Jack Kroll

Admirable in many ways, Coming Home succumbs to the same American lust for romance and heroism for which it implicitly condemns its doomed Marine captain. [20 Feb 1978, p.87]

The movie, half camp, half straight, has its moments, but Australian director Russell Mulcahy lacks the loopy flair of Batman's Tim Burton. Still, the art deco -- 1930s New York, Miller's silvery dresses -- is gorgeous. [11 Jul 1994, p.50]

In Lost Highway, reality has become a dream. But Lynch has forgotten how boring it is listening to someone else's dream.

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]

In a way it's silly to review a movie like this; it's like reviewing a case of acne. John G. Avildsen, the checkered-career director who made Rocky, has made this one a kind of Pebbly -- a Rocky for teenychoppers, about a semi-wimpy kid named Daniel (Ralph Macchio) who's constantly being clobbered by the creeps in his high school until he's taught karate by his janitor, Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki [Pat] Morita). [25 June 1984, p.69]

Hasn't the South as a cornucopia of Lovable Eccentrics worn out its welcome? After Tennessee Williams? After Carson McCullers? After -- what, you say your appetite for L.E.'s is insatiable? Then Miss Firecracker, which Beth Henley has adapted from her 1984 play, is your heaping platter of that delicacy. [01 May 1989, p.75]

Swing Shift has neither enough laughs nor enough sobs. [23 Apr 1984, p.80]

Sleeping With the Enemy is a flat tire of a movie. Looks good -- white sidewalls, crome spokes -- but it flaps and clunks and never gets to vroom. [18 Feb 1991, p.64B]

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]

Hotel New Hampshire wants to be both charming and tough: a fairy tale with wings of steel. Its engines roar, but it doesn't fly. [2 Apr 1984, p.85]

Away from the television screen, Selleck is as stiff as his bulletproof vest. The only fun performers here are sexy, Kinskilipped Kirstie Alley as a scapegoat and a swarm of robot spiders that clatter-crawl all over their victims. [17 Dec 1984, p.84]

Edwards's sputtering rhythm makes it tough for Moonlighting's Bruce Willis, who nonetheless in his first leading movie role mixes a nice blend of brashness and bewilderment. [13 Apr 1987, p.77]

As a straight thriller Condor comes down to thrills that work and thrills that don't. [29 Sep 1975, p.84]

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]

The screenplay, by Rafelson and Charles Gaines from the latter's novel, has all the ingredients of an American Gothic, and that's what you get. But the theme of the young dropout who opposes the system with ironic apathy until something (usually something violent) needles him to action is moldy around the edges, and by now Jeff Bridges seems to be playing that role in his sleep. [17 May 1976, p.111]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

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]

This is state-of-the-art stuff, and clearly Landis is as proud of it as those kid prodigies who build computers out of Q-Tips. Landis also out-palms Brian De Palma, not only giving you nightmares about massacres but double nightmares that go on to meta-massacres just when you think they're over. But despite all of this super-sophistication the movie is finally just as silly as the old horror pictures it ambiguously kids. There's nothing like a rotting, wisecracking corpse to embody the bubble-gum nihilism of the Wise-Guy Wave. [7 Sept 1981, p.82]

The film is too dumb to work as patriotic exhortation and too mawkish to work as blood-and-guts exploitation. It's a long commercial in which the Marlboro Man has become the American Guerrilla, with his good buddies, good guns and a bottomless case of Coors. [03 Sep 1984, p.73]

This would be acceptable, even powerful, if it were a genuinely tragic vision. But there's no true tragic sense here, not even the effective blend of entertainment and social perception of cop movies like "Serpico" and "The Onion Field." [16 Feb 1981, p.81]

Onstage, trapped in the mini-wasteland of the parking lot, the creeped-out kids crackled like lightning in a bottle. Linklater's meager attempts to open up the movie drain its energy.

In this tetralogical effort, writer-director-star Stallone has succumbed to the old one-two of silliness and cynicism. [9 Dec 1985, p.92]