Rita Kempley

Compromising Positions has its problems, especially Julia's weak performance. But it's often on target, exposing the mechanics of the heroine's marriage, the woman herself and her languorous community where two patrol cars respond to a call about graffiti. [6 Sept 1985, p.23]

The experience overall is like laughing down a gun barrel, a little bit tiring, a lot sick and maybe far too perverse for less jaded moviegoers.

It would be cornier if it weren't so well acted by Nunn, Bening and 12-year-old Allen.

An enchanting, staggeringly beautiful epic at sea, is poetry in motion.

It is a wonderfully wacko work, sparked with Cook's oomph, Dunaway's cackle and the superstar power of the sensational Slater. What a face! As long as people prevail over effects, Supergirl glitters, she glows. [23 Nov 1984, p.27]

Tender, touching and downright delightful.

As fascinating as it is frightful. But despite all the occult patter and tony trimmings, Angel Heart is bogus -- only the bogeyman again.

Adapted from Valerie Martin's psychosexual novel, this maudlin film transforms the legend of Jekyll and Hyde into a talky romantic love triangle. [23 Feb 1996]

As disturbing and densely beautiful as its opening image, a lofty forest that dwarfs the gangsters as they laugh over their kill.

Eating Raoul is an American film that's good enough to be European. [05 Nov 1982, p.19]

Barkin's succulence and De Niro's showboating lend sizzle and ferocity to the proceedings, but the film draws its poignancy from 18-year-old DiCaprio's performance.

A deliciously mordant French spine-tingler.

It is a triumph for director Ron Howard, underwater photographer Jordan Klein, the writers and even the guy who made Hannah's latex tail (Robert Short). And it's surely the stairway to superstardom for costar John Candy and the lovely leading nyad. Splash, a departure for struggling Disney Studio, is as irresistible as the siren's song. [09 Mar 1984, p.23]

Yaphet Kotto, as L.A.P.D. Detective Harry Lowes, and Larry Hankin, as his partner, pull the bench out from under the rest of the players. Show-stealing is their only crime -- they add the necessary guts and good humor to bring the Star Chamber down to earth. [5 Aug 1983, p.17]

It's rambunctiously entertaining, a loop-de-loopy bumper car ride through a firecracker sky, all bright lights, sonic booms and impossible heroics.

You can hear the silence, the palpable quiet in director Randa Haines' skillful adaptation of stage's "Children of a Lesser God." The polemic drama of deaf rights translates into a heart-pounding love story -- the most passionately performed since "Officer and a Gentleman."

Like the director, the cast seems to have burrowed into the material, made all the more wrenchingly realistic by Dogme precepts.

Profoundly affecting.

The picture seems muted, the flower's petals a little brown at the edges.

While the plot is thin and there's little action till the big blow some 60 minutes into the film, a volcano offers a greater variety of thrills than your basic cyclone ever could.

Director Harold Ramis, who managed to stop time in the sunny comic masterpiece "Groundhog Day," tries a different tack in this lesser though nonetheless hilarious caper.

This first film from Sesame Street is this summer's sweetest surprise, a wholly good-natured children's comedy with enough wit and whimsy left over to win parents' hearts, too. Like the TV series, it's not violent, not threatening and not to be missed. [02 Aug 1985, p.23]

Filmed in the mock-documentary style pioneered by acknowledged mentor Robert Altman, it does for baby-kissing phonies what This Is Spinal Tap did for heavy metal poseurs.

It practically celebrates convenience of plot, over-the-top acting and follow-the-footprints dialogue, but mostly it is a salute to sequins and sashay. With just a hint of sarcasm.

Astute and entertaining documentary.

A Dry White Season is political cinema so deeply felt it attains a moral grace. A bitter medicine, a painful reminder, it grieves for South Africa as it recounts the atrocities of apartheid. Yes, it is a story already told on a grander scale, but never with such fervor.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock isn't really a movie, it's a happy reunion. The Enterprise is 18 years older and the crew members look like Gray Panthers in space. It may be old stuff, but it's still the right stuff up there. [8 June 1984, p.23]

Most of the time Creepshow works.