Rita Kempley

Sheer torture, the very definition of unfunniness itself.

There's lots of action, but the director must have had a bag over his head. And the stars are ducking more cliches than bullets. [18 March 1983, p.15]

An infectious albeit formulaic game of Cinderella football, this happy athletic romp seems to know just how wheezy it is, but the team grunts "hut, hut," and puts it right on the numbers anyway. It's "Hoosiers" with a pigskin pumpkin and a lot more sis-boom-bah.

The Brother From Another Planet is brilliant science-fiction with a social conscience. It goes to worlds where men, some of them anyway, have never gone before. And all they really ever had to do was take the A-Train. [16 Nov 1984, p.21]

The mind will be starved for subtlety, wit and substance.

More cosmetic than cosmic in its approach, it thrives on what it condemns and in its own weird, wonderfully savvy fashion, spanks the liposucked fannies of Hollywood. It's as irresistibly nasty as The War of the Roses and as cheerily Gothic as The Witches of Eastwick.

Doesn't pack the punch of Schrader and Scorsese's career-best collaborations ("Raging Bull," "Taxi Driver").

The most unlikely of undertakings: an energetic feel-good movie about sex, drugs and other rock-related depravities.

It crackles with comedy, but it's no space cartoon, nor self-lampoon. It's a happy, heartfelt chapter that reunites the original cast with the original TV format, shying away from the cold and epic scale of the preceding movie adventures.

Although the newly paunchy Stallone is credible as a weak, conflicted small-time sheriff, this suburban "Serpico" is a noble, passionless charade.

It is a middling gun play that asks and answers the persistent question: Whither testosterone?

A jumble of subplots and suppositions, The Unbelievable Truth ultimately comes together as suburban farce in a door-banging conclusion to all the wild speculation.

Running Scared, ha. They ought to call this police story "Re-Running Scared." It's as cliche- riddled as Scarface's limo. [27 June 1986, p.29]

Hobbled by a multiplicity of narrative lines and superfluous, often stereotypical characters, the movie suffers from a lack of both focus and passion.

Unlike the ronin, the heroes of a Japanese legend, these guys are still searching for a story.

Alongside this silly kiddie Halloween comedy, reruns of Hee Haw seem works of great comic sophistication.

Dull and unimaginative, Chetwynd treats his characters with such reverence that they might as well be saints in striped prison pajamas, martyred for the sake of some robotic patriotism. At least, his villains stand out from the host of underdeveloped heroes. Boob journalists, a doofus peacenik actress and a Cuban goon -- Michael Russo, who seems to think he's playing a pimp on "Miami Vice" -- add the unintentional comic relief.

Gibson and the overexposed Hunt don't exactly burn up the screen, not that it much matters. The charm isn't in the relationship, it's in Gibson's puckish appeal.

There's enjoyable chemistry between the two, but not the sort that sequels are made on. Aykroyd's straight man gets most of the laughs with his hilarious variation on the late Jack Webb's hard-bitten dialogue, with Hanks playing less often off the priggish, ever-positive Friday.

Its splendor cannot be denied, but then again neither can the emptiness of this Henry James adaptation.

A gruesome tale of obsessive love and mutilation, it's less a work of art, however, than a luridly stylish expression of female self-loathing...A prettied-up snuff movie.

It's less like a film by Demme than the best of Frank Capra. It is not just canny, corny and blatantly patriotic, but compassionate, compelling and emotionally devastating.

Like most plays transferred to screen, Oleanna still bears traces of grease paint. Actually, all the cold cream in the world wouldn't make this verbose material in the least cinematic -- not that Mamet has put much effort into adapting the original anyway. Most of the action takes place in the professor's office. Luckily, it has a window through which we, like bored grade schoolers, can escape from time to time.

Although III claims seven times as much action as ever before, the movie is still so boring that even the love interest (Robyn Lively) leaves early. She's no Kung Fool.

Hell's belles! Nicholson's back. And that old Jack magic has us in his spell.

