[Verhoeven's] cold, slick, funny, high-powered movie is informed by a humanism this genre almost always abandons in its chase after vigilante splat. [17 Jul 1987]

Spaceballs has the happy air of a comic enterprise that knows it's going right. It just keeps spritzing the gags at us, Borscht Belt-style, confidently and rightly sensing that if we don't laugh at this one, we'll laugh at the next. And so we do. After a long dry spell, Brooks is back on the money with Spaceballs. [24 Jun 1987, p.33]

Gray's haunted, obsessional riffs are absorbing theater. Because Demme had the good sense to lay back and not beat them over the head with his cameras, they're equally compelling on film. [27 Mar 1987]

The skies are thick with whizzing bullets and strings being pulled by Shane Black's crude script and Richard Donner's cement-mixer direction. Predictably, the chicks-and-ammo stuff is punctuated by TV cop show repartee. [6 Mar 1987, p.36]

Director Bruce Beresford keeps stars Sissy Spacek, Jessica Lange, and Diane Keaton firmly rooted in the deep, dark black humor of Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. [01 Jul 2014, p.G15]

Obviously, it wasn't the plot that has given Little Shop such a long life. In the case of this film, it's the music, the sets and the comic sketches that make this remake mostly successful. [19 Dec 1986, p.77]

After an hour of biting charm, Something Wild turns into something else. In a twist that turns the movie into a silly story of violence, Demme surrenders his style to a stupid plot. [7 Nov 1986]

The Fly is that rare species of movie - a remake that far surpasses the original and, quite frankly, all expectations. [15 Aug 1986]

This rather simple story, played with stunning conviction by Rourke and Basinger, achieves its apex through director Adrian Lyne's steamy direction. Yet, it's not nasty enough. [14 Mar 1986, p.11]

In Ran, color plays a role not unlike that of language in "Lear": a kind of ground bass of beauty, a product of pure imagination, that both affirms life and surpasses it. Yet Kurosawa uses that beauty more as negation: a reminder not of what man is capable of but how puny he is in comparison.

Clue the movie, not the board game, isn't so much a drama as it is a marketing gimmick. Presumably, Paramount Pictures believed that an audience was clamoring to see actors play one-dimensional figures from a game. [13 Dec 1985, p.57]

Richard Attenborough's film version of the long-running Broadway musical hit A Chorus Line not only avoids the disaster that many had predicted for it, but is often surprisingly effective and enjoyable, transcending its troubled history. [20 Dec 1985]

Pee- wee's Big Adventure is a shrewdly observed, deftly executed looney tune. [9 Aug 1985, p.42]

Silverado plays like a big-budget regurgitation of old Westerns. Whatkeeps it going is the generosity that flows between Kasdan and his actors. It's got benevolent energies, but not the more primal kind needed to renew the standard Western images and archetypes. [10 Jul 1985, p.26]

The best mainstream film since "E.T.," is an uplifting reminder that Hollywood can still produce truly great entertainment...The plot is so exquisitely developed that divulging anything beyond the basic outline might diminish the joyous surprises that await an audience thirsting for originality in a reactionary medium. [03 July 1985, p.57]

The Disney people have taken such obvious care in making Return to Oz that it's a shame it didn't turn out better. It has its moments - mostly visual - but when it isn't a grim downer, it's largely inert. [21 Jun 1985, p.21]

But, fittingly, it's the kids who carry this outing. They're led by Sean Astin, who's rightly more of a dreamer than the others. Jeff B. Cohen engagingly handles the most cliched role, the fat kid who keeps stuffing his face. And I couldn't help wondering if Ke Huy Quan, who played Indy's sidekick in the Temple of Doom, knows that not all movies are made in caves. In any case, you can relax. The Goonies is entertaining despite its calculated flavor. [7 Jun 1985, p.61]

The Purple Rose of Cairo, Woody Allen's tender Valentine to the movies, features poignant performances by Jeff Daniels and Mia Farrow. In the critical rush to canonize Allen, it's easy to forget how far Farrow has come as an actress. [31 May 1985, p.27]

Beyond its fresh twists on the cop and romance genres, Witness is, above all, an anti-consumption film. [08 Feb 1985]

But as good as it is, the film falls short of translating the exaltation and near-gospel music feel of the band in full flight. [2 Nov 1984]

