In most respects Police Academy 2 is witless, which complaint is admittedly akin to inspecting a Hefty bag and being dismayed to find trash. [03 Apr 1985, p.D7]

The Slugger's Wife is awful, easily the most inept mainstream Hollywood entertainment in memory. [29 March 1985, p.D19]

There is certainly nothing wrong with this; very young children, and the less discriminating among their elders, are likely to find The Care Bears Movie charming. [08 Apr 1985, p.C4]

Radford's 1984 is a time of relentless oppression in every corner of life, and his images -- corroded, soiled, darkly corrupted -- speak of Orwell as eloquently as the characters. [15 Mar 1985, p.D6]

It is shameless, and I have the feeling that it is not always wholly honest with us or with its subjects. But it is so well made that we are compelled to forgive its sins. Only a cynic could deny its appeal. [22 Mar 1985, p.D10]

The setting is no longer a summer camp, but a woodsy "confinement center" for the young and deranged; it's the kind of place in which, when a slow-witted inmate begins to taunt the guy chopping wood, one is impelled, with justification, to cover one's eyes. [3 Apr 1985, p.D7]

Porky's Revenge is just what you'd think it is, only not as good. And folks, when a filmmaker promises a cheap, quick and dirty sex comedy and can't deliver, that's disappointment. [26 March 1985, p.D5]

The Last Dragon doesn't aim to be more than it is -- a good funny Afro-Japanese-American-hi tech-martial arts- archetypal-fairy tale. But that's something. [30 Mar 1985, p.D7]

Frears displays a complete mastery of the mechanics of a thriller, such that his movie is terrifying even when it pauses for breath. [08 Feb 1985, p.D8]

The only problem with the movie is that it really has little to say beyond the acknowledgement of young love. By contrast, Benjamin's Racing With the Moon, was so careful not to be clever -- in the process telling a good deal more about real feelings -- that The Sure Thing feels lightweight. It's nicely made and well-acted, and it is a bauble nonetheless. [1 Mar 1985, p.C11]

There's a crude energy to the opening scenes of this film, suggesting that the director might one day find a trade. The rest of it is the worst kind of trash, being not just vicious but stupid, too. Peter Fonda appears in an expanded walk-on as a pimp, his "special appearance." Fonda, O'Neal, Cara and the aforementioned Blakley; it is a long fall indeed. [6 March 1985, p.5]

This movie runs in great, lazy circles, covering its implausibilities with gags, and finishes with the let's-get-it-over-with patness of a movie- of-the-week. Goldblum's performance is the key: We never do figure out who he is beyond the easy guess that his cuckoldry was well-deserved. Sometimes he's in charge, outfoxing the thugs, and sometimes he's helpless, and a lot of the time he's just along for the ride. [12 March 1985, p.B4]

It does contain some curiously overwrought dialogue. People say "Go for it!" a lot, but then Louden will observe, with the bright eyes of a man on the edge of a modest revelation: "The nice thing about working out all the time is that you have a lot of nocturnal emissions." Don't laugh; this line actually stirs something deep inside the heroine, and Carla's eyes, like the sensibilities of an entire audience out in the seats, go suddenly, irretrievably soft. [16 Feb 1985, p.C7]

An exploitation film if ever one was made. [15 Feb 1985, p.D10]

"Overworked" is the word for much of the movie. The Mean Season has the feel of a project much tinkered with, so that it seems both laborious and scattered. For a melodrama it moves too slowly, and for a thriller it is too obvious; you can see the seams, see the film's gears move when its works should be invisible. [15 Feb 1985, p.D1]

It's a fine ensemble, and one mark of how well it works is that The Breakfast Club leaves the confines of the library only three times, and yet we never feel claustrophobic. We just feel trapped, like the kids. For much of the film, one or the other is speaking of parents as the alien life form they represent -- "When you grow up, your heart dies" is the bitter slogan -- and that feeling of being trapped by youth and yet terrified to leave it informs the movie even at its most raucous. For getting that one element, Hughes deserves a great deal of credit; for getting it into a "grown-up" movie, Hughes deserves more work. [19 Feb 1985, p.C4]

It's a bloodless film, however; a spy story that actually drags for long stretches in the middle. And even though it's based on fact, there's rarely any drama in it. These are odd failures. [25 Jan 1985, p.D6]

Mischief is captivating enough that its small failings are forgiveable. Its four principal actors -- McKeon, Stewart, Preston and Nash -- are fine-looking, but they don't rely on that surface characteristic to get them through. Under Mel Damski's direction, they seem to know their craft. And so, Mischief is a twinkle for the eye and a wash of nostalgia for the memory. [11 Feb 1985, p.D4]

A hellishly bad film. [8 Feb 1985, p.9]

Like Apocalypse Now, The Killing Fields tries to show the Southeast Asian war as a lethal spasm of recent history, wholly predictable but nonetheless quite unexpected, and all the more terrible for those elements. And like Apocalypse Now, this film succeeds in the almost surreal business of recalling a nightmare. At its best, The Killing Fields is unforgettable. [18 Jan 1985, p.D1]

Old-fashioned isn't necessarily bad. In Lean's case it can be immensely entertaining, because he knows how to build a story. At 76, he is still quite vital a force behind the camera, and he makes A Passage to India, born a comedy of manners, into high melodrama. [11 Jan 1985, p.D1]

The Dungeonmaster is a low-budget fantasy from 1984 on which no less than seven directors labored, and in vain. Each of the seven took one "sequence" in a series of ill-explained jousts between a computer wizard and a caped character called Mestema, who turns out to be Satan himself. Each of the "sequences" is uniformly shoddy looking. [14 Aug 1985, p.D5]

The ghoulies in question are at least momentarily diverting, which is more than can be said for the rest of their movie. [26 May 1985, p.C6]

But in addition to the sex and violence, there is also surprising style, humor and, yes, drama -- drama that actually serves to justify much of the violence.[11 Jan 1985, p.D14]

Johnny Dangerously was directed by Amy Heckerling, who made Fast Times at Ridgemont High and, like most other female directors, has been waiting for a chance to make a lot of money with a movie, waiting for her breakthrough film. This ought to be it: It's a splendid sophomoric comedy, and these days, in the time of Hollywood's perpetual freshmen, that's saying something. [21 Dec 1984, p.D1]

It turns out to be under-powered and low-wattage. Breakin' 2's plot could use about six months on the Nautilus equipment to tone it up. [19 Dec 1984, p.C5]

There's always something happening at the edges of The Flamingo Kid. And unexpectedly, considering the genre, there's something happening at the center, too. [21 Dec 1984, p.D1]

It's fun seeing what these two can do when they're inspired, but it's awful having to sit through what happens when they're not. [21 Dec 1984, p.D10]