A surprisingly well-made action movie with a definite directorial personality. [03 Sep 1986, p.7C]

A shockingly bad film because of its total misuse of two talented performers, Sean Penn and Madonna. [5 Sept 1986, p.A]

Manhunter is full of useful tips on interior decoration, but a movie it's not. [15 Aug 1986, p.JC]

A film of honorable ambitions severely compromised by a creeping show-biz phoniness.

The performers never find the right spin on the dialogue, and DeSimone never finds the right rhythm in his pacing, to make these deliberate cliches take off into comedy. A stodgy literalness in DeSimone`s approach suffocates the joke.

Fawcett isn`t half bad--she works hard and doesn`t commit any egregious technical faults--but she doesn`t have the resources to give her slimly written character a sufficiently commanding inner life, and it`s difficult to get beyond her sunny, fashion-model good looks. It`s another sad case of the clown who wanted to play Hamlet.

David Cronenberg's The Fly is that absolute rarity of the '80s: a film that is at once a pure, personal expression and a superbly successful commercial enterprise. [15 Aug 1986]

Armed and Dangerous is an extremely violent, often mean-spirited comedy in which most of the gags depend on the absurdly excessive use of force. Jokes like these are designed to appeal to adolescent power fantasies, and while kids may love them, adults are likely to be bored by their repetitiousness and senselessness.

The surreal is appropriate to a story based on fantasy, but the unevenness in tone here makes watching ''The Boy Who Could Fly'' a little like hitting airpockets in a puddlejumper.

No one ever said good taste was a requirement for good box office, particularly when the commodity in question is a summer teen flick, but it does help to have appealing characters in the leading roles and a script with at least the wit of a failing TV sitcom.

Featuring an all-black cast, this little film is a revelation, primarily because it provides black faces with the most natural dialogue they've had in years. She`s Gotta Have It is neither a crime story nor a heavy message movie, and the conversations in it are therefore free of the shackles of most minority-oriented stories.

Ted Danson ("Cheers") is made for the small screen; blown up he looks empty. And his co-conspirator, played by comedian Howie Mandel in his film debut, isn't much better in a role that obviously was designed to let him do his sound-effects-filled comedy act whether the story warrants it or not. The film's many chases will wear you out in short order, save for one funny speeded-up sight gag. [15 Aug 1986, p.A]

The story has no center; the duck is not likable, and the costly, overwrought, laser-filled special effects that conclude the movie are less impressive than a sparkler on a birthday cake.

The film doesn't have the pace or the scale of Back to the Future, but it does have the same sweet moment when a child declares his love for his parents because he's seen them in a different light. Joey Cramer is quite winning as David.

Jason Lives is not a good movie. It is as predictable as a City Council vote in the Daley era; a lamely acted film filled with the most contrived slaughter and utterly lacking in suspense. [4 Aug 1986, p.C5]

Crummy video-store flick. [28 Dec 1990, p.S2]

Professionalism is both Nothing in Common's greatest strength and its greatest limitation. It's a very finely crafted piece, a product of hard work and careful consideration, yet nothing breaks through the craft--there's no personal drive to it.

A mess of a movie, a no chills nightmare about what happens to a group of rubes at a Carolina truck stop when the machines go nuts. [29 July 1986, p.3]

Ephron delivered an incredibly flimsy script based on her novel about her former husband's repeated infidelity during their marriage and her pregnancies. Nicholson isn't given a character to play. He just lumbers onto the screen and cheats off-camera.

Out of Bounds may be, like a comic book, pulp entertainment, but it's artfully done pulp--a pictorial page-turner whose pages turn themselves. [25 July 1986, p.A]

For years now Wilder has been trying to imitate the success of his mentor, director Mel Brooks. But he has repeatedly failed. That's why the biggest mystery in "Haunted Honeymoon" is why anyone would still give Wilder money to make a picture.

Toward the end, the film resorts to placing a young girl in jeopardy in a pathetic attempt to pander to who knows what audience. Some people have praised the technical excellence of Aliens. Well, the Eiffel Tower is technically impressive, but I wouldn`t want to watch it fall apart on people for two hours.

Pirates is tedious round after tedious round of mutiny and rescue. Screen people are hanged and stabbed and garroted with great care, but there's nothing to put the audience out of its misery. [22 July 1986, p.5C]

Throughout, Williams seems hampered, hand-tied and almost mind-controlled, as if afraid of letting his hyperkinetic style take off. That`s too bad, because without it, Club Paradise is amiable, amusing and effortless, words that are good news when the subject is bittersweet comedy and disaster when the intention was clearly slapstick.

Though the film does contain a few minutes of patented Carpenter camera magic, it is unable to sustain either story or character. For all its flash and color, it is a dull film--an artless dig in the Spielberg garden. [02 July 1986, p.C3]

This is the movie "St. Elmo's Fire" wanted to be and missed by a mile.

The real trouble with Psycho III is that it's one sequel too many. Norman and his Gothic manse have already been drained of creative resources. [03 July 1986, p.A]

What it all comes down to is the basic question: Is this just a movie for children? Not really. It's more a movie for the childlike--of any age. [02 July 1986, p.3C]