Vincent Canby

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

The film tries to cover too much ground, even though Calder Willingham's script eliminates or telescopes events and characters from the Berger novel.

Virtually nonstop exhilaration--a dramatic comedy not quite like any other, and one that sets new standards for Mr. Allen as well as for all American moviemakers. [7 February 1986]

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 Package is a feeble attempt to keep the old-fashioned cold-war thriller alive in this era of glasnost...Mr. Davis has directed what may be the worst movie Gene Hackman has ever made.

Within the limits and cliches of utterly predictable material, Mr. Coppola is still finally able to make this one from the heart.

Mr. Rourke and Mr. Johnson handle their roles with more ease and humor than can be accommodated by a movie so stuffed with mindless fistfights, gunfights, helicopter chases, explosions and leaps from tall buildings.

Last Action Hero is something of a mess, but a frequently enjoyable one. It tries to be too many things to too many different kinds of audiences, the result being that it will probably confuse, and perhaps even alienate, the hard-core action fans.

The dialogue is mostly composed of rude variations on ''eek,'' ''ugh'' and ''I'd like to sleep with you this evening.''

As directed by Mr. Ross, True Colors is dreary, humorless, heavy-handed and self-important.

A fascinating, vivid movie, not quite comparable to any other movie that I can immediately think of. Nor is it easily categorized.

Glory is celebratory, but it celebrates in a manner that insists on acknowledging the sorrow. This is a good, moving, complicated film.

Nothing that Mr. Clayton does with the actors or with the camera comes close to catching the spirit of Fitzgerald's impatient brilliance. The film transforms "Gatsby" into a period love story that seems to take itself as solemnly as "Romeo and Juliet."

Like an old electric automobile, the movie rolls forward, without surprises, steadily and almost soundlessly, except for the bomb explosion on the soundtrack. It's never as funny as it looks, but it's a pleasant enough ride if you like your companions.

The revelations explode predictably, like the ingredients of a 24-hour cold capsule, but the dramatic impact is real while one is watching it.

It looks to be clean and pure and without artifice, even though it is possibly as sophisticated as any commercial American movie ever made.

Designed for everybody who still hasn't had his or her fill of break dancing, or who doesn't yet understand that break dancing, rap singing and graffiti are legitimate expressions of the urban artistic impulse.

Madonna, left to her own devices and her own canny pace, is a very engaging comedian, and the screenplay, by Andrew Smith and Ken Finkleman, contains a lot of raffishly funny ideas that get lost in the busyness of the physical production.

A magical mixture of recollection, parody, memoir, satire, self-examination and joyous fantasy.

It would be difficult to describe Martin Scorsese's fine new film, The King of Comedy, as an absolute joy. It's very funny, and it ends on a high note that was, for me, both a total surprise and completely satisfying. Yet it's also bristly, sometimes manic to the edge of lunacy and, along the way, terrifying.

It's a work that has the kind of simplicity, ease and density of detail that only a film maker in total command of his craft can bring off, and then only rarely.

It's apparent that someone connected with They Came From Within has an impertinent sense of humor even though the film is so tackily written and directed, so darkly photographed and the sound so dimly recorded, that it's difficult to stay with it.

Though the new movie has its share of blood and gore, it is mostly creepy and, considering the bizarre circumstances, surprisingly funny.

It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be. Its 134 minutes induce a state of simulated brain death, an effect as easily attained in half the time by staring at the blinking lights on a Christmas tree.

Big Business, which, though it never quite delivers the boffo payoff, is a most cheerful, very breezy summer farce, played to the hilt by two splendidly comic performers.

Too much of the film seems unfinished. Almost every four scenes could be condensed into one. The comedy doesn't build to any climax. It just rolls on, with Ms. Hawn doggedly working to create some sense of oddball fun. The characters, as written, are as flimsy as Newton's dream house, which, even though based on a House Beautiful award-winning design, looks less habitable than a billboard. Even its brand-new furnishings are tacky.

So flecked with minor dishonesties that you come to recognize it as a sort of Formica Western, something that amounts to a parody of the real thing.

Sweet Charity, the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, has been so enlarged and so inflated that it has become another maximal movie: a long, noisy and, finally, dim imitation of its source material.