Rookie of the Year is a wholly benevolent but banal baseball fantasy aimed at Little Leaguers with dreams of reaching big-time fields.

Like last winter's "Pleasantville," this movie juxtaposes classic virtues against modern mores. The former did so with far more invention.

Remarkable.

WarGames is a soft-sell protest -- pro- people, anti-nuclear and anti-machine -- that entertains. It peddles neither the hysterics of Jane Fonda's "China Syndrome" nor the hopelessness of "Dr. Strangelove." It's a war cry for peace that's good to the last byte. [3 June 1983, p.23]

Fans of Gere and Roberts may not care about the movie's many implausibilities and other shortcomings because the stars do indeed sparkle like the bubbles in wedding champagne. But the rest of us will find the vintage too sweet.

Producer-director Garry Marshall, who made a pretty penny off Pretty Woman, brings the same fizzy, dizzy feel to Frankie & Johnny. He seduces us with stars in our eyes and blinds us for 90 minutes or more to his ploys, some of them as cheap as dime-store perfume. Still, we're happy to sit back and swoon. [11 Oct 1991, p.D7]

A provocative, but extremely profane work, it is surely Allen's bawdiest since "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex."

Ricki Lake makes an appealing, though unlikely, fairy tale heroine in the derivative romance Mrs. Winterbourne: If only this stale trifle didn't call for the bewitching or pixilating, for the abracadabra of a Bullock or a Pfeiffer. For a Cinderella story, it's sorely without magic.

Aside from Danner and Ivey, who's also miscast, performances are steady if uninspired. Silverman is engaging but hasn't yet learned to work the camera like the crowd. But all their efforts hardly matter given the surprisingly unsteady pace set by Tony award-winning director Gene Saks, who collaborated with Simon on the successful film versions of "The Odd Couple" and "Barefoot in the Park." Caught between the strictures of stage and the freedoms of film, Saks and Simon (and producer Ray Stark) compromise with an amorphous hybrid that's stagey and forced. [26 Dec 1986]

Filmmaker Paul Flaherty apparently has never so much as given a friend directions to his home.

A cynical, sexist and shallow work from cinema's premier misanthrope, Robert Altman, who here shows neither compassion for -- nor insight into -- the human condition.

The movie is sleek and shiny as a new bullet, reflecting Scott's patented surplus of style.

A faithful adaptation of Craig Lucas's popular play, it proves a feast for love gourmands, especially those with an appetite for body-swapping. The less starry-eyed viewers -- and probably the hard-working leads Meg Ryan and Alec Baldwin -- will remain starved for the comparative profundity of a leaky "Love Boat" rerun.

A coy seriocomedy distantly related to--but missing the sting of--"Kiss of the Spider Woman."

The sequel ought to pacify fans of the original. A predictable mix of farce and sentiment, pleasantly paced by director Emile Ardolino, the story is not in the least demanding.

Visually bland, well-meaning salute to the brotherhood of man.

This sloppily made, poky, extra cheesy adventure is virtually a remake of "Armageddon."

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

The movie lacks luster, and that quintessentially adolescent passion that fueled "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." There's no punch to the pacing, and the players, though pleasant, are uninspired by Howard Deutch, who is directing his first feature film after doing videos, including one from Ringwald's second movie, "Sixteen Candles." The happy ending, changed to suit the tastes of preview audiences, steals the movie's potential pathos, and turns teen trauma into so much gooey, rose-colored mush. [28 Feb 1986, p.11]

The usual complement of classy Brits and a host of Indian extras add the final touches to this vastly enjoyable, sprawling entertainment. Lean truly catches the sunset over the British Empire. [18 Jan 1985, p.25]

Directed a tad languidly by Jon Amiel, "Sommersby" has highbrow pretentions, but it's really an old-fashioned hankie-soaker with Gere and Foster ably jerking tears.

A scrappy independent film that packs the same emotional punch as "Rocky."

A bungled screen version of Louis de Bernieres' cult novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin was doomed from the moment Nicolas Cage was cast as the "life-devouring," Puccini-loving hero.

