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]

Tempest is too long and often rambles when it should scintillate, but it has wit and heart, and some of its Shakespearean switcheroos have a touching charm. [16 Aug 1982, p.59]

It's a shaggy-dog road movie, with all the team's usual ingredients but one -- it's not funny. There's no fresh insight in Things Are Tough All Over, little of their surrealist pothead non sequiturs, and to see them through, they've begun to fall back on tired, conventional sight gags -- a car going through a carwash with its top down, Cheech hiding in a spinning laundermat dryer. [6 Sept 1982, p.75]

Tex, a Walt Disney production, makes good on that studio's promise to return to quality family filmmaking. You don't have be 16 to be moved by it -- having been 16 will do. [02 Aug 1982]

Actually it's relatively clean, downright affirmative (the girls get insurance plans and 90 percent of the take) and resoundingly unfunny. [2 Aug 1982, p.63]

For all its isolated lovely touches--there's a wonderful moment of repose while Garp listens to Nat King Cole on his car radio--the movie leaves a cold, sour aftertaste. Some of this can be attributed to the uncertain tone of Hill's direction--overly broad here, too remote there--but much of it goes back to Irving. [26 July 1982, p.77]

The singin' and dancin' ain't much to write home about; you'd reckon that some $30 million would buy you somethin' with more pizzazz than an Amarillo road-show version of Oklahoma. Reckon again. [26 July 1982, p.79]

It's ersatz classicism, in its inoffensive way as much a dead end as Stardust Memories. Allen seems to be biding his time, waiting for the "real" Woody Allen to figure out what a real Woody Allen movie will be. [19 July 1982, p.70]

The Secret of NIMH is an ambitious and entertaining debut that will delight and terrify kids everywhere. If there are flaws in NIMH they are a product of its ambition: visually, moments when the animation is almost too busy to take in; dramatically, an eclectic and overstuffed plot that threatens the balance of the movie. But better a surfeit than a soporific. [12 July 1982, p.75]

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]

This is one of those films where lots of things happen but there's no real excitement. [28 June 1982, p.73B]

There's nothing sadder than a movie that tries to be adorable and isn't. Author! Author! tries so hard that the screen seems to sweat. [05 Jul 1982, p.72]

Birch's confidence as a director ebbs and flows throughout -it's odd that she can direct the complicated musical numbers so well and bungle the action scenes so badly. Yet in the end it's hard to resist the movie's bubble-gum romanticism. There's even a dream sequence in which the heroine sings to a vision of her fantasy boyfriend, who appears in heaven in a silver-lame biker's outfit. What can-you say in the face of such sublime silliness but hooray for Hollywood? [14 June 1982, p.88]

The Wrath of Khan is a small soap opera about a man coming to terms with age and death and a son he had never acknowledged. It's really On Golden Galaxy, and it would have made a lot more sense as a modestly produced hour of television. [7 June 1982, p.53]

The viewer finds himsel falternating between awe at the director's courage, energy and dedication, and horror at his monomania. [18 Oct 1982, p.95]

As tempting as it is to ridicule Rocky III, the disarming fact remains that Stallone has created a very potent populist myth. It worked for him before, and it works for him again. Just as Sinatra can endlessly reprise My Way and still raise goosebumps, so Stallone can turn out shameless variations on his Believe-in-Yourself miracle play and still get the old adrenaline pumping. [31 May 1982, p.70]

The Escape Artist is chockablock with intriguing ingredients, none of which pays off. It's a true oddball, but as much as one would like to encourage iconoclasm in Hollywood, a movie this incoherent can only induce exasperation. [14 Jun 1982, p.88]

For the eternal adolescents of the '80s, "Warrior" is even more primal fun than its predecessor. Miller has perfected the popup Spielberg style and laced it with speed. [31 May 1982, p.67]

A one joke movie? Perhaps, but it's such an engaging joke that anyone who loves old movies will find it irresistible. And anyone who loves Steve Martin will be fascinated by his sly performance, which is pitched exactly between the low comedy of The Jerk and the highbrow Brechtianisms of Pennies From Heaven. [24 May 1982, p.85]