Phar Lap wastes its brilliant potential through embarrassingly inept acting, a cloying soundtrack, stereotyped characters and pedestrian direction. [13 Jul 1984]

The filmmaking team of director James Ivory, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and producer Ismail Merchant, remained loyal to James, assembled a brilliant cast and created one of the best films of the year. [10 Aug 1984]

The Neverending Story, Wolfgang Petersen's sophisticated fantasy film, is so wonderfully appropriate to children that it seems to have been made by kids. But there is enough artistic merit in the tale to enchant adults equally. [20 Jul 1984, p.1]

Screenwriter John Hughes, making his directing debut, is at his best when he empathizes with the sensitivity in the ugly-duckling Ringwald and Hall characters. [04 May 1984]

A heady flow of brilliant stupidity.

It begins promisingly.... But the film has no center, succumbs to drift, and gets away from Hackford. [03 Mar 1984]

With Ted Kotcheff's hackneyed direction and Joe Gayton's cliche-ridden script, this version of "Missing" for the soldier of fortune set is one of the most reprehensible exploitation films of the year.

Fueled by Meryl Streep's performance in the title role, energized by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen's script and tempered by Mike Nichols' understated direction, Silkwood is a brilliant movie that puts art above polemics, and the facts above speculation. [14 Dec 1983]

It plays like a crude "Godfather" parody, the sort that might amuse as a 10-minute sketch on "Saturday Night Live," but curdles and collapses as a 143-minute film. [09 Dec 1983]

It rates a resounding yes because it doesn't insult our emotional intelligence. [23 Nov 1983]

In short, A Christmas Story isn't just about Christmas; it's about childhood and it recaptures a time and place with love and wonder. It seems an instant classic, a film that will give pleasure to people not only this Christmas, but for many Christmases to come. [19 Nov 1983, p.1]

Testament deserves some credit for its message; it's too bad that its delivery is strictly third class. [04 Nov 1983, p.48]

The genius of Zulawski is that he's dispensed with all the buildup and explanation and logic. How many horror-movie explanations make any sense? He just made an entire movie out of the scary parts, the way a different genius concocted only the muffin top and some pop music producers give you 10 minutes of beats and chorus. Possession climaxes for two whole hours. It's as if, with "The Shining," Stanley Kubrick found 25 variations on "here's Johnny" and "red rum." [17 Nov 2012, p.G5]

It never really chills you, but then it never insults you, either, and it's more affecting than you expect any film based on a Stephen King novel to be. [22 Oct 1983]

Cruise is believable as an athlete; and the cocky bravado he emits to impress his girlfriend (played with matching complexity and maturity by Lea Thompson) has a fetching sense of lift, too. But his vulnerability is what's most refreshing and ingratiating about Cruise's Stef. [05 Nov 1983]

A triumph of romantic impulse over stylistic indulgence. [21 Oct 1983]

The Big Chill is not an ode to the '60s or '80s, but a touching, sincere account of boys and girls who became men and women. [30 Sep 1983, p.1]

If you were ever curious how a bad director can destroy the work of two talented actors and a slight, but funny, script, you need look no further than Educating Rita. [28 Oct 1983]

Risky Business is the sleeper of the summer. It's a refreshing change from the usual dumb teenage ripoffs, the slickest American film since "Trading Places" and "War Games," and a strong directorial debut for Paul Brickman, who knows his way around teen fantasies. [05 Aug 1983]

Staying Alive, the sequel to John Travolta's "Saturday Night Fever," plays like wet cement. [16 Jul 1983]

The original tv series was sometimes frightening, sometimes enlightening, and sometimes a bit too allegorical, but it was almost always entertaining. Serling gave us more in 25 minutes than Spielberg & Co. give us in nearly two hours. [24 Jun 1983, p.1]

It's easily the best of the movies I've seen by the various "Saturday Night Live" alumni, and part of the reason it's funny and satisfying is that it doesn't strain. [09 Jun 1983]

The Man with Two Brains has moments, but they aren't inspired. [04 Jun 1983]

Although idiotic, The Evil Dead at least is propelled by energy and enthusiasm. It's scarier than many a more pretentious effort, and not everything in it is borrowed. [8 Oct 1983, p.Arts1]

Flashdance makes liberal use of jump cuts, strobe lighting and hard-edged, post-punk chic in its dance sequences, it registers as the end product of energy being released by an essentially lyrical temperament. It charms us, makes us want to refrain from scrutinizing it too closely. [31 Jul 1983, p.1]

