Missing in Action is thus never especially compelling, even as a B-movie, because it is never remotely believable. Nonetheless, Norris' appeal is so quiet and uncomplicated that, although the film exploits the issue of MIAs as thoroughly as any movie has to date, Missing in Action is never offensive. [20 Nov 1984, p.D1]

George Burns gets to play both sides of the cosmic fence in Oh God! You Devil, which is actually Oh God! III, and it's this device alone that saves the film, which might otherwise be unbearably cute. [12 Nov 1984, p.C1]

No Small Affair, while no big movie, confirms that it is possible to tell a story about a kid in love without depending on the French-tutor contrivance or the girls'-locker- room giggle. [09 Nov 1984, p.C10]

Paris, Texas is thus a curiosity. On balance it seems overblown and rickety, as substantial as tumbleweed. And it seems to be less than the sum of its two major parts, the script by Shepard and the images by Wenders. Still, it's an essential entry into the Wenders file, full of hollow portents and signs signifying little. And it would be worth seeing for Stanton's performance alone. [8 Feb 1985, p.8]

A Soldier's Story insists that attention must be paid, and in so doing re-creates a dark and still fascinating picture of the American landscape -- geographical, social, spiritual. [05 Oct 1984, p.C1]

It's such a pleasure in so many ways that one feels like yelling, "Welcome back." Forget Scarface, all is forgiven. Body Double reminds us what it's like to be in the presence of an original, and that does not happen often at the movies, these days or any days. [27 Oct 1984, p.D1]

Fast, well made and utterly inconsequential -- The Terminator is a vintage "B," and it's good to know that Hollywood can still crank them out. [29 Oct 1984, p.C6]

Despite its weaknesses, Firstborn is a movie that deals sensitively with the emotional trials of single-parent families. And it is one of the few that treats adolescents with respect. This film is a must-see for parents and teen-agers and could provoke a long, long talk. [26 Oct 1984, p.C1]

The great strength of Le Carre's novel was that it twisted the psyches of the characters as it tensed their muscles. This movie muscles through the action, but it takes the psychic tension out of the twists. [19 Oct 1984, p.D6]

Turner's performance is intriguing -- now we know that she can play not only a sexpot (Body Heat) but a sexpot hiding in a career woman's suit-and-tie and posing as a fleshpot. This is pretty interesting. [19 Nov 1984, p.C1]

Two things are going on in The Razor's Edge, the second movie adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel. One is that Bill Murray, the comedian, is trying a dramatic role for the first time. Another is that people out in the seats are being bored to tears. [19 Oct 1984, p.D1]

Places in the Heart is set in another time and place. But it becomes universal because it is also a personal story of an artist turning from the safe confessional platitudes of Yuppiedom to a more mature confrontation with the complexities in his own past. [05 Oct 1984, p.C1]

Teachers is more or less entertaining, but TV tactics are too diffuse on the big screen. America is still waiting for someone to produce a school satire with some teeth in it. [05 Oct 1984, p.C9]

Movies like The Wild Life are softcore porn comics for teenyboppers. It's hard to believe teenagers are really as easily entertained as the makers of this movie seem to expect them to be. What ever happened to introspection and identity crises? [01 Oct 1984, p.C7]

If you liked the meat of Kramer vs. Kramer, the reasoning goes, this movie should be the sauce. Too bad. Irreconcilable Differences, the latest comedy by the husband-and-wife writing team that simmered away schmaltzily in Private Benjamin, has its seasonings awry. [28 Sep 1984, p.B1]

The essence of the movie, and the key to its success, lies in the innocent rhythms of old-fashioned screwball comedy. [21 Sep 1984, p.D1]

This movie hypocritically entertains viewers by appealing to the same sadistic qualities it professes to condemn. There is real suffering going on in Latin America -- and this movie has nothing to do with it. [24 Sep 1984, p.C1]

No matter how well-choreographed, Kosugi's karate scenes are impossible to look at as abstract movement divorced from their casually murderous purpose. What is more, they are distorted by special effects and physical feats made possible only by trick photography. [21 Sep 1984, p.D14]

This movie Mozart seems little more than a wild and crazy music-maker, whose biggest problem was that his compositions had "too many notes." And that, as Forman's Mozart might say, ain't much. [20 Sep 1984, p.C1]

