Rita Kempley

It's a monumental biopic that cheapens the hero's successes by glossing over the failures that surely also shaped the man.

Blame It on Rio, ha. Rio is innocent. Let's put the blame on executive producer Gelbart along with Caine and Bologna. Unlike the starlettes they've taken in tow, these three guys are old enough to know better.

The charismatic comedienne pulls the slipshod spy adventure Jumpin' Jack Flash out of the fire. [10 Oct 1986, p.N29]

Writer Alan Sharp gets so caught up in the legend and the lush language that he doesn't seem to know he's written "Death Wish" in kilts.

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]

Should never have been released, not even on video. It should have been placed in a hazardous waste container, encased in concrete and dumped into the Farrelly brothers' septic tank.

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau reprise the roles of a pair of Minnesota mossbacks in the heartwarming, albeit warmed-over, sequel Grumpier Old Men—though given its scatological bent, it might have been called Grump and Grumpier.

Gibson, the thinking man's Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Spacek, a rawboned Raggedy Ann, are nearly silent partners in this largely visual parable. Despite their good looks and best efforts, the film falters. [11 Jan 1985, p.19]

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.

Troop Beverly Hills is a dog of a movie, one of those nasty little yappy dogs with fancy hairdos, pedicures and pedigrees.

A queasy union of savagery and uplift, the film ought to be unnerving. Instead, it finally becomes routine. [18Apr1997 Pg. C.07]

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

Like the mythological creatures it celebrates, the movie appears bound for extinction.

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

The movie faithfully records the rivalries among the various members of a fractious Baltimore family, but it never really attempts to resolve any of the internecine conflicts. In that sense, it's less ambitious than many a TV series.

Cryer, a talented comedic actor, struggles mightily but can't wring laughs from the lowbrow humor. The screenplay, written by Jeff Rothberg and Joe Menosky, is statically directed by Bob Giraldi, a maker of Michael Jackson videos and Pepsi-Cola ads, in his faint feature debut.

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]

Two if by Sea, directed by Australian Bill Bennett, suffers from a symptom common to romantic comedies that begin after the couple have visited the haystack: There's simply no more sexual tension. Without it, you'd better be as good as Tracy and Hepburn.

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.

Excess of vision and a weak underpinning are the potholes in the Streets of Fire. If you can swerve around them, Happy trails to you. [01 June 1984, p.25]

Lacking in both inspiration and ingenuity, it doesn't so much spoof the conventions of the genre as dumb down famous -- and in some cases, forgotten -- scenes from a slew of other movies.

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.

As long as the script tracks the men's relationship with the baby, the picture is lively froth. But when screen writers James Orr and Jim Cruickshank of Tough Guys stray, the story goes stale.

A trite vehicle that lumbers along like its namesake. Clankety-clank. [16 Mar 1984, p.19]

Another tediously sanctimonious message movie from Alan Parker.

Gratuitous gore prevents this monstrous movie from becoming the competent comedy it might have been. [21 Aug 1981, p.17]

A deliciously mordant French spine-tingler.

A sexless seriocomedy that would be a bust without the support of Burt Reynolds and Ving Rhames. The pair bring a much-needed lift to this tale of a mother at the mercy of the system. Without them, the movie is mostly a showcase for the star's personal trainer.

Ninety minutes of Shock Treatment feels like a week in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," a Quaalude interlude, a quart of Sanka laced with Valium. No jolt...Despite flashy lights, splashy sets and plump girls in tight white corsets, "S.T.'s" a bore -- a blatant try for teeny-punk bucks. It's a lesson for filmmakers: You can't force a cult film, they just happen. [28 May 1982, p.13]

How many times can we be awestruck by Day-Glo Gumbies? And why do these creatures always travel with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?

Alternately a celebration and sendup of cowboy conventions, the movie lingers over a stunning Western landscape only to be spurred on by the principals' inexhaustible supply of escapades. The burr under the saddle: There's just too much of everything.

Crudely made and in your face, The Living End is mostly annoying.

