Ghostbusters II doesn't seem to be pushing as hard as its predecessor, which of course makes it even more fun. There's an old-shoeishness to the proceedings; even Murray's owlish put-downs seem a little less snide-they're almost affectionate, if that's not too outrageous a word in this context. [16 Jun 1989, p.1]

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is as much a spiritual odyssey as a space adventure, and it's all the richer for it. It has high adventure, nifty special effects and much good humor, but it also has a wonderful resonance to it. [9 June 1989]

No Holds Barred gets no points for originality. It's written with the subtlety of a body-slam and directed with the finesse of a hammerlock. But the movie never takes itself seriously and director Tom Wright has fun with the wrestling montages.

Renegades, a shamelessly contrived, ultraviolent macho fantasy, stars Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips, who are too talented and too successful to be wasting themselves on such trash.

Pink Cadillac has a strong visual design and lots of juicy, self-confident acting. But it doesn’t transcend its star vehicle trappings or chemistry. The construction of the story is so soft, you get the impression that if the driver and navigator were replaced, the movie might turn rattletrap and fall apart.

You can't roll monstrous boulders straight at audiences any more and have a whole theater-full duck and gasp with fright--and pleasure. We may be plumb gasped out. And although Harrison Ford is still in top form and the movie is truly fun in patches, it's a genre on the wane. [24 May 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

The crushing assault that Road House delivers to fun at the movies is enough to send you crawling out of the theater on hands and knees, bloody and bowed. [19 May 1989, p.C1]

A sort of new-wave nuke film, “Miracle Mile” is intense, humorous and powerful. And, yeah, it’s also sometimes off the wall.

Brisk, ingenious and funny comedy that happily reunites Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. [12 May 1989, p.6]

While not especially distinctive, the film is pleasant and amusing. It has a brisk, well-turned-out quality that augurs well for Harris, the son of Richard Harris.

Earth Girls Are Easy may be a classic case of a director getting more out of his material than it really deserves. Temple has spectacular gifts for making musical movies. He is a witty formalist, a light-hearted virtuoso, and, like all the best movie-musical directors, he's able to create images that breathe in tempo with the songs or cut against them jaggedly, exhilaratingly.

This is the same dopey save-the-princess-and-kill-everybody revenge plot we always get. The Return of Swamp Thing is enough to drive you back to the comic book stand. Or even the swamp.

It's cruel, funny, knowing, never less than biting and occasionally brilliant. [05 May 1989]

Chocolat is a film of some subtlety. It has good, even memorable moments to it, and it’s beautiful looking. It is very, very, very French, which may or may not be your cup of chocolat. It is also a suffocatingly precious film, enough to try the patience of an oyster, and one that primly refuses to detonate the mounting numbers of erotic situations it sets up.

It's enjoyable, thanks not only to its charismatic duo, but also to the skilled comedy direction of Rod Daniel, whose strong sense of pacing is enhanced by Miles Goodman's driving but not overpowering score.

Switch witchcraft for werewolves, and the hackneyed plot of Teen Witch could easily be that of Teen Wolf or a dozen others like it.

The director has been able to do nothing with this wheezing script, one of the subplots of which involves Dempsey's dad believing that his son is gay. And the movie's moments of physical farce are mortifying...What makes "Loverboy"(rated PG-13 for sexual situations) such a pitiful waste is that Dempsey has so much potential charm.

It’s a low-budget production with major-league acting by Mary Steenburgen, Holly Hunter and Alfre Woodard. It’s not directed sharply enough; Thomas Schlamme is particularly weak on the fight scenes.

But there's something missing, something tentative and uncertain. In order to pull off a magic trick, you often have to distract the audience with smooth patter, clever detail or indirection. And this movie tries to play it so pure and unabashed that we can see right up its sleeves. [21 Apr 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]

Illusion and disillusionment entwine through the film like twin helixes, weaving a dreamy, free-form look at his life and legacy.

Gwynne is the anchoring presence as a classically dry, laconic New Englander who seems to know some terrible secret. Elliot Goldenthal has composed a helpfully ominous score, as moody as vintage Bernard Herrmann, and Peter Stein's cinematography is superbly varied, from the bright hues of a glossy magazine to the dark shadows of the charnel house. No question about it, Pet Sematary is a handsomely produced film.

They’ve made a sometimes funny, mostly media-referential movie without much real life; a high-tech, high-pro job that has a glamor-robot feel.

Ward directs his actors as adroitly as he has written for them, and the vulnerability that he allows his three stars to reveal is really what makes the movie work. No one, not even baseball fans, should go to Major League hoping for "Bull Durham's" sex, raunch and sophistication. But "Major League" has its own ingratiating charm.

A spare, smart, seductive piece of real movie making with (almost) every loophole covered, a superlative cast and enough tension to keep us all hyperventilating for hours.

