Sheila Benson

A dippy, joyous meander of a movie, more than a little messy but abundantly rewarding.

These characters need rescuing from screenwriter Colin Welland’s view of life in middle-class America as oppressively banal. By the time he gets finished sketching in the deadening of the American family, you may feel like beating Hackman to the front door...Twice in a Lifetime is a dreary masquerade of a serious movie.

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

Year of the Dragon has an arrogant, electric energy that dares you to look away from the screen for an instant. Do so and you miss a furious piece of action that has bubbled up, seemingly out of nowhere.

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.

The problem with Lean on Me is a stripped-down script with no room left in it for complexities, and revved-up direction that makes it move anyway.

The production is as clean and effective as Red October herself; there's not one dial or glowing radar screen too many; the underwater hits and near-misses are clearly choreographed and the undersea intensity is captured perfectly by Jan De Bont's camera work. [2 Mar 1990, Calendar, p.F-1]

Depardieu and MacDowell seem to share an uncommon honesty and generosity of spirit. So as the sexual tension between their characters grows, their scenes together are charmingly open and uncompetitive. The sense is that if these two ever become lovers, it will be because they have first become friends. On that startling note, in today's climate of explicit, loveless love, the film floats to its heady conclusion. [11 Jan 1991, p.6]

The Jedi return to us at last, older, wiser and frankly irresistible. Of all its many qualities, Return of the Jedi is fully satisfying, it gives honest value to all the hopes of its believers. With this last of the central "Star Wars" cycle, there is the sense of the closing of a circle, of leaving behind real friends. It is accomplished with a weight and a new maturity that seem entirely fitting, yet the movie has lost none of its sense of fun; it bursts with new inventiveness. With Jedi, George Lucas may have pulled off the first triple crown of motion pictures.

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

Not even Seth's elegance and worldly warmth, nor his short speech about the virtues of his country's culture, is enough to give balance to the film's nearly two-hour portrayal of harassment, inequality and suppression. [11 Jan 1991, p.F1]

If "Back to the Future" made you bored and querulous, then the tumbling inventiveness in its sequel may come as a pleasant surprise. Of course, if you were among the 92% of the world who loved the ride in Dr. Emmett Brown's diabolical DeLorean back in 1985, then Part II is your oyster. [22 Nov 1989, p.F1]

The movie is grisly, illogical, contradictory, borderline tasteless, riddled with plot holes--and at the same time, decently photographed, cleanly edited and crisply directed. All in all, the waste it represents--of talent, of intelligence, of fine craftsmen and of the audience’s good will--is enough to make one howl like a dog.

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]

Even illuminated by the unsparing performances of Jack Nicholson as Francis and Meryl Streep as Helen, his companion of nine years and another soul stumbling away from grace, the film becomes becalmed and confusing; it lacks the novel's great unwavering trajectory. [18 Dec 1987, p.1]

The comedy of Quick Change is city-dweller humor, honed to a fine edge and site-specific to New York because the Big Apple is more or less on its knees, civility-wise. All it needs is a lethally funny comedy like this to give it the coup de grace. [13 Jul 1990, p.1]

Wall Street wants to be a shrewd piece of movie making, our own insider's tip, but it's tinny and thin and close to moral bankruptcy. As for its veracity, it's probably no closer to Wall Street than "The Bad and the Beautiful" was to the skills of movie making. And it's a lot less fun. [11 Dec 1987, p.1]

An utterly pleasant surprise...Lordy, is it tenderly acted, with an unyielding spine of honesty to all its characters.

Ghostbusters II doesn't seem to be pushing as hard as its predecessor, which of course makes it even more fun. There's an old-shoeishness to the proceedings; even Murray's owlish put-downs seem a little less snide-they're almost affectionate, if that's not too outrageous a word in this context. [16 Jun 1989, p.1]

Beineix is still the sumptuous stylist; it's as much a part of him as his skin and the film has its share of gorgeous dawns, haunting sunsets, rollicking pink-and blue-painted beach houses. But he is also a great storyteller, and the whole middle section of Betty Blue is an irresistible tale of crazy love on one hand and crazy friendship on the other. [07 Nov 1986, p.1]

The question of grace, of nonviolence, of loyalty and faith that are the weft of The Mission are not confined to the Jesuits or to the 18th Century. In their postlude, the film makers extend these concerns to today's priests in South America, and others might include clergy in South Africa and Poland. It is the power of these questions that ultimately sweeps away reservations about the film. The Mission becomes a spectacle of conscience.[14 Nov 1986, p.C1]

Did you miss "Pretty in Pink," with the glowing Molly Ringwald? No problem. Some Kind of Wonderful, which has the same director -- Howard Deutch -- also has the same story... The real complaint, however, is that Hughes has absolutely nothing new to report -- no fresh perspectives, no gratefully received maturity, nothing added or depleted. [27 Feb 1987]

But seductive as his surfaces are, Forman's tack doesn't hold for long. His changes have muted a great tale of betrayal by intelligence and he has blunted the malign inevitability of Laclos' story. [17 Nov 1989]

Crossroads needs a leap of faith to swallow it whole, to buy its Faust-like premise of a musician's pact with the devil played against the realism of a contemporary road movie, but director Walter Hill lays out reasons enough to make us want to make that leap.

For all its lack of suspense, "Gardens of Stone's" intelligence and its unsimple characters make it a notable attempt to deal with that war. [08 May 1987]

In Memories of Me, nothing goes unsaid; its banalities are triumphant, its maudlin flourishes build to maudlin crescendos.

Unfortunately, style needs a little substance to keep it from careening around looking empty, and the story of Blue Steel is lofty, implausible twaddle that sinks whatever ideas Bigelow hoped to investigate.