Jay Scott

The movie blows through the Brat Pack smoke screen - it is superior to Colors in that regard - to reveal the troubled, lonely and sometimes crazy males behind the macho, misogynist posturing of men in groups. You couldn't find a nicer bunch of killers. [12 Aug 1988, p.C3]

An adolescent-oriented farce so finely tuned it projects beyond its narrow intended audience - it's not only for adolescents, it's for anyone who remembers what adolescence was like. [05 Aug 1983]

It's an undemanding yet bright delight. [16 Mar 1991]

Paradoxically cerebral and primal, reasonable and anti-rational, life- affirming and nihilistic, Naked Lunch is a sensual and intellectual feast. It will not be a meal to everyone's taste, but in its bizarre class, there is nothing classier. [10 Jan 1992]

Perfect betrays itself in the end, but until it does, it's an unexpectedly thoughtful consideration of "lifestyle" journalism, which by nature allots to the unknown a sudden but ephemeral celebrity, and which too frequently takes advantage of naive subjects eager to lower their defences. [7 June 1985]

In Hollywood terms, Beverly Hills Cop harks back to the semi- good old days, to the studio era when stars were not always relied on to fix everything - this is unquestionably a star vehicle, but the star, an employee of his own production company, has been smart enough to surround himself with other, by no means lesser lights. [4 Dec. 1984]

The plot gives Brest a structure on which to build a minor, gentle, subtle miracle; he uses the hackneyed plot as the foundation for a restrained monument to the dreams of the elderly. Going in Style has many of the simple but considerable virtues of Best Boy - the epiphanies may be diminutive, but they linger. [27 Dec 1979]

This wildly black comedy says that in Hollywood, death becomes everyone. [03 Aug 1992]

Henry & June, a portrait of two pioneers in prose, accomplishes its own kind of pioneering on screen and not merely because it's unapologetically erotic: it effortlessly pairs that oddest of all couples, sexual desire and cerebral activity. It is, as a friend commented in a phrase Nin and Miller would have loved, "an erection for the mind." [05 Oct 1990]

The Company of Wolves is a trifle long, but the sequences of bona fide scariness and beauty compensate for the occasional longueurs, and it's great to be a kid again, as the artists behind the film know; they also know it can scare the hell out of you. Always cry wolf. [20 Apr 1985]

If Vice Versa becomes the hit it deserves to be - adults who accompany their kids will be glad they came along for the joyride - Reinhold may be able to flex artistic muscles that have been necessarily flaccid until now. [11 Mar 1988]

Psycho III, directed by Perkins himself, is years behind the Hitchcock original in quality, it's light years ahead of Psycho II. [27 June 1986, p.D1]

A lark from start to finish. [1 July 1987]

Polanski has always inspired comparisons to Hitchcock, back to Cul-de-Sac and up to Rosemary's Baby and beyond, but this is the first time he has intentionally set out to replicate the thrills, chills and laughter of Hitchcock's best work. He succeeds, but with a difference: the last half-hour, at once improbable and horrible and self-referentially satiric, is pure Polanski. [27 Feb 1988]

French Postcards is a minor, mechanical remembrance of insignificant times past - specifically, of days spent by (young) Americans in Paris. But it is also quite funny and the performers more than make up for the script's creaking joints: there is a freshness and vitality in the work of the largely unknown actors that is invigorating. [27 Oct 1979]

The violent but impressive Bad Boys doesn't waste much time getting down to business. Bad Boys is about a generation of teen-agers who have learned from television to want the biggest and the best, and it's about a generation in the process of angrily learning that it's going to be forced to settle for the littlest and the least. [22 Apr 1983]

Stand and Deliver honors its title; it's a good news movie in a bad news world. [15 Apr 1988]

The first 20 minutes owe too much - much too much - to Animal House & Co., and the last 20 to The Graduate, but in between there is an uproariously crude and vigorously funny effort to squish the teen genre into the confines of classic French sex farce.[14 June 1985]

That it all works is a tribute to Stu Silver's gaggy but never vulgar script and to DeVito's imaginative direction, but the movie would be unthinkable without its trio of funny folk. [11 Dec 1987]

Not a masterpiece, but it's not negligible either. [14 Aug 1992]

A superior sequel to an amusing original. A new batch of slapstick and satire. [16 Jun 1990]

Technically, the picture is a mess, but the ineptitudes in the editing and cinematography actually add to the charm, and the Bushman family is wondrous to watch. The Gods Must Be Crazy II is an old dog sans new tricks, but the friendly mutt's familiar repertoire is varied enough to fill a few hours with undemanding fun. [13 Apr 1990]

This Is Elvis could have been called This Is America: it's a portrait of a face full of wounds, warts and wonders. [09 May 1981]

Brooks' bravery is spiriting; in his debut he has written an unlikeable character doing unlikeable things to likeable people. One wishes his talent as a director matched his chutzpah. [17 Mar 1979]

The reign of the last emperor, a reign in name alone, was an exercise in style over substance; it is perhaps fitting that his cinematic biography should follow the same incarcerated course. [20 Nov 1987, p.D1]

Walter Hill is a master moviemaker, and when Streets of Fire is speeding by like Mercury on methedrine, the rush left in its wake cancels out questions of content. But the minute the momentum slows, it's another story - a story about a movie with no story at all. [01 June 1984]

Laughter, tears and Bette Midler: Santa's done a whole lot worse. [23 Dec 1988]

Days of Thunder relies on charm, loud noise and a few racing sequences to print money with Cocky's visage on the bills: there can be no suspense because there can be no possibility Cocky will lose. [29 Jun 1990, p.C1]