The film suffers dearly because of the two underwritten, emotionally unavailable characters at the film's center and when all is revealed at an amateur dance contest, the music — and the modicum of tension the movie has created — dies.

It's punishingly dull for fully half of its two hours and 45 minutes.

Field comes off best under the circumstances - she has real spirit - but Leibman, too eager to be liked, hits all the stereotypes on the head and Bridges is saddled with an underwritten, utterly inexplicable character. What Norma Rae really tells us is that Hollywood is still capable of making condescending paeans to the "little people" with all the phoniness of yesteryear. [5 March 1979, p.105]

A lumbering, self-important three-hour melodrama that defies credibility at every turn.

By the time Pale Rider wends its solemn, deliberate way to the final showdown, all of its tantalizing potential has bitten the dust. The woefully inadequate screenplay by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack takes every mundane turn available, reneging on its mythical promises. [1 July 1985, p.55]

Once the film devolves into teary hospital scenes and courtroom shtik, you might pine for Thelma and Louise's daring road to oblivion. [20 Feb 1995, Pg.72]

Downright repetitive! [30 May 1983]

There's a big difference between shock effects and suspense, and in sacrificing everything at the altar of gore, Carpenter sabotages the drama. The Thing is so single-mindedly determined to keep you awake that it almost puts you to sleep. [28 June 1982, p.73B]

An epic vision isn't worth much if you can't tell a story. This, in a nutshell, is the problem at the heart of the three-hour-and-39-minute debacle called Heaven's Gate. In his painstaking quest for period authenticity and his reliance on the operatic set piece, Cimino has lost all sight of day-to-day reality--and all sense of dramatic truth. [01 Dec 1980, p.88]

Though it tells us that it's about a man who gives pleasure for a living but is incapable of accepting pleasure, it is in fact about the guilty obsessions of a filmmaker who seems incapable of giving pleasure to an audience. [11 Feb 1980, p.82]

Flat, distressingly witless -- To put it bluntly -- the thrill is gone. Nobody did it better. But that was then.

This is one of those films that isn't a fllm but some repulsively complicated business deal. Nighthawks purports to be about terrorism, but it should be sued for nonpurport. [20 Apr 1981, p.93]

The densely populated movie, pumped up with unnecessary crowd scenes and a handful of utterly extraneous male characters, is as garish and busy as a TV game show. As directed by Herbert Ross, it is so intent on persuading the audience that it is having a heartwarming emotional experience you almost expect TelePrompTers to flash in the theater, instructing you to laugh and cry. [27 Nov 1989, p.92]

Black Rain is the sort of movie where, if you see a motorcycle race at the start, you know you'll get one in the climax. The script is routine formula swill, at best. [02 Oct 1989, p.70]

You don't have to be a Hitchcock idolater to see that this dumb, dull, plodding, pseudo-camp bore is a callous, commercial parasite. [13 June 1983, p.78]

This echo of the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans is the only new gimmick in Edward Zwick's entry in the cliche- terrorist genre.

Everything in Rounders is right there on the surface. Watching it is about as exciting as playing poker with all the cards face up. [14 Sept 1998]

Neil LaBute’s Possession is bad, but not spectacularly bad, which is disappointing.

An empty videogame of a movie about interplanetary pest control.

Hill is a modern-day Peckinpah. But is there really a need for this pointless, graphic violence in the 1980s? Is this escapism, or is it just a distasteful, needless reflection of what has become horrifyingly common in the real world?... Only small boys will be able to keep a straight face. [4 May 1987, p.77]

Irreversible takes an adolescent pride in its own ugliness. “I Stand Alone" told me something about the world; this one tells me more than I want to know about the calculating mind of its maker.

Heavy Metal is the bummer version of "Star Wars," an expression of adolescent revenge against the world. What gives the movie its thoroughly unpleasant integrity is the suspicion it arouses that the guys who dreamed this stuff up mean business. If only they'd saved it for their shrinks. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]

Eastwood has no more singing talent than Citizen Kane's mistress, and this oh-so-well-intentioned movie takes more than two tepid hours to show us the boy becoming a man, the man achieving his dream and somebody singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot over his grave. They'll have to come for to carry you home after this one. [27 Dec 1982, p.62]

All the surprises strenuously cooked up by screenwriter Patrick Smith Kelly and director Andrew ("The Fugitive") Davis can't overcome the movie's inability to make us care about any of its paper-thin characters.

Rent the devastating "The Boys of St. Vincent" to see how slick and hollow Sleepers is, how little it reveals about the real nature and effect of child abuse. [28 October 1996, p. 74]

One of the nastiest movies of our time, it pretends to be horrified by endemic violence in our schools while actually exploiting violence with a coldblooded cynicism that's worse than the violence itself. [30 Aug 1982, p.61]

An amiable comedy without a thought in its point head. [2 Aug 1993, p.55]

The superhero genre screams for a makeover, or at least a smart deconstruction, but Hancock isn't that movie. It just ups the foolishness ante.