Pat Graham

Gordon still hasn't mastered the simplest filmmaking techniques. The gross-out sliminess and sexual acting out are supposed to provide a purgative release, but all Gordon does is gawk at the excess for what seems like forever: his voyeurism is too unpleasant for casual entertainment, too mild to constitute a pornographic vision.

Timothy Dalton stars as the 1987 model James Bond in this 15th entry in the series, with the usual assortment of dope smugglers, KGB operatives, and criminal psychos providing a few anxious moments at the welcoming party. Expect the expected.

Nobody knows how to speak, but they sure know how to apply makeup. [17 June 2010, p.63]

Bolt's moralizing ironies (as leaden here as in A Man for All Seasons and assorted David Lean scenarios) are enough to sink a thousand war canoes, and Joffe doesn't help things along with his patronizing vision of native innocence: the Indians only exist to be sentimentalized—as angels, victims, and amiable rehab projects for enterprising Christians.

Sam Wood, the El Supremo of Hollywood hackdom, squired this one to glory.

Pearce pads out his plot with lots of borrowed bits (notably from The 39 Steps, with Gere and Basinger as manacled fugitives), but the borrowings don't have any resonance of their own: they simply hang on the story like empty thematic husks.

The whole film seems ideologically forced and out of place, an attempt to resurrect the retentive virtues of Ford and Hawks without the cultural context that gave them expressive strength.

Director Joe Camp, the inspirational hand behind the Benji series, shows some remarkable logistic skills in setting up his scenes, and the wilderness photography is never less than impressive, but there ought to be more to harmless entertainment than following wagging tails across the screen. Some formidable displays of technique here, but the treacly anthropomorphism makes it all seem trivial and wasted.

Gene Kelly directed, a long way from Terpsichore apparently, though not, alas, from the Thanksgiving turkey.

The character interactions are strong, especially for this depleted genre, and Hill's tight, efficient styling recovers a lot of lost formal ground: his framing and crosscutting are as sharp as ever, and the bloodbath finale is, improbably, a model of intelligent restraint, the classicist's answer to Peckinpah baroque.

Peter Weir's 1986 adaptation of Paul Theroux's best-selling novel is literally that - an adaptation without much character of its own.

There aren't any flesh-and-blood characters here, only superimposed attitudes: it's almost like reading a rape-crisis textbook, with every lesson italicized.

A second helping of horror tales inspired by an old 50s comic-book series. Original Creepshow director George Romero contributes the screenplay this time, basing it on some tastefully selected Stephen King morsels.

Prince's narcissism was easier to take than than that of his contemporaries Sylvester Stallone or Rob Lowe: he didn't regard the rest of the world as an insult to his estimable self.

Nothing quite works as it should: the rhythms are subtly off, the pace is forced, the comedy overextended . . . and the surfeit of hommages—to the Keystone Kops and Laurel and Hardy and Jerry Lewis and all and sundry—threatens to sink it before it gets out of the starting gate. But there's something to be said for Edwards's insatiable overreaching, and at times the orchestration of pratfalls and comic pairings could hardly be more deft.

Not to raise anyone’s hopes too high, but Gene Wilder has finally made a film you can watch without wanting to exit before it’s over.

Huyck's direction is resolutely uninvolved—every shot of every arrhythmically paced scene cries out for instant anonymity—and only Jeffrey Jones's sardonic scenery chewing as an archetypally deranged scientist keeps things marginally watchable. Lea Thompson is completely out of her element as Howard's sexpot girlfriend (though graduated, thankfully, from the treacly virginality of SpaceCamp), and as for the guy(s) in the duck suit . . . well, he/they deserve our condolences and prayers.

Director Joe Roth (Streets of Gold) seems content with recycling the negative charms of the '84 original and hoping that nobody will notice or care. Roth's no stranger to coarse enthusiasms (he produced the amiably crass Bachelor Party, as energetic as it was inept), but this one's on automatic pilot all the way.