The director gives us a small, sincere and nearly perfectly realized film about adolescence in Oklahoma, aptly entitled The Outsiders. [24 Mar 1983]

Return is a slow-paced, incompetently directed film with both eyes focused on the box office. [26 Mar 1983]

The movie masterfully evokes, through stunning direction and magnificent performances, the heat and passion of desperate people living in desperate times. [18 Feb 1983]

Tootsie, the story of a man who liberates himself by masquerading as a woman, is the funniest, most revealing comedy since "Annie Hall." [17 Dec 1982]

Alan Pakula's literal adaptation of William Styron's Sophie's Choice is an admirable, if reverential, movie that crams this triangle into a 2 1/2 -hour character study enriched by Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, and nearly destroyed by Peter MacNicol. [21 Jan 1983]

A surprisingly effective slice-and-dice cheapie; cool, controlled direction by Jack Sholder, who also wrote the script. [31 Oct 2012, p.G27]

Ted Kotcheff's First Blood is a cute, slick anti-Vietnam war film carefully treated to go down for the pro-war constituency it's made for. [23 Oct 1982]

An Officer and a Gentleman has so many echoes that it never finds its own voice. [29 Jul 1982]

Producer Ray Stark and director John Huston have relied more on the rigid style of the comic strip than on the high-steppin' pizazz of the Broadway show. They've transformed a big-hearted hit that won seven Tonys into a small- minded musical. [18 Jun 1982]

Music for the eyes. That's why it has become a treasured classic. That's why we'll see it again and again. [2002 re-release]

What has aged well in Diva is the grave beauty of that aria and the wry, painterly camera shots - you should see the new print for the colors alone - conceived by Beineix but executed by the great French cinematographer Philippe Rousselot. They're enough to tide us over and maybe convince the kids that hip date movies existed back when their parents and dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Unfortunately, except for one raucous routine, this "Animal House" clone is an overblown, over-publicized, overwrought exploitation flick that's about as funny as the first dirty joke my father told me. [09 Apr 1982]

Deathtrap is slick enough that you can't disengage from it without missing something. [19 Mar 1982]

Barry Levinson's Diner is an extremely clever, slick male fantasy that takes some time to work out its mood and tone but ultimately blossoms into a moving film. [16 Apr 1982]

Except for the evocative sets and Randy Newman's upbeat musical score, Ragtime is better read than seen. [18 Dec 1981]

Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat--an homage to film noir--gets off to a nice start before it becomes entangled in its convoluted and somewhat uninteresting plot machinations.

The film is more interesting as a phenomenon than as a movie. [27 Feb 1981]

One of the major problems facing Hollywood today is the lack of will and energy to make movies that can charm youngsters without boring their parents. Popeye is an important contribution toward the solution. It's not a sophisticated film. But it's a gratifyingly engaging one. [12 Dec 1980, p.1]

If you enjoy laughing at a movie, rather than with it, then you might get a few chuckles. [18 Dec 1980, p.1]

The Visitor arrived at the height of a sci-fi and horror film revival, when “serious” directors... embraced genre conventions and made them their own. Paradise stole from them all. But unlike these directors, his ambition was coupled with delusional ineptitude.

The film that many consider the finest of its decade, Raging Bull, has aged well, and not just because it was filmed in black and white.

Somewhere in Time is a glossy, flossy and intermittently interesting piece of kitsch which, with more sensitive craftsmanship, could have been one of the more dazzling screen romances of the year. It's too bad that it's held down by its more overt commercial impulses. [7 Oct 1980, p.1]

Moore's conception of the character is compelling. She rivets us. She's assisted by the superb performances Redford has elicited from her co- stars, Sutherland and Timothy Hutton, who plays Conrad, the guilt-ridden surviving brother of the dead boy. [26 Sep 1980]

There are sequences in The Big Red One that you can't forget, and every one of them could have been made better with a bigger budget and a realism that was beyond Fuller's grasp at the time.

