Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the dopiest and most congenial in the series, an indication that the producers have at last acknowledged that what they're dealing with is not science fiction or adventure, but a kind of cosmic fluke. [27 Nov. 1986, p.F1]

Richard Jordan, who can be uniquely menacing (see: The Mean Season, Flash of Green) is here reduced to lampooning himself in leatherette storm-trooper garb. Charles Durning, looking wonderfully rumpled as the warden of the orphanage, does as little as possible in the heat. The skating stunts are routine. [2 Dec 1986, p.B4]

Chuck Norris, whose action dramas are often unintentionally funny, edges into spoof territory with Firewalker, and the result is inadvertently dull. It's a curious cycle, a kind of primordial rhythm of bad moviemaking.[2 Dec 1986, p.B4]

Director Moshe Mizrahi, who did the Academy Award-winning Madame Rosa, cannot decide whether he has a light comedy or a heavy drama, and the film wavers between the two. [26 Nov 1986, p.D5]

The bad guys are genuinely creepy, the victims likable enough to engage sympathy, and the conflict among the the crooks a kind of wild-card element. If they still made "film noir," the brooding crime fiction of Hollywood in the '40s and '50s, it would look something like this. You have to feel good for Elmore. [7 Nov 1986, p.D2]

The whole film feels bloated, as Joffee makes his point, makes it again, and then returns to it as if for reassurance. [16 Jan 1987, p.5]

At its heart, however, Soul Man is a one-gag story propelled by sitcom material; there are times you'd swear you were watching Lucy. And because the filmmakers really aren't up to their premise, the movie ends on a note of forced harmony that's enough to make the blood run cold. It's a reminder that even good white liberals still aren't sure how to act around black people. Which, come to think of it, would make a fine, socially "relevant" comedy. Perhaps Hollywood will make it someday. [27 Oct 1986, p.C4]

The premise is marvelous, the music more than adequate (assuming you're a metal fan), the performances appropriately dumb. And it's seasonally funny. [28 Oct 1986, p.D5]

We get the feeling that whatever it is Scorsese and Price have to say about these marvelous characters, it is not anything very interesting.

The film is all very wistful, and at its best moments has an exquisite mystery to it, the lure of the memory play. And even when it isn't working, there's Turner to watch. That's something. [10 Oct 1986, p.D1]

It doesn't ask much of anything except that you come along for the ride. Riding with Byrne is pretty much a hoot. [09 Nov 1986, p.K1]

Craven packs routine teen-confrontation material into the plot as filler, and still has trouble getting to 90 minutes. His ending is contrived and nonsensical even by the standards of the form. [14 Oct 1986, p.B7]

Something happened to Mark Medoff's moving Children of a Lesser God in its translation from stage to screen: Somebody turned it into a soft-focus Hallmark card about deaf people. [3 Oct 1986, p.D1]

Moments of life intrude, particularly with the periodic appearance of Eli Wallach as a superannuated hitman, a truly bizarre performance (he's got a sawed-off shotgun but his eyes are so bad it doesn't matter). And there are times when the sheer vitality of the two stars -- particularly Lancaster, who has not lost a thing -- promises to lift the movie. But it's too flimsy, and we're left with two stars in search of a story. For a while, it's fun watching them hunt. Then it's just a chore. [3 Oct 1986, p.D2]

It's a gentle and wholly implausible comedy with an appealing character carrying the load -- no more. [27 Sept 1986, p.D3]

Ribald, wry and even, from time to time, suspenseful, The Name of the Rose is actually a movie-movie -- rich in Hollywood convention, dense with images, with muscular performances (the principals play their types to the maximum), with good, old- fashioned movie stuff. Never a dull moment. How very unlikely. [24 Oct 1986, p.D1]

Minimalist, yes; post-modern self-conscious, to a fault. But giddy, fanciful and at times simply obvious. [21 Nov 1986, p.D10]

Born American was made in Finland, a first feature by two Finnish directors. Their government reportedly stopped financing the project in mid-production and eventually disowned it. The guess here is that the reason for this was not so much fear of offending the Great Red Neighbor as it was simple embarrassment. [01 Sep 1986, p.D5]

Josh Brolin and Robert Rusler star in this 1980s-era guilty pleasure that reimagines Romeo & Juliet as a war between rival skateboard gangs (yes, there used to be such a thing).