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.

In Burton's hands, Washington Irving's spooky classic is reincarnated as an overripe, grisly Goth cartoon.

Baldly manipulative, emotionally counterfeit melodrama.

The film fleetingly touches on the underfunding of schools and other administrative problems as well as the more compelling personal issues of teen pregnancy and violence. But the characters are so poorly drawn and underdeveloped that they seem to be little more than personifications of these societal ills.

The overplotted but predictable thriller "White Sands." Written by the same guy who tried to scare Harry Homeowner silly with "Pacific Heights," it's got all the ingredients, though none of the gumption, of a good adventure. It's suspiciously trendy.

Kermit, who takes to the role of Smollet like a grunion to running, is commanding, but it is Piggy as Smollet's castaway flame who puts much-needed wind into the movie's luffing sails. Clad in a muumuu and clamshells, she sets Kermit's timbers a-shivering as in the old days. Their love for each other—like America's love for Muppets—is simply unsinkable.

Director John Milius, the barbarian behind Conan, co-wrote this anti-gun-control, anti- Communist, survivalist script with Kevin Reynolds. Sick and silly as it is, the idea could have been intriguing, had it gone anywhere, which it didn't.

Despite all the talent, form triumphs over substance. Director Hugh (Chariots of Fire) Hudson clutches, and climactic scenes miss their mark. Greystoke is curious entertainment, less satisfying than Planet of the Apes, which begs the same question: noble savage or naked ape? [30 Mar 1984, p.21]

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.

A noisy, impenetrable and totally nonsensical cogitation on the nature of firefighters and the sizzling "animal" they love...We just wish somebody would call 911 for boredom.

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

The trouble is, we don't really much care about this philandering billionaire glamour puss, who seems perfectly capable of taking care of herself. We don't care about her husband or lover either.

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.

Bad movies have a way of writing their own epitaphs.

Writer-director Stephan Elliott is obviously fond of his characters, and this may account for the upbeat story line, but it blinds him to how very annoying two hours of dishing can be.

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.

The result is a script so needlessly complicated that it defies comprehension.

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]

Most egregiously, the filmmakers set up a classic struggle between right and wrong and then, in a coy coda, refuse to take a stand.

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's deeply vapid, with the emotional consistency of styling mousse.

Tired conventions, hoary themes and obvious conclusions.

Isabelle Huppert and generic Steve Guttenberg prove incompatible costars in The Bedroom Window, a cockamamie mystery that finds these bi-continentals drawn together like, say, refrigerator magnets to styrofoam coolers. Yes, it's magic.

The blarney and bohunkery builds to a shaky apex of nothingness, then ends with a slaughter in slo-motion, a romantic ode of blood, bullets and body parts.

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.

Unhappily, the attractive twosome never give into the pull, just as this coquettish variant of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" never arrives at its promised destination.

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.

The Wizard is not only tacky and moribund, but it teaches gambling and bad sportsmanship.

Mr. Whipple squeezing his Charmin is scarier than this phony baloney computer effects-driven anaconda.

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.

South Central covers some of the same ground as Boyz N the Hood, but certainly there's nothing wrong with reiterating its positive message for black sons and fathers.

After one scummy role after another, Rourke finally stops taking himself so seriously. Instead of the usual Neanderthal, he treats us to a sensitive, likable blob with a sense of humor.

Director John McTiernan, who redefined the action genre in the original "Die Hard," does devise some smashing explosions, crashes and so on, but nothing really new.

Diane Keaton's kooky sensibilities as a director are ideally suited to the sweet madness of Unstrung Heroes.

A soppy songfest about a tubercular pea picker who drives to Nashville, where he hemorrhages and dies. It's unfit for human consumption. [17 Dec 1982, p.20]

A flawed but funky adventure.

An uplifting, superbly acted and intelligent family drama.

Ford's earthy Everyman and Pitt's vengeful youth are probably more interesting than they have any right to be inside these tired macho roles. Of course, Rory and Tom could be bursting with blarney and the movie still wouldn't gather any momentum.