The "troubles" in Northern Ireland would seem to be an excellent dramatic vehicle: tension, violence, a people torn apart by religious, political, and economic differences. But writer-director Tony Luraschi turns it into a polemic. Speeches replace action and the dialogue is wooden. [14 Feb 2014, p.G31]

When you sit down to The Shining, you sit down with normal expectations of being diverted, perhaps even being gripped, but not being undermined. But the film undermines you in powerful, inchoate ways. It's a horror story even for people who don't like horror stories - maybe especially for them. [14 Jun 1980, p.1]

Generations from now, when people talk about horse movies, they won't be talking about "National Velvet" or "My Friend Flicka," they'll be talking about the majestic beauty of Carroll Ballard's The Black Stallion. [07 Feb 1980]

"No God and no religion can survive ridicule," wrote Mark Twain, but for once the sage of Hannibal was wrong.

Nick Nolte electrifies the football-cum-drugs saga with a remarkable performance as Phil Elliott, a pot smokin', beer swillin', cocaine sniffin' tight end for the North Dallas Bulls. But the erratic direction of Ted Kotcheff and the wayward script are strictly second-string. [10 Jun 2014, p.G15]

What's most unusual about the original 24 years later, though, is its elegant minimalism.

This thoroughly stripped-down thriller simmers in a way that's still unsettling 25 years later. [24 Oct 2004]

Eric Roberts, making his movie debut, shines as a Travolta-ish hero who wants to surmount his family origins. [19 July 2015, p.N]

The animation techniques are sophisticated but the story tends to get bogged down in pop philosophy. [01 Mar 2015, p.N]

The screen Grease seemed at the time a big, overblown version of the sassy, gritty stage musical. Now the differences seem less important. What the two versions share are sizzle and a refusal to ignore the sexual energy of an exuberant cast. Grease seems kickier now than it did 20 years ago. [27 Mar 1998, p.D6]

Perhaps the elusive, uncanny soundtrack of Tangerine Dream brings this about, or maybe it’s Friedkin’s juxtapositions of close-ups and stark long shots of the tiny trucks lost in jungle or desert landscapes, but Sorcerer eventually seems to be happening someplace not of this world. Not hell, exactly; maybe Limbo.

Fonda, who looks as if he's trying to hide through half the picture, was paid $ 500,000 to look like a convincing victim. It doesn't seem worth it. Even the corny special effects are better than his stilted, walk-through performance. [03 Dec 1989, p.B45]

Star Wars is, quite simply, one of the best family entertainment buys you can make this summer. It’s a gorgeous, fantastic toy, a marvelous science fiction film that anyone can enjoy, sci fi fan or not.

A characteristic early offering from horror icon David Cronenberg, rough production values and all. [30 May 2004]

H.G. Wells's tale of nature's little critters turned steroidal gets cheesy screen treatment from director Bert I. Gordon, a veteran of the ginormous creature genre of the '50s. [09 Sep 2007, p.N32]

Truly, there is no looniness like looniness with lineage.

Exquisitely painful look at how Hollywood turns its hopefuls into whores. [03 May 1992, p.B35]

Nobody ever placed brilliance in the service of silliness quite the way the Python gang did. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is stuffed with both.

Has a pleasantly freewheeling, European art film feel to it, a welcome reminder of the New Hollywood of the '70s. [04 Sep 2005]

It's my favorite movie...Chinatown is a complex reminder of how movies were made when filmmakers held the cards - before product placement, marketers, and agents assumed control of the business. Before movies had to be sold to studios on the basis of zippy one-liners. I dare say that the movie wouldn't stand a chance of getting the green light today unless Julia Roberts was interested in playing Jane Gittes. [5 Nov 1999, p.D5]

Some will say weird is fun for its own sake, but we say weird does not equal cinematic satisfaction. [05 Mar 1999, p.C6]

Badlands is one of the great banality-of-evil films. [29 May 1998, p.C9]

Remembered for being the best Boston movie of all time. [27 Feb 2005]

Slly, sublime, buoyant mischief that is virtually without parallel in 20th-century art, much less 20th-century film.

Melville's austere yet sensuous reinvention of the genre's macho honor and trenchcoated, fedora-wearing iconography, coolly projected by Delon's expressionless face, makes "Le Samourai" a pungent and pleasurable experience still. [02 May 1977, p.D7]

A modest entertainment made intriguing by the race element. [15 May 1972, p.14]

For someone wanting to get noticed as a filmmaker, George Lucas couldn't have done much better than THX 1138, his 1971 feature debut that starts a limited run today in a new director's cut.

As Altman misfires go, Brewster McCloud is one of the better ones. [25 Jul 2010, p.12]

The impact of this stunning film - and the lessons to be learned from it - are as remarkable as when it was first released 30 years ago.