The film is full of carefully balanced moral proclamations, to the point where it begins to resemble an episode of "Nightline." [15 Jan 1988, p.B]

An original and insinuating black comedy from Winnipeg, Canada, where something very strange seems to be going on. The pastiche is nearly perfect, played with an utter sincerity that makes it impossible to tell just where the jokes are coming from.

Sold as a romance, but actually is one of the funniest pictures to come out in quite some time. [15 Jan 1988]

A hesitant, conservative approach that yields great elegance and a rhythm that carries the viewer along. Yet the film is haunted by a sense of opportunities not taken, of an artist deliberately reining in his artistry. [9 Dec 1987, p.2]

Depending on the speed of your gag reflex, "+batteries not included" is either a 21st Century "Lassie" or the worst piece of smarm to come along since "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."

Broadcast News is the crispest, classiest entertainment; it has what Hollywood has been missing. [16 Dec 1987, p.8]

Russell offers a relatively restrained, Gary Cooper-ish performance, though most of the laughs are left to the four kids-Brian Price, Jared Rushton, Jamie Wild and Jeffrey Wiseman-who crack wise with arch sitcom precociousness. And Hawn, batting her baby blues, does make you want to hug her-at times very tightly, right around the throat.

The world of Wall Street is that of a lush soap opera-"Dynasty" with a moral. It gets the barn burning, all right, but it has no impact. [11 Dec 1987, p.A]

A comedy with a curious tone of depressive whimsy. It manages, somehow, to be both aggressively cute and oppressively sordid. [11 Dec 1987, p.G]

The film is sober, serious-minded and paced like a funeral march.

By imitating the gestures and outlines of a vanished cinema, Berri can only provide a cold simulation. The surface is smooth and refined; the insides aren't there. [23 Dec 1987, p.A]

What a relief! John Hughes has decided to quit being the patron saint of sniveling teens and to turn his sympathetic gaze on sniveling adults.

Leonard Nimoy, in unTrekked territory as director of his first comedy, displays a sure sense of pace. His free-wheeling prologue and epilogue set a spontaneous, stylish tone that carries over into the body of this helium-filled entertainment.

Given the grosses of the original, a sequel to Teen Wolf was inevitable-and it was inevitable, too, that the sequel would lose the quality of innocence and unconscious artfulness that made the first film work. The material has been broken down, analyzed and reassembled with scientific precision; what was instinctive in the original has become self-conscious and calculated in the followup, and the spirit is gone.

Prince is an exciting entertainer, an equal opportunity employer-especially when it comes to talented women-and his act is a physical tour de force. It's the next best thing to attending one of his concerts and sitting near the stage. [20 Nov 1987, p.A]

Dawson, though, burrows into his role with all the zeal of a perennial second banana recognizing the opportunity of a lifetime. It's the one naturalistic performance in this cartoonish film, carrying with it the implicit authority of years of firsthand experience shaped, perhaps, by some late-night introspection. [13 Nov 1987, p.B]

The stirring, somewhat too earnest story of a white newspaper editor in racist South Africa who rallied to defend black activist Steve Biko, who was beaten to death in jail in 1977. The film is weighted to the story of the editor (Kevin Kline)-his education about Biko, his subsequent determination to spread the word of the widespread bigotry in South Africa and his adventure story of his family fleeing their native land before they were all jailed for treason. Directed by Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) in the same noble, yet effective manner. [06 Nov 1987, p.41]

It's a thoroughly professional job, but even in making a feature film, Giraldi still seems to be working to please a client. He shoots the script, supplying just enough style to make it stand up but not enough to make it move.

Despite the obvious talents of the stars-McCarthy is especially arresting-there is an empty feeling that we're taking a tour of a garish ghetto without a tour guide. [6 Nov 1987, p.55]

The derivative nature of it all wouldn't be so bad if the script and acting weren't so plain and unenticing, while the adventure and the plot-the future is dominated by tyrranical baddies whom Swayze and the ranchers valiantly battle-are slow-moving and mostly empty.