An overgrown hybrid of disaster epic, can-do combat adventure and '50s sci-fi movie, this craft has visited our world many times before. And while she's a beaut, the sticker on her titanium bumper reads: "Been There, Done That, Beam Me Up, Scotty."

Fans of the book will despise it, others will just find it tries too hard. If you want to see the masters of the universe chastened, see "Wall Street." This is a story of redeemed white guys.

If emotional catharsis is what you seek, Stepmom delivers the goods.

Director James Bridges and journalist Aaron Latham wrote the shoddy screenplay from Latham's cover story "Looking for Mr. Goodbody" and two other articles, none of which come together sufficiently to comprise a plot. You've got to wonder what they really had in mind with this marriage of ink and sweat. What next -- the "The 60-Minute Workout" with Morley Safer, or Arnold Schwarzenegger and "Meet the Bench Press"? [7 June 1985, p.29]

The Unbearable Lightness of Being leaves an afterimage as insistent as a flashbulb's ghost. It is a haunting, glowing thing that won't let go.

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener's earnest first feature is a low-budget comedy drawn from the pages of her own dear diary. Most women have sense enough to burn theirs.

Pu Yi's personal tragedy has become Bertolucci's three-hour epic of obsolescence, opulently visualized. It's docudrama that dazzles, but basically Pu Yi was a bore.

Don't blame the fellas. They're good when they're together, but that doesn't happen nearly often enough in this sporadically amusing script. [07 Dec 1984, p.39]

Reinhold, as a little boy in a big man's body, looks and acts more like a sheep in shell shock. Savage, however, is an able comic when he takes on his father's yuppie persona, demanding Grey Poupon at the school cafeteria and downing martinis after a hard day in the principal's office.

Wendy Wasserstein brings a dull pen to this literary adaptation, which shows none of the bite or savvy of Stephen McCauley's novel.

Old-fashioned Hollywood filmmaking at its best .

There's only one thing to do with this "Bottle": Put a cork in it.

The premise is tragically flawed and politically incorrect. In fact, it is blatantly cat-ist.

The Theory of Flight, an unlikely marriage of malady movie and romantic comedy, never quite soars, but beats its wings with the desperate tenacity of a wounded butterfly. Alas, the proportion of lift to drag isn't quite enough to defy the gravity of its subject.

A Ninja turtle soup of computer gimmicks, karate chops and kiddie Confucianism.

It's wage earners versus employers, his same old pitch. No curveballs, no spitballs, no surprises.

The fourth film in the series, the newest installment has a new director, Chris Cain, and a female Kid, Hilary Swank, but otherwise it reprises the formula established by John G. Avildsen in 1984: A troubled teen conquers self-doubt and the local bullies with the help of an enigmatic karate teacher.

It's foul, with so little left to the imagination that we get a look between his toes. [13 May 1983, p.19]

The powerhouse performances are directed by Bruce Beresford, who maintains balance among the actresses and keeps a lovely tone and smooth pace.

A delightful, forgivably stagy adaptation of Willy Russell's one-woman play, it delivers a domestic engineer from drudgery and into the arms of an aging Greek stud.

This sweet little tale is as informative as it is entertaining for its target audience, the very youngest of the Muppet franchise's fans.

Sweetly dopey, kid-friendly, if overly contrived comedy.

Yet much of the movie's validity stems from time and place recreated with such authenticity that you can sense the wet chill in the morning air and the new wax pungent on the old gym floor. [27 Feb 1987, Weekend, p.n29]

North, which co-producer Alan Zweibel and Andrew Scheinman adapted from Zweibel's slight novel, is awkwardly structured -- it's still in chapters -- not to mention mean-spirited and incredibly stupid.

Classy fare, with posh settings, gorgeous scenery and lots and lots of polishing from director John Madden ("Ethan Frome") and writer Jeremy Brock.

