Richard Harrington

Is "The Last Waltz" the greatest rock movie of all time? It makes its case persuasively in a restoration overseen by director Martin Scorsese and producer Robbie Robertson that's been released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the concert it made famous.

While Fishburne is generally riveting -- his facial disguise is basically hardness layered onto strength -- and Goldblum is intriguing -- his wannabe urges are quite curious -- the film itself is only occasionally visceral.

The plot of The Glimmer Man involves not only the Family Man but Our Evil Secret Government, the Russian Mafia and Rich Powerful Politicians -- the three stooges of action cinema in the '90s.

It's overly long and it's overly melodramatic, but it's also a perfect example of the kind of film they just don't make anymore, because they can't.

Sugar Hill is often more unflinching in its detailing of the death trip drugs provoke -- a pair of overdoses are particularly harrowing and the gun-violence is sufficiently sudden and shocking -- but much of its message feels as if it's being delivered by Western Union.

All the kids are believable and Suburbia's shortcomings are mostly in its script, not in its characterizations. [11 Feb 1984, p.G1]

The film as a whole is a little like one of those inflatable love dolls -- a reasonable facsimile, but nothing like the real thing.

The acting is straight out of '50s B movies. The exposition is clumsy, the sound track corny, the denouement silly. Then again, who said bad taste was easy? [13 Apr 1987, Style, p.b4]

Triple the length of its cable television inspiration, Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood is triple the gore, triple the naked women, but not, alas, triple the fun. Comic takes on vampires have been done better, less bloodily and with more clothing, but always without the benefit of a wildly popular franchise like this HBO series.

It's a sweet-natured family drama in which years of effort are rewarded by a brief moment of glory. Its corny, cartoonish finale makes "Rocky" look like "Bullwinkle." Still, you'll have to forgive the lump in your throat and the tear in your eye.

Crowe has said he envisioned "Singles" as a celluloid album, and like an album, one comes away remembering some parts more fondly than others.

There is enough action and general movement to satisfy younger moviegoers and enough gentility and creative thought to please everyone else. [26 Nov 1982, p.D1]

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is rousing entertainment with many faces -- martial arts thrills, romance, mystery, comedy -- and a double dose of poignancy.

You don't have to be young or old to enjoy it this lovely, engaging film, just open-minded, or at least bighearted. At once funny, sad, moving, inspirational and revealing, The Boy Who Could Fly suspends the law of emotional gravity, soaring at just the right moments.

A soulless replica of Don Seigel's 1956 model and Philip Kaufman's 1978 update.

As usual, it's the colorful and loquacious Joker who is most riveting. Shirley Walker's orchestral score is also quite powerful.

The film conveys the raucous energy that fueled the music, which is delivered with lip-sync abandon to tracks recorded by an alternative rock coalition under the guidance of Don Was.

The only thing wrong with John Woo's American debut, Hard Target, is that it's too American and not enough Woo.

While she demystifies prostitution, managing at times to make it seem as boring as it must often be, Borden (and cowriter Sandra Kay) make the characters almost too sympathetic.

Fear of a Black Hat is not brilliant, but it's bright enough.

Fright Night is really "Fright Lite," a film promising more than it delivers, and even that delivery is so late in the game that you may want to arrive fashionably late and skip what passes for plot development and concentrate on Richard Edlund's special effects. [05 Aug 1985, p.B3]

Except for a few gory flourishes and several jolly special effects, Warlock is a surprisingly old-fashioned horror adventure that benefits from the superbly malevolent presence of Julian Sands as said warlock.

Director Geoffrey Wright, who also wrote the script, is thoroughly ambivalent in his storytelling. It's in his deft filmmaking that Wright slips: By whipping up a visceral ride through a tunnel of hate, and by making several characters likable, he creates a parable of race and rage that offers no moral position.

Madsen is a much better actress than is usually found in such a role. However, if you don't like splashes of blood or bees swarming out of bodies, you may want to think twice about this one.

It's an uninspired blend, integrating the boys from "Porky's" and the girls from "Foxes" into a vehicle resembling the worst of "American Graffiti" and the best of "Rock and Roll High School." [13 Aug 1982]

Say what you will about Ken Russell, his films are usually bonkers. His latest, Lair of the White Worm, will do nothing to alter his reputation as the champion of camp thrash, but at least it's a step or two -- if only short ones -- above such recent efforts as "Salome's Last Veil" and "Gothic."

Unfortunately, Bosworth couldn't act his way through the Seattle Seahawks and he's not likely to act his way into a film career based on this first outing.

