Paul Attanasio

Tavernier has created an extraordinary portrait of an artist quite simply because he's so intimate with it -- because he's such an extraordinary artist himself.

Not since the heyday of Frank Capra, perhaps, has there been a movie that so seamlessly combines screwball comedy with get-out-your-handkerchiefs heart. Peggy Sue Got Married isn't about solving life's problems, it's about accepting them, in a world where love doesn't conquer all, but conquers enough. And in the hands of director Francis Coppola, that message makes what could have been merely a delightful lark about time travel into something much more.

A gory and gorgeous cop thriller -- you'll forgive it almost anything, so full is your eye with the beauties of its design and photography, and your ear with its supercool electronic music. For all its faults, it's one of the most sensually thrilling movies of the year.

Heartburn is a masterpiece, a collaboration of mature artists at the peak of their craft, and something of a summing up for Mike Nichols, who, more successfully than any other American director, has staked out the terrain where men and women meet as his own. Here it is -- a movie that is seriously funny.

To appreciate Children of a Lesser God, you only have to imagine how it could have patronized the deaf by celebrating their pluck, or become a heartwarming tale of little people who solve their big problems. That's exactly what it isn't, and that's quite an achievement.

Salvador, Oliver Stone's drama based on the recent strife in that country, has an irresistible brassiness, a swing-at-the-moon quality -- it's big and loud and bold, all primary colors, and it has more energy than any 10 films this year. [4 Apr 1986, p.D1]

The Killing Fields is the best movie about journalism since "All the President's Men," re-creating with an understated ease the atmosphere of the poolside bonhomie of the correspondents, the mechanics of getting and filing a story, and the moral quandaries of a reporter's professional detachment.

Thrumming with the electric rapport between Jessica Lange and Ed Harris (and screen writer Robert Getchell's sparky dialogue), the movie's darn near irresistible.

Re-Animator is splatter heaven. Based on the sci-fi novel by H.P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator's gore is exceeded only by its wit. Not since the heyday of Roger Corman, perhaps, have filmmakers had so much fun with an exploitation movie.

For such a low-budget movie, Nightmare on Elm Street is extraordinarily polished. The script is consistently witty, the camera work (by cinematographer Jacques Haitkin) crisp and expressive.

As directed by Rob Reiner, Stand by Me has a quality of seriousness, and of relaxation, that you hardly ever see in movies made about kids. It's at its best when its characters are just hanging out, razzing each other, feeling the summertime -- when it's like "Diner" for 12-year-olds. [22 Aug 1986, p.D1]

From the first frames of The Color of Money, you feel, almost physically, the presence of a man singularly obsessed with the romance of movies. In this movie, Martin Scorsese enters a new period in an already extraordinary career. It would be hard to exaggerate the complex pleasure and wonderment that The Color of Money conveys.

In the way it deemphasizes its script and consciously undercuts its star, Cotton Club adventurously questions the formulas of Hollywood; its success in doing so without a hint of boredom or pretension augurs a whole new way of making movies. It's the most entertaining art film of the year, the kind of movie you can't help smiling along with.

Little Drummer Girl is the most trenchant, chilling vision of the psychological fallout of spying since Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation.

Here's a science fiction movie where the special effects are in the background. And the effect is, well, rather special.

This is an astonishingly polished and nuanced first film. It deserves to be celebrated, not quibbled with.

Target depends on a few sleights of hand, all transparent; so transparent that you quickly forget about what's wrong with the movie and focus on its strengths -- particularly a quirky, adventurous performance by Gene Hackman. [8 Nov 1985, p.C1]

Shocking and relentless, the movie pioneers an unholy border between Rembrandt and pornography, finding a transcendent unity in the abasements and attainments of man.

It's not one of his masterpieces, but High and Low fully illustrates why Kurosawa is regarded as Japan's foremost director.

A lewd, gory, twisty-turny murder mystery swirling around Hollywood's porn industry, Body Double finds Brian De Palma at the zenith of his cinematic virtuosity. The movie has been carefully calculated to offend almost everyone -- and probably will. But, like Hitchcock, De Palma makes the audience's reaction his real subject; Body Double is about the dark longings deep inside us.

She's Gotta Have It is Spike Lee's impressive first feature, discursive, jazzy, vibrant with sex and funny as heck. [22 Aug 1986, p.D1]

Fabulously acted and written with zing and zong, it's one of the few enjoyable movies of the summer.

Choose Me holds up the mirror, not only to its own characters, but to the conundrums of '80s life.

A delightful and frequently funny cartoon feature based on the characters of the Sherlock Holmes series. [07 July 1986, p.B8]

The Journey of Natty Gann shows how skillful filmmaking can take something that's almost unendurably hokey and make it charming. Beautifully photographed and designed, evocatively scored, it's a pleasantly archaic family entertainment in the Disney tradition. [18 Jan 1986, p.G1]

An intoxicating blend of comedy, kung fu, corny romance, special effects and rock videos, it's as electrically sleepless as the New York it's set against.

A playful, artfully made horror movie that shows there's life in Norman Bates yet, and death, too. [04 July 1986, p.C1]

A slickly made, shoot-'em-up sci-fi fantasia, it stands for the proposition that, inside the most staid local theater, there is a drive-in yearning to be free. [29 Oct 1984, p.B4]