So clearly derived from the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest that you might begin to wonder when Jack Nicholson will show up. The Dream Team isn't unusual, but it's funnier than, say, Twins or Fletch Lives. It can't really hit any classic highs, perhaps because it regards rebellion as cute and paranoia as a running gag. The jokes, to stick, need grittier, sawtooth edges.

Although director Albert Pyun brings out nothing but the worst in the mercifully brief recitations of dialogue, he does know how to stage and pile up effectively brutal action sequences till you feel as though you've been through four world wars in under 85 minutes. It's desensitizing violence in all its glory: You may cheer during the rousing slugfests, then hate yourself afterward. [07 Apr 1989, p.12]

A film of warmth, insight, humor and surprising originality… [It] isn't perfect, but when it's good, which is every moment John Cusack is on screen, it's a living joy. And when it's not-so-good--earthbound and not inventive enough--it s till almost single-handedly redeems the breed. [14 April 1989]

Unfortunately, director Michael Lehmann's point of view is swivel-mounted: He doesn't have the courage of his cynicism. [31 Mar 1989]

Long is an actress who can’t throw away a line--though this is one case where she should have thrown away the whole script. But she gets points for sheer, daffy energy and rampaging pulchritude.

Fletch Lives is the ultimate comedy of condescension, a movie with a hero whose every other line of dialogue is a snide wisecrack directed at a fool. In this meager sequel, as in its popular predecessor, Chevy Chase demolishes every easy target in sight with a quip of the tongue. Some of the lines are funny, but after a while you just want to smack him.

Leviathan is Alien under water. It's not nearly as sophisticated or as terrifying as the Ridley Scott film, but it looks good and moves fast. It's elementary fun with a couple of scary moments along the way.

Gilliam never aims down, his films zing in somewhere at the Mensa level of reference, but he seems confident that we will catch the wit of his visual quotations and so we do. Like a film making Catherine wheel, he throws off an immoderate art history display; he plunders past film styles with a free hand to make a point. [5 Mar 1989, p.23]

The talk and plot twists both have a flavorless, perfunctory quality.

This is comedy so insidious it could scarcely be less than diabolically inspired; to know these 84 minutes is to know an endless living death. [14 March 1989, p.C6]

Sweet-natured but hopelessly confused. [3 March 1989, p.6-10]

The problem with Lean on Me is a stripped-down script with no room left in it for complexities, and revved-up direction that makes it move anyway.

Blake Edwards’ Skin Deep has a couple of the funniest moments Edwards ever devised; it has John Ritter’s easy-to-take charm, but it ends up living up to its title far too closely.

The actors, many of whom are part of a loose Mike Leigh stock company, are miraculously deft at erasing that line between performing and being.

For a movie with so many flying feet, American Ninja 3 is amazingly short on kicks. [28 Feb 1989, p.2]

Bill and Ted differ from Spiccoli, their “stoner” predecessor, only in that there are no drug references here to account for their allegedly jocular lack of ambition or interest in education or self-improvement.

The movie sparkles with playful tension, bubbles with amiability. The plot is formula, unsurprising, but the film makers and cast seem to be enjoying themselves; their sheer ribald exhilaration becomes infectious.

Ruben’s stylistic devices, his high angle shots and his black-and-white recountings of courtroom testimony, become just so much cinematic corpse-rouging.

It is certainly elegant looking , but 15 minutes into the action the thrill is gone and director Bruce Beresford seems to have no clue as to how to find it.

In this pleasantly silly private-eye spoof, Crumb is a grand poseur, shamelessly self-important, slow on the uptake yet good of heart and not the complete fool he so often seems. Director Paul Flaherty brings to the film consistent good judgment and deftness.

Thompson has always had an evil sense of humor, and the movie repeatedly crosses the line between dramatizing a situation and exploiting it, exposing racism or moral rot and almost indulging in it. But the disturbance you feel in watching Kinjite doesn’t just come because it has a sordid subject, some bad scenes or a heavy cargo of shock and sleaze, but because it leaves us, much of the time, with no moral anchor.

Nick Nolte and Martin Short make a frequently hilarious odd couple, but the film itself is shamelessly sentimental and often slapdash.

Parents is all leftovers, despite the tasty little tidbits that Quaid and Hurt keep sporadically cooking up: Dad's spotless collars and loopy grin, Mom's brittle Cutex-lacquered claws. [27 Jan 1989, p.7]

There's a genuine attempt in Gleaming the Cube to deal with the impact the loss of a brother has upon a likable, footloose teen-ager. Unfortunately, the conventions of the action-adventure/youth-flick genres prevail. The result is an exploitation picture with a little something extra--lots of awesome skateboard wizardry, culminating in a speed-of-lightning chase sequence, in which skateboards are pitted against cars.