Those bumbling boys and girls in blue are back on the streets in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. And they're more moronic than ever -- '80s Keystone Kops dropping their pants, breaking wind and parading their big American "mangoes." Nothing is too degrading for these troupers. Gradually the more employable members of the original squad, such as Steve Guttenberg (not that he's so great), have gone on to better assignments. But the desperate have returned to reprise their roles in this fifth-rate rehash of the rather wonderful original. "5" is a comic assault, batteries not included, an insufferable collage of coarse slapstick vignettes.

Directed by the touchy-feely Henry Jaglom, this is film as purgative -- a hens' party from hell, gorged on its own self-importance and damned hard to swallow.

Yes, it's corny and reemerging cynics need not apply. But it is blissfully heartwarming.

The performers all seem to be relishing this sendup, but we're always aware that it is a vehicle better suited to the stage. In trying to open it up some for the screen, Bogdanovich and scriptwriter Marty Kaplan have presented the original play as a series of flashbacks that come upon Caine as he sweats out the play's Broadway opening. All this does is slow the opening and delay the close.

Big Night, a scrumptious tale of great food and grand passions, belongs on the menu with such mouth-watering movie fare as "Babette's Feast" and "Like Water for Chocolate."

Enormously entertaining and surprisingly touching.

This is Disney's idea of a fright fest -- about as threatening as Jaws with Flipper in the title role.

Brendan Fraser breathes loopy new life into the swinging '60s TV cartoon icon.

Blaze is a celebration of the sporting life, as zesty as Cajun music and as tickly as a feather boa.

Director John Schlesinger bolsters the rickety script with cameras that spin like Linda Blair's head. If you don't get spooked, you'll at least get dizzy.

A surprisingly amiable romp about a zany quartet of escaped mental patients four who flew out of the cuckoo's nest.

Riveting.

Though long on ambiance and short on story, it may appeal to the spiritually inclined -- and to oater lovers.

Alien Nation wants to be "In the Heat of the Night" as science fiction, but it's neither morally instructive nor prophetic. It proves a lumbering marriage of action and sci-fi that alienates both audiences. It's too dull for one and too dumb for the other.

Wyatt Earp, a bio-pic that lasts more than three hours and moves with the urgency of a grazing buffalo, lacks everything from a coherent dramatic structure to a clearly articulated point of view.

Howard entices us into overlooking the film's faults with some genuinely amusing scenes, particularly those featuring Japanese-American Gedde Watanabe as a beleaguered Assan executive who doesn't fit the corporate mold. [14 Mar 1986, p.27]

Flexploitation pure and simple -- nothing but savagery, sex and sinew.

An engrossing chronicle.

What "Raising Arizona" was to baby lust, "Barton Fink" is to writer's block -- a rapturously funny, strangely bittersweet, moderately horrifying and, yes, truly apt description of the condition and its symptoms.

One of the smartest, most inventive movies in memory, it manages to be as endearing as it is provocative.

An engrossing and thoroughly enjoyable adaptation of the bestselling spy thriller by Frederick Forsyth.

Perceptive, powerfully acted psychodrama.

A corkscrew of a thriller, has more twists than a tarantula with a permanent.

Sharp, wildly funny social satire behind the profanity and potty jokes.

Linklater, who introduced the blithe, but bemused slacker subculture to America in 1991, gets bogged down not only in Bogosian's for-stage structure, but especially his middle-aged perspective.

This spooky film's ostensible subject—an environmental illness known as multiple chemical sensitivity—is merely a starting place for this mesmerizing horror movie, feminist tract and medical mystery.

Robert Redford does everything but wear a crown of thorns as the selfless war hero of The Last Castle, a heavy-handed military prison melodrama.

A crackling courtroom drama with more twists than O.J. had alibis.

"Star Trek V" is a shambles, a space plodessy, a snoozola of astronomic proportions. The story is uneventful, the effects warmed over from "Star Wars."

Writer Rupert Walters's episodic narrative is decidedly corny—especially the later chapters—and yes, it's as creaky as old bones. But its weaknesses are offset by the film's elaborate re-creation of plague-ridden London.