The film was conceived and executed as a star vehicle. Wrong stars, wrong roles, not much happening here. And for George Harrison and his Handmade Films, the first big bust. [20 Oct 1986, p.C4]

It has the ring of small, unspectacular truths and a devotion to characters that is quite rare in contemporary film, and is genuinely the kind of movie "they" don't make anymore. This makes Stand by Me special. It does not make it a wonderful movie. [22 Aug 1986, p.D1]

The movie takes you over, shakes you for a couple of hours and then turns you back out into the street, limp. You've grown to know a lot about its characters. But when you think about them, you realize that you don't want to know this much. They're hollow men, on both sides. [15 Aug 1986, p.D1]

A movie about lunatics with chainsaws that is neither funny nor frightening. [25 Aug 1986, p.C5]

And though this may seem a perverse observation, Extremities just doesn't work as well magnified and distanced by celluloid. If the attack involves a real man and woman who are just feet away in the same room, the horror, engagement and catharsis are far more deeply felt. [22 Aug 1986, p.D1]

An object lesson in wasting a talented comedian. The film is so far off base that Candy winds up an action hero, and his co- star, Eugene Levy (who was even weaselier on SCTV) gets the girl. [15 Aug 1986, p.D2]

If ever there was a textbook "feel good picture," this is it. It's not a bad film, either, but director Nick Castle is afraid to let anyone go home without a glazed respect for all living things, and the result is too much syrup. [26 Sept 1986, p.D11]

One Crazy Summer's only truly funny bit of business occurs when two evil kindergartners are transformed for no reason at all into pigs. You laugh here, not because it's riotously funny, but because the scene is one of the most stupid things you'll ever see...Much like the film it's contained in.

Unless you're a constipated horse or a lover of truly tasteless cinema, A Fine Mess is one you don't want to wander into. [8 Aug 1986, p.D15]

Lorin Dreyfuss (Richard's brother) and David Landsberg try acting in a movie they wrote for producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They fail on every count...Yawn city, bambino. [21 Aug 1986, p.D5]

There's good stuff around the edges of the film -- all that word play and all those visual gags demand that you pay attention lest you miss something even in the slow scenes. But at the center, no magic. [01 Aug 1986, p.D1]

Flight of the Navigator is a cheerfully unaccomplished little movie, a kind of E.T. for kids that recalls the Disney live-action films of a generation ago. E.T is not the only movie borrowed from here; there are echoes of Back to the Future and most of the rest of the last decade's science-fiction fantasies, though Flight of the Navigator is generous in acknowledging its sources. It's a happy knockoff. [31 July 1986, p.C5]

Operative marketing concept: There are thousands, not just one, born every minute. [5 Aug 1986, p.B5]

The movie is facile and manipulative, but it can't hide the gifts of Jackie Gleason in the role of Hanks' father. [30 July 1986, p.D6]

Maximum Overdrive is the classic botch. Good idea, nice effects, bad pacing, porous script, no punch...Too bad. As usual, the premise has promise. [26 July 1986, p.C1]

Heartburn doesn't have enough good inside semi-fiction to be of much interest to the Washington cognoscenti, and it's not enough of a movie to stay in the memory of the outside-the-beltway crowd more than an hour or two. What it is is a chance to see our two most celebrated actors at work for a while between films. [25 July 1986, p.D1]

Out of Bounds is a jazzy, raffish looking movie. It flirts with punk. It's also a fundamentalist summer-teen thriller, with two kids on the lam from everyone, and in L.A., too. The movie wants it both ways: stylish, safe. Mostly it's dumb. [28 July 1986, p.D5]

When the film isn't borrowing, it's collapsing of its own weight, slight though it may be. [28 Jul 1996, p.B4]

The good news is that Aliens is scary and mean and just about everything a fan of the original could want. Bad news? There's a too-campy line of forced dialogue during the climax. And that's about it. This is your grade-A sequel, the movie equivalent of a hot "summer read." Aliens is 137 minutes long, and never drags. A solid hour goes by before there is any action, but the picture is never coy, either. [18 July 1986, p.D1]

These are things to keep in mind while the movie lumbers along from retread situation to punchleszs comic setup. Pirates looks cheap and runs long; it moves fast only when it is scrabbling for a shred of charm. [18 July 1986, p.D3]

Next to Club Paradise, Caddyshack looks like comic art. [11 July 1986, p.D1]

The big trouble with John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China is its tone. This time out, the director of Halloween and Starman has concocted a cartoon with human characters -- or, as it is described in the movie's press materials, a mystical action-adventure comedy-kung-fu monster-ghost story. Any film that needs that many adjectives to explain itself is already in trouble. [03 July 1986, p.D9]