Its message is that if we get to know each other, everything will be okay. Admirable, that. But the way in which it is delivered is so hampered by stereotypes and lathered in cute that one is never able to trust its intentions or swallow its story. [06 Nov 1987, p.56C]

Sammy and Rosie is a writer's film, with all the pluses and minuses that go with that status. The language is marvelously clear and the structure exquisitely wrought; on the other hand, the film lacks the sense of discovery and spontaneity a more creative director might have brought to it.

The film is violent and a little gross in one or two scenes, but there is an intelligence in its writing by Bob Hunt and direction by Jack Sholder that makes everything worthwhile. [30 Oct 1987, p.41C]

Prince of Darkness is a real tour de force, and a welcome return.

Sweeney, however, gives a better account of himself than Sheen in his role. [23 Oct 1987, p.A]

Suspect smothers in misapplied seriousness-it's the thriller as civics lesson. [23 Oct 1987, p.A]

O'Rourke acts way over the top; Dunaway is more effective because she seems more desperate. Both characters are the kind of people who want to be left alone. That's what you may feel like after you spend a few minutes with them in one long brawl after one long argument after one long soliloquy.

Save for a questionable ending, it's one of the year's best films. [16 Oct 1987, p.A-N]

A director can get away with stick-figure characterizations in a 30-minute television show, but here it looks like he got Siemaszko to assume a browbeaten expression and Tyson to do his best imitation of a Neanderthal, then told them to "freeze" for the duration of the project. That may be filming, but it's not directing.

Berenger and Rogers look right and move right, but there is no spark behind the emotions they dutifully mime. Shading is something the director reserves for inanimate objects: He makes things come alive and turns people flat.

Shyer's direction of actors rises instantly to a level of cartoonish hysteria and descends only for occasional wet bursts of sentimentality. But as an exercise in ideological persuasion it works appallingly well, playing on deep-seated guilts and insecurities with a sureness of touch that may make it a hit with the audience it caricatures.

Bigelow's is a synthetic talent, in the good sense of the word: She draws together a rich, imaginative range of cultural references (the film noir, the Western, the horror movie, the love story) and narrative styles (the lyrical, the expressionist, the action-based, the psychological), making something new out of the traces of the old. [2 Oct 1987, p.A]

Mastrantonio, though capable throughout, is never provided with the spark that might ignite her subtle fire. Hulce is firmly the center of events, but, like the dancing habits he displays in flashback, he bounces around this movie like an pinball out of control. [6 Nov 1987, p.48]

Like Father Like Son has the cheap, florid look of a rejected television pilot, and the same air of anything-for-a-laugh desperation. [02 Oct 1987, p.J]

The Belly of an Architect is less a movie than a filmed script--it lacks the sense of surprise and discovery of a world freshly unfolding before the camera that makes the cinema come alive--but it remains an intelligent, provocative effort. [14 May 1987, p.7N]

The Princess Bride wants to be sweet and warm, but it doesn't want to take the chance of seeming uncool -- and that is an attitude far, far removed from innocence. [9 Oct 1987]

A lot of nostalgia movies are so in love with their period details that they squander plot and character time on lingering shots of antique cars and storefronts. They wear their vintage with the self-conscious smirk of a 40-year-old stepping out in her prom dress. It's a hoot, of course, but it doesn't guarantee a good time. [25 Sep 1987, p.L]

Lyne indulges in baroque touches-he is fond of open-grate elevators and water, be it rain or from faucets-but mostly he tells the story in well- tailored vignettes that range from horrifying to humorous. [21 Sep 1987, p.5]

Though overexplicit and underdeveloped, Clive Barker`s Hellraiser is a horror film with enough personality and ambition to rise slightly above the run of the genre.

