Vincent Canby

Considering the dreary circumstances, the performances are quite good, especially those of Mr. Scott, who can do this sort of thing before breakfast; Timothy Hutton, an Oscar winner for Ordinary People; Sean Penn, as the one cadet at Bunker Hill with a grain of sense; Tom Cruise, as a murderously gung-ho cadet, and Evan Handler, as a cadet who remains a humane civilian at heart.

Such a vulnerable movie that if it were a little less sappy, one might feel compelled to protect it, as if it were someone under 7 or over 65 -- that portion of the public for which it is intended.

Bracing...Withnail and I isn't social history. It's about growing up, almost as if by accident. It's also genuinely funny.

The sort of comedy that leaves you exhausted, though not from laughing.

It's a frenetic farce that takes the form of a folksy study of Smalltown, U.S.A., where there is no problem that can't eventually be solved on top of a bed, in a bath.

What's missing from the film is any urgent interior meaning, and this it may be because of the distractions of the exterior details. It may also be because the conflicts that rage within Lancelot — between duty and desire, courtly love and physical love — simply aren't complex enough to bring out the best in Mr. Bresson.

Valiant Southern sheriff. Effective, unsurprising.

The Escape Artist represents a lot more talent than is ever demonstrated on the screen.

Like "Blood Simple," it's full of technical expertise but has no life of its own... The direction is without decisive style. [11 Mar 1987, p.C24]

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.

A tricky, cheerful, aggressively friendly Walt Disney fantasy for children who still find enchantment in pop-up books, plush animals by Steiff and dreams of independent flight.

Though big of budget, A League of Their Own is one of the year's most cheerful, most relaxed, most easily enjoyable comedies. It's a serious film that's lighter than air, a very funny movie that manages to score a few points for feminism in passing.

Though Mr. Hanson ("Bad Influence," "The Bedroom Window") is a slick movie maker, he is not an especially persuasive one here.

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is the most barren comedy I've seen in years, maybe ever.

Resourceful and valiant though unsuccessful attempt to revive the kind of animated feature identified with the Golden Age of Walt Disney. If The Secret of N.I.M.H. had had a screenplay to equal its great visual qualities, it might have become a classic in its own right.

The Lawn Mower Man depends mostly on a lot of colorful video-game-like special effects. They are very loud but, after a while, the noise and the lights induce a torpor that is quite soothing.

Robert Benton has made one of the best films in years about growing up American.

The best things in the production are the garishly absurd sets. The costumes, including the gold lame athletic supporters worn by the members of Ming's palace guard, suggest an adolescent's fever dream. The pacing is so funereal that this Flash Gordon seems far longer and far less funny that the 15-chapter serial, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938), which starred Buster Crabbe. [05 Dec 1980, p.C8]

Even though most of the gags are too familiar or too dumb to be hilarious, Airplane II is too good-natured to be a serious irritant.

A silly, jumbo-size sequel to the original film adaptation of Arthur Hailey's Airport.

Mr. Fonda gives one of the great performances of his long, truly distinguished career. Here is film acting of the highest order, the kind that is not discovered overnight in the laboratory, but seems to be the distillation of hundreds of performances.

In 9 1/2 Weeks, he has created a work that might well qualify as a truly nouveau film. Here is a movie in which actors impersonating characters are blended into the decor so completely that they take on the properties of animated products, no more or less important than exquisitely photographed strawberries.[21 Feb 1986, p.C17]

I like its music, its drive and its determination, even when it's pretending to a kind of innocence and naiveté that I never for a second believe.

Mr. Schrader is a director of great rigor and discipline. The movie is fascinated by the baroque behavior it observes, but without imitating it.

The lines, like the movie itself, don't scan perfectly, but they are funny in the knowing, cheerfully bigoted way of Cheech and Chong's brand of comedy...Cheech and Chong's Next Movie is casual, slapdash and rude, and it's frequently hilarious in the way of some intense but harmless confrontation between eccentrics on a street corner.

Zorro, the Gay Blade, which was directed by Peter Medak (''The Ruling Class'' and ''The Changeling'') and written by Hal Dresner, has some of the slapdash bounce of Bob Hope's long-ago Paramount comedies. Though it doesn't have the authoritative timing and leering presence of Mr. Hope, it has its own careless charm and an appealing tolerance for jokes that aren't wildly funny.[24 July 1981, p.16]

The best thing about the movie, flimed mostly in Kenya, is its performances, funny and hip and self-assured in the manner of television personalities working in front of loving audiences. Mr. Caine and Mr. Poitier are never unaware that their material may not be the greatest, but that doesn't spoil their good spirits, and when a good line comes along they get maximum results without stomping on it or us.

Bound by Honor looks and sounds authentic but, like many community wall paintings, it has the manner less of one artist's vision than of a community endeavor. This may explain its singular shortcomings and its redeeming sincerity.