John Derek, who wrote and directed and filmed Bolero, failed to make Bo look sexy; managed, in fact, to make her look dull and foolish. [01 Sep 1984, p.B5]

While the movie sets you up to believe you're watching an old- fashioned American western (in other words, a morality play), it's confusing figuring out what the bad guys represent. [31 Aug 1984, p.C8]

Perhaps Rudolph is sending out a message about love, a la Rohmer, or maybe he's just having a strange kind of fun. Choose Me is just entertaining enough, in its eccentric, soap- operatic way, so that it doesn't matter. [21 Dec 1984, p.D22]

The few bright spots in Oxford Blues, including the handsome cinematography, are like the raisins in the tapioca: They just don't help. [24 Aug 1984, p.C10]

It is not in most respects more than an ordinary thriller, however; were it not an Eastwood picture, it would be instantly forgettable. [17 Aug 1984, p.D1]

In their defense, it must be said that Dennis Quaid (as the chief dreamer) and Kate Capshaw (back again, this time in the time-honored woman's role of "assistant scientist") make an appealing couple. The presence of Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer is more problematic; someone paid these people a lot of money to sleepwalk. [16 Aug 1984, p.B6]

There are plenty of good B movies around to amuse fans of the medieval-hocum genre, but Sword of the Valiant rates a D- minus. [03 Dec 1984, p.C8]

Roberts looks great bathing under a waterfall. It's just that no one had the heart, during this production, to tell her that it was stupid. And so, while all about her are laughing up the short sleeves of their safari jackets or rattling their Zambooli spears in impatience, Roberts plays Sheena as high drama, as best she can, which isn't so good. [18 Aug 1984, p.C1]

And so it goes, cleverly, amiably -- infidelity made fun. Wilder seems to have a firm hand on the controls, and the movie works best when he indulges his talent for physical comedy, which is considerable. It works less effectively when we have time to think about what is going on, and how many times we have seen it before, but the pace is quick enough that these times are few. [17 Aug 1984, p.10]

Cloak and Dagger does have its charms. It also has its tense moments, and an unforced sentimentality that helps it end on just the right note. And it's nicely performed. [10 Aug 1985, p.6]

This is what we call a movie-movie, a movie that throws nuance and self-consciousness and artiness to the wind and concentrates on the slam-bam. It's richly entertaining, it's big, it moves fast. [10 Aug 1984, p.C1]

It was pretty interesting a couple of years ago, too, when a variation of it was the premise for The Final Countdown. The big difference is that the earler film wasn't bad, and this one is. [03 Aug 1984, p.C9]

Kleiser seems to know something about style and pace after all, and he seems to know something about having fun with a movie. These are minor revelations, and they make Grandview U.S.A. almost unique among its class of film over the past five years: It's worth seeing. [03 Aug 1984, p.C9]

Remarkably, director Albert Magnoli is able to use a single moment of melodrama to give this story a measure of depth. And from that point on, Purple Rain is improbably successful at tugging on the heartstrings as well as shaking the rafters. It winds up a love story, and one with power. [27 July 1984, p.D1]

Unfortunately, The Corsican Brothers isn't very funny. This does not exactly make us nostalgic for other, less purposeful C- and-C films, but it does serve as a sad reminder that their first, Up in Smoke, for all its excesses, was funnier than anything they have been able to manage since. [30 July 1984, p.C5]

Part II is even dumber than Meatballs, which was plenty dumb enough. [01 Aug 1984, p.C4]

Largely devoted to whatever laughs may be coaxed from the sound of a freshman belching and the sight of some mighty mature-looking coeds removing their blouses. There's some nose-picking, too, but not enough to save the picture. [20 July 1984, p.D6]

A surprisingly dull and witless film. [21 Jul 1984, p.C1]

Electric Dreams seems to take forever to establish its premise and its characters, who (computer excepted) are nonetheless rather one-dimensional. [23 Jul 1984, p.C6]

The best parts of the movie, as in all Muppet ventures, are when director Frank Oz takes the action into pure fantasy. [13 July 1984, p.D1]

Video-game-come-true plot is corny, but somehow it works. [13 July 1984, p.D10]