The charm of the film (and it does have an effective degree) ultimately seems as synthetic as Jack's. Perhaps the real pickup artist of the title is Toback himself, hiding behind a winning smile as he attempts, for the first time in his career, to hustle the audience.

Rarely has a comedy been so empty of laughs. If this film makes any money, it all should go to the person who thought up the title. [18 Sept 1987, p.A]

It's basically an anger film, a catharsis for problems we haven't learned to solve. As that, it does its job well, with humor and surprising grace. [18 Sep 1987, p.18]

The Fourth Protocol was a great in-flight read, and it will probably be a great in-flight movie, too-though in a theater it looks a little pale and overextended. [28 Aug 1987, p.FC]

With its modest, no-nonsense approach, Hamburger Hill seems, curiously, more like the first film in a cycle than a late entry. After the baroque extravagance of the Vietnam films that have come before it, the movie runs a good chance of being overlooked. But it's an intelligent, craftsmanlike job, with a power of its own; it merits recognition. [28 Aug 1987, p.AC]

John Sayles has directed an authentic looking and sounding film, featuring cinematography by the great Haskell Wexler. [02 Oct 1987, p.A]

For the most part, the humor in House II is mild and conventional, and the suspense sequences never amount to much, thanks largely to the film's failure to play by any identifiable rules. In a film in which reality can be bent and rebent, following the director's whim of the moment, it is nearly impossible to establish any real sense of danger. Menace requires integrity, and "House II" doesn't have it.

A shapely film, considered and concise. And if its rhetorical slickness eventually covers up its emotional core, that slickness has a pleasure all its own. [21 August 1987]

Most disappointing are the seven 'Kids' themselves, played by midgets wearing elaborate headpieces. Their behavior is every bit as gross as their reputations: Valerie Vomit uses her digestive instability to win a fistfight; Windy Winston's chief weapon is flatulance; Nat Nerd graphically wets his pants. [24 Aug 1987, p.5]

The film's strength is director Jim McBride's seemingly easy way of presenting us with a New Orleans that is more malevolent and intoxicating than the tourist trap that some think it to be.

Moving away from the gag-based comedy of his films with Chong, Marin has discovered a richer humor of character and circumstance, and although old habits surface long enough to permit unfortunate lapses in continuity and consistency, he proves surprisingly adept at his new mode. [24 Aug 1987, p.C5]

No Way Out emerges, paradoxically, as a film that is better than it has to be and not as good as it ought to be, but there is skill here, as well as an admirable willingness to try something new.

Though it looks bright and the young actors have a couple of sweet moments, the picture is almost unremittingly punishing, hammering home its "be yourself" message with all the gentle persuasiveness of a Marine drill sergeant.

Crass but imponderable, bizarrely mixing glowingly back-lit sentimentality with stomach-churning violence and juvenile sex jokes.

Aimed squarely at adolescents in subconscious search of strong father figures, most of the movie is dull and familiar. [18 Aug 1987, p.C]

Everyone knows how the battles will turn out. It's what's between them that raises Masters Of The Universe ever so slightly above the mediocre.

It's a light, slight premise that seems more suited to a Saturday Night Live sketch than a full-length movie, but it plays pleasantly enough in its video incarnation, where modesty sometimes can be a virtue.

Who's That Girl? is sunny and harmless. Perhaps it's indicative that feminist hostility is taking a milder turn. Or perhaps the genre has gone Hollywood. [09 Aug 1987, p.6C]

It's a dream of a movie, if only in the literal sense. The film means well; so it seems churlish to mention its total absence of originality. Care Bears poaches shamelessly on everything from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Androcles and the Lion," but its greatest debt is to Lewis Carroll, whose engagingly warped mind would surely recoil at this confection. [07 Aug 1987, p.Q]

The surprising emotional amplitude of Stakeout, its generosity and conviction, proves that it's still possible to achieve something of value within the tight formulas of commercial filmmaking. It needn't all be "Cobra" and "Lethal Weapon"--not as long as directors like John Badham can find room to move. [5 Aug 1987, p.C3]

Schumacher's work in The Lost Boys consists of turning undertones into overtones--of taking the latent, the implied and the mysterious, and turning them into the loud and the obvious. He takes a story and turns it into a bunch of scenes, each of which contains its own payoff and none of which seems to draw on what has come before. And in these days of concept films, a story is a terrible thing to waste. [31 Jul 1987, p.D]

In The Living Daylights, Dalton establishes his claim to the role; in the films that will follow, he'll have the chance to dig deeper.