Blue Thunder hovers just this side of trash and the other side of credibility, but it propels a willing audience into adrenaline heaven.

The rich visuals seem at odds with the spartan content of the screenplay, with skating nuns like penguins on a frozen pond, cows lowing, pigeons flapping, statues weeping, novices in white gowns splayed like crucifixes on the stone cold floor. We're left with these images when we should be left pondering the cosmos, shortchanged by the saints and the scientists alike, denied our just epiphany. [27 Sept 1985, p.25]

As love interests go, Shepherd and Downey are about as hot as Ike and Mamie Eisenhower, though the apoplectic Downey does have his comedic moments. Always a standout, Masterson is pensively provocative as Miranda, something of a teen-age Kim Novak.

The author of such shoot-'em-ups as "Executioner" and "Road House," Henkin has hard-boiled the action genre twice over with this lurid, ludicrous, appallingly violent, offhandedly moralistic spoof.

Amadeus isn't meant to be a biography of the composer's life, but a bawdy, black fantasy, a fiction based on a few curious facts. [21 Sep 1984, p.23]

The script boasts more writers than the computerized menagerie's got megabytes, but they haven't come up with much variety or humor in what is essentially a string of catastrophes.

The potential for hokum is there, but Duvall and co-star James Earl Jones capably avoid the sticky pitfalls of Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton's sugar-cured script.

Lethal Weapon opens with a shot of Mel Gibson in his birthday suit and just gets better. Likewise we meet costar Danny Glover in the bathtub, fêted by his family on his 50th birthday. This endearing double exposure introduces us to the vulnerabilities of these superduper heroes, an odd couple of cops who mature into friends as they quell crime.

Sinbad, one of show business's sunniest souls, brings much-needed buoyancy to this somewhat soggy tale of kindred spirits. [30 Aug 1996, p.F06]

Fast Food Fast Women is "Sex and the City" in Payless shoes. An incoherent jumble of characters and situations.

Everything has been modernized except for the characters, and that's this movie's tragic flaw.

Douglas plays Gekko with a terrible intensity. He raves and rants, but he has a rascal's humor.

Ultimately Sleeping With the Enemy wants to be about one woman's rebirth, but Roberts neither grows nor glows in this empty movie.

Not since "Ghostbusters" have the spirits been so uplifting. [30 Mar 1988]

Tea With Mussolini is really about the first women in the Italian director's life. It's drawn from a single chapter of his book but suffers from a lack of focus. None of these great ladies is willing to give up center stage; nor, for that matter, are the grande dames who bring them so vividly to life.

Cannonball Run II is a real lemon. [29 June 1984, p.19]

Of course, this is the stuff of suspense thrillers, but writer-director Steve DeJarnatt sets an unsure pace that tries our patience. It seems he's not committed to his story or his characters, but to the idea that he is saying something profound -- which he isn't.

It's all as cliche'd as "A Summer Place," a better movie even if it was soap opera. For Keeps is a soapbox opera, and the slats are about to fall through. Writers Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue are as wishy-washy about their issues as they are their heroes. And they serve up the usual "you can have it all" scenario. After the teen-agers suffer with didies and postpartum depression, it's off to college to prepare for future careers. [16 Jan 1988, p.B5]

If there's an amnesia movie worse than Overboard, it slips my mind.

Anarchistic, self-indulgent and monumentally self-obsessed.

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?

All canapes and haute bourgeoisie, it is a smart comedy of conversation, like "My Dinner With Andre" but with eight place settings.

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

SWEET DREAMS is like "Coal Miner's Daughter," but without the grit. It's a slow, insensate musical biography, with the unfortunate Jessica Lange miscast as country singer Patsy Cline. The physical and emotional opposite of the coarse Cline, Lange looks like a refugee from a dude ranch in her western gear, her delicate features overwhelmed by a raggedy black wig and a rhinestone cowgirl's hat. She croons into the smokey, liquor-soaked night of a honky- tonk saloon, "I Fall to Piecessss . . . ." [11 Oct 1985, p.29]

For the most part, American movies concern the middle class, console the poor and celebrate the rich, and Schrader tried to pay blue-collar culture its due. He may have worked an honest day, but he didn't come up with an honest drama.

