Jack Kroll

The film's chief delight is the sharp and funny international cast. But Jarmusch's comic touch keeps curdling into corn. The minimalist is a sentimentalist, which would be ok if he didn't cover it all with an incense of cosmic pretentiousness. [18 May 1992, p.66]

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]

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]

Interiors has the look of a Bergman film, helped by Gordon Willis's Nykvist-like cinematography, but it does not have the creative elation that triggers elation in the audience, no matter how dark the artist's vision. Woody gives us his dread untransfigured and it's hard to swallow. [07 Aug 1978, p.83]

At times veering toward the portentous, the film nonetheless has the relentless rhythm of a juggernaut. The acting is first-rate American realism -- gutsy, funny and scary as the occasion demands. [09 June 1986, p.79]

Almost certainly Joplin's friends, associates and many of her old fans will accuse The Rose of distortion, sentimentality, vulgarization andother crimes. They will not be entirely wrong, and yet Mark Rydell's film has a certain coarse, splashy integrity. And it has a remarkable, going-all-the-way performance by Bette Midler in her first movie. [12 Nov 1979, p.107]

True Stories is David Byrne's funny, worried, loving celebration of a disoriented America. [27 Oct 1986, p.103]

Moonraker's only real imaginative surge comes in a rousing pre-credit sequence in which Bond is pushed out of an airplane and survives by deftly sky-diving to a parachutist and swiping his chute. After this, a bizarre blandness takes over. [2 July 1979, p.68]

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]

Whatever it is -- movie, photographed stage show, TV spectacular -- Pirates of Penzance is a happy hybrid. [14 Feb 1983, p.85]

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

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]

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]

The jaggedness will put many people off, which is a shame, because this is a rewarding film that asks only that you stay alert and use your senses. [15 Mar 1976, p.89]

Lange gets deep into these numbers, the sound and spirit of Patsy seeming to stream through her face, body and hands with the musical equivalent of that hunger for living. Hominy Harmonies: Lange's energy, sensuality and intelligence pump iron into Getchell's script, which doesn't have the bite and color of his "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." [7 Oct 1985, p.88]

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

A reasonably engaging kids' flick that is given humor and heartbreak by director Michael Dinner and a cast of splendidly scruffy young players. [11 Feb 1985, p.73]

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

Looking for Mr. Goodbar could have been just another sensationalist movie version of a shocking best seller. But Richard Brooks has filmed it with power, seriousness and integrity. [24 Oct 1977, p.126]

Price's vision was realistic and romantic at the same time, the violence painful but also sensual, the mood charged with a sweet hopelessness. Philip Kaufman's tough but tender film emphasizes this double vision. It's like Grease with brass knuckles. [16 July 1979, p.93]

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]

Edwards has given Dudley Moore his best vehicle since Arthur. [31 Dec 1984, p.67]

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]

Its battle scenes have a raw, gritty power that's closer to an actual documentary than any other Vietnam movie (the director, John Irvin, is an Englishman with an extensive background in documentaries, including ones about Vietnam). But its uncompromising indictment of the antiwar movement back home is much too simplistic and undercuts the film's tremendous momentum as a record of the combat soldiers' hellish ordeal. [14 Sept 1987, p.83]

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]

The film is laudable, but Grass's book was lacerating. [21 Apr 1980, p.90]

An absorbing, well-crafted, honorable movie that seems almost as ambitious as the original operation itself. [20 Jun 1977, p.65]

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]