Hal Lipper

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]

Radio had a mystical power that television never has been able to re-create. Its sound effects and faceless voices stirred the imagination and quite often the heart. Allen captures its essence with an anguished broadcast from the scene of an accident, an attempted rescue of a young girl wedged in a well shaft. [20 Feb 1987, p.1D]

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]

If only lead actors Johnny Depp and Amy Locane could sustain the perverse pleasures Waters envisions. [6 Apr 1990, p.7]

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]

FernGully...The Last Rainforest is surprisingly fun for being the first politically correct, environmentally conscious full-length animated film. [10 Apr 1992, p.5]

An absolute masterpiece in the Disney tradition. [17 Nov 1989, p.11]

A pleasant surprise. It's a gentle, unforced adult comedy that capitalizes on situations rather than gags. [19 June 1987, p.1D]

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]

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]

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

Gary and Martin Kemp, better known in pop music circles as Britain's Spandau Ballet, are superbly, diabolically creepy as the Krays. They give the film its otherworldly, yet street-smart and gritty, sense of being. [09 Nov 1990, p.7]

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]

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]

Writer-director Levinson returns to Baltimore (his home town) with a perceptive, rueful comedy called Tin Men. It is about male camaraderie and revenge, and it, too, uses its setting as a statement. Baltimore, circa 1963, represents hope, transition and a fading American Dream. [13 Mar 1987, p.1D]

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]

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]

Spielberg's Empire of the Sun dispels with the sugar coating that turned Alice Walker's searing novel about racial and sexual subjugation into "The Color Purple: The Coffee Table Edition." Yet, Spielberg retains a sense of innocence in this ambitious, visionary tale. [10 Dec 1987, p.6]

There are occasional missteps. The movie's pacing is uneven. The scandal is overblown...But the performances are excellent, and the sentiment is honed to ugly perfection.

What does cut it, for action fans, is Kaplan's direction. Kaplan can spook audiences with the best of them. His movie is like a giant capacitor, storing tension, then releasing it at prescribed junctures in massive jolts. [26 June 1992, p.5]

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]

Writer-director Shelton builds his story around Starr's and Long's scandalous affair, capturing Long's unprecedented bid for a fourth gubernatorial term and his fight against Louisiana's voter registration law, which disenfranchised illiterate blacks. Through Long's eccentric and purportedly immoral behavior, Shelton captures the last gasp of American innocence when public officials could do as they pleased with minimal scrutiny by the press. Handsome, fulfilling, though not entirely perfect movie. [13 Dec 1989, p.1D]

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]

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]

Romances such as Frankie's and Johnny's work better in the artificial environment of the stage than the "real" world of movies. The couple's bond seems phony from the start. [11 Oct 1991, p.7]

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]

Schepisi & Co. appear to have forgotten a tenet of film making: A moving picture needs to move to succeed. [21 Dec 1990, p.6]

Despite its commercial leanings, Dragnet is consistently entertaining. Its acting is flawless and its tone is refreshingly reverent toward the old Dragnet series. [26 June 1987, p.1D]