Rita Kempley

It's saying something when Tom Arnold's performance is among the movie's highlights.

Coppola, who both wrote and directed this entertaining adaptation, follows the well-thumbed scenario, but with the help of his winning cast he disguises the absence of invention.

The Sure Thing is fresh, funny, sure-fire stuff. And much of the credit for that goes to an energetic comic actor named John Cusack, who was only 17 when he made the film.

Everyone is convincingly miserable, and audiences are likely to follow suit.

It's like a chick flick for men--and the women who love them, sniff-sniff.

A pooped, poorly executed buddy-cop comedy with more cliches than expletives.

Sonnenfeld, who demonstrated a knack for Gothic comedy in "The Addams Family," brings the same mischievous gleefulness to this deliriously macabre enterprise.

Doubtless better than it deserves to be, thanks to Fraser, whose Costner-esque dash serves as an antidote to the dated material. Director Robert Mandel, best known for the flashy techno-thriller "F/X," brings a surprisingly sensitive touch to this earnest story of intolerance. Meant to serve as a "Gentleman's Agreement" for the '90s, it's actually got much more in common with "The Outsiders" or even "Pretty in Pink." The moral is the same whether you're a greaser, a tomboy, a gentile or a Jew. You've got to be you.

Director Joe Johnston, a veteran of Industrial Light and Magic, brings a wry Rube Goldberg approach to his first-ever feature. The sets are definitely plastic, but that slightly homemade look is refreshing in the hardware movie decade.

Like the jokes, the brothers' rapport seems recycled from childhood. Sheen and Estevez are hardly working.

And while it's intermittently engaging, the drama's flatter than a sucker's wallet.

Puerile bluster.

Tim Burton remains the Wizard of Odd with this eye-filling if problematic confection.

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.

Short Circuit fizzles a little at the end when the script becomes even more predictable and mawkish. But Badham's technological know-how can't be denied, and the pleasures of Number Five are considerable. [09 May 1986, p.27]

The picture is not a social satire. It’s a mess.

Though appealing in its wispy way, "Manon" is only a continental soap opera.

A convoluted psychosexual thriller that promises the moon and gives us Bruce's butt.

It's worth seeing at the very least because it is so different from standard Hollywood fare.

A chiller that, except for the last half hour of ghoulish effects, is undeadly dull. [02 Aug 1985, p.23]

It's as much fun as ever, a ground-meat-and-potatoes movie, with guys beating hell out of each other to a disco beat. Stallone pulls no punches; the familiar refrain features the Rocky I score, along with its characters and moral simplicity.

Wickedly clever.