In a film which can't seem to decide whether it's comedy or drama, folksy or sinister, every scene is played for ambivalence. The result is a definite maybe. [23 Sep 1988, p.L]

In "Crossing Delancey," veteran independent filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver returns to the Jewish milieu of her early hit "Hester Street." This time, however, she turns ethnic drama into romantic comedy. [16 Sep 1988, p.A]

A gripping and original piece of work, itself sure to be remembered as one of the finest films of the year.

A John Hughes-ish teen drama unaccountably complicated by politics and method acting.

The ensemble performances are of such a uniformly high caliber that our interest in the story never wavers.

It is an intriguing subject, though so far all that Morris has brought to it is a combination of the morbid and the cruel; he needs to develop some sympathy, too. [16 Sept 1988]

It's true that there has been a shocking dearth of talking-horse pictures lately, but even so, Hot to Trot has few pleasures to offer.

It's a movie of a thousand pleasures - of glinting insights and sly twists. [19 Aug 1988]

Directed by the Finnish-born Renny Harlin, it's a deft, fluid piece that rushes from one surrealist epiphany to the next, and along the way displays a craft and imagination far above the norms for the genre.

The late '40s world Coppola has put together for Tucker is an extremely stylized one: Vittorio Storaro's cinematography has the bright, hard, almost lacquered look of old Technicolor; Dean Tavoularis' sets, built with slanting floors and surfaces, create an imaginary, compacted space in which actors and objects seem to be thrusting out toward the camera; and the transitions between scenes, based on visual rhymes and elaborate wipes, effectively remove the movie from the orderly flow of normal film time. [12 Aug 1988]

Dafoe manages to draw us into the mystery, anguish and joy of the holy life. This is anything but another one of those boring biblical costume epics. There is genuine challenge and hope in this movie. [12 Aug 1988, p.A]

Billy's burning, self-destructive energy is about all Young Guns has going for it-the suicidal kicks James Dean found in chickie races are here transposed to six-gun shoot-outs, filmed in a slow-motion process that strives vainly to evoke Sam Peckinpah. [12 Aug 1988, p.H]

This is what happens when someone doesn't make a sequel to a hit movie fast enough. Someone else, with a lot of brass, makes a ripoff that is even less satisfying. [19 Aug 1988, p.A]

Contains some gaspingly funny moments. [29 July 1988, Friday, p.A]

Tom Cruise does with bartending pretty much what he did with a pool cue in "The Color of Money." In other words, he shows skill at a con game while being less successful with the woman in his life. [29 Jul 1988, p.A]

One of Romero's most complex and challenging creations. The film shifts effortlessly between playfulness and outrage, between a distanced irony and an awful, immediate horror.

It`s shoddy, lazy and numbingly stupid.

Graciously filmed by Martin Brest and imaginatively performed by Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, the tired concept yields a steady stream of little discoveries and surprising insights that add up to some uncommonly rich comedy. [20 July 1988]

Has everything but a personality. [15 July 1988, Friday, p.A]

Where the previous sequels have been mostly dour gun blasts, The Dead Pool is a thriller with wit and humor and tension. [15 Jul 1988, p.A]

Coscarelli has captured the texture of a disjointed, half-remembered nightmare, full of figures and events that seem to have some symbolic value, but which have lost their precise meaning in the process of floating up from the subconscious.

Beeman and Tolkin drain every trace of real life friction from the story line, pumping it up instead with the standard Hughes synthetics: kids who are preternaturally smart, sophisticated and poised (Haim's best friend, played by Corey Feldman, has a swagger that suggests Robert Mitchum at his cockiest); adults who are monstrous, cretinous and ultimately pathetic. [07 July 1988, p.3C]

It's a sweet, oft-told story, and Murphy and Hall add a number of very sharp supporting roles-hidden by makeup-to add spice to the general level of gentleness. [1 Jul 1988, p.A]

Brilliantly funny, bracingly smart and surprisingly moving. [22 June 1988]

The world of his films may be violent, but Hill's vision is a delicate, subtle one-of individuals packing away the tiny bit of meaning and emotion life has granted them, and fighting to protect it at all costs. It's not a sentiment that can survive in cartoons; that it emerges at all in Red Heat is a tribute to Hill's still great talent. [17 Jun 1988, p.A]

Even for John Hughes, who writes movies in less time than most people write postcards, The Great Outdoors seems unusually slapdash.

There are few marquees that could contain the title The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: the Metal Years, but Penelope Spheeris' documentary on the heavy metal bands of rock 'n' roll turns out to be much more graceful than its name. [05 Aug 1988, p.B]

Successfully avoids the grandiose mythmaking that has been the bane of the baseball movie from ''Pride of the Yankees'' to ''The Natural.'' Rather than a vapid national epic, it is a warm, droll, deftly cracked romantic comedy. [15 June 1988]