Oh, yes. Reynolds is in it -- but whatever quiet comic timing he once had with DeLuise in movies like The End has been shot to hell by the confusion in the script and the havoc in the pace. They get it back again during the credits, which are accompanied by some outtakes of DeLuise and Reynolds doing their improvisational bit as DeLuise assumes the role of a human bomb. Even bad bloopers are better than this movie. [29 June 1984, p.7]

Fleischer has missed his opportunities to get real comic- book style humor out of this movie. It could have been a lot of belly laughs -- but as it is, it's only an occasional snide chuckle. [04 July 1984, p.B5]

I suppose if you haven't seen Rocky or its many imitators, The Karate Kid might have its modest charms; there's a good bit of man-to-boy philosophizing in it, on the order of "To thine own self be true," and that's harmless enough. But there's a measure of laziness in this whole idea that is dismaying, that borders on cynicism. One wonders what went through the minds of the filmmakers as they prepared to make a film that has been made so many times before. By the look of The Karate Kid, some quick-play box-office may have been the highest aspiration. [26 June 1984, p.B3]

There are some funny lines in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Once the eye knows the characters and the ear gets accustomed to the filthy (and somehow quaint) street slang, Rosenberg keeps the pace entertaining. [22 June 1984, p.D8]

Attention-getting it is. Entertaining, too. But meaningful? Are you kidding? [22 Jul 1984, p.D1]

Huston's effort was an ambitious attempt to simmer down difficult literature, but this Under the Volcano is too thick and too thin. [31 Aug 1984, p.C11]

It's as if Dante sought so hard to parrot his producer that he wound up parodying, and all involved should have known better. There's a current of menace to Dante's work that sets him apart from Spielberg, and a measure of innocence in Spielberg's quite apart from anything Dante has done. [8 June 1984, p.1]

The writers have 13-year-old humor in their hearts and an overdose of late-night movies in their minds. But there was no snowballing of the humor; the jokes leave you tickled, but never build to a comic crescendo. [23 June 1984, p.D6]

The Search for Spock should be great fun for Trek fans; it's splendid junk when it works. But if you can't hum the theme from memory, Trek III is likely to be just another way to kill two hours. [1 June 1984, p.D1]

What goes on in Streets of Fire is not quite stupid -- it's saved from that by the remarkable love for style of its director, Walter Hill -- but the film doesn't show an intelligence to match its style, either. [04 June 1984, p.C6]

What Spielberg does is use the Lucas tricks to propel an old-fashioned fantasy, played broadly enough so that the laughs come as easily as the thrills. [23 May 1984, p.B1]

It's a ridiculous story to be sure, filled with holes and not remotely plausible, but director Mark L. Lester knows enough to keep the speed up, and the dumb stuff is flattened by action. It's the kind of movie in which the audience waits happily for the little heroine to be cornered by villains, all to cheer at the inevitable roast. Lester, at least, is stylish enough to get away with it. [12 May 1984, p.C1]

The Natural is dense with Boys' Life stories and grand heroics, and it sometimes wanders from black comedy to serious icon-bashing and back again. But mostly it's good fun. At the end, everyone in the audience is swinging imaginary bats. It's a great movie for summer. [11 May 1984, p.D1]

Though Breakin' follows the Flashdance formula as if it were blazed in concrete, working from a script that would make a 12-year-old snicker, it is so exuberant and lighthearted that it works. [09 May 1984, p.B5]

Occasionally, this Bounty seems about to soar; the scene in which the ship first makes land at Tahiti, all throbbing drums, bare breasts and hooting sailors, is wonderfully rich if no less cliched. At other times, as when the Bounty leaves calm water for a gale in a split-second cut, the film seems almost amateurish. The rest of it occupies the middle ground between ho-hum and grand -- sure to disappoint those knowledgeable about the early films, still likely to engage those with two hours to kill. [05 May 1984, p.C5]

Not making any sense is not the same as unbelievably dumb, which The Final Chapter pretty much is. [18 Apr 1984, p.6]

It seems very much an exercise in time, place and character, without much soul, as if Demme expected the period to provide most of the romance. [17 Apr 1984, p.B5]