A mix of martial-arts and special-effects magic, the film serves its nonstop confrontations either straight up or with a twist (as when they involve Kombatants with special powers, like Sub-Zero, Reptile and Scorpion).

Not so much a film as a frolic that established the escapist Elvis formula: an exotic location, curvaceous girls, an inane script and an album's worth of songs. From here on, Elvis is basic boy scout. The music is pastiche Hawaiian, the plot is ridiculous, and the box-office grosses and record sales were incredible. [13 Aug 1987, p.B7]

Saddled by Milius and Larry Gross's leaden script and Hill's somnambulant pace, "Geronimo" is hardly better than Ted Turner's recent fiasco.

Craven also wrote the script here, based on a news story about California parents who kept their children locked in the basement for many years. That's scary -- and so is how far Craven has fallen.

In Born in East L.A., Marin plays it mostly for cheap laughs and only an occasional touch of pathos. In other words, he's taken the easy way out. And the script is so sketchy, the scenes so disconnected and the ideas so vacuous (even for Marin) that Born in East L.A. is in desperate need of a center it never finds in its 75 unfocused minutes. The film is a series of skits, blackouts and punchlines, but finished it's not.

Romero and his original partners apparently made no money from the original, and Romero admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the reasons for remaking the film were "purely financial." It shows...This Night of the Living Dead is resurrected, but it's never brought to life.

Though creepy Jeffrey Combs and beach boy Bruce Abbott return as West and Cain, producer Brian Yusna has replaced Stuart Gordon in the director's chair, without bringing new life to the affair. Even the jokes in the Woody Keith/Rick Fry screenplay seem refried.

"5" has none of the pizazz of "1" and "3" and is only marginally better than "2" and "4," the worst of the "Elms."

It's fists and feet that do the talking in Under Siege 2 and they prove eloquent enough.

Between the gang's patois and Seagal's soft speaking, Marked for Death almost begs for subtitles; the breaking of bones, however, comes through loud and clear.

But on the evidence of this twisted, high-tech "Wild Bunch" update, [Hill]'s still just the poor man's Sam Peckinpah. All the ethics and issues have been eliminated from Hill's nuevo western film, leaving only the violence, the spent bullets and the copious slo-mo flow of blood.

Beware of horror films that begin with a bad dream -- they usually go on that way as well. Case in point: Popcorn, which has several good ideas that, unfortunately, go unrealized.

Genre fans will appreciate the blood flow and the gore, and director Anthony Hickox keeps things moving so that there's never a dull moment -- or dull blade. Consider Hell raised.

Boiling Point is a bad cable movie -- USA as opposed to HBO -- temporarily masquerading as a theatrical release; even the presence of one hot actor, Wesley Snipes, can't elevate it past lukewarm status. Dennis Hopper, here reduced to an unamusing caricature of himself, further cools things down. The end result, if truth-in-titling were in effect: "Tepid Point."

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II may be derivative, but for the most part it's clever enough to trade on its sources with humor and class. It's "Peggy Sue Lives on Elm Street," with dollops of "Carrie," "The Exorcist" and a half dozen other genre stalwarts.

The level of humor, of course, is familiarly low -- with nothing more deadly than the Crypt Keeper's puns ("Frights! Camera! Hack-tion!"). As for the gore, let's just say the demons are slimy, heads do roll and bodies are ripped asunder

A moment past its concept, Fortress settles into a mix of sci-fi and prison cliches that result in predictable and often silly confrontations, including a not-so-great escape. Much of the blame lies with Lambert, as vapid here as he has been in the "Highlander" fiascoes.

Critters 2 is flat, lacking the kinetic energy, tight pacing and generally better acting of its predecessor.

A talky European Grand Prix thriller/romantic potboiler. [14 Sep 2007, p.WE38]

Typically hollow and patchy, the script is low par for the course, the acting close behind. Where it's a cut above the rest is in the work of Yugoslavian cinematographer Bojan Bazelli: His outdoor shots, both day and night, are superbly lit and cleanly shot, as if this were an A film. And with Marcus Manton's crisp editing, Pumpkinhead looks three times as good as it is.

In making the transition from small page to big screen, Tank Girl gains very little and gives up nothing. Working from a generally faithful script by Teri Sarafian, director Rachel Talalay opts for an approach that emphasizes surface and flash at the expense of depth and coherence -- much like its source. The result is a bracing film that's halfway between a string of MTV videos (Courtney Love put together the edgy soundtrack) and some of that network's over-the-top cartoons. [31 March 1995, p.D07]

Judgment Night is regrettably familiar fare.

