It was Francois Truffaut who said that it's not possible to make an anti-war movie, because all war movies, with their energy and sense of adventure, end up making combat look like fun. If Truffaut had lived to see Platoon, the best film of 1986, he might have wanted to modify his opinion. Here is a movie that regards combat from ground level, from the infantryman's point of view, and it does not make war look like fun.

The problem with everyone in King Kong Lives is that they're in a boring movie, and they know they're in a boring movie, and they just can't stir themselves to make an effort.

I could go two ways. I could say that No Mercy is a dumb formula thriller, which we can all sort of figure out from the ads, or I could go the other way and talk about the movie's style and energy. I think I'll go the second way, because whatever this movie is, it's not boring. It doesn't take shortcuts and it delivers on its grimy, breathless action sequences.

There are a lot of moments to remember in The Golden Child, but the one I will treasure the longest happens when Eddie Murphy gets behind the wheel of a beat-up station wagon and is led by a sacred parakeet to the lair of the devil.

Heartbreak Ridge has as much energy and color as any action picture this year, and it contains truly amazing dialogue.

The movie has been directed and acted so well, in fact, that almost all my questions have to do with the script: Why was the hero made so uncompromisingly hateful?

This is easily the most absurd of the "Star Trek" stories - and yet, oddly enough, it is also the best, the funniest and the most enjoyable in simple human terms. I'm relieved that nothing like restraint or common sense stood in their way.

This movie owes so much to the "Road Warrior" pictures that I doubt if it could have been made without them. Since the movie so clearly required great dedication, especially in its visual effects and the use of its desert locations, I can only wonder why they didn't spend equal effort on finding an original story to tell.

It has been written by people who want to prepare kids for the worst.

Firewalker is a free-form anthology of familiar images from the works of Steven Spielberg, subjected to a new process that we could call discolorization. All of the style and magic are gone, leaving only the booby-trapped temples, the steaming jungle and such lines as, if I remember correctly, "Witch, woman, harlot - I've been called them all!"

In the way it combines sports with human nature, it reminded me of another wonderful Indiana sports movie, "Breaking Away." It's a movie that is all heart.

The movie is wise, deep, and painful, and it is filled with words. Used to be, a "sex film" contained lots of nudity and steamy scenes. That kind of stuff would just slow this one down.

Something Wild is quite a movie. Demme is a master of finding the bizarre in the ordinary.

Why should anyone care about a movie about two scabrous vulgarians? Because the subject of a really good movie is sometimes not that important. It's the acting, writing, and direction that count.

Betty Blue is a movie about Beatrice Dalle's boobs and behind, and everything else is just what happens in between the scenes where she displays them.

This is a well-crafted movie by a man who knows how to hook the audience with his story; it's Frankenheimer's best work in years.

The Sacrifice is not the sort of movie most people will choose to see, but those with the imagination to risk it may find it rewarding.

All that was needed to pull these elements together was a structure that would clearly define who the characters were, what they stood for and why we should care about them. Unfortunately, that is all that is missing.

This is a genuinely interesting idea, filled with dramatic possibilities, but the movie approaches it on the level of a dim-witted sit-com. Thoughtful scenes are followed by slapstick, emotional moments lead right into farce, and the movie doesn't have an ounce of true moral courage; it sidesteps every single big issue that it raises.

The movie is the latest horror show from Stuart Gordon, whose Re-Animator was one of the great trash pictures of 1985. From Beyond doesn't quite measure up - it's not trashy enough and it doesn't have the insane tunnel vision of the first movie - but in its own way, this is quite a job.

Many of the scenes in this movie are almost formula, despite the energy of Scorsese's direction and the good performances. They come in the same places we would expect them to come in a movie by anybody else, and they contain the same events.

Peggy Sue Got Married is a lot of things - a human comedy, a nostalgic memory, a love story - but there are times when it is just plain creepy, because it awakens such vivid memories in us.

Even the ordinary moments in True Stories seem a little odd, as if the actors are trying to humor the weirdo they're working for.

By telling the whole story from Hurt's point of view, the movie makes the woman into the stubborn object, the challenge, the problem, which is the very process it wants to object to...This objection aside, Children of a Lesser God is a good but not a great movie. The subject matter is new and challenging, and I was interested in everything the movie had to tell me about deafness.

The movie makes the same mistake as some of the characters in it: It treats these two guys like lovable old characters instead of listening to what they really have to say.

You do not need to know a lot about jazz to appreciate what is going on because, in a certain sense, this movie teaches you everything about jazz that you really need to know.

All of the cliches are in the right places, most of the gags pay off and there are moments of real amusement as the Australian cowboy wanders around Manhattan as a naive sightseer. The problem is that there's not one moment of chemistry between the two stars.

What this movie needs is a clear, spare, logical screenplay. It's all inspiration and no discipline.