A dull, routine action-adventure in which the suspense is mechanical at best. Although there are a couple of gory moments, those expecting the jolts director Sean Cunningham brought to the original "Friday the 13th" are sure to be disappointed.

The January Man is nothing to seek out if you want airtight logic. What it offers is charm, blather, the dazzlement of writing and performance that wear thin well before the final, credulity-straining quarter.

Irresistibly funny… Just about the best holiday gift imaginable. [23 Dec 1988, Calendar, p.6-1]

Working Girl is the sparkling success that it is because of the sheer irresistibility of Melanie Griffith. [21 Dec 1988, Calendar, p.6-1]

This follow-up is faster and campier than its mostly somber predecessor, but the basic grim tenets of British horror author Clive Barker's supernatural worldview are still intact: a universe with a senseless hell but no heaven, without a god but with plenty of demons, without real good but oozing evil to spare.

As a transcription of Bogosian's theater piece, Talk Radio is tense, packed and crackling with life. As a dramatic investigation into Alan Berg and his murder, it's shallow and dubious. But as a synthesis of those two disjointed halves into a volatile whole--a comic-paranoid nightmare about media success, media myths, prejudice and the pathological relationship between performers and their audience--the film is an often dazzling success. Bogosian and the cast are bravura performers; Stone a director with guts and talent.

The most shamelessly manipulative movie since they shot the dog in "The Biscuit Eater."

Somehow, Hoffman makes all this hypnotically interesting, and, through impeccable timing, sometimes terribly funny--a sweet humor which never betrays Raymond's unalterable character. [16 Dec 1988]

In addition to its photography, the film's details of costuming (by "The Last Emperor's" James Acheson) and production design (by Stuart Craig of "Gandhi" and "The Mission") are ravishing. [21 Dec 1988, Calendar p.6]

Blithe, reasonably witty, with as many story twists as a Riviera roadway, its greatest assets are its glorious look and Michael Caine, his hair full of Dippety-Doo, his heart full of larceny. [14 Dec 1988, p.1]

There are misfires in Sucka, but there's also some funny stuff. Wayans shows a refreshing taste for self-mockery. [17 Feb 1989, p.8]

Twins starts with an overblown fairy-tale quality that seems as if it should work. But, by the finish, the movie collapses on the shoulders of the stars. It works because they both showed up and delivered the goods and kept their end of the deal. [9 Dec 1988, p.1]

My Stepmother Is an Alien is solid, wide-appeal holiday fare. It makes the best use of Aykroyd’s warmth and proven talents in quite some time, and it does even more for Basinger, showing that she can be as funny and smart as she is sexy.

In the years since he first played Drebin, Nielsen has deepened the role, made it more subtle, more universal, more paramount. He's brought out an almost preternatural mellowness in a character who began as a relatively uncomplicated dimwit. [2 Dec 1988]

Written with his trademark artfulness, nicely acted and gorgeously pretty, Tequlia Sunrise finally blows away into slick unsubstantiality. [2 Dec 1988, p.1]

Actually it's not a bad notion for a satiric comedy and this one begins well, but then veers entirely out of hand until it's as over-inflated as its own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and as funny as a mugging. [23 Nov 1988, p.1]

Cocoon: The Return is the best kind of sequel: It doesn't merely cash in on the success of the original but actually continues its story in new directions, eliciting fresh meaning and emotion. [23 Nov 1988, p.C1]

Don Bluth (An American Tail) has gone to the trouble of differentiating between the species, of being careful of the scale of one in relation to another and of giving very little children a sort of primer of dinosaur lore.

A bright, upbeat comedy that should appeal to audiences of all ages. [18 Nov 1988, p.1]

The American big-movie sex comedy conventions overwhelm Jordan’s liberating poetry, his wild lyricism.

The smiles don't fade until the finish of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown when we witness Pepa's realization that she has, in fact, come into her own and taken charge of her own destiny. [20 Dec 1988, p.1]

Ernest Saves Christmas is an improvement on Ernest Goes to Camp, mostly because of Seale. But basically it's another TV ad, a chestnut roasting on an open fire, exploding in your face every so often with another Ya know what I mean? [15 Nov 1988, p.7]

With the same painstaking care that made John Bryson’s “Evil Angels,” the book on which the film is based, incontrovertible, Schepisi builds his mosaic with Australian faces and voices crisscrossing every social class and occupation.

Scary, yet darkly funny, this thriller of the supernatural from the director of the terrific Fright Night moves with the speed of a bullet train and with style to burn. The film is a stunner--in all senses of the word.

