Vincent Canby

Having been handed a script that, at its best moments, is a wan though benign reminder of the original version of The Thing, Mr. Schepisi seems uncertain whether to distract the audience's attention by decor or to send up the cliches of a certain kind of science-fiction. Unfortunately, he plays it straight most of the time. [16 May 1984, p.17]

A virtually uninterrupted series of smiles.

It's thoroughly silly and endearing.

Mr. Blake's screenplay and Mr. Costner's direction of it are, with the exception of three memorable sequences, commonplace. The film is painstakingly composed of small details of frontier and tribal life that should be riveting. Most of the time they aren't.

When the film's focus is on labor history, remembered or recreated, it is extremely moving. Fortunately this is most of the time.

Not since "Love Story" has there been a movie that so shrewdly and predictably manipulated the emotions for such entertaining effect.

Attempts to be a kind of all American, slapstick Orpheus Ascending, a timeless myth about innocence and corruption told in the sort of outrageous and vulgar terms that Brian De Palma and Robert Downey do much better.

Under Fire, which was written by Ron Shelton and Clayton Frohman, from a story by Mr. Frohman, means well but it is fatally confused.

My mind wasn't simply wandering during the film - it was ricocheting between the screen and the exit sign.

There is something eerily disconnected about Heaven Can Wait. It may be because in a time of comparative peace, immortality — at least in its life-after-death form — doesn't hold the fascination for us that it does when there's a war going on, as there was in 1941 when Here Comes Mr. Jordan was released and became such a hit. Or perhaps we are somewhat more sophisticated today (though I doubt it) and comedies about heavenly messengers and what is, in effect, a very casual kind of transubstantiation seem essentially silly.

Monty Python's the Meaning of Life is funny but, being unreasonable, I wish it were funny from start to finish.

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

Truly, Madly, Deeply should be enchanting, but it isn't. Everyone pushes too hard, especially Mr. Minghella, the writer and director. There are a few amusing lines and a lot of terrible ones, including Nina's overwrought response, early in the film, when her sister wants to borrow Jamie's cello: "It's like asking me to give you his body!"

The movie, which looks as if it had been made on an A-picture budget, has a lot of the zest one associates with special-effects-filled B-pictures.

The great satisfaction of Mad Dog and Glory is watching Mr. De Niro and Mr. Murray play against type with such invigorating ease. Each is the other's straight man, a relationship that is hilariously set up in the initial encounter of the cop and the hoodlum.

A cheerful, somewhat vulgar, very cleverly executed comedy about what goes on in a single 10-hour period in a Los Angeles car wash.

Postcards From the Edge seems to have been a terrifically genial collaboration between the writer and the director, Miss Fisher's tale of odd-ball woe being perfect material for Mr. Nichols's particular ability to discover the humane sensibility within the absurd.

It's also full of lyrical slow-motion footage of women athletes' training - jogging, sprinting, running the high hurdles, throwing the shot, broad jumping and high jumping. These sequences are accompanied by not-great pop music that has been poured over the images in a way that suggests fudge sauce on top of fried chicken.

Desperately Seeking Susan, based on a good screenplay by a new writer named Leora Barish, is a terrifically genial New York City farce in which the lives of two very different young women become tangled in an Orlon web of lies, half-truths and cross purposes. Full of funny, sharply observed details, reflected in Santo Loquasto's witty production design as well as in all of the dozens of individual performances. The cast is virtually a Players Guide to the variety of performing talent available in New York.

Smashingly funny...This To Be or Not to Be scarcely misses a comic beat right from the opening sequence.

The film is superbly acted by Mr. Polanski, Mr. Douglas and Miss Winters, who might not be entirely convincing as a Parisian concierge in a realistic film, but who fits into this nightmare perfectly.

The Mighty Quinn is an entertaining, touristy sort of movie that manages to be lighthearted without being soft in the head.

An enchanted lark about wiseguys and those hustlers who think they are wiseguys, but aren't.

As directed by Ms. Foster, the film has a kind of purity of purpose and control that is very rare in mass-market movies. It avoids a lot of sentimental nonsense. It is also sparely (and well-) written by Scott Frank.

At its best, Light Sleeper is merely theoretical. Most of the time, though, it is artificial and laughably unbelievable. Even the dark, gritty Manhattan locations don't add authenticity.

The problem, I think, comes back to Mr. Stallone. Throughout the movie we are asked to believe that his Rocky is compassionate, interesting, even heroic, though the character we see is simply an unconvincing actor imitating a lug.

It is spectacularly out of touch, a laughably earnest attempt to impose heroic attitudes on some nice, small characters purloined from a ''young-adult'' novel by S.E. Hinton, the woman who wrote the novel on which ''Tex'' was based.

Silkwood is a very moving work about the raising of the consciousness of one woman of independence, guts and sensitivity.