Jack Kroll

This movie is so packed with character, incident and detail that it seems to whiz by like a ferocious number by a high powered jazz ensemble. In the process it skimps on connections and short-circuits many of its emotional relationships. But Coppola, called in to rescue the project and working under crazy financial and creative pressure, has come up with a vision of jazz-age fever in which violence, romance and race are choreographed to the music of the Harlem renaissance. [24 Dec 1984, p.52]

The Elephant Man has great dignity, sweetness and compassion in this portrait of an unlucky monster who must fight to make other humans recognize his humanity. But it lacks dramatic punch and repeats its effects rather than developing a truly complex texture. [06 Oct 1980, p.71]

For Your Eyes Only is one giant second-unit film, an anthology of action episodes held together by the thinnest of plot lines. Most of these episodes are terrific in their exhilaratingly absurd energy: Steven Spielberg himself would not sneer at them. [29 June 1981, p.72]

This Freudian folderol is actually well handled by writer-director Richard Tuggle, who wrote the script for Eastwood's Escape From Alcatraz and here, in his first shot at directing, gives Tightrope a quietly effective tension and suspense. [27 Aug 1984, p.68]

Like many movies with wimpy intellectual infrastructures, St. Elmo's Fire is not without a certain trumpery charm. [1 June 1995, p.55]

Stanley Kubrick hungers for the ultimate. In The Shining, he has gone after the ultimate horror movie, something that will make "The Exorcist" look like "Abbott and Costello Meet Beelzebub." The result is the first epic horror film, a movie that is to other horror movies what his "2001: A Space Odyssey" was to other space movies. [26 May 1980, p.96]

The actors are wonderful, especially the women who play El Hadji's first two wives - ladies of magisterial personality, social shrewdness and sexual pride. The wedding sequence in Xala makes the one in "Godfather I" look like a wedding party at McDonald's. This allegory of impotence in the body politic shows Sembene on his way to becoming an African Moliere. [13 Oct 1975]

[De Palma] is a superb visual artist, but more important, his visual patterns express the moral dislocations of a troubled society. In Body Double, De Palma has never been more perversely brilliant in his tracking of the pervasive lust -- for sex, for money, for power -- that floats through our culture like some poisoned aerosol of desire. [29 Oct 1984, p.134]

Spielberg has gone to such lengths to avoid boredom that he has leaped squarely into the opposite trap: this movie has such unrelenting action that it jackhammers you into a punch-drunk stupor. This may be the first movie whose audience O.D.'s on action. [4 June 1984, p.78]

Since this isn't one of your deep-think sci-fi movies, you look for the happy hardware to get you kicks. [4 July 1976, p.102]

Marathon Man is an intelligent and largely satisfying thriller, written by William Goldman from his own novel, directed by John Schlesigner and photographed by Conrad Hall. But the most satisfying element is the work of Olivier, one of the few who turn acting into one of the great humane progressions of Western civilization. [11 Oct 1976]

De Palma's takeoff on the Godfather genre doesn't have the subversive slyness of Prizzi's Honor. Wise Guys aims lower, but that's an honorable direction in which to aim, and De Palma and writer George Gallo riddle the belly with dumdum laugh bullets. [19 May 1986, p.73]

Director Irvin Kershner handles the early part with wit and style, but he's hamstrung by Lorenzo Semple's script, which is based too much on "Thunderball." Still, there are fun passages. [10 Oct 1983, p.93]

Star 80 is very strong stuff. Fosse is one of our best moviemakers; he shows us better than anyone the perverse beauty in decadence and the decadence that we can't seem to burn out of our dreams of beauty. [14 Nov 1983, p.98]

Days of Heaven is a big advance, hauntingly beautiful in image, sound and rhythm, unashamedly poetic, brimming with sweetness and bitterness, darkness and light. [18 Sept. 1978, p.97]

Kansas City can be regarded as a jazz tone poem on themes of race, politics, money and the movies themselves.

Movies this bad make you wonder if somebody's kidding. [03 Sep 1984, p.73]

The Onion Field is one of the best films of the year, a powling, gripping, disturbing movie that has its own far-from-simple vision of evil in our wretched and sinister cities. [24 Sep 1979, p.107]

Moving like a dream that explodes into reality, Chocolat is blessed with superb acting, especially by its star, the African-born Bankole. His quiet eloquence and suppressed passion express the human cost of an unjust political system. [27 Mar 1989, p.68]

Some of this is mildly amusing, but most of it is thumpingly obvious. [01 Oct 1979, p.77]

This film has almost none of the scraggy, raunchy, irreverent anarchy that gave "Animal House" a kind of perverse anti-style. There's nothing at all perverse about Meatballs; in fact, it's so cutesy, squeaky-clean that it becomes Andy Hardy with a few extra belches. [9 July 1979, p.68]

There's plenty of violence in The Long Good Friday, but it's good old macho man-against-man violence and the film has crisp direction from John Mackenzie and a tight, smart, sophisticated script by a first-rate English playwright, Barrie Keeffe. [15 Mar 1982, p.78]

