A pleasing but overlong version of the Rocky story told through the character of a put-upon young high school student who learns karate from an old Japanese master to vanquish the local school bullies. There is no reason this simple story should run 2 hours and 10 minutes. Such a running time strains the good will generated by a cast full of likable performances. [22 June 1984, p.12]

A horror-comedy about cute little Christmas toy/pets who turn into murderous monsters wreaking havoc on a Norman Rockwellian town. There's a moral there someplace.

Ghostbusters is a hoot. It's Murray's picture, and in a triumph of mind over matter, he blows away the film's boring special effects with his one-liners. Spotting a lusty, totally transformed, fire-breathing Slgourney Weaver, whose body has been overtaken by a spirit, Murray walks past her saying, "That's a new look for you, isn't it?" Thank you, Bill. And don't get outta here, you knucklehead. We like you in this kind of movie.

A bunch of scattered laughs. [22 June 1984, p.5-12]

An upbeat, thoroughly entertaining street film about an entertainment revolution in the depressed South Bronx, featuring break dancing, graffiti art and record mixing. A black and Puerto Rican version of Saturday Night Fever. [08 June 1984, p.12]

The Natural is a fairy tale from start to finish, full of wildly implausible scenes that win over our emotions because, frankly, that's the way we'd like life to be. Being a baseball fan involves repeatedly experiencing exquisite pain and exquisite joy. Well, there's a lot of both in The Natural.

The best teenage comedy since last year's "Risky Business."

A vital film about a bunch of youngsters who view break-dancing as a way out of their dead end lifestyle. For what is essentially a musical exploitation film, Breakin' is surprisingly filled with more human moments and dance scenes than violence or sexuality. [08 June 1984, p.12]

A thoroughly enjoyable Raiders of the Lost Ark inspired adventure film, set in the present and starring Michael Douglas as an American hustler in Columbia who helps uptight romance novelist Kathleen Turner search for buried treasure. [22 June 1984, p.12]

This comedy-romance about a mermaid who falls in love with a man does have one thing going for it, the lithe shape and pleasant underwater smile of actress Daryl Hannah. Otherwise, it's a desperately unfunny film that wastes the talents of SCTV favorites John Candy and Eugene Levy. [08 June 1984, p.12]

Deserves an encore anyway for its invaluable contributions to the vocabulary of rock'n' roll and pop culture.

This richly remembered tale of Christmas past, with writer Jean Shepherd recalling the days when a Red Ryder BB gun really meant something, is already something of a Christmas perennial.

You know the drill: Seven gates of hell. The walking dead. Blood and spurting eyeballs. Strictly for horror mavens hungry for kitsch. [03 Jul 1998]

Testament does manage to convey in its surprisingly quiet and non-theatrical way the very point that its creators surely wanted to make: that human stupidity can destroy the world, but it cannot erase human dignity. [08 Nov 1983]

The Mirror may not be the easiest place to start your Tarkovsky education, but its sublime images (including a memorable shot of a burning barn in the rain), are sure to whet your appetite for more. [26 May 2000, p.M]

There are two, maybe three, good gags in National Lampoon's Vacation, which otherwise is poorly paced, sloppily put together, and full of inept, ill-conceived performances.

Sniggery sex, adolescent male-bonding, casual drug use, the agonies of growing up, mistrust [to put it mildly] of the adult world, a yearning for material success and a corresponding distaste for anything that smacks of the "committed" 1960s - it's all here, supporting a plot so lunatic that it could have been assembled only in the backwards fashion outlined above. [22 July 1983, p.3-3]

A typically weak sequel that has no legitimate artistic reason for being. [July 22, 1983]

A mixed bag of four short films done in the style of famous '60s TV show. Two work; two don't. [July 22, 1983]

An amateurish sequel to one of the most repulsive movies in years, a teenage sex comedy with horrific caricatures of women. This time the nudity is diminished, but in its place are tasteless high jinks iwth the Klu Klux Klan [22 July 1983, p.3-10]

It's the funniest new movie on town. [July 22, 1983]

A thoroughly entertaining thriller about a teenage video game freak who almost starts World War III. A clever warning against nuclear weapons and too much reliance on computers. Only a preachy scientist hurts a fine entertainment. [22 July 1983, p.3-10]

But with 'Jedi,' listen to the creaking, huge metal door that opens and leads the androids C-3PO and R2-D2 to the cave of Jabba the Hutt, where, at the beginning of the film, good-guy space pilot Han Solo is frozen in a carbonite mold like some kind of nouvelle cuisine side dish. It will remind old-time radio listeners of the creaking door of the 'Inner Sanctum' show, and it serves the same purpose. Both are doorways to adventure...And before this portion of the 'Star Wars' saga is history, let us take time to praise the principal performers.

John Badham's exciting thriller about an L.A. detective (Roy Scheider) who battles against the government creeps who have created a monstrous helicopter to be used for 1984-style crowd control. Great action in a David-versus-Goliath story. [22 July 1983, p.10]

The dance sequences are sexy and energetic, more than compensating for a love relationship in the film that is thoroughly illogical and wooden. [22 July 1983]

This overrated backstage TV nostalgia comedy, set in 1954, does boast standout performances by Peter O'Toole and Joseph Bologna as characters modeled on Erroll Flynn and Sid Caesar. [07 Nov 1997]

Carelessly digressive and stylistically muddled. [22 Mar 2016, p.C3]

Most important, several elements -- the film's tough, new ending; a sly, fleeting dissolve of a unicorn, not in the original; and a brilliant, trompe d'oeil flicker of life in a shot of a still photograph -- bring Deckard's existential dilemma into focus. [11 Sept 1992]