A grating and sinister comedy on the dangers of television. This mean-spirited marriage of cautionary tale and thriller-satire follows the increasingly vicious antics of a deranged cable installer who stalks a preferred customer.

A ruthlessly unsentimental portrait of a German war profiteer's epiphany that inspires neither sorrow nor pity, but a kind of emotional numbness.

Grounded in a good cause but never puffed up or preachy, the father-daughter drama transcends the issues.

It is a gripping adult drama, as erotically violent as it is intellectually satisfying. [9 Nov 1984, p.27]

While this adaptation of Waller's treacly bodice-ripper leaves out a lot of the lurid excess, it is not altogether free of pomposity.

With its foibles and quirks, it's something like a Sam Shepard play by way of the Black Forest.

A case of art imitating the electorate, it's a comedy that rides in on Clinton's coattails, bringing with it a landslide of laughs.

Annaud, who wrote the adaptation with frequent collaborator Gerard Brach, showed more consideration for the cub in "The Bear" than he does for young Miss March, who is shamefully overexposed. True, Leung's bodacious, cantaloupe-colored bottom is showcased, but the only thing we miss of March's is the skin between her toes. Never mind that in portraying passion, the two seem to be demonstrating the proper use of the Salad Shooter.

Michael Apted (who was due for a hit film) directed this fiery film, brilliantly layered scene-on-scene without a wasted frame. The odd camera angles presage the evil that will infect the happy home and put us on an eye-level with the boys whose spats gradually disappear as the two come to rely on each other. [26 Oct 1984, p.21]

A documentary as compelling as the best whodunit.

Michael Keaton's the live wire and Henry Winkler's the deadbeat in director Ron Howard's new hit, Night Shift, a whorifying undertaking that solicits its laughs by pairing the quick and the dead.

A decidedly medieval enterprise, darker in text and tone than a Gothic cathedral by the light of the moon.

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.

The screenplay, by the team of Joe Batteer and John Rice and doctored by Dan Gilroy, is standard issue, as insufferable in its situations as it is in its characterizations. Berenger, who tries to growl some life into his role, sounds as if he's been gargling cat litter, while McNamara shows off the work of his orthodontist a la Tom Cruise. For Eleniak, there's always Hooters.

A spoofy paean to cheerfolk that has more bounce per flounce than most tales about teen queens.

Relentlessly offensive.

It's a literate though strained uplifter.

Zucker, who collaborated with his brother Jerry and Jim Abrahams on such comedies as "Airplane!" and "Ruthless People," is working solo here. And aside from a flat patch midway through, he delivers as faithfully as Domino's pizza. In the limbo of comedy, few can go lower than Zucker without visibly straining. And the movie has a message: "Love is like the ozone layer; you never miss it until it's gone."

Psycho II is only a shadow of the master, a technical scare without the original's life-long grip on the subconscious. It fades as soon as the house lights go up. [10 June 1983, p.21]

A fleecy romantic caper with a dusting of feminism, the picture is basically a one-joke movie successfully nursed by director Ivan Reitman.

The chatty, romantic roundelay takes a lighthearted look at the misadventures of six in the city.

It's not the monotonous, neurotic's ego trip you'd imagine, but a karate-chop crawl against a rising tide of complacency.

This real-life case of Misery sets your teeth on edge, your blood boiling, your adrenaline surging with the subtlety of a World War II propaganda film.

A flurry of stunts, close shaves and deeds of desperate daring, it easily transcends its television origins to become a stylish pacemaker-buster.

If you choose to see this puerile tripe, check your dignity at the door.

Despite its hopeful title and a warm inland location, this dawdling family dramedy proves as sodden as a bed-wetter's mattress.

Despite the quirky trappings, Something Wild is often as tame as its star couple.