It had to happen. The most foulmouthed movie of all time has been written by a woman. Nancy Dowd's original screen-play for SLAP SHOT is a landmark. Like female jockeys, lesbian ministers and distaff sportscasters, this sharp-eared, engagingly impudent young writer has struck a blow for equal rights, a field that stretches from realms of the spirit to jock itch. The first in a coming avalanche of sports-oriented movies, this strenuously irreverent film about a minor-league hockey team in Middle America will set tongues wagging over every sports buff's beer glass, every culture-vulture's wine goblet, every pundit's brandy snifter. [7 Mar 1977, p.68]

For about an hour the writing, acting and direction coalesce in a prismatic, hyperkinetic ode to end-of-century doom. And then the two-hours-plus film starts to subside into genre convention. [16 Oct 1995, p.86]

A perversely appealing apotheosis of cuteness. Almost inadvertently, the film becomes an ultimate comment on American innocence that can only refresh itself by regression. The unseen patron saint of Parker's stylish movie is not Little Caesar but Humbert Humbert. [27 Sept 1976, p.89]

Simon shies away from the more interesting implications of his own growth in favor of ingratiating his audience. This weakens the movie versions even more than the original plays. [04 Apr 1988, p.72A]

Sidney Lumet's new film does have its absorbing aspects, but it doesn't provide any jolting insights into the pervasive process that turns elections into advertising wars in which candidates come fixing at us like Peter Pepsi and Calvin Coke. [10 Feb 1986, p.79]

A pure, rousingly entertaining action movie which makes it clear that "binary oppositions" are good guys vs. bad guys and "ideological meanings" are us vs. them[17 July 1989, p.52]

The Streep-De Niro show is bringing back the sizzle and savor of the golden age of movie couples. [03 Dec 1984, p.78]

Like Renoir, Mazursky has warm affection for his supermaterialists and his tattered tramp. The joke and wisdom of this movie is that they need each other. Joke and wisdom don't always interlock perfectly, but the movie has more than its share of savvy comedy and sharp social perception. [03 Feb 1986, p.68]

The sweet, funny, funky screenplay by Darryl Ponicsan (from Terry Davis's novel) is beautifully directed by Harold Becker ("The Onion Field," "Taps"), who gets performances so true and winning from his actors that you're smiling through the entire film. [25 Feb 1985, p.85]

There is genuine sweetness in this nougat-hearted movie -- in the friendliness of Ashby's direction, the caressed clarity of Haskell Wexler's cinematography and, most of all, the acting of Jon Voight. [11 Oct 1982, p.104]

If there's a problem with this film, it lies in its hieratic, almost operatic style, which at times veers dangerously close to the self-absorbed and sanctimonious. But the sheer scope and significance of the story win the day, and Joffe and his actors score some stunning achievements. [3 Nov 1986, p.81]

What makes Stallone a figure to be reckoned with is that although these films can be looked at as sledgehammer mindlessness, they contain not only action, but a mystique of action. For all the blood and thunder, there's a strange stillness at the heart of Stallone. [27 May 1985, p.74]

Lynch comes amazingly close to the logic of dreams and nightmares, in which successive layers of reality seem to dissolve, sucking you into a terrifying vortex. [11 Sep 1978, p.95]

One of the best American films of the year. [14 July 1986, p.69]

There's an aura of liberal ineffectuality about The Brother, but it's touching and amusing and confirms the originality of Sayles. [08 Oct 1984, p.87]

Jaw 2 is not a shipwreck of a movie; it'll make you jump now and then, like a boring guy tickling your ribs. But it lacks the style and intelligence that director Steven Spielberg brough to the original "Jaws". Jennot Szwarc, a French-born teveision specialist, come nowhere near Spielberg's blend of kinetic drive and comic touch. [19 June 1978, p.74]

This courageous film breaks new ground in movie musicals. [21 Dec 1981, p.49]

Technology has squeezed character to a few measly pixels on the digital screens. Explosions have replaced dramatic climaxes.

The Idolmaker would be worth seeing if only for its modesty, which is a blessing in these days of ersatz epics. It's a small, honest, decently entertaining film with one outstanding performance. [08 Dec 1980, p.107]

Frothing from two mouths, they parody film noir, megaviolent thrillers, sports allegories, ravaged-war-veteran movies, existentialist Westerns, even Busby Berkeley musicals.

Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull is the best American movie of the year, Scorsese's best film and at long last replaces Robert Wise's "The Set-Up" (1949) as the best film about prizefighting ever made. [24 Nov 1980, p.128]

Penn and McGuane have made an intelligent, entertaining Western, nicely balanced between the protagonists and the well-woven, colorful tapestry in which they're placed. [24 May 1976, p.103]

A powerhouse of a film, an epic of sixteenth-century Japan swarming with savage action and even more savage irony. [13 Oct 1980, p.131]

A unique and provocative film, ironic, funny, crazy and moving. [26 Oct 1981, p.78]

