Paul Attanasio

If the style of the film matches the story, that doesn't make it any easier to look at -- it's just too bleak, and in the end, you'd rather see "Ivanhoe." Annaud never finds the right rhythm for the movie, and it's sluggishly paced, even as palimpsests go.

Mona Lisa is consistently undercut by sentiment, whether it's the cute routines between George and his best friend, a mechanic and junkman, or the "heartwarming" stuff between George and his estranged daughter. In the end, "Mona Lisa" is another movie about the lovable little people; the movie is mushy where it should be monstrous. [16 July 1986, p.D1]

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

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.

The script of Three Amigos (Martin's collaborators were producer Lorne Michaels and singer Randy Newman) plays like it was slapped together by a few friends with a tape recorder enjoying a charming weekend at the beach. You can't tell one amigo from another, the gags are silly (a "singing bush") and far between, the dialogue full of inane wordplay. Sample: "We could take a walk and you could kiss me on the veranda." "The lips would be fine."

Mishima tries to make sense of both its subject's life and his work, and ends up illuminating neither.

Aliens is a wow, a sci-fi war movie that gets you in its grip very early, and never lets go. In its "fasten your seat belt" storytelling, it invites comparisons to "Raiders of the Lost Ark," but Aliens, the work of writer-director James Cameron and his wife, producer Gale Anne Hurd, goes beyond such films in the darkness of its reality and the depth of its emotion. It doesn't get any better than this. [18 July 1986, p.D1]

Tuff Turf is a youthsploitation movie that has fun with its formula, and for that, two cheers. But director Fritz Kiersch's twists promise more than they deliver -- it's just more grist for the run-of-the-mill.

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]

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

If amusing, A Room With a View is little more than a lark, a series of skits, a two-hour tribute to the rich British eccentric.

Technically brilliant though short on narrative, The Black Cauldron is a painless, old-fashioned way to take out the kids, and a triumph for the animation department at the Disney studio, where it has been in development for almost a dozen years.

Solarbabies is a hilariously bad movie that doesn't make much sense and isn't much good when it does. Director Alan Johnson has stolen most of his visual ideas from Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner") and George Miller ("The Road Warrior"), and he hasn't the slightest idea how to direct actors. That said, the movie has its campy pleasures.

Overheated and recklessly violent.

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.

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]

The screenplay, by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby, is just one long passage of exposition: someone blows up or dries up or whatever, you wonder why that's happening, and then someone explains it. This they call suspense. [25 June 1985, p.C8]

Trouble in Mind is something of a jumble, but never less than an intriguing one. It's an off-center romance, as unnerving as a half-remembered nightmare. [25 Apr 1986, p.D1]

Lean never brings the characters' motivations or emotions to life, so they just seem like props gathered together to make a point about imperialism. [18 Jan 1985, p.C1]

Ruthless People has an enchanting comic premise -- everyone in the film is either an S.O.B. or wants to become one. But ultimately, the black comedy is not pursued very far -- the movie's too good-natured for its own good. And the elaborately worked-out farce structure, involving a victim who may be either kidnaped or dead, is mostly wasted on a style of humor that, by comparison, makes Buddy Hackett seem the very soul of sophistication. [27 June 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.

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.

My Beautiful Laundrette is quirky and fresh and ambitious and pretty much everything a movie should be, except good.

That's the problem with The Sure Thing. All the good lines are given to Cusack -- he's always "on," narrating his own life in the revved-up spiel of a sports announcer. For Cusack's Gib, life is performance -- his long quill of a nose even seems to look for his audience's ticklish spots. But why would he bother with Alison? Screenwriters Steven L. Bloom and Jonathan Roberts have sketched her as an annoying scold, leaving Zuniga little to do but bray disapproval at everything. [4 Mar 1985, p.B3]

The only thing that is sustained in Sid and Nancy is a tone of clinical disinterest that leaves you asking why Cox would want to make a movie about them. By the end, you know more about Sid and Nancy than you care to, and about Alex Cox, quite a bit less than you'd like.

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

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]

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.