Rita Kempley

Room With a View, with its genteel cliches and its mouth-puckering social commentary, will absolutely please. It is a gorgeous, glimmering film adaptation of E.M. Forster's sweetest novel, an affectionate study of a party of English gone globetrotting, their Baedekers held close like talismans. [4 Apr 1986, p.29]

The French originals are always much breezier, the characters more genuine and the actors subtler even if the situations are just as silly.

Less Than Zero, an aptly titled tale of snooty California drug snorters, is dumber and duller than primordial ooze. It's one of those silly speed-bumps-in-the-fast-lane laments, though it does have a significant message: Get off the freeway or take the last exit ramp to the Betty Ford Clinic in the sky.

There's a sense of mystery in this purply palette and one of majesty in the landscapes, but the drama of the drawings is never really echoed by the skimpy and predictable story.

The point is well taken, but, basically, Cradle is a long rapturous interlude of baby pictures, now and then reinforced with pointed pro-momma dialogue. Even with the politics, it remains just so much French Pablum. [09 May 1986, p.28]

Happily, Pfeiffer and Clooney, now officially a movie star, not only click, they send off sparks.

The movie is as visually inventive and wildly eccentric as the Coens' earlier movies, but it lacks the emotional maturity and moral clarity of 1996's "Fargo."

Preposterous, predictable, but excessively entertaining, this frenzied thriller draws both story and characters from such action classics as "The Fugitive," "Die Hard," "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Silence of the Lambs."

Shamelessly contrived pap.

Depressing as it is dull as it is dumb.

Though its attitudes are decidedly French, this intelligent film goes a long way toward explaining America's obsession with Martha Stewart Living, fake designer labels and TV talk show makeovers.

In the end, it's primarily a brain teaser, obtuse and ultimately limited in its emotional impact.

Unlike Hollywood's hygienic undersea dramas, Das Boot graphically depicts the nasty intimacy of a long mission.

Hardly out of the driveway before director Penny Marshall loses control.

About as persuasively ethnic as an episode of "Friends."

Built with fine materials and boasts a gorgeous ocean view. Unfortunately the family dramedy's design is overblown and the construction is pretty flimsy.

Proud to be junk food, but it still tackles the serious subjects of illiteracy, teen-age pregnancy and young adult alcoholism. [22 July 1987]

A star vehicle from its onset, this peculiar, mediocre comedy strains to accommodate the talents of both Mutt and Jeff, Terminator and troll. It's a Frankensteinian thing, an unsettling combination of two-fisted beefcake and mean-spirited shtick.

Adam Sandler is surprisingly likable as Robbie, a struggling musician who is left at the altar early in this modest romantic comedy.

Like the original, Wings 2 is endearing, even if it is a spiritual muddle.

Basically, it's Tootsie reincarnated, an off-the- wall comedy for everybody who still doesn't know what to make of Boy George. [21 Sep 1984, p.23]

It's Mondo Machismo, Hollywood on safari, a self-aggrandizing epic reeking of man scent.

Though it's allegedly a comedy, there is nothing funny about this tasteless, shallow and mean-spirited slam.

Hardware doesn't make a movie; characters, be they Blawp or human, do. And as so often happens with such outsize undertakings, they are overwhelmed by the gizmos. Technology, one. Astros, naught.

The Perrier of dumb-and-dumber movies, an effervescent idiot's delight that burbles from the wellspring of silliness inside star Adam Sandler's head.

Local Hero is as gentle as Capra corn and as magical as the Misty Isles. An insightful, international commentary -- badly named, but beautifully drawn -- takes us roaming in the gloaming and questing among stars. [01 Apr 1983, p.19]

The performances make up for the sloppy history in the film, and it's a good-hearted and diverting story. [21 Dec 1984, p.29]

McGregor, the movie's most engaging performer, is convincing enough to sell the mutual attraction. The "Trainspotting" star is usually playing some kind of freak, and this is a nice stretch for him.

Ought to have been called "The Sap Also Rises."

Close kin to Fatal Attraction, but more earnestly told, it is a cautionary treatise on the wages of fooling around in the office (death for her, despair for him). But mostly it is a solid whodunit, driven by subtext and the intensity of Ford, Greta Scacchi as the predatory other woman and Bonnie Bedelia as the wronged wife.

The trail is all too familiar and pretty soon we recollect why westerns lost their appeal. [28 June 1985, p.27]

The only thing parents need fear is utter boredom.

The region's stark beauty and the filmmaker's eye for composition compensate somewhat for its predictability and obvious if misguided feminist agenda.

Howard's film, like McConaughey's performance, is unassuming, ingratiating and a little rough around the edges.

A superbly heartfelt drama for six diverse actors, it is as colorfully striated as its majestic namesake - and almost as wide. The film's depth is another matter altogether.