Most of the humor is sophisticated slapstick, which Depardieu mastered in the hilarious trio of Francis Veber comedies he did with Pierre Richard in the '80s.

It's a moralistic muddle with only one message: If Disney wants to make movies about Germans, it should restrict its efforts to German shepherds.

Brooks unfortunately is neither Brooks nor Benny, but a hesitant ghost of both. And Bancroft is no comedienne, just tired old Mrs. Robinson with a feather boa.

It's sheer piffle, a disingenuous romance with Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino that's all sap and no sizzle.

It's a wonderfully corny story, performed exuberantly by Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze. When these two get together, you practically have to get out the fire extinguishers.

Hounsou, a West African model with beauty and presence but no acting experience, carries much of the movie on his broad shoulders with surprising skill and strength.

Sayles brings familiar tools to "Roan Inish": a passion for language, labor-intensive lifestyles and, of course, the moody beauty of the geography. The writer-director frequently links his characters' personal happiness with their environment. That, more than the unusual marine life of Roan Inish, is the theme of this amiable visit to northwestern Ireland.

There are entertaining touches in this blackly comic grotesquerie, but it is no more frightening than a teenage slasher movie. Perkins, in his first stab at directing, never gives us time to anticipate. At best, he parodies the classic, but without restraint. [04 July 1986, p.N29]

Young Sherlock Holmes delivers all the ingredients that Spielberg addicts relish: action, effects, a cute fat kid, a pretty girl and a hero who's good with swords. But, like a room at a Holiday Inn, there are no surprises. [6 Dec 1985, p.33]

Swinton is elegantly comic, but also strangely cartoonish.... A funny and forthright screen presence, she is the foil for the stately pace and the opulent sets -- the most ravishing since "Bram Stoker's Dracula." There is only one conclusion: Potter, the little smarty-pants, is pulling our cross-gartered gams. She's having us on with this spoof of the prissy masterpiece theatricality.

Rusnak, who was the second-unit director of "Godzilla," brings plenty of style to this ambitious yet utterly anticlimactic thumb-sucker.

It's the Hardy Boys as id busters, an entertaining though mightily flawed scalp-tingler with a few too many magic moments: shooting stars and star-splashed skies and glittery ectoplasmic motes and ghosts that fly on strings.

Trouble in Mind, a striking comic confection, is like nothing we've seen before: "Casablanca" meets "Blade Runner" in post-post-modern terms. [25 Apr 1986, p.27]

Relentless formulaic fodder for the explosion-starved; it's loud, shallow, sexist and a complete waste of time.

Nielsen earns a few giggles with his big entrance and later on his even bigger belly, but he can't overcome the lousy material.

Kloves has taken us on one more ride down this same old Texas highway, with its cheap motels and gloomy cowboys. Ain't much more to it than that.

Atrocious. It's also pretentious, superfluous, superficial, shallow, dated and bilious. I'd pay money not to have seen this jumble of gooey special effects, sappy symbolism and out-of-it animation. [17 Sept 1982, p.13]

Writer-director Neil Jordan shows no knack for comedy, nor is he as kinky as he was on Mona Lisa, and kinky is what is called for.

The topic certainly suits the times, but the director's approach is as alienating as it is old-fashioned.

A weak handshake of a movie, it is slightly repellent -- hardly gripping, much less knuckle-whitening. This "Psycho" for fatsos is as self-aware as it is styleless.

Early on, Lumet wastes too much time characterizing Newman, following him from bar to bar to bar. Though Newman plays a good drunk, his performance is far from intoxicating. When he rests his case, the jury goes to sleep. [17 Dec 1982, p.19]

This belabored charade of mistaken identities is guided by Herbert Ross, who has directed everything from The Sunshine Boys to Footloose. Apparently, he's decided to cater to younger moviegoers with this discordant mix of MTV imagery and classic farce.

As a good fairy tale should, The Princess Bride teaches but never preaches. It's a lively, fun-loving, but nevertheless epic look at the nature of true love.