There's a frenzied integrity to this wild and crazy movie that yells at us as a father yells at children who are playing with fire. [26 Apr 1982, p.75]

The Chosen is slowly absorbing and ultimately powerful, because it takes the time to reveal its characters in all their quirky complexity. [27 May 1982, p.100]

Aided by Vladimir Cosma's haunting score (and that great Catalani aria) and by Philippe Rousselot's bravura cinematography, Beineix makes an utterly stunning debut. "Diva" demonstrates the depth of pleasure a shallow movie can provide. [18 Apr 1982, p.96]

Chariots of Fire will thrill you and delight you and very possibly reduce--or exalt--you to tears...Chariots of Fire is for everyone; it's exactly what a popular film ought to be: superb work by first-rate people out to achieve the highest standards of excellence. [28 Sept 1981, p.88]

Cat People retains the psychological suggestiveness of the original while adding a blazing, carefully controlled eroticism and violence as well as state-of-the-art special effects and a ravishing over-all physical design. And it has the quintessential cat-person in Nastassia Kinski. As with all horror classics, what might be ludicrous is transformed into something gripping by the passionate logic of a grotesque metaphor. Alan Ormsby's screenplay has the logic and Paul Schrader has the passion. The result is Schrader's best work as a director. [05 Apr 1982, p.74]

This is funny? Yes, as Pryor does it--not as knee-slapping farce, mind you, but as the painful comedy of endured humiliation of which he is the master... But it's high time Pryor stopped redeeming badly made movies and surrounded himself with talents equal to his own. [12 Apr 1982, p.87]

There's plenty of violence in The Long Good Friday, but it's good old macho man-against-man violence and the film has crisp direction from John Mackenzie and a tight, smart, sophisticated script by a first-rate English playwright, Barrie Keeffe. [15 Mar 1982, p.78]

Eating Raoul is only one of the many outrageous things that Paul and Mary Bland do in this outrageous black comedy that's almost certain to be the up-from-underground movie of the year. [11 Oct 1982, p.103]

Take this classical-farce premise, put it in the very accomplished hands of the neoclassical director Blake Edwards, and you have yourself a real comedy -not a mere grab bag of gags but a deliciously accelerating divertissement on the theme of role-playing, sexual and otherwise. [22 March 1982, p.84]

Director Guy Hamilton's movie is rather more effective as an advertisement for Majorca than as a thriller, and the idea of Ustinov as Poirot remains more enticing than the reality, but you could do a lot worse. Think of it as a languid cocktail party with a terrific guest list. [22 Mar 1982, p.85]

It's a real writer's movie, happy to linger on a psychologically telling moment--and audiences expecting a big payoff may feel disappointed. "Diner" isn't the kind of movie that jumps up and down to please. But while seeming to traverse familiar ground, Levinson and his superb young cast are sprinkling it with sparkling insights. [19 Apr 1982, p.96]

Pseudo-lush but crummy flick. [15 Mar 1982, p.78]

It's no soap opera: it's serious, unsentimental and novelistic in its preference for anecdotal detail over melodramatic plotting and filled with fresh, acute and moving moments. Shoot the Moon can also boast of excellent performances and Parker's most controlled direction to date. Yet these many virtues don't add up to a completely satisfying film. [25 Jan 1982, p.75]

If Barbarosa is a decidedly bumpy ride, its quirky ambitions are always interesting. Schepisi doesn't play safe, but he's a real filmmaker -- even his mistakes are arresting. [02 Aug 1982, p.62]

Quest for Fire is diverting and well made, and kids should love it. Chong is delightful as the first feminist heroine. And as bloody and brutish as the fights are, the film is resoundingly sweet-natured at heart. [15 Feb 1982, p.61]

The Border has the air of a project marred by studio compromises -marred but not broken. Warts and all, it has more passion, texture and bite than anything Richardson has done in a long while. [01 Feb 1982, p.72]