Crouse is stiff and Hutton's a bit sappy, but Lone's performance would melt an iceberg's heart. Despite a rubbery forehead and crude make-up work, Lone is convincing. With grunts, moans, howls and mime, he presents a stoic, depressed, trapped human being. [13 Apr 1984, p.21]

Madhouse is excruciating fluff for moviegoing masochists. It's what bad cinephiles can expect in the cineplexes of hell. No, it's probably already on video there.

Though slow and overlong, the movie is at least scenic family fare. This easily understood yarn should appeal primarily to boys who still think girls are yucky.

Takes its cues from the musical dramas of the '70s, but this otherwise engaging young-adult romance never quite catches Saturday night fever.

A precise and elegant piece. [8 Apr 1988, p.D1]

Marvels of animation abound in Monsters, Inc. -- when it comes to irreverent humor and real heart, Monsters doesn't quite measure up.

An endearing comic roundelay about the can't-commits.

Potter-philes are sure to get what they want -- if what they want is, in fact, an exacting version of J.K. Rowling's charming children's fantasy. If it's enchantment they are after, that's quite another matter.

Bill Forsyth's Being Human, an anthology about the hesitant ascent of man, is a whimsically offbeat, stubbornly upbeat tour of man's progress as seen through the eyes of five guys named Hector. [06 May 1994]

A mite sluggish.

Steve Barron, who directed "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Electric Dreams" and a mess of music videos, understandably can't seem to whip up any enthusiasm for the project. Nor is he able to inspire this large, listless cast of zombies.

An agoraphobic's nightmare, it's a condescending view, and maybe one that's totally off base. [23 Sep 1983, p.21]

Like "Ghost" and "Pretty Woman," this romance is blissfully dependent on our staying good and starry-eyed, seduced by the charisma of the leads. And we do, despite its lackadaisical pace and disappointing ending.

City Slickers II, subtitled The Legend of Curly's Gold, is basically a refresher course. There are couple of good guffaws, but many of the jokes are simply recycled from the prequel.

A low-horsepower chase movie with Charlie Sheen and D.B. Sweeney...Peter Werner, with plenty of documentaries and "Moonlighting" episodes to his credit, directs this out-of-gas look at the young and the mobile. What this movie needs is more macho, more moxie, more attitude. Fill it up, and make it high testosterone.

Smits can't wrench free of this tangle of cliches.

It's certainly harrowing to sit through. Talk about your grizzly misadventures.

If laughter is the best medicine, Patch Adams is but a sugary, fitfully amusing placebo.

With it's many knotty connections and complex exposition, the movie is definitely something of a muddle, but for that matter so are most conspiracy theories.

Without a doubt, mainstream moviegoers will be revolted by the nastiness of it all.

Firefox may sound bright, hot and racy, but it browns out. Eastwood has an energy crisis as director, producer and star. [18 June 1982, p.15]

Clan's greatest fault, however, is simply that it is an epic bore. [28 Feb 1986, p.11]

This is hardly your same old trough of slop. Babe nonetheless prevails, demonstrating once again "how a kind and steady heart can heal a sorry world."

Mulan may be exotic, but it's hardly a risky enterprise, what with its sentimental show tunes, wholesome morals and plucky teen heroine.

The X-Files movie is really just a two-hour teaser for the series's sixth season. And little else. You will feel exactly like Mulder when he says, "How many times have we been right here before, Scully? So close to the truth?"

A John Hughes movie without Pretty in Pink director John Hughes, sure makes you appreciate the teens' auteur. Frankly, Steve Rash, who directs this copycat comedy, another nerd-gets-the-cheerleader romance, isn't fit to wear Hughes' hightops. Rash only tinkers with adolescent angst, without the progenitor's empathy for his audience.

It's plenty entertaining, but the ending is disappointing, given the buildup.

With its callow cast and playful tone, there is nothing dangerous about Forman's variation on the novelist's schemes.

Sans emotional depth or narrative drive, Lee's latest flick is little more than a profane litany punctuated by Oscar-caliber orgasms.

[A] wacky but eminently watchable kitsch-mobile.

Profound, powerful Czech import takes a tragicomic approach to the Holocaust, though unlike Benigni's film, the movie does not sentimentalize those caught up in the Nazi dragnet.

Many of the visual effects are stunning, but others are downright cheesy -- especially an attempt to fuse the Rock's head onto a scorpion's body.

Director-star Kevin Costner falls head over heels in love with himself in this nihilistic, post-apocalyptic clunker about a loner who becomes a reluctant sperm donor, role model and inevitably a godsend to what's left of America.

A drama about strong, giving, funny women, Fried Green Tomatoes seems plucked from the same patch as the play-turned-movie Steel Magnolias. It's not exactly a successful hybrid, but you could get a craving for it anyway.