Apocalypse Now is the ultimate war movie, a riveting adventure story, a searching and deeply committed probing of the moral problem of the Vietnam War -- and something more than all of these, transcending categories and genres in a way that only true art, and specifically true movie art, does at its best. The film seethes with violence, horror, madness, irony, humor, sweetness, anger, despair and hope, but the seething is controlled by the hand of a master. [20 Aug 1979, p.57]

Slacker is a very funny, oddly touching, weirdly appealing look at the young (and not so young) people who live (sort of) in the nooks and crannies of this college town. [22 July 1991, p.57]

Rourke, a good actor, is reduced to doing his whispering-wacko shtik. Supermodel Otis has a marvelous face and can smile and breathe heavily at the same time. Only Jacqueline Bisset gives a real performance, as Claudia, a fiscal whiz who gets her real kicks not form the carnal but the commercial. [7 May 1990]

where E.T. celebrated its young hero's imagination, Cloak & Dagger makes the boring mistake of chastening it. This wouldn't be so bad if the kid's prechastening adventures were exciting. [03 Sept 1984, p.73]

Fawcett is admirable; evoking the pathos of beauty that turns from a blessing into a target, her own beauty is deepening into courage and talent. [1 Sept 1986, p.86]

Sarandon and Davis give superb, wonderfully interactive performances: funky, fierce, funny and poignant. [27 May 1991]

Crash has no plot to speak of. It's a cinematic tone poem of collisions and coitus.

This sequel is so laden with dubious, spurious, curious and tedious stuff about theology, parapsychology, entomology and speleology that it forgets to frighten you in its frantic concern with being hip in the fad world of the occult. The Heretic simply drowns in its own malarky. [27 June 1977, p.61]

Seeking the sources of our alienation in the explosively random energies of the eighteenth century, Kubrick has created an epic of esthetic self-indulgence, beautiful but empty. He needs to come back to earth from the outer spaces of past and future. [22 Dec 1975, p.49]

Polanski treats the hotel with the same virtuosity he displayed in filming the apartment in Rosemary's Baby, one of the most deeply satisfying thrillers ever made. Frantic doesn't maintain this level: there are some irritating illogicalities, and Polanski hasn't fully mined the possibilities of all the elements in his screenplay (cowritten with Gerard Brach), such as Arab terrorists in Paris and the tiny nuclear-bomb trigger they are after. [07 Mar 1988, p.68]

The movie's one pleasure is watching Sarandon turn a cliche into a woman crackling with carnality and spirit. [22 Oct 1990, p.74]

In THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN, they're at their most golden, ethical and sexy. This ability to make right-mindedness so seductive, stylish and debonair is what makes The Electric Horseman such a sweet and beguiling movie. [17 Dec 1979, p.112]

Sidney Lumet's film tries very hard to be an original blend of realism, black farce and probing comment on the McLuhanatic Age that creates instant show biz out of what used to be called life. [29 Sep 1975, p.84]

Superman turns out to be a surprisingly infectious entertainment, nicely balanced between warmth and wit, intimacy and impressive special effects, comic-strip fantasy and several elements that make the movie eminently eligible for Deep Thinking about rescue fantasies, cherubic messiahs and other pieces of popcorn metaphysics. [1 Jan 1979, p.46]

Henry & June doesn't finally cohere, but there's something noble in its evocation of the erotic in all its pleasure and pathos. [22 Oct 1990, p.74]

Such soft fare that it makes your eyes feel gummy. Andrew Bergman's script has no comic tension and no thrills. [3 June 1985, p.65]

This lean, hard, ruggedly acted film is hardly ingratiating, but its clenched power has a cruel and compelling beauty. [04 July 1977, p.77]

Splendid film...Just as the recent "Chariots of Fire" did, Robert Towne's Personal Best takes the world of track and field as a microcosm for the ecstasies and pains of self-striving. And it dares, with great delicacy and insight, to show a loving sexual relationship between two young women, not as a statement about homosexuality but as a paradigm of authentic human intimacy. [8 Feb 1982, p.60]

A genuine work of the popular imagination. It's the first true populist science-fiction film, a blend of the most startling, far-out special effects with the most ordinary human material of the American Heartland. [21 Nov 1977, p.88]

The Terminator is a splendid meta-monster, Frankensteined for the computer age. And Cameron devises not one, not two but, well, let's call it X climaxes that will melt the hinges of your jaws. [19 Nov 1984, p.132]

Alan J. Pakula has succeeded brilliantly in converting that outworn myth into a brand-new myth that conforms to our time. Pakula drives moral and ideological meanings straight to your nervous system by the rhythms of his imagery and editing. But Pakula is subtler, less melodramatic. Redford and Hoffman really are ordinary guys doing an ordinary job. But film shows how their tenacity, their doggedness, become under pressure much more than mere professional virtues. [05 Apr 1976, p.85]

The film has too much class for its own sensibility; it seems often stuck in this class like a fly in molasses. [24 Sep 1979, p.102]

The updated King Kong doesn't really believe in itself; it snickers, straightens its face, roars and tramples, snickers again. Behind the bigness lurks a conventionality of spirit.It does have a certain thunderous fun from time to time, but that's not the stuff that dreams are made on. [20 Dec 1976, p.102]