Moore's Debbie is earnest but uninteresting, which is a problem when she is playing half of the movie's focal couple. [2 July 1986, p.D10]

Psycho III is still a comedie macabre -- as was Hitchcock's -- but Perkins doesn't follow the Psycho path. Where the master trod subtly, the disciple relies on emphasis. [03 July 1986, p.D11]

The Great Mouse Detective is destined to be a classic -- not just for the old-time quality of the animation, but for its general superiority over such recent Disney efforts as The Black Cauldron. [16 July 1986, p.D4]

It's a stylized, overdressed love story with music tacked on. It's a tangle of relationship studies that drag endlessly, slapstick "get the girl" scenes that aren't funny, and clashes with parental authority that only feign rebellion. [03 Jul 1986, p.D10]

The acting, along with a wonderfully witty script and more madcap plot twists than a gaggle of Hitchcock films, lets Ruthless People ruthlessly overshadow its summer comedy competition. In Ruthless People, Midler at long last is allowed a full stretch of her talent and is given a chance to be both the actress and the funny lady. [27 June 1986, p.D8]

Though a "summer" movie set in wintery Chicago might seem less than logical, this one does what good escapist fare should: loses you in a world with enough excitement and fun that surrender becomes easy. [27 June 1986, p.D1]

Kid II is not comparable to its predecessor. It is stale and boring. [20 June 1986, p.D1]

In a movie world jam-packed with teen-agers and computers and fantastic beings, it's refreshing to encounter a film that finds its laughs in the warmth and absurdities of adult interaction. Let the other critics hang Legal Eagles. This jury of one says see it. [20 June 1986, p.D1]

When Collet is interacting with other kids or with his girlfriend and partner-in-crime Jenny (Cynthia Nixon, who played Mozart's maid in Amadeus), The Manhattan Project is a witty, enjoyable teen-age movie. But when, laughs and all, it is addressing the nuclear perils -- timely as the topic might be in the aftermath of Chernobyl -- the project dries up under the spell of sophisticated visual values, glossy props and sexy laser lights. [13 June 1986, p.D3]

What makes the story seem larger and more important than it is are the quality of the performances -- uniformly first-rate -- and the deftness of the director, Neil Jordan, for opposing the several cultures and thereby causing a clash. [8 Aug 1986, p.D1]

It helps that Raw Deal works, for a time at least, as a first-rate cop movie. It is violent to excess -- more graphic by far than Stallone's films, and bloodier, too -- but it's a real movie. [07 June 1986, p.D1]

SpaceCamp is perfectly harmless and perfectly dull, but it comes at a time when NASA could use an esteem booster. For all those who get just a touch queasy at the Top Gun lesson, in which shooting down planes in peacetime is presented as role-model behavior, SpaceCamp offers a nonviolent corrective. [6 June 1986, p.D6]

The most memorable scene in Invaders belongs to Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). She also turns in the best performance as the school marm who, after the Martians get to her, gobbles a bullfrog and becomes the movie's gleeful and insane Madame LaFarge. [14 June 1986, p.C6]

The better children's movies offer a subtle level of humor to keep the adults entertained while the kiddies enjoy the basic story. [03 Jul 1986, p.D8]

By the time John Hurt shows up, in the role of the villain, the fun's over. Crawford tries for sardonic and falls short, into lazy. Lane's pace is way off; his adventure seems to take forever to get under way, and the jokes aren't enough. Good pulp is better than this. [04 June 1986, p.D1]

John Cassavetes has been making exquisitely personal films -- or agonizingly personal ones, depending on one's tastes -- for years now. Sometimes, they are intimate dramas (Faces, Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence). Sometimes, they are dark comedies in melodramatic dress (Gloria). And sometimes, as in the newly released Big Trouble, they are just a mess. [19 Apr 1986, p.D1]

Cobra looks and sounds as bad as it does because Stallone hired George P. Cosmatos (Rambo), a hack with no ideas, to direct, and because Stallone wrote the screenplay himself. No excuses: This movie is just the way the highest paid and hence most powerful man in Hollywood wanted it. You take a long look at the thing, you keep that in mind: This is the film he meant to make. [24 May 1986, p.D1]

The original was good enough so that a residue of curiosity about the Freelings remains; we want to know what happened next. But a sequel is a sequel is a sequel, and this amiable movie is very much a II. [23 May 1986, p.D1]

