Like a series pilot, Stand and Deliver has a strong character, a promising situation and not a lot of story-it seems to be setting things up for future episodes.

Shoulders sloping, not quick on the uptake, utterly agog at the adult world of sex and high-powered business, Reinhold's character is a wonder to behold. And Fred Savage is completely inoffensive as the officious boy-man, which is quite an achievement for a child actor. [11 Mar 1988, p.A]

It's a wholly passive performance, and one that touches not at all on Pryor's special gifts. This man desperately needs a new agent.

A strangely powerful yet meandering film that takes a long time to make its point.

From its opening shot-of little girls with huge hairdos-Hairspray is a relentlessly silly, crude and hilarious lampoon of modes and mores in teenage America, 1962. But it's also more than that. By closing credits, it has made some provocative observations about the influence of rock music on race relations in America, about how the '50s became the '60s and about the volatility of fashion and politics. [26b Feb 1988, p.F]

Certainly, the elements for a better movie are here. The credits are dotted with multi-Oscar nominees. But not all are well used. What Frantic needs most is an infusion of chemistry. Somehow Polanski has failed to make these actors connect.

It's a rich, funny, bracing film, one of Boorman's finest.[06 Nov 1987, p.41]

Despite a few high-spirited sequences, School Daze succumbs to preachiness and choppiness. It's a movie with too much to say and not enough style to say it with. [12 Feb 1988, p.0]

Weathers turns out to be a disappointingly weak lead whose low-key likability doesn't make up for his lack of anger and drive-crucial attributes for any action hero. And Baxley is surprisingly stingy with his action sequences.

The movie's rhythm and scope are pure sitcom, but that keeps the vehicle running smoothly over sizable plotholes. [15 Feb 1988, p.7C]

Ironweed is more than a chance to watch two multimillion-dollar actors play bums. Each character has a particular story; each is given a dignity that seems honest in the context of a worldwide Depression in the late '30s, and at no time are we certain what the future holds in store for either character. [12 Feb 1988, p.A]

His first confrontation with Berenger allows Poitier to display the overwhelming, nearly palpable moral force that was his great strength as a performer, but the balance of the film makes very little use of his special skills. [12 Feb 1988, p.A]

Mingling a frank trashiness with unexpected ambition, Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow emerges as one of the more commanding horror movies of recent months.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is anything but light, though it very nearly is unbearable.

She`s Having a Baby wants to be everyone`s story, but its hollowness makes it no one`s.

If Godard's use of sound is as inventive as it was in his Dolby "Detective" of 1985, that's reason alone to check it out. [08 Apr 1988, p.B]

There's still enough hardcore Williams-when he's sitting by himself in his studio-to make Good Morning, Vietnam worthwhile, but the alarm bells are sounding. Heres another comic who wants to play Hamlet.

ROTLD II may be junk, but at least in the hands of director Ken Wiederhorn it's efficient, well-filmed junk. [18 Jan 1988, p.7C]

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.