Stallone is feral this film, physically powerful; he's muddy and bloody, but he's still pretty even in a tarpaulin. He's the wild child coming home. First Blood is good to the last drop, if you like that sort of thing. [22 Oct 1982, p.17]

Director Ron Underwood of the big-worm thriller "Tremors" effectively contrasts the bland life of the big city with the rough-hewn joys of the Big Country. And the three leads -- neurotic, brash and bonding like flies to No Pest strips -- give energetic if obvious performances. The whole dang thing is rather too blatant, but if you take your comedy with a little branch water, you'll want a shot of this 'un.

Hurt's horrendous, with his goofy stilted accent. He talks as though he swallowed a bathtub. [16 Dec 1983, p.24]

The story is as stale as prison air and so is the star. [25 Mar 1983, p.18]

In the translation from page to film, the life seems to have gone out of the story

Toys is a misguided missive from director Barry Levinson about an attempted military coup at a whimsically run toy factory.

Like the male-bonding movies upon which it's modeled, it celebrates letting down your hair with your own gender.

Armstrong applies a dusting of contemporary feminism, but the stubborn sentimentalism of Alcott's endearing family portrait endures. [21 Dec 1994]

What could be more frightening than an indestructible murdering mutant? Consider the unbelievably horrifying performance of Stephen Furst as Charlie, the sheriff's deputy. Couple Furst's incompetence with a scene like this one and you know real fear: Charlie tells Sheriff Dan that he just isn't made for law-enforcement. Not because he's incredibly out of shape and dumb as a post, not because he can't drive a squad car. No, no, no. It's worse. The coquettish Charlie confesses to some pretty grim experimentation of his own. He tells of giving his first puppie a bath by swishing it around in the toilet. Then he put it in the freezer to dry. Voila! the first freeze-dried pupsicle. [2 Apr 1982, p.11]

In these days of overproduced overstatement, of totally awesome turtle power and other toxic gimcracks, The Gods Must Be Crazy II feels like a vacation, a sort of enlightened Wild Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the technical hullabaloo gets stale about three-quarters of the way through and we want something to cling to. It's a case of the missing plot, unless you count what writers Reiner (who also directed), Martin and George Gipe weave round the clips to string them together. [21 May 1982, p.13]

Still of the Night is a red herring all its own. It's a mystery that isn't a mystery, a thriller that isn't a thriller. What's more bothersome, the corpse is the most animated member of the cast. [17 Dec 1982, p.19]

Nolte is not only made for the role, he's also rehearsed it in real life.

A surprisingly tame and humorless effort by director Curtis Hanson of Hitchcock-spoofy The Bedroom Window, the movie does provide a couple of good jolts.

In short, Carrey's got nothing to bounce all that energy off of, not even a solid story line.

It's the rapport between the two actors, De Niro and Murray, that saves Mad Dog and Glory from being something less than just another buddy movie. Their real-life friendship spills over into this jittery, very funny look at the male bonding experience.

Stand and Deliver is inspirational, but never sentimental. It resists all too many temptations. It cries out for schmaltz. But this is a drama as honest as its hero, a work that comes from the heart -- the heart of a computer programmer.

Reality Bites principally turns on the romantic tension between Ryder, wonderfully radiant and not all that literate for the class valedictorian her character is purported to be, and Hawke, who does the alienated-poet thing better than anybody since Matt Dillon's greaser in "The Outsiders."

Another cheesy, overdrawn and witless "Saturday Night Live" takeoff.

As intoxicating as the flower it's named for, and its characters, most of them as flawed and fascinating as the film itself, seem intoxicated by the overpowering scent.

It's a quirky film -- extremely profane and violent -- a respite from reverential sigh-fi. It's like visiting the bus depot late at night, and finding you kind of like it. [14 Sept 1984]

Annoying.

Baby Boom is an '80s fable based on a beer ad philosophy.

A dumbed-down adaptation of Michael Crichton's techno-novel on the dangers of dinosaur cloning, it's not Spielberg at the top of his game, but it's dino-mite just the same.