A thrill-an-hour distraction that promises much more than it delivers.

If Rogers moves through the film somewhat lethargically, Six Pack's bare-bones plot doesn't provide much inspiration. [20 July 1982, p.B4]

Only mildly exciting as it grinds toward its conclusion, Sniper falls apart in the last reel as writers Michael Frost Beckner and Crash Leyland dispense with credibility by turning the rebel and drug lord's forces into the Keystone Kartel, invoking a Magic Bullet and attempting an Oliver Stone denouement. Unfortunately, director Luis Llosa is no Oliver Stone.

Like too many genre directors these days, Ken Wiederhorn went for a mix of horror and comedy, and it's probably not his fault he succeeded mostly with the latter.

Like one of the victims, Innocent Blood feels about five quarts low.

But just as Pee-wee Herman's films are vehicles for his shtick, Elvira is mostly Elvira wisecracking and busting out of her dress. She's fun, a Transylvania Valley Girl grown up into the Queen of the Bs, but after 96 minutes you may start thinking more fondly about those '50s and '60s camp classics she's usually interspersed with.

The major problem with "For Love or Money" is its leads, since Fox is no Cary Grant and Anwar no Audrey Hepburn. Fox is sweetly engaging at times but he still seems too boyish to be convincing. And though he wheels and deals with flair, no romantic sparks fly between him and Anwar. Of course, as she proved with Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman," it takes two to tango -- and Anwar simply is too vapid an actress, a poor woman's Adrienne Shelly with a flat voice, wan looks and all too little presence.

In the end, family ties are re-strung, but the morals remain annoyingly at loose ends.

Unless you're a Van Damme or martial arts fanatic, you're more likely to be thinking: No, merci.

As the vengeful Candyman, Tony Todd remains both a tragic victim and a frightfully menacing supposition, enough so that you'll think twice before repeating that full Candyman mantra in front of your bathroom mirror.

While it's obvious that Stanley has seen a lot of genre films, he's not yet learned how to make one, though his shortcomings are less visual than dramatic and narrative; things look fast, but happen s-l-o-w. This Hardware needs a grease job.

The effects are generally good, and those Cenobites are definitely not the kind of folks you'd have over on New Year's Eve. Still, it's odd that the most intriguing, and threatening, items in the film are those darn puzzle boxes.

Director Bruce Malmuth keeps the pace taut, the shots tight.

Dickerson keeps things moving along briskly and the ensemble manages to survive Eric Bernt's "script" (Connell gets no credit). As for the dreadlocked Ice-T, he avoids the rap trappings of his previous film roles and is generally effective in his survival schemes.

A shameless, uneventful rehash of the classic Western "Shane," "Nowhere to Run" miscasts Jean-Claude Van Damme in the old Alan Ladd role -- an outlaw outsider gradually drawn into both unexpected familial warmth and predictably violent conflict with a greedy land baron...While it boasts better supporting actors and technical credits than other Van Damme projects, the film nonetheless founders, a victim of its own lugubrious pace and misguided efforts at turning the bulging Belgian into a romantic lead.

The script is at once so undernourished and so obvious that you'll be convinced Cohen produced it via telegram: START MANIAC COP KILLS CIVILIANS STOP CLEANCUT GETS BLAME STOP WORLD-WEARY DETECTIVE FIGURES IT OUT STOP BODIES FALL STOP.

Barker the filmmaker resorts to most of the horror cliches he chillingly sidesteps in his writing.

The story is silly but entertaining, the fisti/footsycuffs are generally exciting and the laughs are common. Summer fare, basically.

This Dr. Giggles has a lot of hearts and no brain.

Possibly . . . no, probably . . . no, definitely . . . the worst rock film of all time. [24 Nov 1980, p.B11]

You're going out with a touch of class: a slam-bang finale in 3-D -- make that Freddyvision; a gaggle of one-liners directed at the final crop of victims and a few in-jokes; some wonderfully bizarre dream sequences; and the possibility that while Freddy may be gone, some of his progeny may live on (we can say no more).

Some films aspire to B status; some achieve it accidentally. Return of the Swamp Thing does neither. It isn't shocking or entertaining. At best, it is a catalogue of bad acting unredeemed by humor, and it will quickly settle back into the swamp of anonymity accorded most minor comic book heroes. [26 June 1989, p.B8]

What this ill-fated journey is all about are never rationally explained, but then it seems most of the little thought in Galaxy of Terror was put into the special defects, which include a crewmember whose head and tummy snap, crackle and pop; an arm that gets cut off and still manages to spite itself; and a tiny worm that grows and rapes a comely crew member to death. [12 Nov 1981, p.C17]

Spaced Invaders is a slight, obvious sci-fi parody that would like to be in the same league as Spaceballs, but doesn't even deserve the comparison.