Has its share of underthought or overwrought moments. The tone keeps shifting radically. It has some silly lines, plot lapses and goofball action scenes. But you can forgive the movie everything because of the sheer nasty pizazz of its central concept. [4 Nov 1988]

Anyone who goes to Halloween 4 deserves what they get: stale, sordid tricks and no treats. [25 Oct 1988, p.C6]

Things Change is a coldly controlled, immaculately mounted show, with a softly beating heart. Everything--the dialogue, the performances, Ruiz Anchia's jewel-like lighting, Michael Merritt's wittily elegant production designs and Alaric Jans' haunting, spare score--contributes to the final effect.

For all the serious efforts on the part of all involved, Bat 21 (rated R for the usual war-film bloodshed) doesn't rise above the routine.

While an abundant sense of humor cannot save the film from terminal silliness, it might make watching it bearable and even sometimes amusing.

Beyond some well-observed sibling interaction, the mutual effort of four writers is mutually uninspired. Whoever wrote the episodes between hot-to-trot Jojo (Taylor) and her balky boyfriend Bill (D'Onofrio) should be ashamed. [21 Oct 1988]

A preachy, empty story, enlivened by a great central performance and generous dollops of self-delusion, not the least offensive of which are Topor's and Lansing's quoted comparisons of their movie to the moral climate of the Holocaust. To paraphrase dear Joseph Welch, have they no shame? [14 Oct 1988, p.4]

Stan Winston steps in as director (and co-scenarist) here after many years leading one of Hollywood's top special makeup effects units. Ironically, Winston shows a surer directorial touch with the early, more human scenes (especially those between Henriksen and son) than he does later with the spooks and scares, which are never even faintly frightening. He doesn't win any more points for having his creature followed by artsy mood lighting wherever it goes in the supposedly black night.

Watching the strength of [Nair]'s vision and her craft, balanced by the empathy shown in all her work so far--her earlier documentaries as well--there is every reason to believe that “Salaam Bombay!” marks the opening of an extraordinary career.

There are, thankfully, a few humorous and imaginative touches here and there, but Alien Nation is hardly inspired.

Bold, sneaky, brilliant Punchline works its change-ups unmercifully. I can't remember laughing this much with tears still streaming down my face, or beginning to weep while my sides still ached from laughing. The closest to it was "Terms of Endearment." [30 Sept 1988, p.C1]

All and all, it adds up to a delightful, unpretentious movie, hands down the richest work Whoopi Goldberg has done on the screen.

In Memories of Me, nothing goes unsaid; its banalities are triumphant, its maudlin flourishes build to maudlin crescendos.

The film is as faithful to its subject as perhaps any film biography has been. As Eastwood said, Parker was a paradoxical character, both self-destructive and full of life, and the movie, simultaneously dark and exhilarating, takes that as its theme. [22 Sep 1988, p. 1]

To think of a film this assured, this unified and this dizzyingly potent, you have to go back to "Blue Velvet." [22 Sept 1988]

Oddly enough, it's as black comedy and social history, far more than thriller or human drama, that Patty Hearst works best.

Matt Dillon and Andrew McCarthy are engaging, but David Stevens’ overly conventional direction lacks the style to bring freshness and punch to Spencer Eastman’s complicated and drawn-out script.

From its first romantic encounter, as two pairs of eyes lock across a crowded room, to its last tremulous one, "Crossing Delancey" is unqualified pleasure, bound on every side by love. [31 Aug 1988]

Terence Davies' mesmerizing memory film, Distant Voices, Still Lives, becomes its own kind of poetry: taut, referential, inward, brilliant. Although it is set among the unremarkable flats of Liverpool, the place is stamped by Davies' profoundly original vision and sounds; its framing is painterly and deliberate. And just as you think you have its moves all doped out, a scene of such shocking beauty flashes before you that it takes your breath away.

Sophisticated, uncompromising and refreshingly original, it is one of those rare films which is likely to mean as much to teens as it does to their parents.

As he spins his mesmerizing story of the fixing of the 1919 World Series, John Sayles moves to a new level of dexterity as a writer-director.

Morris pulls off a genuine shocker to cap his film, but his method exacts its price. It takes fully a third of the film's 109 minutes to become involved in it, thanks to Morris' deadpan tone and the initially jarring effect of his intercutting between straightforward talking heads and his B-movie reenactment of the crime. [2 Sept 1988]

A movie to make ninnies whinny, audiences gag and horses hide their heads.

Strangely enough, Married to the Mob, which may prove to be Demme's long-overdue passport to mass audience adulation, may tickle everyone but die-hard Demme fans. [19 Aug 1988]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is by far the best of the series, a superior horror picture that balances wit and gore with imagination and intelligence. It very effectively mirrors the anxieties of the teen-age audience for which it is primarily intended. [19 Aug 1988, p.17]

Stylistically, the film is a dream. But in every case, the style has a reason. [12 Aug 1988]