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]

It's a movie that doesn't have an original thought in its head, and seems to like it that way.

Poltergeist at this point is a brand name without a distinctive product to sell-no vivid characters, no unique situations, no look or meaning of its own.

It's too smoothly controlled to be funny, which is Big Business's problem as a whole. [10 Jun 1988, p.A]

Big moves with polish and assurance. It's too soon to tell whether Marshall has anything of her own to say, but Big is proof that she can handle the Hollywood machine, and that is no small thing.

Chevy Chase doesn't seem to have enough to do in "Funny Farm." He's a physical actor whose appeal can turn flat if he spends too much camera time sitting at a typewriter or working on his love relationship. Smith, as Elizabeth, is gorgeous and competent, but she lacks the comic verve of Beverly d'Angelo, Chase's memorable co-star in the National Lampoon series. This is a vehicle that does a lot for its supporting character actors and almost nothing for its stars. [3 June 1988, p.B]

This is a comic book movie, its outcome as predictable as it is satisfying, which is part of its charm. [25 May 1988, p.7]

It's comfortable and Disneyfied and, with shots of the splendid Australian wilderness filling the long valleys between dramatic peaks, probably the safest way to travel.

Directed by Ron Howard and produced by George Lucas, the film seems to mark the final paroxysm of a genre-the big-budget fantasy-adventure-that dominated American filmmaking for a decade but has recently been weakened by changing tastes, altered economics and sheer exhaustion. It's less a movie than a collection of morbid symptoms: a labored, arrhythmic narrative; a pathetic dependency on recycled themes and borrowed images; a sour, self-mocking humor that suggests the end is near. [20 May 1988, p.2]

The result is a weak "Carrie" versus Jason finale after Jason has impaled about eight young people, mostly women. The filmmakers have mastered the blood but not the tedium of all of the predictable killings. Nor have they eliminated the "hate-women" subtext to the entire series of films. [20 May 1988, p.A]

The fight scenes are staged cleanly enough by Newt Arnold, a veteran assistant director (to Sam Peckinpah, among others) making his debut at the helm. But the contest format is hopelessly repetitive and inert, the characters would seem underdeveloped in a comic book, and the restricted setting ensures that the action will never develop any real scale or velocity. The Chinese may take it on the chin in Bloodsport, but their own movies are infinitely better.

Good, grungy fun.

Director Zalman King has literally created a bad B-movie here, photographing breasts, buttocks and bubbleheads. The film is erotic until its first coupling; that's when we realize these dullard characters might as well be mannequins. Two Moon Junction deserves a genre all its own: very soft-core porn. [6 May 1988, p.A]

Director Godfrey Reggio gives us some ordinary and a few spectacular shows of people doing hard work to the accompaniment of the boring music of composer Philip Glass. This film is not in the same league with its fine predecessor, "Koyaanisqatsi." [20 May 1988, p.A]

Much of the film`s charm resides in the fact that there is no reason for any of this to happen, except for the director`s sheer will that it be so.

The action sequences are sleek and strong enough, but the story that chains them together is too ambitious for its own good

LaLoggia clearly loves his chosen medium: He has a passion for filmmaking-for ferreting out unusual angles, for planning elaborate camera movements, for designing elaborate special effects-that sometimes leads him way over the top. Yet it's the extravagance of his gestures that gives Lady in White its character and imaginative force. [22 Apr 1988, p.A]

Even and assured, Colors may not descend to the sloppy, indulgent depths of ''Easy Rider'' and ''The Last Movie,'' but neither does it rise to the delirious, dangerous heights of those films. [15 Apr 1988]

For the record, this movie stars George Burns and Charlie Schlatter, and its one distinguishing feature is a consistent tastelessness, which still doesn't manage to make it much fun. [08 Apr 1988, p.H]

Save for the compelling oddity of seeing Michael J. Fox as a cocaine addict, this drama offers nothing special. [1 Apr 1988, p.A]

For all the film's popped eyeballs and severed limbs, Beetlejuice retains an innocence that makes the grotesque humor very appealing. Burton has captured the sweet ghoulishness of a 12-year-old pouring over horror comics, dreaming of the greatest Halloween costume ever invented. [30 Mar 1988]

Biloxi Blues also wants to be a confessional, coming-of-age memoir, but again, it works better around the edges than it does in its central conception.