Though it boasts a big budget and is indeed busier and more densely populated than Seagal's previous efforts, Out for Justice feels cheap, not only in its production but in its content. It's "Scarface" without a point of view; it's shallow plot cluttered with extreme violence, both verbal and physical.

Child's Play 2 is an inevitable sequel that's not as good as its progenitor, but better than most movies with the numbers 2 through 8 in their titles. Thin plot-wise, it caters to an audience apparently amused on the first go-round by the antics of a foul-mouthed doll named Chucky.

There are so many problems with Graffiti Bridge. The major one is that this "contemporary musical drama" stars and was directed by Prince, who also wrote the script and the score. This may be four hats too many.

All the redeeming qualities of "Rocky Horror"--naive wit, enthusiastic invention and absurb plotline--have been approximated in Shock Treatment without ever approaching the original. Unlike its inspiration, which fans have returned to time and again, Shock Treatment is hard to sit through once. [28 May 1982, p.C4]

Striking Distance is a solid adventure with just enough edge and mystery.

This is a surprisingly inept tale about an evil nanny and a killer tree that's right out of Jason's woods. Despite a prologue that aims to excuse subsequent plot deficiencies and a finale that's as absurd as you're likely to find in a modern horror film, The Guardian is simply ludicrous.

In the end, it all looks and plays like a $40 million version of a game you're more likely to enjoy on a computer.

Ultimately, it's hard to decide which is more deadly, the action or the dialogue. [26 Dec 1981, p.D5]

Well shot, well edited, well paced, Deepstar Six seems to have gone to the idea-well just a bit too often -- or is that not often enough? While the creature is an average creation, the underwater visual effects are often quite good, if not plentiful enough. [14 Jan 1989]

What can you say when a video game is more exciting and entertaining than the big-budget feature film it inspires?

The plot stumbles over genre cliches after a promising start and the whole thing becomes lamentable. As an indictment of a techno-society in which too much information is available by computer, it's simply unconvincing.

All the characters mumble, perhaps out of sympathy for the Dutch Van Damme's ongoing struggle with their native language. As for plot, it unravels more quickly than the mystery facing Van Damme.

Martial arts maven Seagal has long been on deadly ground with critics, and this, his directorial debut, is likely to keep him there.

It's all good, stupid fun.

Class of 1999 gets a D for dumb, dull and derivative, and so what if director Mark Lester, who made "Class of 1984" eight years ago, is borrowing from himself? The latter was just a punked-up version of the original rock-and-roll high school film, "Blackboard Jungle." For this new venture, Lester has simply tacked on elements of "Westworld," "RoboCop" and "Terminator" in a blatant attempt to enroll the action faction.

You could call it a nightmare but that would be an insult to Elm Street.

For all the nice turns, this movie can't decide whether to focus on undergraduate fun and fantasy or the tensions of the workaday world. As a result, the film fails to deliver its promised exploration of the last week of summer, when some people find themselves with no way to turn back, and no place to look forward to. [01 Oct 1984, p.B3]

Genre aficionados looking for chills and thrills will be disappointed; this one could play uncut on television -- network, not cable. The effects and the jokes are equally few and far between, and for all its amiable intentions, House II deserves few boarders.

Charmless, stupid and badly made, No Holds Barred makes Rocky look like Citizen Pain.

Never Ending Story II is as flat as the pages of its script.

Child's Play 3 is further proof of the principle of diminishing sequels: The original was actually quite good, the follow-up was lame and now what is hopefully the capper is DOA.

Alan Silvestri's score is the worst mix of ersatz Jerry Goldsmith and schlock pop tunes, and the acting is pretty weak, though the filmmakers get good marks for using Calegory, a real-life disabled 11-year-old who brings a healthy authenticity to his role.

Scriptwise, you'll be left thinking "if it only had a brain." Like last year's "Hardware," this British effort is simply too talky. Those who seek deeper meaning will enjoy the astrological and satanic explanations, even if they make no sense.

Flowers in the Attic is slow, stiff, stupid and senseless, a film utterly lacking in motivation, development and nuance, and further marred by embarrassingly flat acting and directing.

Scriptwriter Kitty Chalmers really should have called it Replicant, since Cyborg borrows bits and pieces from so many genre films and since it has really no soul of its own.