Schepisi and his writers don't get what they should have from the business of traumatic culture shock; they spend too much time on twaddle. [13 Apr 1984, p.D1]

The very premise is a test of one's tolerance for the cutes. The rest of the film is merely strange. [6 Apr 1984, p.D1]

An homage to the original so shabbily made and so witless that we can only hope it disappears into history -- and fast. [06 Apr 1984, p.D1]

Douglas' performance is surprisingly dull, and he has a script to match (by Diane Thomas). Moral: Remaking Raiders is harder than it looks. [04 Apr 1984, p.B6]

Greystoke has its many pleasures, and despite its bobtailing at the hands of the bottom-line-watchers, it has the sweep of epic. [30 Mar 1984, p.D1]

Gag delivery is by shotgun and, as happens when there is even a minimum of talent involved in such projects, some of the material is on target. And some of it is awful. [27 Mar 1984, p.B5]

Make no mistake, Racing With the Moon is a modest film; that's one of the reasons it works so well, being a meticulously made miniature. And it's a joy. [28 Mar 1984, p.C7]

If the story were not already stupid and cynical, the casting would kill the film in any case. Garner is utterly lost as a top sergeant; he doesn't even swear well, and some of the movie's most uncomfortable moments are those in which he tries. [16 Mar 1984, p.D10]

The Ice Pirates is a Star Wars knock-off tricked out with cheesy special effects and nonstop gags, and it's almost entertaining despite itself. It's as if someone wanted to try the Airplane! formula on space epics, and nearly got it right. [20 Mar 1984, p.C7]

The idea that there is evil under the sun and amongst the verities out there in the clean-living heartland is not exactly new to fiction. Neither is the one about the bad seeds, the homicidal children. In combination, however -- the combination in Children of the Corn-- the elements have a perverse novelty. [19 Mar 1984, p.C6]

Splash is funny and gentle and quite entertaining, and there isn't a cynical moment in it. And unlikely as this may sound, Splash suggests that we had better keep an eye on Ron Howard, director. He is something special, too. [12 Mar 1984, p.C6]

The Hotel New Hampshire, in which John Irving's novel comes to the screen, is such a mess that it does not feel like a film at all. It's a kind of endurance contest, an epic bout with the cutes, in which the audience is made to confront a long, quirky line of performers playing oddball "types," and is then given only a handful of platitudes by which the explain the experience. "Sorrow floats" is the story's most profound statement, though there are others. [3 Apr 1984, p.C5]

The key to the movie's success is that it was made by people who know and doubtless even enjoy rock in all its infinite, often tedious variety. This distinguishes Spinal Tap from the usual run of spoof, created at a distance by bemused outsiders (Johnny Carson in a mop-top wig, etc.). Reiner and company actually understand the media they are lampooning; the result is not only funny, but lethal. [27 Apr 1984, p.D1]

The atmospherics here are impressive. There's an undertone of comic dread in most of Cox's scenes, so artfully established that you wonder where it came from. In this respect, Cox seems a more playful variant of Wim Wenders, whose Paris, Texas might have been this funny had it not taken itself so seriously. Of course, Cox isn't Wenders -- he doesn't have the narrative skills yet. But Repo Man is without qualification the most interesting film yet about people driving around and getting into trouble. And there does seem to be a metaphor in there somewhere. [4 Apr 1985, p.4]

By the end, we can guess what Newman was up to, and how warm a story he meant to make. But nothing comes together until one of the characters is written out, and by that time, it is almost always too late. [02 Mar 1984, p.D1]

Footloose is for an audience that wants something easy to think about, a conflict in which the two sides are easy to distinguish and an "enemy" who is easy to look down upon. It's for the folks who like to skip dinner and go right to the cream- filled finale, and though not quite evil, it's as silly as can be. [1 Mar 1984, p.D12]

Certainly, Lassiter is painless and periodically amusing. And it's so much bigger than TV. [22 Feb 1984, p.B6]

Unfaithfully Yours turns mildly manic in its last half-hour or so, but it's not enough to redeem that first hour, when Moore and Kinski go through familiar motions in search of something special. For too much of their movie, what they're looking for isn't there. [13 Feb 1984, p.C6]