Splendid film...Just as the recent "Chariots of Fire" did, Robert Towne's Personal Best takes the world of track and field as a microcosm for the ecstasies and pains of self-striving. And it dares, with great delicacy and insight, to show a loving sexual relationship between two young women, not as a statement about homosexuality but as a paradigm of authentic human intimacy. [8 Feb 1982, p.60]

This courageous film breaks new ground in movie musicals. [21 Dec 1981, p.49]

Taps aspires to be both a movie for the conservative '80s and a youth-in-revolt, anti-military movie of the '60s. The contradictions break the dramatic spine of director Harold Becker's film, which grinds to a predictably violent climax without ever having made its basic premise believable. How many teen-agers do you know who would sacrifice their lives for a military school? [28 Dec 1981, p.65]

This is an epic you have to listen to--it's about people who trade in words, who make revolutions in their heads, and Beatty and Trevor Griffiths's script is full of some of the best talk in any movie this year. [7 Dec 1981, p.83]

Sleek, moody, violent and romantic, Sharky's Machine is not only the most seductive Burt Reynolds movie in many a moon. Reynolds is turning into a stylish director, and he sets a distinctive tone of languid menace. Though he can be graphically brutal, Reynolds isn't after realism, but a kind of gauzy, slightly baroque romanticism. [28 Dec 1981, p.64]

The ads for Neighbors call it "a comic nightmare"; it's more like a sour case of creative indigestion. [21 Dec 1981, p.51]

Rollover wants to be a thriller, love story and economics lesson rolled into one, but in trying to do so much, it shortchanges each element. The screenplay (by David Shaber from a story by Shaber, Howard Kohn and David Weir) doesn't hang together. [14 Dec 1981, p.125]

Time Bandits is at once sophisticated and childlike in its magical but emotionally cool logic, and this tone is perfectly captured in young Warnock's appealingly sensible performance. Cleese, Warner, Richardson, Holm and Connery are in great form, and the bandits (David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Jack Purvis, Mike Edmonds, Malcolm Dixon and Tiny Ross) are all gifted comic actors. Made on a modest budget, Time Bandits is a wonderful wild card in the fall movie season [09 Nov 1981, p.92]

The plain fact is that Halloween II is quite scary, more than a little silly and immediately forgettable. [16 Nov 1981, p.117]

As dumb as Looker is, it's not dull, and Crichton does pull off one very funny sequence--a black comic climax in which corpses and commercials become hilariously intertwined. lt should have been a skit on "Second City Television." [2 Nov 1981, p.108]

Their best work since the fresh and appealing studies in cultural clash they made in India in the '60s, such as "Shakespeare Wallah." Movies are not literature, and Ivory is a dangerously literary director. But in Quartet he has found the images to express Jean Rhys's troubling vision of female fatality. [9 Nov 1981, p.94]

The French Lieutenant's Woman is one of the most civilized and provocative movies of the year, but it falls just short of greatness. Perhaps Reisz and Pinter are too innately reticent to wring the last drop of emotional power from Fowles's story. [21 Sep 1981, p.96]

A unique and provocative film, ironic, funny, crazy and moving. [26 Oct 1981, p.78]

This swiftly paced comedy is a deliciously impure compound of old-fashioned "women's film" formulas and up-to-the-minute sexual mores. It is, from moment to moment, trashy and touching, literate and ludicrous, bitchily funny and as full of sharp, sophisticated insights as it is of appalling blind spots. Part soap opera, part comedy of manners, it refurbishes shopworn cliches into a gloriously unrespectable entertainment. [12 Oct 1981, p.98]

Paternity evades every serious issue it raises and blows a nice opportunity to be something more than a pleasantly run-of-the-mill entertainment. [12 Oct 1981, p.99A]

Faye Dunaway's performance has its own Gothic energy and insight. She catches the behavioral details of Joan Crawford--the throaty voice, dropping its "g's" with tough-guy casualness, the Venus' flytrap seductiveness. In her nightly chin strap, her sweat suit as she works out like a fighter, in Irene Sharaff|s brilliant period gowns and rings-of-Saturn hats, Dunaway catches the star's driving ambition, her obsession with a perverse ideal of perfection that turns human feeling into cruelty. She makes Crawford a fearsome portrait of the pathology of stardom. [21 Sept 1981, p.97A]

