There's not a scene here where Badham doesn't seem to know what he's doing, weaving a complex web of computerese, personalities and puzzles; the movie absorbs us on emotional and intellectual levels at the same time. And the ending, a moment of blinding and yet utterly elementary insight, is wonderful.

It's too heavy on plot and too willing to cheat about its plot to be really successful, but it does have its moments, and it's better than your average, run-of-the-mill slasher movie.

'Return of the Jedi' is fun, magnificent fun. The movie is a complete entertainment, a feast for the eyes and a delight for the fancy. It's a little amazing how Lucas and his associates keep topping themselves.

Kaprisky, as the young French student, is an unknown in a role too large and complex for her, and there are times when she seems lost in a scene, looking to Gere for guidance. The result is a stylistic exercise without any genuine human concerns we can identify with - and yet, an exercise that does have a command of its style, is good-looking, fun to watch, and develops a certain morbid humor.

There is very little comic invention in the idea for Doctor Detroit (the screenplay is Identikit sitcom), but there's a lot of invention in Aykroyd's performance.

This movie is a little treasure, a funny, sexy, appealing story of a Valley Girl's heartbreaking decision: Should she stick with her boring jock boyfriend, or take a chance on a punk from Hollywood?

The Hunger is an agonizingly bad vampire movie, circling around an exquisitely effective sex scene.

In its descriptions of autumn days, in its heartfelt conversations between a father and a son, in the unabashed romanticism of its evil carnival and even in the perfect rhythm of its title, this is a horror movie with elegance.v

Koyaanisqatsi is an impressive visual and listening experience, that Reggio and Glass have made wonderful pictures and sounds, and that this film is a curious throwback to the 1960s, when it would have been a short subject to be viewed through a marijuana haze. Far out.

If Flashdance had spent just a little more effort getting to know the heroine of its story, and a little less time trying to rip off "Saturday Night Fever," it might have been a much better film.

This is an action movie. It makes no apology for that. But it's high-style action.

Screwballs opens outside the local hot dog stand, where a giant inflatable hot dog is swinging back and forth like a pendulum, gently nudging the backsides of two teenage girls. From such beginnings I suppose we should not anticipate a masterpiece, but the opening shot is the high point of this dumb movie.

A movie that seems consumed with a desire to push us too far. This movie is so far beyond good taste, and so cheerfully beyond, that we almost feel we're being One-Upped if we allow ourselves to be offended.

Coppola's teenagers seem trapped inside too many layers of storytelling.

The performances are often good, including Reno's; he has an interesting, poker-faced way of underplaying scenes that keeps him from being a stereotyped kid.

Following the tradition governing such movies, the story eventually comes to a moral decision at which a bad boy has to decide whether to become a good man -- and that's too bad, because until the movie turns predictable, it is very, very good. The acting, the direction and the sense of place in Bad Boys is so strong that the movie deserves more than an obligatory right scene for its conclusion.

The lockstep mentalities who made this movie tell their story entirely from a boring male point of view, supply us with male wimps and studs who are equally uninteresting, and view women only as wet T-shirt finalists. What a letdown for horny movie critics.

An unconvincing, harmless action movie that at its best moments is a pale echo of "Raiders."

This movie indicates that Charles Bronson just doesn't care any more, and is just going through the motions for the money. I admired his strong, simple talent once. What is he doing in a garbage disposal like this?

When interesting people have little to say, we watch the body language, listen to the notes in their voices. Rarely does a movie elaborate less and explain more than Tender Mercies.

What is important about this film is not that it serves as a history lesson (although it does) but that, at a time when the threat of nuclear holocaust hangs ominously in the air, it reminds us that we are, after all, human, and thus capable of the most extraordinary and wonderful achievements, simply through the use of our imagination, our will, and our sense of right.

The King of Comedy is not, you may already have guessed, a fun movie. It is also not a bad movie. It is frustrating to watch, unpleasant to remember, and, in its own way, quite effective.

Here is a small film to treasure, a loving, funny, understated portrait of a small Scottish town and its encounter with a giant oil company.

The characters are bitter and hateful, the images are nauseating, and the ending is bleak enough that when the screen fades to black it's a relief.. Videodrome, whatever its qualities, has got to be one of the least entertaining films of all time.

The Year of Living Dangerously is a wonderfully complex film about personalities more than events, and we really share the feeling of living in that place, at that time.

Coup de Torchon left me cold, unmoved and uninvolved. All I could find to admire was the craftsmanship.

This movie gets you coming and going.

Jessica Lange plays Frances Farmer in a performance that is so driven, that contains so many different facets of a complex personality, that we feel she has an intuitive understanding of this tragic woman.