Janet Maslin

Though Songwriter is an original, it recalls the director's earlier Roadie in its choppiness, its knowing view of show business, and its humor, which tends to be exuberantly rude.

Goes straight to cult status without quite touching one important base: the audience's emotions. This movie finally isn't anything move than an intricate feat of gamesmanship, but it's still quite something to see.

Brooks brings vast reserves of quarrelsome, hairsplitting hilarity to the story of a man going mano a mano with his sweet little mom.

Humorously and fondly, with an entertaining supply of what he has called "prosaic license," Stillman again displays a pitch-perfect ear for both the cattiness and the camaraderie that bind his characters into collective friendship.

Drawing upon the novel with merciful selectivity, and adding such a contemporary flavor that the film's woodsmen often have a laid-back air, Michael Mann has directed a sultrier and more pointedly responsible version of this story.

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka is a lively but uncertain mixture of nostalgia, silliness and genuinely unpredictable humor.

An oblique narrative and shadowy thoughts, in a film that divides itself abruptly between wordlessness and outright poetry, become too fragile to rise above harsher images that overwhelm the viewer. Cyclo never achieves the balance to make such contrasts work as lucidly as they might.

The film's view of Eddie Dodd is occasionally on the facile side, but Mr. Woods's performance is crackling and passionate enough to give the character depth despite that; it's also laced with snappish, self-mocking humor that Mr. Woods delivers particularly well. This performance is so razor-sharp that Eddie can be seen coming alive with each little triumph, reveling in each little maneuver and taking each little disappointment terribly hard. His enthusiasm is irresistible.

The appeal of character and story line here is thoroughly overshadowed by the various technical feats involved in bringing the film to the screen.

This film includes several remarkable episodes illustrating the strange events that shaped Mr. Perel's destiny and the full force of his terror and sorrow.

The screenplay, by W. D. Richter, remains bright and lively throughout, but the plot just isn't full enough to carry a feature film. The characters are vivid, and uniformly well-played, and their pre-pod lives are fairly well established. But an hour into the film, once the menace is identified, the few remaining humans begin fleeing for their lives, and after that it's just run, run, run.

Barry Levinson's richly textured new film also has a rueful nostalgia, a fine-tuned streak of con artistry, and the same hilarious, nit-picking small talk that colored Diner, his first and best film - which is recalled, rivaled and in a few ways even outdone by this one.

Mr. Giraldi, who also directs commercials, takes a fairly ordinary approach to this easygoing teen-age comedy about a stockbroker in his mid-20's who must pretend to be a high-school student. The material is pleasant enough, and Mr. Cryer is a good deal less strained here than he has been in other roles, affecting a natural manner and a good way with wisecracks.

Undeniably, there's an element of corniness to this. But that doesn't keep An Officer and a Gentleman from being a first-rate movie - a beautifully acted, thoroughly involving romance.

Risky Business improves as it goes along.

Handsome and impassioned, vigorously staged by the director of ''The Madness of King George,'' this ''Crucible'' is a reminder of the play's wide reach, which goes well beyond witch trials in any century. As adapted gamely by the playwright into a screenplay that takes advantage of scenic backgrounds and photogenic stars, ''The Crucible'' now speaks to subtler forms of dishonesty and opportunism than it did before.

As fascinating as it is freakish. It confirms Mr. Lynch's stature as an innovator, a superb technician, and someone best not encountered in a dark alley.

A small, personal, independently made film with the sweep of El Norte, with solid, sympathetic performances by unknown actors and a visual style of astonishing vibrancy, must be regarded as a remarkable accomplishment. [11 Jan 1984, p.15]

This Elizabeth is presented as a glamorously stressed-out modern woman who must cope with a super-intense case of having it all.

Born in Flames, while inventive, is also much too diffuse and overcrowded. Only those who already share Miss Borden's ideas are apt to find her film persuasive.

Fierce and disturbing, with a plot that skillfully resists following any familiar course. The film's hero fears that he's half-crazy, and for two hours Mr. Gilliam artfully keeps his audience feeling the same way.

The film's greatest directorial success is in finding a thoroughly entertaining way of inviting the audience to share Valerie's point of view.

Mr. Gray's feature-length monologue brings people, places and things so vibrantly to life that they're very nearly visible on the screen.

Its best moments come from witnessing the Senator's inspired unraveling, not from watching where it will end.

The film's cleverness is aggressive and cool, and so its mysteries, though elaborate, remain largely uninviting.

Mr. Cameron has made a swift, exciting special-effects epic that thoroughly justifies its vast expense and greatly improves upon the first film's potent but rudimentary visual style. He has also broadened his initial idea to encompass better developed characters (after all, the first Terminator was barely verbal), a livelier wit and a more ambitious, if nuttier, message.

Mr. Day-Lewis, looking wearily rugged and battling his way through several plausible boxing matches, once again breathes fire into the character of a high-minded loner, and his vitality lends real force to the film's moral arguments.

Trouble is, while not trading quips, the characters actually go through the motions of being scared of the croc, menaced by the croc and so on. And since even the gator horror satire is old hat (remember ''Alligator?''), there's no remaining way to make this interesting.