At times Southern Comfort seems like a kind of war game itself--an academic exercise, perfectly executed but a little cut and dried. Still, it's an exercise passed with flying colors. The objective is sighted, the mission accomplished, the audience properly pummeled. [05 Oct 1981, p.78]

De Niro's exquisite underacting seems partly designed as a foil for Duvall's special ability to express repressed rage and explosive anxiety. They develop a complex and riveting relationship that's one of the most brilliant brother acts in screen history. [28 Sept 1981, p.87]

It's obviously a dangerously stretched premise, but writer-director Andrew Bergman keeps the plot rolling so fast you don't really mind. Bergman, who wrote "The InLaws" and "Blazing Saddles," mixes his comic punches well, from low slapstick to English-major jokes to Jewish social satire. [12 Oct 1981, p.99A]

A small, lovingly detailed story of wartime hardship and smalltown malice, Raggedy Man proceeds with a quiet, lyric, slightly sentimental charm, but it doesn't trust its own modest virtues. [05 Oct 1981, p.78]

A heavyweight contender unafraid to take on some of the most harrowing moral and social dilemmas of the day... Prince of the City takes us into the jungle and into the halls of justice, and forces us to see how precarious the line between them is. It's a true horror story. [24 Aug 1981, p.67]

This is state-of-the-art stuff, and clearly Landis is as proud of it as those kid prodigies who build computers out of Q-Tips. Landis also out-palms Brian De Palma, not only giving you nightmares about massacres but double nightmares that go on to meta-massacres just when you think they're over. But despite all of this super-sophistication the movie is finally just as silly as the old horror pictures it ambiguously kids. There's nothing like a rotting, wisecracking corpse to embody the bubble-gum nihilism of the Wise-Guy Wave. [7 Sept 1981, p.82]

The fun of They All Laughed is that it's both blithe and knowing, a work carefree in its spirit and careful in its art, somehow French in the way of (so help me!) Rene Clair. [30 Nov 1981, p.105]

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]

When the dust settles, you may well suspect you've been taken for a sentimental ride, which is not what one normally expects from director John Huston. What he does bring to Evan Jones and Yabo Yablonsky's proficient script is his confident, unhurried pacing and his ease in mixing the professional actors and professional soccer players into a seamless ensemble. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]

De Palma has brought back Travolta's edge and intelligence. Relieved of having to give a star turn, Travolta seems happy to buckle down and do a straight-ahead, no-frills acting job. [27 July 1981, p.74]

You cannot accuse Wolfen of dullness. Though he hasn't the least interest in developing his characters, Wadleigh keeps you on your toes with a steady diet of dismembered bodies, red herrings (make that Red for the terrorists and Indians) and the sheer lunacy of the concept, which must be seen to be disbelieved. [03 Aug 1981, p.51]

Eye of the Needle never really catches fire. Marquand and screenwriter Stanley Mann may have overestimated the strength of their story: they serve it up unembellished, with competent but imperhat...Eye of the Needle isn't a bad film, just an unnecessary one: it was a better movie as a book. [3 August 1981, p.50]

Arthur is not the best comedy of the season, which is a pity because it has the best comic team--Dudley Moore as a childish, perpetually soused millionaire named Arthur Bach and John Gielgud as his snobbish, reprimanding and adoring valet, Hobson. [27 July 1981, p.75]

With pretty Martin Hewitt as David and pretty Brooke Shields as Jade, what you get is an overwrought teen make-out movie. [27 July 1981, p.74]

Zorro, the Gay Blade doesn't have an offensive or pretentious bone in its body; it's one of the few comedies around that can properly be called cute. That's no put down. [3 Aug 1981, p.50]

Escape From New York gets more conventional as it goes along, settling for chases and narrow escapes when it could have had wild social satire as well. Carpenter has a deeply ingrained B-movie sensibility--which is both his strength and limitation. He does clean work, but settles for too little. [27 July 1981, p. 75]