Tomorrow is propelled by relentless action. Chase scenes are interrupted not by witty conversation or sexy conquests but by the rattle of machine gun fire.

Though he is a master thief with a heart of gold, the new Templar has all the charm of one of those ladies behind the counter at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Back from their respective voids and together for the firs time, Hurt and Weaver romp romantically as janitor and TV news reporter in Eyewitness, a murky mystery produced and directed by Peter Yates and written by Steve Tesich, the guys who uplifted us via Breaking Away. [06 Mar 1981, p.15]

A vulgar attempt to revamp the undead genre by introducing computer-generated splatter and a casketful of themes from genetic tinkering to conspiracy theories.

Like many of his recent films, The Mexican would be an independent movie if Pitt, not to mention the queen of popcorn cinema, weren't part of the picture. This is not your typical star vehicle.

The case is tried off-screen. Thank goodness for the maid (Sarah Flind), who runs home from her chores with tidings from the outside world -- we hear from the maid that Sir Bobby gave a helluva final argument. The jurors wept, the crowd went wild. Too bad we missed it.

A wonderfully acted, heartwarming family film, it suffers from a goopy score, but not in the least from its potentially stalemated subject matter. Zaillian can make a chess tournament look like the Threepeat.

A diverting cops-comedy-cum-action-romance.

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.

Meryl Streep teams with director Fred Schepisi for "A Cry in the Dark," a compelling account of the media witch hunt and subsequent trial of Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian mother accused of murdering her 9-week-old daughter Azaria.

Better yet, just throw the whole thing in front of a subway and hope it gets dragged a couple of miles.

It is unsparing when it comes to gruesome descriptions and ominous characters, but it's got more giggles than goose bumps. The Exorcist III isn't about to scare anybody.

An amiably dopey teen movie.

Aside from the bell-ringer's new look, the studio's ambitious adaptation of Victor Hugo's sprawling classic remains surprisingly faithful to the book's grim mood, if not its plot.

Africa might have been another Gone With the Wind, blown by passion and buffeted by social upheaval. But in the end it's like a trip to a game park called Extinction. [20 Dec 1985, p.C1]

Seditious themes aside, the adventure fails mostly because Ward never achieves super- hero status. He never quite lives up to the name RE-MO. Sluggo maybe.

Russell is an inoffensive Mel Gibson clone here. But Stallone is an unlovable lummox, preposterous because he takes himself so seriously. Even when he attempts to laugh at himself, his quips fall like clods on coffins. His bravery is braggadocio. Let's hope this will be the last of Tango.

A nostalgic paean to China's fading pastoral ways, might easily be taken for an audition tape for Zhang Ziyi.

Adolescents are too grown-up for this blasted nonsense.

Aimed at kids, but written with parents in mind, The Santa Clause balances the sugar with the spice, which Allen sprinkles on just right.

The screen writers have come up with a simple-minded scenario, true, but it is enlivened with enough laughs to make up for the shortcomings.

The movie is humble as child's play, graced with the effortless comedy of Hanks and Ryan. They're as fresh and warm as summer peaches, but never sappy, thanks to the off-kilter honesty of Shanley's writing.

ROBIN WILLIAMS rises above the mediocrity of Harold Ramis' newest comedy, which features the cherubic improv comic as co-owner of a de'classe' Club Med. Even so, Club Paradise is lost. [11 July 1986, p.N31]

Ought to be the subject of an obituary, not a review. A creepy film noir modeled on Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," it was a stinking stiff on arrival.

Howl and damnation, if this isn't just one long, stomach-turning drool joke.

The Big Town aims to be The Hustler with dice, but it's just a lot of craps -- a laughable, overlong look at a small-town gambler's comeuppance at the hands of Chicago's high rollers.

As dull as the decor in a Motel 6.

Director Michael Ritchie refreshingly shows no reverence for film noir. And screenwriter Andrew Bergman, who co-wrote "Blazing Saddles," shows no mercy in what turns out to be a good mystery as well as comedy. [31 May 1985, p.25]

It's got a little kick to it.

