Sheila Benson

But the climax of "Close Encounters" was breathtaking and the climax of The Abyss is downright embarrassing; in the light of day, its payoff effect looks like a glazed ceramic what's-it your 11-year-old made in crafts class. It's criminal. [9 Aug 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

There are individual moments to remember with affection, but the plot has miles to go before we sleep. [26 June 1987, p.1]

Class Action s good, chewy entertainment, part courtroom pyrotechnics, part Machiavellian legal maneuvers. [15 Mar 1991]

This one you see for the pure love of great movie making. Its tough-minded, unsentimental writing and ferociously brilliant acting--across the board and especially at the top--manage to give a pretty good idea of what Christy Brown, the Dublin-born writer, poet and painter, was all about.

A lovingly assembled cast in a brilliantly detailed production, with special notice to Vilmos Zsigmond's haunting cinematography, which seems somehow to have captured the light as it was, pre-smog. [10 Aug 1990]

It is excruciating: a combination of Beth Henley’s insistently eccentric screenplay, Bruce Beresford’s frenzied direction and the sight of three singular talents on an acting roller coaster with no one riding the brakes.

Blaze is hugely enjoyable, with fluid, sensual camera work by Haskell Wexler and Ruth Myer's cheerfully outrageous costumes that savor every inch of Davidovich. There's a real feeling about Long's henchmen, Gailard Sartain in particular, as the aide who hates what Blaze is doing to the boss' chances, but grudgingly comes to admire her spirit. But Blaze is also puzzling. It peaks too soon, and having teased us with these legendary characters, it goes almost prim when it comes to seeing them in action.

Arm wrestling and hamburger building have been exhausted as backgrounds for movies, so it was probably inevitable that bartending would be next. But nothing quite prepares you for the hamburger that Cocktail makes of an old and relatively honorable profession. [29 Jul 1988, p.14]

One of “Trouble’s” nicest gifts is a pair of lovers to sigh over, whose future you agonize about, lovers who can make each other roar with laughter while lovingly intertwined. How long since we cared anything about a couple on the screen?

Anger? Outrage? Are these new feelings for audiences dealing with the fact of rape--aborted or not? You might hope not, but if they are, the film generates them, as well as the shamefully satisfying taste of bone-cracking revenge. But they still don’t add up to reason enough to make a movie, or to make it in 1986.

Sidewalk Stories is a bold and utterly enchanting creation, and its appearance is a signal to watch the multifaceted Lane closely. [09 Nov 1989, p.F1]

The plot line may fray at times, especially with Fisher's dizzyingly quick segue from magazine reporter to Geraldo Rivera-like television muckraker. But Schatzberg anchors his story with enough pungently observed details of New York--its lofts, chic editorial offices, in restaurants and sad and tawdry street scenes--and with enough marvelous actors, in big roles and small, to give his story real bite.

As The Fourth Protocol begins at the outside and curls its way into the center of its wildly complex plot, it becomes almost a "Saturday Night Live" spy spoof. We're saturated with detail: Where will the nested Russian folk-art dolls, the visiting violinist's patent-leather shoes and the American Air Force officer's randy wife fit into the Greater Scheme of Things? Gradually, as our eyes glaze over, it becomes very hard to care--and even harder to suppress a giggle.

Stirred up impassioned debate everywhere; it would seem the greatest compliment that could be paid a stunning entertainment. [30 June 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

If sex, lies, and videotape hinted at Spader's fascination, Bad Influence confirms it; he is one of a handful of startling young American actors whose range has barely begun to be tapped.

Bold, sneaky, brilliant Punchline works its change-ups unmercifully. I can't remember laughing this much with tears still streaming down my face, or beginning to weep while my sides still ached from laughing. The closest to it was "Terms of Endearment." [30 Sept 1988, p.C1]

Irresistibly funny… Just about the best holiday gift imaginable. [23 Dec 1988, Calendar, p.6-1]

Unfortunately, and through no fault of Meryl Streep, there doesn't seem to be enough electricity generated out there in Africa to power a love story 2 1/2 hours long.

But honestly, Collins' vehicle is a creaky old donkey cart. [30 Aug 1989, p.C1]

At all times the wretched high-concept, low-intelligence story contrives to bring everything down to its sudsy level. [22 Nov 1985]

In all his athletic scenes, leaping through doors, leaping between uptown and downtown trains, leaping on an assortment of villains, Swayze is just fine. It's the movie's big cosmic questions that throw him; for these he's reduced to a look of total stupefaction--not the movie's finest moments. [13 July 1990, Calendar, p.F-1]

Using a twist on the ingenious premise of "Fantastic Voyage" -- miniaturized travel within a human body -- and a pair of very different but equally irresistible leading men, Innerspace is densely inventive and consistently hilarious. [1 July 1987, p.C1]

A frenetically unfunny and charmless movie.