Superman IV is a pathetic appendage to the series, a dull, shoddy film that makes the minimal 1950s TV series seem rife with production values by comparison. [27 July 1987, p.10C]

As played by the smooth-faced, cheerful Lou Diamond Phillips, there seems to be something almost supernatural about the young man of La Bamba. He's a chosen one, and his rise to the top will be swift and smooth. If only he could shake those nightmares about a crashing plane . . . . [24 July 1987, p.A]

It has a lack of ambition and energy that is almost total: It's the most this movie can do to roll over and ask for a little more lotion on its back. [22 July 1987]

Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop is a stylish piece of work that leaves a sour aftertaste. [17 Jul 1987]

Jaws is looking a bit long in the tooth these days. As the venerable series (b. 1975) sets off on its fourth paddle around the pool, Jaws the Revenge is definitely dragging its tail fins. Give a poor fish a break.

Like "My Beautiful Laundrette," "Rita, Sue and Bob, Too" imagines an untraditional romantic relationship, outside the bounds of monogamy and exclusive heterosexuality, as the only effective alternative to a social structure that has reached the end of the line. [02 Oct 1987, p.A]

For most of its length, Revenge of the Nerds II is pleasantly stupid summer fun, though it does have a nasty way of turning inspirational on you.

Adventures in Babysitting not only panders to expectations but also attempts to exploit fears and prejudices. [03 July 1987, p.A]

There is more than enough energy here to sustain the film over its two-hour course. [3 July 1987, p.AC]

The film has undeniable power, but it's an unusual and unsettling power, a product of a collision between red-hot material and the cool serenity with which Kubrick observes and accepts it. [26 June 1987]

If the movie has a weakness, it's an over-reliance on Bond-style car chases and mass action scenes, which take away from the much richer and more original character comedy. But Mankiewicz's basic instincts seem admirable. He knows that a movie begins with people, and that`s a very good start.

Brooks' own timing as a director doesn't seem up to its usual snuff. Light-years stretch out between the set-up of a gag and its payoff, and for a director who has always depended on the quantity of his jokes rather than the quality, the gap is fatal. When a character is introduced as "Pizza the Hut," and then shown as a melting mass of mozzarella and tomato sauce, the result is to turn a fairly clever pun into something thuddingly obvious and vaguely nauseating. [24 Jun 1987, p.3]

A romantic comedy of grace, buoyancy and surprising emotional depth, filled with civilized pleasures.

It's difficult to see, too, what exactly all of this has to do with the twilight of the '60s. With his frequent sentimental allusions to the end of an era, Robinson seems to be grasping for a profundity that his anecdotal reminiscences don't merit or really need. Marwood, the film implies, will leave this life behind and go on to great things, while Withnail will be mired in it forever, a forgotten Falstaff to Marwood's striding Prince Hal. Self- dramatization is one thing; self-Shakespearization is something else. [10 July 1987, p.C]

There's really nothing wrong with the movie; it delivers exactly what Arnold's audience wants, but I'm not part of that crowd. I'm tired of jungle fights and creatures with weird fangs. [12 June 1987, p.A]

The Witches of Eastwick is filmmaking of a very high order; it's also a great time at the movies.

The movie was attractively filmed by John Schlesinger, but the subject matter is stultifying and not the least bit spooky. [12 Jun 1987, p.A]

It isn't hard to take, but Harry and the Hendersons seems a bit familiar.