The result is cutesy but harsh, a hybrid of saucer-eyed anime and square-jawed angularity that brings to mind an edgier "Pokemon."

Though shot in four weeks on a low budget, Stephen King's Children of the Corn, while not on a par with "Carrie," sure beats "Christine," "Cujo" and "Dead Zone." It's terse, tense and the sound is effective as auditory terror.

A downright entertaining combo of mystery, melodrama and action adventure.

Alice, which seems like child's play after last year's sober Crimes and Misdemeanors, finds Allen at his most optimistic and sentimental since Radio Days. His pen is not as sharp nor his wit as keen as it has been, but he has become accessible to a broader audience in this whimsical entertainment.

Racing With the Moon is the second directorial effort for Richard Benjamin, whose first film was the ribald My Favorite Year. He tries and overwhelmingly succeeds at masterminding a more dramatic style. Slowly paced, it's nonetheless a film on track for patient, compassionate viewers. [23 Mar 1984, p.23]

The brothers, who have always seemed fond of their characters, have never taken quite so overt a stand for life's simple joys.

The remake, alas, must mask its failings with Julia Ormond's toothsomeness, Pollack's poky pacing and the uninspired scribblings of writers Barbara Benedek and David Rayfiel.

In the hands of director Julie Dash and photographer Arthur Jafa, this nonlinear film becomes visual poetry, a wedding of imagery and rhythm that connects oral tradition with the music video. It is an astonishing, vivid portrait not only of a time and place, but of an era's spirit.

It just isn't a Meg Ryan movie unless she's got male.

So solemnly paced and deliberately performed that it seems to solidify before your very eyes.

A raunchy parody that's hip-deep in the mainstream it aims to rip, and sometimes does despite a glut of smug inside jokes.

There's style and humor, but the visual excess overwhelms the weak plot. [29 Apr 1983, p.17]

He's slightly more articulate than usual, but the lines still fall from his lips like beaten boxers to the mat. Not that it much matters, given the constant mayhem.

The caper isn't as passionate as the title suggests—in fact, it's facile—but Ryan and Kevin Kline, as her attractive opposite, are irresistible together.

Lorenzo's Oil, which is further encumbered by its funereal pacing and woebegone score, is definitely a remarkable story, but as told by Miller it isn't really an uplifting one.

VIOLENT CRIME against women is not entertainment. "Star 80" was not entertainment. "Body Double" was not entertainment." And Jagged Edge is not entertainment. It is commercially packaged abuse. And we are supposed to call this anger art.

Williams, might have been more aggressive. Otherwise, director Roy Hill has done about as well as you can when translating word to image, not only through plot, but via the repetition of symbols: primitive, obvious ones -- the toad, a death's head costume, a child's clumsy drawings. After two hours and 20 minutes, all the parables and paradoxes join in a sluggish whole. And we wind up where we began, up in the air without a tail gunner. [23 July 1982, p.11]

It's not Allen's best film, but fans of the Woodman should not resist. Whether it's the future of Sleeper or the turn-of-the- century of Sex Comedy, Allen plays the same character -- always bewildered, always sex-obsessed, always under-consummated. [23 July 1982, p.11]

A duet between Daniel and Miyagi, a boy without a father and a father without a son. The duet is the soul of the film, but it also has heart. The paths to enlightenment are many; The Karate Kid is surely one of these. [22 June 1984, p.23]

Pollack makes a solid job of it, as does Cruise. But solid isn't enough when it comes to thrillers -- or courtroom dramas, for that matter. Solid is great when it comes to office furniture.

Veteran Arthur Hiller, who directed Peter Falk and Alan Arkin in The In-Laws and Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in Silver Streak, proves equally adept at managing a female odd couple.

This wonderfully acted romance brings the touching fantasy "Truly, Madly, Deeply" to mind.

Director Jonathan Demme has nailed one with this playful, but dangerous, gangster farce.

But this unsavory stew is just plain overcooked.

Overworked by New Waver Luc Besson, it offers visual verve, if not a lot of storytelling savvy...What "The Road Warrior" did for cars, Subway almost does for rapid transit, with its focus on the commuter cars that glide in and shuttle off into the passageways around the Op,era stop, where much of this tragicomic parable takes place. This parable's philosophy, however, is inane, imitative, prepackaged punk. [22 Nov 1985, p.29]

A hilarious new addition to the wonderfully warped Generation X-Files.

A prosaic, sexually perverse thriller masquerading as a critical look at military injustice.

Tom Schulman's script is on the sloppy side and offers few surprises; still, it's not entirely bereft of laughs.

Nothing could save this movie. These guys make a fortune off the comedy of cruelty. How dare they climb on a soapbox?