Cute, anthropomorphic animals, old-fashioned American rural locales and alternating doses of sentimentality and scares firmly place The Fox and the Hound in the classic Disney mold. [13 July 1981, p.81]

This movie has teeth, and it's not afraid to bite. [6 July 1981, p.7]

For Your Eyes Only is one giant second-unit film, an anthology of action episodes held together by the thinnest of plot lines. Most of these episodes are terrific in their exhilaratingly absurd energy: Steven Spielberg himself would not sneer at them. [29 June 1981, p.72]

A dark slice of sword and sorcery that could have used some of Walt's old storytelling sense. [13 July 1981, p.81]

As breezy and charming an entertainment as any barnyard ever produced. [6 July 1981, p.75]

Superman II is a success, a stirring sequel to the smash of '79. Whether you will prefer it to the original is like choosing between root beer and Fresca. They're both bubbly, but the flavor is different. What the follow-up doesn't have is the epic lyricism of Richard Donner's version; it's harder edged, fleeter on its feet, less reverential. [22 June 1981, p.87]

Criticizing it is like spitting in the wind, but at the risk of sounding like the spoilsport villain of the piece (a snippety liberal Washington bureaucrat, wouldn't you know), there's a smug, bully-boy spirit underneath this supposedly merry romp. The message is Go for It, and the theme song tells us 'Youv'e gotta have a dream to, make a dream come true," but what have our dreams come to? Breaking the 55-mph speed limit? In this movie, paradise is being able to land a Piper Cubin a busy city street to pick up another six-pack. Unfettered individualism has come to this: drive hard and carry a big Schlitz. [13 July 1981, p.81]

In the end, the virgin Andromeda (Judi Bowker) is chained to a cliff as a sacrifice to the sea dragon Kraken, while Perseus gallops to the rescue. If you are a small child, you may care what happens. If you are of age, you will have long since slipped off for a stiff drink. [06 July 1981, p.75]

By this time your face is twisted out of shape from reacting to Brooks's nonstop gags with either a yock or a wince. The trouble is that Brooks (who wrote, produced and directed the movie) doesn't develop anything: just like King Louis, he skeet-shoots the audience with his gags. He needs the creative help he had on his biggest hits, "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein." Good bad taste is too precious to be bollixed up. [22 June 1981, p.87]

A rancidly hilarious slice of Americana. [01 Jun 1981, p.91]

Bustin' Loose has a fair share of laughs, none of which is supplied by Tyson, who is totally wasted in an oppressively upright role and lacks the light touch that might have transformed it into something more quirky. For his first effort as producer, Pryor earns a mixed report. He's given himself a good showcase, but his gifts as a dangerous, subversive comic are undermined by his desire to make Uplifting Statements. [01 June 1981, p.91]

It's these well-lived-with characters who make The Four Seasons a pleasure to watch, and the actors obviously relish their parts. [25 May 1981, p.74]

It doesn't help matters that Connery has been given a cardboard wife and child who--fed up with dingy space colonies-abandon him early on. They're ingredients, not characters. Once again, Hollywood's superlative technology has been squandered on an undernourished screenplay. [01 June 1981, p.91]

Second Hand Hearts is a very classy-looking movie. Haskell Wexler is the cinematographer, and he transforms the gauchest milieus into elegant tableaux. But Harris and Blake don't mesh with Ashby's innately cool style. [18 May 1981]

The Hand is a moderately frightening, reasonably stylish exercise that ultimately doesn't seem worth the effort. Connoisseurs of schlock shock effects will not be satisfied by its tony illusion/reality games, and those looking for psycho/sexual illuminations will be one step ahead of the Freudian cliches. [27 Apr 1991, p.90]

Despite pitfalls of bathos and silliness, Knightriders has a startling sweetness, warmth and humor. [13 April 1981, p.82]

Boorman is both a romantic and a realist, an idealist and a skeptic, and Excalibur is an impressive but uneasy attempt to marry these opposites. [13 April 1981, p.82]

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]