The movie is as insistently bubbly as the Bradys themselves, but it does run out of carbonation before the end. "Bunch" fans won't mind a bit, while others will be amused by the juxtaposition of the family's wholesome idyll with the harsher realities of life in the '90s, as evidenced by "Roseanne," "Married ... With Children" and "Grace Under Fire." [17 Feb 1995, p.F01]

The trouble is that the picture is far from over when suddenly we find ourselves watching another movie -- a punishing, overly complex melodrama in which the Gingerbread Man receives his comeuppance.

In some ways, Contact is just like the universe: big, star-bright and seemingly endless. Not to mention that it begins with a big bang, gradually falls into a lull and finally succumbs to entropy.

He's obsessed with the physical details instead of the human emotions. The actors are really just part of the scenery.

A bland, utterly silly, curiously provincial courtroom drama.

Sometimes the material's rather too gruesome for a family-oriented film, but as one HVTV intern says to the Devil, "It isn't the blood that bothers me, so much as the lack of subtext."

Merchant and Ivory have regathered many of the cast and crew from their earlier films to work on this reproduction to exquisite effect.

The ultimate in deja viewing:an overfamiliar and exasperating game of cat-and-mousie.

Alas, it's too coarsely drawn and broadly directed by Brit Jonathan Lynn to effectively skewer what ought to have been an easy target.

The sparkly but flawed sequel to the couple's last caper. [13 Dec 1985, p.29]

Bewitching.

Not just another youth movie, but a deft dramatization of a Joyce Carol Oates story adapted by a couple of documentary filmmakers in their feature debut.

Just isn't as fresh, focused or uniformly funny as "Waiting for Guffman."

Showcases its cast's athleticism and Ping's kinetic high-wire artistry. But unlike similar Western-made fare, it doesn't take itself seriously.

This is screenwriter Richard LaGravenese's directorial debut and now that he's in charge, he finally has his chance to give dialogue and character their due.

The current Bat cycle was already tired when Schumacher replaced Tim Burton behind the camera on "Batman Forever." This chapter -- so action-packed, yet so insufferably dull -- makes it clear that there's nowhere else to go.

British director Beeban Kidron chooses screenplays that balance precariously between maudlin and quirkily comic. To Wong Foo, richer in character than story, fits right into her repertoire. Lucky for her that Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo have plenty of fashion sense.

And you will laugh till your ribs ache -- not because director Chris Columbus of the "Home Alone" movies has a gift for farce, which he does, but because Williams is to funny what the Energizer Bunny is to batteries. He keeps going and going and going.

With its droll underpinnings, Robocop does for cyborgs and Detroit what "Blade Runner" did for androids and L.A.

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]

Arthur Hiller, who last directed the sour "The Babe" -- not the one about that sweet pig -- finds even less to work with in TV veteran Don Rhymer's stupid screenplay.

Slapdash Sidney Lumet directs this misbegotten three-star vehicle, an overpowered tricycle of a tale with Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick unconvincing as successive generations of the genetically eclectic McMullen clan.

If there is a Hell, Not Another Teen Movie will be playing for all eternity on every screen there.

It's an incredible show of flexibility on Tavernier's part, as improvisational and exploratory as the be-bop itself. "Round" is living sound, as "Sunday" was canvas come to life.

Don't go to "Into the Night." It will numb your mind. It will bore your soul. And it will cost you $5. [8 March 1985, p.25]

Screenwriter Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird) creates three rare human beings -- not jukebox stereotypes -- in Sonny, Mac and Rosa Lee. They're shy, emotionally severe people, country people who sing their emotions in baleful ballads. They were country when country wasn't cool. Always will be, praise the Lord. [06 May 1983, p.19]

The Paper perfectly captures the hubbub of the nation's newsrooms.

Unfortunately, the filmmaking couple take the fetishistic masquerade far too seriously. They may describe it as a "departure" from traditional fare, but it's simply the same old action-packed guff.

It couldn't be any less revolutionary in style. It is straighter than a guitar string.