Vincent Canby

How each frees the other is the stuff of Free Willy, which is as engaging as such films can be without offering rude surprises.

Even the special effects are more to the point of the comedy than they were in the first film. For some reason, this appears to leave more room for the sort of random funny business that Mr. Murray and his friends do best, or to which they react with most aplomb.

It's an especially American kind of social comedy in the way that great good humor sometimes is used to reveal unpleasant facts instead of burying them.

A tough-talking street melodrama, both shocking and sorrowful, acted by Paul Newman and a huge cast with the kind of conviction that can't be ignored.

My Cousin Vinny is easily the most inventive and enjoyable American film farce in a long time, even during those extended patches when it seems to be marking time or when it continues with a running gag that can't stay the distance. The film has a secure and sophisticated sense of what makes farce so delicious.

Murder by Death is as light and insubstantial as one could wish.

What we eventually see underneath this shell is not the study in dignity that Ashley Montagu wrote about, but something far more poignant, a study in genteelness that somehow supressed all rage. That is the quality that illuminates this film and makes it far more fascinating than it would be were it merely a portrait of a dignified freak. [03 Oct 1980, p.C8]

A Brief History of Time is a kind of adventure that seldom reaches the screen, and it's a tonic.

Watching Frenzy is like riding a roller coaster in total darkness. You can never be quite sure when you're going to start a terrifying new descent or take a sudden turn to the left or right. The agony is exquisite.

The action sequences are what the film is all about, and these are remarkably well done, including a climactic, largely bloodless shootout among helicopters and jet fighters over Los Angeles.

A film of tremendous visual impact, a kind of cinematic Guernica, a picture of America in the process of exploding into fragmented bits of hostility, suspicion, fear and violence.

Mr. Hopkins's screenplay is funny without being condescending, more aware of history, perhaps, than Conan Doyle's mysteries ever were, but always appreciative of the strengths of the original characters and of the etiquette observed in the course of every hunt.

It raises the spirits not by phony sentimentality but by the amplitude of its art. From time to time, it is also roaringly funny... A terrific movie. [1 Oct 1993, p.C1]

The film's beauty is dazzling. It stands with—or perhaps a little ahead of—Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Roman Polanski's Tess, but it also must be conceded, quickly and without too stern a reproach, that there is less to The French Lieutenant's Woman than meets the dazzled eye.

The movie is massive, shapeless, often unexpectedly moving, confusing, sad, vivid and very, very long.

A very funny, sometimes prescient satire of American politics, and of the comparatively small, voting portion of the electorate that makes a Bob Roberts phenomenon possible.

George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson are responsible for the story and screenplay, which was directed by John Glen, who does much better than he did with "For Your Eyes Only." However, the material is markedly better, and the budget seems noticeably larger. Peter Lamont's production design is both extravagant and funny.

A rich, gaudy cinema trip.

The Distinguished Gentleman is an easy, breezy romp of a movie, a low comedy of highly entertaining order.

Quite clearly, Pookie Adams is a marvelous role, full of tough-sweet humor, and Liza Minnelli, the daughter of Vincente Minnelli and the late Judy Garland, turns it into one of the most appealing performances of the season, a triumph limited only by the squashy movie that encases it.

Koyaanisqatsi is an oddball and - if one is willing to put up with a certain amount of solemn picturesqueness - entertaining trip.

Moonraker begins with one of the funniest and most dangerous (as well as most beautifully photographed and edited) sequences Bond has ever faced.

A lot of Over the Edge is awkwardly acted and motivated, but it is staged with such vivid efficiency and concern that, as you watch it, you are frequently caught halfway between a giggle and a gasp.

A big commercial entertainment of unusually satisfying order. [11 Dec 1992]

This veteran movie icon handles both jobs with such intelligence and facility I'm just now beginning to realize that, though Mr. Eastwood may have been improving over the years, it's also taken all these years for most of us to recognize his very consistent grace and wit as a film maker.

A good old-fashioned adventure movie that is so stuffed with robust incidents and characters that you can relax and enjoy it without worrying whether it actually happened or even whether it's plausible.

Though it's set within the world of the seriously down-and-out in Los Angeles and is about people who are at the end of their ropes, Barfly somehow manages to be gallant and even cheerful. It has an admirably lean, unsentimental screenplay by Charles Bukowski, the poet laureate of America's misbegotten.

Don't go to Winter Kills looking for some solemn explanation of the way things are or of how they got this way, or even of what happens in the film itself. It's a comedy, logical response to our times, a film whose reality depends on one's willingness to go along with the uproarious imaginations of Mr. Richert and Mr. Condon.