Among the ties with the past, the opening portion introduces a comic orgy that is deliberate parallel cantina scene in “Star Wars” and among the new thrills there is an airborne vehicle chase through a forest, projected at a speed to leave audiences dizzy.

What Fast Times at Ridgemont High has is an attractive, personable cast, a bunch of young actors who are very easy to like. What it doesn't have is a clear point of view, something that would make it of more interest than leafing through a high school yearbook. Its final sequence, for instance, could just as easily come in the middle of the movie for all the relation it bears to what goes on before.

Spielberg's direction and Melissa Mathison's script never lose sight of the realistic, low center of gravity world of childhood, in which such marvelous adventures happen every day that an alien knocking around the garage is not really such an unusual occurrence. [2002 re-release]

Chariots of Fire reasserts the importance of the so-called old-fashioned virtues of moral courage and personal integrity and, as such, it is a movie that, with the help of Vangelis Papathanassiou’s wonderfully stirring music, lifts the spirits to a new high. The actors seem to have been born to play their roles.

The movie is so entertaining it hardly seems right to say it's susceptible to holes being picked in it, but it is.

There is no denying the emotional power of these scenes, but one wishes that Scorsese would end his Italian-American guilt trip and stop exposing mean-tempered, self-destructive characters like La Motta, whose personality problems, he apparently feels, stem from their cultural environment. Raging Bull ultimately has a numbing effect on the brain as if one's head had been pummeled by La Motta's so-called "girlish" fists.

It is nearly impossible to look at this brilliantly executed movie without being moved to tears.

The combination of old-time Hollywood valor and ahead-of-its-time surprises makes this restoration a big event.

Airplane loses its buoyancy. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, who share both writing and directorial credits, become so desperate for laughs that the jokes descend to a much cruder level. And Airplane does an abrupt nosedive, turning a hopelessly flat movie, sparked only by the occasional appearances of Lloyd Bridges as an easily rattled air traffic controller whose nerves are such he depends on booze and pills to keep himself going on the job.

The opening scene of The Shining is along a narrow mountain road while the “Dies Irae” plays ominously on the soundtrack. The camera veers out away from the car toward the horizon as if to bear down on something significant… and then comes back to the car. The movement is a sort of portent for the direction of the movie, which takes two and a half hours to go nowhere.

Anyone planning to see The Empire Strikes Back should be warned right away that it is done as a two-hour chapter and ends in a cliffhanger, which is likely to leave an unsatisfied feeling, unlike “Star Wars,” which can be taken as a self-contained unit. This acknowledged, the movie nevertheless is a spectacular piece of work that carries the new “Star Wars” tradition forward.

Creepy in 1980, Cruising is almost macabre now, knowing that most of the young men involved in rough, unprotected sex then began dying of AIDS shortly afterwards.

It is a purely mechanical movie that is no more dazzling to the eye than a nighttime landing at Kennedy airport.

Coppola, with his bravura style of direction, has created a movie of harrowing intensity and staggering power. But if you accept the belief that art should enlighten and illuminate as well as arouse the emotions, I’m afraid that Apocalypse Now does not qualify as great art.

The Warriors is a comic book morality tale, Westside Story crossed with A Clockwork Orange. The movie is so perversely fascinating in a variety of ways that it’s too bad the imagination demonstrated wasn’t used for something better than what turns out to be one more exploitation film in which the audience is encouraged to cheer the sights and sounds of mayhem.

A movie that is pure escape and good, clean, unadulterated fun.

In ferociously intense, chillingly brutal scenes, this bravely innovative, kingsized movie (one should be warned that it runs over three hours) enables one to fully understand why this particular war not only destroyed the hopes and dreams of America’s young men, but why it left so many of them permanently shattered and alienated from society.

Star Wars is somewhat grounded by a malfunctioning script and hopelessly infantile dialogue, but from a technical standpoint, it is an absolutely breathtaking achievement.

There are moments when it seems Allen’s comic muse has temporarily deserted him - but it has been replaced by something much greater. Annie Hall touches the heart.

Stallone is totally engaging Rocky playing him with a mixture of boyish intensity, lusty sensuality and cheerful innocence. And Shire is equally appealing, slowly blossoming into a vibrant young woman, and Burt Young seethes with anger as her embittered brother.

Were there Richter scales for measuring the degree of terror induced by movies of this kind, De Palma's "Carrie" would register only 2.2 in terms of actual shock value, but it would score well on the laugh meter. This satiric examination of the American high schooler turns out to be scathingly funny.

What finally makes the movie so compelling is director Martin Scorsese's scathing vision of New York as a fiery inferno of neon lights and relentlessly hostile populace.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the best film therapy one can recommend.

It is a stunningly effective thriller, as cleverly engineered by director Steven Spielberg (with considerable assist from film editor, Verna Fields) as the mechanical sharks that everyone knows by now play the great white shark.

The Godfather PART II is the most ambitious American movie in terms of size and scope in recent memory. It goes much deeper than “The Godfather” in analyzing the twisted mentalities of these men who pervert the capitalist system for their own gain. The film is richer in texture and gives more evidence of social awareness.

Director William Friedkin, with his scrupulous attention to detail, his determination to convey a sense of realism, achieves such startling effects that one comes away almost completely convinced of the possibility of demonic possession. His movie rushes headlong towards a blood-curling climax (the actual rite of exorcism), a series of scenes so powerful it leaves the audience limp and exhausted.

But the look of a movie is not as important as how it feels. The Sting feels like a cold shower. One dashes into it primarily because of its superior cast.

The movie is set in a gloriously creepy and crumbling Venice. It's the off-season, and every deserted canal and alleyway reeks of bad vibes. Roeg plays masterfully with this menacing atmosphere, jangling the nerves with quick cuts and quixotic possibilities. [16 Oct 1998, p.72]