For all its supernatural vein, Lady in White has an engaging, Hardy Boys feeling about it and, in Lukas Haas, probably the screen's most irresistible performer this side of Kermit the Frog. And every ounce of Master Haas' adorability will be put to the test, because Lady in White is also a virtual junkyard of mismatched ideas and elements, thrown up on the screen in a friendly, haphazard fashion. [22 Apr 1988, p.8]

It's Nolte's boldest, most spellbinding performance; his subtleties in playing this Irish-American monster who believes himself on the front line of "us against them" are profound. [27 Apr 1990, p.F1]

The wonder is that anything in a country this exotic, full of such potential wonder, could be made this enervating.

Arachnophobia manages to be genuinely frightening without being '80s-style revolting. Marshall has gauged his pattern of frights and laughs carefully, to let the audience giggle at its own jumpiness, and his cast, which includes a sprinkling of the best-known American character actors, is a clue to his affection for the form. [18 July 1990, p.F1]

Stand and Deliver itself, with its message of the soaring rewards of learning, aims high and delivers perhaps a B+. But it's already a better, less cliched film than La Bamba, with considerably more on its mind, and its strengths may pave the way for more complex, more demanding stories of the Latino experience for all audiences.

Unfortunately, director Michael Lehmann's point of view is swivel-mounted: He doesn't have the courage of his cynicism. [31 Mar 1989]

A preachy, empty story, enlivened by a great central performance and generous dollops of self-delusion, not the least offensive of which are Topor's and Lansing's quoted comparisons of their movie to the moral climate of the Holocaust. To paraphrase dear Joseph Welch, have they no shame? [14 Oct 1988, p.4]

With the same painstaking care that made John Bryson’s “Evil Angels,” the book on which the film is based, incontrovertible, Schepisi builds his mosaic with Australian faces and voices crisscrossing every social class and occupation.

Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael isn't truly terrible, it's truly confused. It's as though director Jim Abrahams wanted to do heartfelt comedy-drama but couldn't quite shake off the wicked edge of his alma mater, ZAZ: Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, the dementos behind "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun."

It's cruel, funny, knowing, never less than biting and occasionally brilliant. [05 May 1989]

The film's greatest asset is Kelly LeBrock, who is triumphant. She may represent souped-up womanhood at its most fanciful but she does so with great warmth and a sharp sense of herself.

Stakeout is this summer's suntan lotion: It won't linger in the memory any better than it would survive a quick dip in the pool.

Nothing works, except perhaps the sight of Julia Roberts' lean, well-tempered midsection and her roughly eight yards of legs that, in this frail comedy, are worked until they're almost a story point of their own. [23 Mar 1990, Calendar, p.F-14]

Romantic and preposterous all at once, it's actually a funny, endearing fable about courage, love and faith...So endearing that the flatness about its last few minutes manages not to sink the picture. [9 March 1990, p.C1]

Written with his trademark artfulness, nicely acted and gorgeously pretty, Tequlia Sunrise finally blows away into slick unsubstantiality. [2 Dec 1988, p.1]

The delectable Babette’s Feast is a fable told with passion, intelligence and sumptuousness. Although it certainly has a feast at its center, it would be a mistake to think that its tribute is intended only for great cooks. No, it’s a deep reverence to all great artists--whether they make books, bowls or ballets, baskets, quilts, songs, poems, paintings . . . or films.

Under Australian director George Miller ("Mad Max"), The Witches of Eastwick begins so promisingly. It has such smashing separate moments, so succulent a cast and so interesting a premise that watching it crumble into stomach-turning crudeness and "Poltergeist"-scale special effects is deeply painful.

Nicholson's Joker will be the pivotal point for many. It's his energy, spurting like an artery, that keeps the picture alive; it's certainly not the special effects, the editing, which has no discernible rhythm, or the flaccid screenplay.

Skim the pleasantly diverting surface of Absolute Beginners and you can easily forget that there is nothing contained beneath. [18 Apr 1986, p.C6]

The director has been able to do nothing with this wheezing script, one of the subplots of which involves Dempsey's dad believing that his son is gay. And the movie's moments of physical farce are mortifying...What makes "Loverboy"(rated PG-13 for sexual situations) such a pitiful waste is that Dempsey has so much potential charm.

Actually it's not a bad notion for a satiric comedy and this one begins well, but then veers entirely out of hand until it's as over-inflated as its own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and as funny as a mugging. [23 Nov 1988, p.1]