States' current role in Central America. Their film certainly wouldn't dare make a statement, bother to educate or entertain. And most importantly, it wouldn't take sides. [29 Aug 1987, p.1D]

The material fails the execution and performances. [13 Jan 1989, p.7]

Eastwood is absolutely the wrong actor to play Huston, called John Wilson in White Hunter, Black Heart. Eastwood is tense and tightly coiled, while Huston was gleefully bombastic. [12 Oct 1990, p.7]

Running on Empty, for all its implausibilities and pseudo-radical bourgeois banter, is an unusually engaging movie. [14 Oct 1988, p.10]

Stone's riveting three-hour movie freely mixes black and white and color documentary footage with pseudo-documentary and dramatic footage, so the line between real and fabrication is constantly blurred. [20 Dec 1991, p.7]

For all its shortcomings and long speeches, The Presidio is to be credited for trying to reach beyond formula. Hyams and screenwriter Ferguson (Highlander, Beverly Hills Cop II) have aspired to make more than a mismatched buddy movie. But the task has proved too intricate for them to achieve. [10 June 1988, p.6]

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]

Lifeboat is one of Alfred Hitchcock's weakest films, yet it remains a notable experiment for its ability to maintain a sense of action despite its cramped setting. [9 March 1990, p.10]

Had the writing matched their performances, Fried Green Tomatoes would be this year's Driving Miss Daisy. As it is, it's an absorbing period mystery and a hapless social comedy. Half of it works. [24 Jan 1992, p.28

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]

What undercuts Deep Cover is its convoluted, talky and ultimately predictable screenplay written by Henry Bean and Michael Tolkin. [15 Apr 1992, p.1D]

Distant Voices, Still Lives is both a personal and social portrait. It often flows without dialogue, eloquently relating a tragic story that words could not describe. [10 Nov 1989, p.13]

Encino Man is enormously funny, hip and gross without ever being vulgar. [22 May 1992, p.12]

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]

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]

The Rookie is the most brain dead action-thriller Eastwood has ever directed or starred in. It plays well as a comedy, but that isn't its intent. [07 Dec 1990, p.6]

Swayze exhibits virtually no charisma, although the terpsichorean skills he demonstrated in Dirty Dancing appear to have translated well to martial arts. He can kick box like a champ. He sweats handsomely in the sunset. He is able to flex his buns, which are shown naked more than once. [19 May 1989, p.6]

Like Top Secret and other less inspired efforts made by Zucker, brother Jerry Zucker and pal Jim Abrahams, The Naked Gun 2 is consistently amusing without being outright funny. [28 June 1991, p.6]

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]

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