Reckless is weak, though teenagers may empathize with the fairy-tale fate of the improbable lovers. [11 Feb 1984, p.D4]

Richly enjoyable on its own terms: modest, funny and sad. It is Woody Allen at the top of his art. [28 Jan 1984, p.D1]

There is more truth to the lives of people alone than Hiller and his writers have cared to admit, and, consequently, more humor. The Lonely Guy is short on both. [31 Jan 1984, p.B5]

When it comes time to paint a view of Southern California from the perspective of outsiders looking in and expecting miracles, Nava's touch is marvelously sure, the satirical edge all covered in chrome. Nava's is the kind of talent that a low budget cannot hide. [30 Mar 1984, p.D6]

Hot Dog...The Movie! involves soft-core quickies and schoolyard one-liners and is not much fun at all. [14 Jan 1984, p.C7]

Perhaps because we see so few musicals at all, the Streisand model seems welcome on any terms. But there is also a great deal of warmth in the picture, and it has what one-man shows do when they are working right: It has conviction, and a sense of the artist's vision. This movie was not made by committee, and hence it is free in a way that few American films are. [09 Dec 1983, p.D12]

Mann deserves credit for trying new stuff, of course; The Keep is nothing if not ambitious. But it isn't anything more, either. [20 Dec 1983, p.D5]

If anything, the 1983 To Be or Not to Be is more tasteless, while a great deal less engaging, than the original. [16 Dec 1983, p.E20]

A film that has too little to entertain grownups, and perhaps too much for children. It's a blunder. [21 Dec 1983, p.C8]

It's not a movie for the easily distracted, but it has its rewards for those who pay attention. [19 Dec 1983, p.C6]

The story may be slim, but Carpenter deserves some credit. He makes more of the car-as-villain than one might expect, largely by filming the Plymouth in high style. [10 Dec 1983, p.B5]

Harry is more fun, and he is less the fascist. Considering the genre -- bloody crimebusting and to-hell-with-your-rights- pal -- these are no small blessings. [12 Dec 1983, p.C6]

The film is even slower and less engaging than is standard for its undistinguished genre. [22 Nov 1983, p.B5]

Think of The Beyond as a Rorschach inkblot of a horror film: It's by turns impressionistic, repulsive, ridiculous and baffling. In the right frame of mind, it can also be a hoot. [17 Jul 1998, p.7G]

Testament is determinedly apolitical and wholly unsensational. It is propaganda in the best sense, a cry for life. And it is no fun at all. [09 Nov 1983, p.B6]

It is long. Very, very long...And it feels its length, feels every bit the 190 minutes of it. This is a problem for a movie. A movie can be any length at all if its audience remains unaware of its artifice, remains suspended in time. But in The Right Stuff, we are always aware that there's a movie going on, rather than lives on a screen; by the end, there is the feeling of having been dragged through recent history, feet first. The Right Stuff is exciting from time to time; it has its jolts and its snaps and its nostalgic tweaks. But there is more to a roller coaster than a bumpy ride, and The Right Stuff does not thrill. [16 Oct 1983, p.L1]

It's a troubling movie, and there's something old-fashioned about its mechanics as drama, but Spottiswoode forces us to look at the humanity under duress behind all those back-of-the-book war stories. That in itself is enough. [22 Oct 1983, p.D7]

As an older, slightly less athletic but no less Sybaritic Bond (he carries an attache- case sampler of caviar and pate de fois gras), Connery is perfectly suited. [8 Oct 1983, p.C5]

No ears for dialogue around here, either: Several characters observe that the invention "blew my socks off," an expression so odd that we expect it to lead to a comic payoff. But there is none, and there's not much to the movie, either. [30 Sept 1983, p.D1]

A few times, when Eddie and the Cruisers are making their music, the movie begins to hook you. But less-than-skillful plotting always lets you off the hook, and the ending is a letdown and a tease. [26 Sept 1983, p.6]

One of the craziest, most random and insane slasher films ever made. [31 Oct 2010, p.A8]

This is also the first of the s-and-s films to give sex nearly equal time with disembowelment, a story concept we can only cheer. [6 Sept 1983, p.B5]

Offers a few strange twists on well-used material. [12 Sep 1983, p.C5]