It's also likely that audiences other than the very young will find the action too restricted and too repetitive. It's far too modest and leisurely a film for children who have been exposed to MTV. Still, there is a charm in Camp's relaxed, low-tech approach; his is a cottage industry that merits a degree of respect and support. [19 June 1987, p.G]

The Stepfather is a nearly perfect work of popular entertainment. A thriller about a psychopathic killer, it is absolutely terrifying. At the same time it is a highly personal work, the expression of a gifted individual. [27 Feb 1987, p.A]

Ethics aside, the filmmaking by DePalma is stylish and alternates between shocking surprise and hold-your-breath quiet.

Dolls leaves no cliche unmined, with the result that every scary moment is its own comic relief. [27 Mar 1987, p.L]

Most of the problem with this movie is that Ernest is too much of a cartoon to carry such exposure, particularly since he hogs most of the scenes. The other characters, even the children, behave like cardboard props.

It is, in fact, Itami's consistent, subtle intimation of mortality that grants Tampopo a resonance beyond simple satire. [11 Sep 1987, p.A]

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Eddie Murphy has just paid himself a heartfelt compliment. Cut for cut, his Beverly Hills Cop II is almost a perfect match for the wildly successful "Beverly Hills Cop I," with only the crimes and the shticks changed to protect fans of the original. It could have been written by a witty computer. That's not all bad, given the quality of the model. [20 May 1987, p.C13]

Ishtar is a good movie, but you can't help but wonder if, lurking somewhere in those cans of outtakes, there isn't a great movie, too. [15 May 1987]

This is good-natured terror, the sort that can take time at the height of action for a quick joke. [18 May 1987, p.3C]

Based on a true story, the movie has a hypnotic, documentary like appeal despite outlandish performances by Crispin Glover as the ringleader of the kids and Dennis Hopper as a wacked-out former hippie who offers them shelter. River's Edge is challenging to watch if only because it doesn't lecture. It simply presents these young people as wandering, stoned souls; shows a few of them grappling with moral responsibility, and allows the rest to fail. As we leave the theater, we can't help but wonder how common their behavior may be.

It's a good film, sturdily and somberly made, but it never catches fire.

To call this picture "Hot Pursuit" is false advertising; "Lethargic Pursuit" would be more accurate. [22 May 1987, p.A]

Solemn, inchoate and close to complete enervation, Francis Coppola`s ”Gardens of Stone” seems less a movie than a depressive symptom–a mass of feelings that Coppola has been unable to transform into art.

The film's main fare is three Stephen King horror stories, presented as comic books come to life. Stringing them together are scenes about an all- American youngster, a Creepshow comics fan who outwits the neighborhood bullies with his mail-order Venus flytraps. The Creep, who delivers the comics, acts as host for this anthology. It's a complicated framing device, but it puts the film squarely in the camp of kids' movies. [07 May 1987, p.3C]

It has a charming actor named Scott James as Joe's buddy, Curtis Jackson. And it still has smartly produced scenes of black-clad ninja performing sleights of hand, foot, spear, dart, knife, chain and scimitar. What it doesn't have is a shred of originality. [07 May 1987, p.13A]

It's an open, closely observed and nicely detailed film that attains an authenticity beyond the standard social worker formulas. [5 June 1987, p.B]

The film leaves a sense of entrapment and despair. Its characters are caught in a shrinking world that leaves no room for notions as grand as "good" and "evil," but only a sordid, creeping malignancy that levels everything in its path. [24 Apr 1987, p.AC]

The drama is predictable, and the confrontations lack rational dialogue. In other words, this is just of the sort of movie that a 9-year-old would probably enjoy. [1 May 1987, p.A]

The Secret of My Success is crushingly bland. Bland, yes, but somewhat chilling, too--particularly in the way Ross and his screenwriters (Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr. and A.J. Carothers) zero in on their teenage target audience by indulging in the grubbiest of grubby fantasies.