With its energetic cast and insistent street score, it still manages to be poignant without becoming bathetic, and violent without being exploitative.

A hip, hilarious new animated feature.

A densely plotted, visually dynamic post-apocalyptic thriller.

Twister not only blows, it sucks, too.

An ill-conceived and unsuccessful romantic adventure set in jolly, collegiate England. [24 Aug 1984, p.20]

Director Ron Underwood, who came up with a happy marriage of schmaltz and shtick in "City Slickers," can't quite disguise the mechanical superficiality of the story.

The dazzle doesn't make up, however, for the movie's lack of depth.

To Greenwalt's credit as cowriter, there are funny lines and some situations that held promise. But his direction is early "Brady Bunch," with a daub of Ridley Scott's Chanel commercials for further inspiration...Despite the director, the cast is decent, with Fred Ward of the "Right Stuff" in rare comic form as Lt. Lou Fimple, a vice cop who finds both his wife and his daughter undone on lover's lane.

The tale is propelled by its characters and buoyed by the film's warm and loving spirit.

Size vanquishes both substance and subtlety in the overhyped, half-cocked and humorless resurrection of dear old "Godzilla."

The Three Musketeers, a rusty trio of middle-aged retirees, have all but changed their motto from "All for one and one for all" to "I have fallen and I can't get up" in this less-than-rollicking adaptation.

The slogging melodrama that emerged still more closely resembles the daily musings of an infatuated teenager than a well-crafted, thoughtful story. [14 Aug 1998]

A tour de force so haunting that other films can't exorcise the memory of its radiant cast, exquisite craftsmanship or complex system of metaphors. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a movie.

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.

As a persona of epic polarities, [Harrison Ford] animates this muddled, metaphysical journey into the jungle.

An inspid comedy about Daddy and Daddy's little girl. It's an irksome, one-dimensional sitcom with smut.

A brainy, superbly acted buddy movie.

A joyous genre-blender guaranteed to crank up your karma.

Languidly paced and prettily crafted, it's certainly a scenic adaptation of Golding's novel. But while it's been brought up to date, there's certainly nothing new under this tropical sun. [16 Mar 1990, p.B7]

The actors haven't much to do. It looks like everybody needed the work. [10 Jan 1986, p.21]

The real story lies beneath the surface of this superbly acted, strangely moving film.

A complex, compelling examination of personal-injury law as well as a portrait of personal redemption, the movie quickly sets its tone with a heartless summation of an individual's relative worth.

Whatever its failings, Beaches speaks to women. It makes girlfriends think of calling girlfriends they haven't seen in 10, 20, 30 years. You can live without love, but "you've got to have friends," as Midler sings.

The action scenes are beautifully mounted and photographed and offer a sense of the rigors of the sport.

A more kid-friendly version of "Dumb and Dumber." And there's even a moral: "Yahoo for education," though the movie doesn't really put any muscle behind it.

Oscar and Lucinda seems like the perfect story for director Gillian Armstrong, that of a free-spirited proto-feminist chafing at the strictures of tight-laced colonial Australia. But in the end, she's created a beautiful but annoying Victorian-era melodrama. [30Jan1998 Pg.D.06]

Though dark and harrowing, explicit and unsparing, the movie proves a riveting biography of these burnt-out icons and their iconoclastic half-decade. Symbolism aside, Sid & Nancy is an indelible drama of undying love and meaningless decline.

Stinks like a cat box that hasn't been changed in a hundred years.

Three losers of late, the actors succeed quite nicely in unifying the movie's multiple personalities, its ricocheting screenplay.

Cerebral, frenetic and funny, this chamber piece from filmmaker James Toback provides a timely if inconclusive comment on monogamy.

Despite the threatened NC-17 rating, there's nothing remotely sexy about this stone-cold escapade. It only reaffirms the stodgy reputation of the British, who think hot to trot means let's go fox hunting.