Pauline Kael

The script goes from one formula to the next, and it reworks the pranks of generations of male service comedies, but the director, Howard Zieff, refurbishes the stale material with smart small touches, and Goldie Hawn has such infectious frothy charm that she manages to get laughs out of ancient routines about a tenderfoot going through the rigors of basic training.

A London-set Hitchcock silent thriller that was in part reshot and in part dubbed to make it a sound film--and an unusually imaginative and innovative one.

It's very well worked out in terms of character and it has a sustained grip, but it certainly isn't as much fun as several of his other films.

As a wisecracking , intermittently violent lunatic, Michael Keaton electrifies this quirky farce. The film isn't the knockout it might have been if it had a few big wild routines. And yes, it's sentimental. But the sentimentality isn't overplayed, and Keaton's fast rap cauterizes much of it.

This came late in the series but it's still fairly cheerful.

It has so many unpredictable spins that what's missing doesn't seem to matter much. The images sing. [10 July 1989]

It's a creditable though unadventurous film, handsomely staged in the M-G-M backlot style for classics.

The film is like an expanded, beautifully made TV "Movie of the Week."

William Shatner's Kirk is less stoic here than in III--he's pleasantly daffy. The others in the crew also have an easy, parodistic tone. But the picture doesn't have much beyond the interplay among them and the jokey scenes in San Francisco.

The jokes get rather desperate, but there are enough wildly sophomoric ones to keep this pop stunt fairly amusing until about midway. It would have made a terrific short.

The Oscar Wilde story has its compelling gimmick and its cheap thrills, and despite the failings of Albert Lewin as writer and director, he has an appetite for decadence and plushy decor.

Ragged when it tries for philosophical importance, but it's fun to see so many stars at an early stage in their careers.

This one is really only for Trekkies; others are likely to find it tolerable but yawny.

Directed by Bob Clark, this handsome Anglo-Canadian production features fine Whistler-like dockside scenes and many beautiful, ghoulish gothic-movie touches, but the modern political attitudes expressed by the writer, John Hopkins, misshape the picture.

The film loses its imaginative energy once it moves out of the ripe, sleazy carny milieu, and from the start the technique of the director, Edmund Goulding, is conventional, even a little stodgy. Still, the material, adapted from William Gresham's novel by Jules Furthman, is unusual and the cast first-rate.

Meryl Streep gives an immaculate, technically accomplished performance as Sarah Woodruff, the romantic mystery woman of John Fowles' novel, but she isn't mysterious. We're not fascinated by Sarah; she's so distanced from us that all we can do is observe how meticulous Streep -- and everything else about the movie -- is.

The emotion got to many viewers, even though the manipulated suspense and the sentimental softening prevent the film from doing anything like justice to its subject.

As an example of the "woman's picture" this doesn't have any of the grubbiness or conviction of the Barbara Stanwyck Stella Dallas, but de Havilland works hard confecting cold cream.

As Octopussy, the beautiful amazon Maud Adams is disappointingly warm and maternal - she's rather mooshy.

In its B-picture way, it has a fascinating crumminess.

The director, John Badham, does a glamorous, showy job, and, what with all the stunt flying and the hair-trigger editing, this is the sort of action film that can make you fell sick with excitement, yet it's all technique -- suspense in a void.

Wenders' unsettling compositions are neurotically beautiful visions of a disordered world, but the film doesn't have the nasty, pleasurable cleverness of a good thriller; dramatically, it's stagnant -- inverted Wagnerism.

Ousmane Sembene's approach is thoughtful and almost reticent; the viewer contemplates a series of tragic dilemmas. Yet for all its intelligence, the movie isn't memorable--partly because the last section is unsatisfying.

This movie is terribly uneven -- best when it's gaudy and electric, worst in its more realistically staged melodramatic moments, especially toward the end. Overall, it's an entertaining show.

Taylor looks very desirable, and the cast is full of actors whooping it up with Southern Accents.

Some of the whimsey in this message operetta is hard to take, but, considering the moldering ponderousness of the whole project, the young Francis Ford Coppola did his best to keep things moving in a carefree, relaxing way.

The scattered fine comic moments don't make up for the wide streak of fuddy-duddyism in the notion that the family used to be the bulwark of the nation's value system.

Some of the film's junkiness is enjoyable, but there's also an unenjoyable cultural fundamentalism at work. Marshall is telling us that the complications of the last two decades are unimportant.