Like "An Officer and a Gentleman", Top Gun travels a cramped emotional range. The characters don't really change, but have plot devices imposed on them. Unlike its template, however, Top Gun does have a payoff: Maverick and his pals do a lot of flying, and many of the aerial scenes are impressive. [16 May 1986, p.6]

The running character of a dim-bulb scientist of Indian or Pakistani extraction, who is prone to malapropisms, badly accented English and Carson-esque wink-and-giggle innuendo, might not seem offensive in a better film. Here it seems designed only for cheap laughs. The laughs come. They are cheap. [09 May 1986, p.D5]

The combination of slack script and coasting star is invariably lethal, and since Blue City doesn't aim very high to begin with, the disaster is complete. Even the gunfights are staged ineptly, and the picture's one big action sequence is so telegraphed that during a preview showing, when Nelson's character finally tumbled to what was going on and muttered, "It's a setup," the audience hooted happily in derision. [3 May 1986, p.D1]

Director Coline Serreau has a deft touch with sugary material. Her Three Men and a Cradle is a slick, confident comedy that moves from point to predictable point without a surprise, but moves so gently and gracefully that it seems by the end something more than it is. [23 May 1986, p.D5]

The performances -- even those by Rosanna Arquette and Jeff Bridges, as Sarah and Scudder -- are simply trashy; they're throwaway stuff. [30 Apr 1986, p.C7]

Like Midnight Express, for which Stone received an Academy Award for his screenplay adaptation, Salvador is better movie than document. But if Stone's style is entirely too florid for history, it is grimly arresting by Hollywood standards. Whatever else, Salvador is an original. [9 May 1986, p.D1]

The film seems just right for kids, though what older fans of Cruise ("Risky Business") and Scott will make of it is far less clear. [22 Apr 1986, p.B4]

While it embraces many of the conventions of the movie- musical, Absolute Beginners overcomes the ready cliches with the crackling energy of jazz and youth. Both Kensit and O'Connell catch the rhythm of their personas early on, riding Temple's roller-coaster tale with care thrown to the wind. They careen off the brainless characters and the hard-knocks facts of life with a "who cares" resilience, never missing a beat in their quest for experience. [4 June 1986, p.D5]

Though Wise Guys isn't a big movie, its gentle parody of gangster mythology, which adopts the pace and tone of a European caper movie from its opening titles, makes Prizzi's Honor seem naive by contrast. [13 May 1986, p.B6]

The idea, apparently, was to combine elements of E.T., Gremlins and run-of-the-mill slasher films, while keeping the whole thing palatable for pre-teens. Only Steven Spielberg has been able to make this combination work, and even he has had trouble with it; director Stephen Herek, who also worked on the Critters script, is the wrong Steve. [30 Apr 1986, p.C7]

Miami Vice producer Michael Mann is the executive producer of this movie. Paul Michael Glaser, who has directed several episodes of that show, is at the helm on this film. As a result, that Vice feeling is everywhere in Band: plot and character development yielding to scenic Miami, violence and music. [15 Apr 1986, p.B4]

Frears uses the story of one relationship, intimate but exploitive, to mirror England's racial strife. By turns tender and angry, it's a film of distinctive, commanding voice. [28 Mar 1986, p.D2]

Ivory's version of A Room With a View is impeccably turned out and wonderfully funny once the rhythms are established, which does not take long. The performances are splendid, from Helena Bonham Carter's moon-faced Lucy to the Cecil of Daniel Day Lewis (who can also be seen in a role so different -- the loutish punk of My Beautiful Laundrette -- that it hardly seems possible he is the same actor). As expected, Maggie Smith (as Charlotte) and Denholm Elliott (George's free-thinking father), nearly steal the film. [4 Apr 1986, p.D1]

The sex parts are dumb -- they could have been lifted from a 1960s beach comedy -- but when Last Resort acts as a sendup of drinks (and life) by the colored bead at Club Med, it has its amusements. [04 Jun 1986, p.D4]

It's about a weird little kid, and it's an engaging mix. It is successful in recreating the frissons of adolescence and in slapping the myths around. The film also sports an ending that is pure tearjerker, but at least it earns the mush. [2 Apr 1986, p.D6]

A measure of redemption is offered in an opening montage and in the climactic bike-race sequence; in each, the stunts of the stand-ins are breathtaking. In all other respects Rad, which was directed by Hal Needham (a former stunt man who "directed" the Smokey and the Bandit series) is crudely made, the visual equivalent of a 10-speed with training wheels. [2 Apr 1986, p.D6]