Anyone who feels immune to the charisma of Elvis Presley should immediately see This Is Elvis. If you are not transfixed by his sexual aura, his liquid musical ease, his promiscuous stylistic range and his mysterious mixture of shyness and vulgarity, chances are you've been living at odds with the second half of the twentieth century. [04 May 1981, p.44]

Sarandon is touching and funny--a truly fresh performance. But the movie's sweet, elegiac heart belongs to Lancaster. Lou may be the role of his lifetime, and he carries it gently, obviously cherishing the gift. [06 Apr 1981, p.103]

Brutal and precision-made, Thief is a high-tech crime movie that closes in on its subject with such relentless purpose that it approaches abstraction. Nothing enters Mann's frame that is not designed to be there: the expertise he honors in his criminal hero is mirrored by his own meticulous craftsmanship. He gets the job done--and blows you away while doing it. [30 Mar 1981, p.82]

If they merely wanted to retell a good tale, they've failed. The first half of "Postman" succeeds in building up an atmosphere of dread and throttled desire as Nicholson and Lange circle their prey (John Colicos). But after the dramatic turnarounds of the trial, the film goes slack. Just when Mamet's script should be tightening the screws, it grows diffuse, introducing unnecessary characters while unaccountably lopping off Cain's original ending, without which the title is inexplicable. Rafelson's increasingly plodding, stagy direction doesn't help: he emphasizes the mechanics of Cain's plot when it needs to be disguised. [23 March 1981, p.81]

Not only the silliest chapter in the Omen trilogy, it's the dullest and most inept. [30 Mar 1981, p.83]

The film, adapted by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin and directed by Ivan Passer, captures Thornburg's tense, moody vision of life on the California edge, but it runs into trouble as a mystery. Fiskin has radically altered the last third of the book and has come up with a new ending that is far too ambiguous, abrupt and silly. One feels let down that so much comes to so little...Yet the film's sad twilight glow lingers. Cutter and Bone and Mo get under your skin. [6 Apr 1981, p.103]

Ritt and DeVore don't capitalize on their fairy-tale structure; they let the magic dribble away. The moviegoer knows from the start that this isn't a story about real people and accepts the fact. [16 Mar 1981, p.97]

he Dogs of War doesn't begin to deal with the moral complexity it promises: it keeps settling for easy, melodramatic solutions. Irvin is obviously a gifted storyteller, but he's shackled with the wrong story: it's a shame he couldn't have scrapped more of Forsyth's original plot and made a real movie about mercenaries and the Third World. [23 Feb 1981, p.61]

That American Pop is a work of anti-nostalgia does not make it any less banal than the sunny trip-down-memory-lane formulas it mocks. For all his very real skills as an animator, Bakshi's limitations as an artist are all too clear in American Pop. There's something perversely small-minded about a saga of pop music that resolutely refuses to convey any sense of the joy of making music. Bakshi's ears hear only the downbeats. [16 March 1981, p.94]

The Yugoslav-born Tesich is a wry romantic, a moonstruck jester, and his tendency toward excess is nicely complemented by Britisher Yates's crisp but delicate professionalism. With a superb cast at their disposal, they've taken a somewhat preposterous film noir plot and enriched it with quirky, meaty characterizations to produce a nervous comedy of menace about class distinctions and romantic and political obsession. [02 Mar 1981, p.81]

This would be acceptable, even powerful, if it were a genuinely tragic vision. But there's no true tragic sense here, not even the effective blend of entertainment and social perception of cop movies like "Serpico" and "The Onion Field." [16 Feb 1981, p.81]

With a mad doctor like Ken Russell at the helm, one happily follows this movie to hell and back. [29 Dec 1980, p.65]

Not a fiasco, a disaster or a scandal. But not as funny as it should have been, and not the trenchant office satire one was led to expect. As a comedy built on the juicy soil of revenge, "9 to 5" falls between two poles. It's not wild or dark enough to qualify as a truly disturbing farce and it's too fanciful and silly to succeed as realistic satire. Politically and esthetically, it's harmless--a mildly amusing romp that tends to get swallowed up by its own overly intricate plot. [22 Dec 1980, p.72]