Rita Kempley

See critic run. Oh, for the days of Smell-a-Vision.

Cameron and company have made a sequel that is gripping and vital. The 2 1/2 hours fly by with this brave company, our imaginations sucked into the screen as if by a black hole. [18 July 1986, p.N31]

Based on Gerry Conlon's own account of his arrest and subsequent incarceration, the film takes forever to do what "60 Minutes" does with the same meat in a single segment.

This rapturous romance is not only laugh-out-loud funny but demonstrates how little humankind has evolved in matters of the heart.

When Terminator is not taking itself seriously -- and sometimes even when it is -- it's lots of fun. And filmmakers James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd don't drown us in blood, though it's not for the squeamish.

An episodic drama rich in sly humor and symbolic imagery.

All the performances are exceptional.

Mark Childress, who wrote the screenplay based upon his book of the same name, would have been better off leaving this Southern Gothic between two covers.

For all of its departures, Luhrmann's largely successful reinterpretation is far from irreverent. He takes liberties with the world, but never the words of this achingly beautiful love story.

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]

Cuaron approaches the film not as a fairy tale for children, but a work of magic realism. And perhaps best of all, he doesn't talk down to young folks, in the audience or in the cast. The performances are as natural as skinned knees and missing teeth.

Writer-director Todd Solondz is far from clueless when it comes to the agonies of early adolescence, which he mercilessly re-creates in his caustic suburban comedy Welcome to the Dollhouse.

Adolescents are too grown-up for this blasted nonsense.

An instant slapstick classic from Disney and Steven Spielberg. Already, it's a hare's breadth away from legend. [22 June 1988]

A great big beautiful valentine of a movie, an intoxicating romantic comedy set beneath the biggest, brightest Christmas moon you ever saw. It's a monster moon, a Moby Dick of a moon, whose radiance fills the winter sky and every cranny of this joyous love story.

Overall, this is a well-crafted, carefully paced, and appropriately cerebral work -- if the intention is to ape Le Carre's writing style, that is, and like the writer, de-glamorize the spy genre. If you're a fan of the style, this film will please.

Though the Oscar-nominated documentary captures the fight and the fighters, it also explores Ali's role in reintroducing black Americans to their African culture.

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]

Belushi is fetching, though he plays a cliche'. But the movie would roll over and play dead without the talented German shepherd. Lassie was classy and Benji beguiling, but Jerry Lee is a four-legged Burt Reynolds, just made for fast cars and chase scenes.

A captivating comic allegory about daring to be different in the face of conformity.

Unforgettable, especially in Pearce's startling performance.

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.

Doesn't go down smooth, but it doesn't promise to.

Remarkable.

Weaned on the homilies of "Happy Days" and the hominy grits of Mayberry, Ron Howard brings sitcom aphorisms to bear on the sticky-fingered realities of the beamish Parenthood.

Zemeckis, an undisputed master of film technology, shows off an equal aptitude for vivid storytelling.

The relationships feel contrived, less a drama than an exercise in cuteness.

Broadway Danny Rose mixes the old, bitter Allen with the new, mellowed Allen, still a great comedy writer and comedian but now a better story-teller and better actor. He seems to plan films in orderly progressions, so they'll fit right into retrospectives without any shuffling. [27 Jan 1984, p.19]