There's a lightheartedness to the film that belies its genre, however. As one of the dimmer of the dwindling party says, after the body count has reached three, "You gotta look on the bright side of things." April Fool's Day eventually does, but the mild satisfaction of its climactic twist does not redeem the tedium of the first 88 minutes. [29 Mar 1986, p.B4]

Its situation and its sight gags are marvelous, recalling the best of Spielberg's 1941. But like that movie, The Money Pit is disconnected; pieces seem missing, and subplots seem to have been abandoned in a rush. [28 Mar 1986, p.D5]

Hamburger, like Police Academy and a dozen others before it, is essentially a basic-training sitcom with some softcore on the side. And like the films it imitates, Hamburger is an example of a perfectly good comic premise -- there's weirdness in modern food technology, bet your syntho-chicken nuggets there is -- botched by a script aimed at just that segment of the audience that is theoretically banned from attending R-rated films. [20 March 1986, p.B6]

Every now and then, there is even a funny line, as when the wife of one officer insists on joining the force herself: "We can wear matching uniforms, share ammo -- everything that makes a marriage work." [24 Mar 1986, p.D7]

In Chopping Mall the conflict is merely an excuse for a repeat of the kids vs. slasher formula. Nothing heavy here, just the predictable deaths of the couples who went "all the way," the survival of the virgins, and the best exploding head sequence since Deadly Friend. [05 Nov 1986, p.D6]

Though the quality of animation remains dismal, Care Bears II has many pretty pictures; they just don't move very well. Kids under five, particularly little girls, seem enthralled nonetheless. [31 Mar 1986, p.D6]

The movie isn't really about America and Japan at all; it's about set-ups for gags. [14 Mar 1986, p.D2]

You don't find many teen films about blues singers. You find hardly any about characters who don't smirk for 90 minutes before stumbling onto the meaning of life in the final passages. In Crossroads, it's the absences that are most refreshing. [14 March 1986, p.D1]

Mulcahy has style to burn, but he may well have used the script to light it, for Highlander almost never makes any sense. [11 Mar 1986, p.B4]

Desert Hearts offers its central romance virtually free of moral clutter. Deitch tries neither to justify her characters' actions nor to place them in the context of the "forbidden"; she deals instead with intimacy, pieces of their lives. [18 Apr 1986, p.D5]

Trouble in Mind is an earthbound fantasy to match the soaring nightmares of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. It's one man's dream of romance, melodrama, life by street lamp. One surrenders on Rudolph's terms. Surrender is sweet. [21 March 1986, p.D6]

Parts of House are certainly meant to be funny, and other parts draw laughs the way the tools move, without the apparent intent of their creators. As haunted-house tales go, House is something of a bust. [4 March 1986, p.B5]

Pretty in Pink is not a bad film, but for those who do not come to it predisposed to re-indulge the agonies of young love, it is less than memorable. [3 March 1986, p.C6]

The Hitcher has a certain weight. It's not junk, and Harmon is neither a hack nor a beginner just taking his genre shot. His movie is arresting in surprising places, and it never really lets us off the hook. There's something here worth seeing, and something about Harmon as well. What will he do next, and can he top this? [27 Feb 1986, p.8]

Like most Norris vehicles, The Delta Force is long on spurious action and short on production values. It's also silly, but it's more than that. Rambo asked, "Do we get to win this time?"; Norris' Delta Force gets to go back and win last time. [19 Feb 1986, p.D8]

All its freewheeling makes for a really "moving" movie, one in which the big chase scene involves, predictably, a car and a bike. But there's not much else to it. [21 Feb 1986, p.6]

The knock on movies like Wildcats used to be that they belong not on the big screen, but on TV. But times have changed. Wildcats isn't good television, either. It's just Goldie Hawn's latest. [10 March 1986, p.C6]

F/X doesn't have the surprises when it needs them. [8 Feb 1986, p.C7]

It's too civilized by half and never quite funny enough. [31 Jan 1986, p.D1]

The Best of Times will make points with football fans, and it might even score with believers in the human comedy. But, oh, what a disappointing first half. [1 Feb 1986, p.C4]

Full of intriguing possibilities, it is a film propelled by a puff of hot air, not a tornado of brilliantly realized political, philosophical and artistic ideas. Sometimes, it is so embarrassingly bad that one can only laugh and wonder how Lumet could have missed the windmill by so much more than a mile. [31 Jan 1986, p.D9]

This lovely movie, impeccably made in nearly every way, has entirely too much right about it to be resisted. [21 Feb 1986, p.D1]