Doesn't add up to any big deal. But it's a likable, lively little ditty -- one theme, some clever variations -- that never wears out its welcome.

Portman gives a superb, understated performance as a teen who gets whiplash from watching her mother's mood swings.

This movie is so unself-consciously wholesome it's almost Gumpian.

Whatever it is -- movie, photographed stage show, TV spectacular -- Pirates of Penzance is a happy hybrid. [14 Feb 1983, p.85]

If Ang Lee sometimes piles on the sugar, he has made a truly sweet movie in a bitter time. It leaves a bracing aftertaste. [22 Aug 1994, p.62]

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]

What makes Without a Trace important is the powerful, intelligent, seismic-sensitive performance of Kate Nelligan as Alex's mother. Nelligan literally creates the film's real theme -- the nightmare emotional world the victims of such crimes are plunged into. [07 Feb 1983, p.69]

Pollock can be clunky and TV-movie-ish. Still, Harris gives a fiery, convincing performance.

What Mad Hot Ballroom lacks in depth, it more than makesup for in charm and vibrancy.

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]

Ambitious, unsettling, funny and perhaps too smart for its own good. With so much on its satirical agenda, it tends to spin out of orbit. [9 Nov 1987]

If the truth be told, my eagerness to sit through a sequel to "Romancing the Stone" only slightly surpassed my desire to revisit my periodonist. Surprise: The Jewel of the Nile, the further adventures of romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) and adventurer Jack Colton (Michael Douglas), is a good night at the movies. [16 Dec 1985, p.82]

The tale is a bit too insular and claustrophobic for its own good: in the end these characters lack the depth and complexity to resonate deeply. The pleasures of The Dreamers stay mostly on the surface. But when the surface is as stylish and sexy as this, it's hard to complain.

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]

Frances McDormand, as the lone female union rep, and Richard Jenkins, as Josie’s angry miner dad, cut through the predictability.

Droll, sweet-tempered and lackadaisical, it's a shaggy-dog story with Nicholson playing the shaggy dog. It turns Western conventions on their heads not out of satirical anger but simply to charm the pants off the audience. A little less coyness, and a lot more John Belushi (as a Mexican deputy), would have helped. Still, at a time when most comedy comes straight out of the bathroom, the quirky, civilized pleasures of Nicholson's film are not to be sneezed at. [09 Oct 1978, p.94]

Plausibility is not the movie's strongest suit, but Phil Alden Robinson's enjoyable caper makes up for its gaps in logic with its breezy tone and its technological razzledazzle.

This visually stunning movie serves up generous dollops of designer creepiness.

The remarkable thing about Jarrold's movie is how much of the book it manages to capture.

This demented toyshop of a movie is a bit of a mess, but it's a visionary mess. Of how many sequels can that be said?

The preposterous plot is riddled with holes, and Patton, as the psychotic homosexual aide, badly overplays his hand. Nonetheless, Australian-born director Roger Donaldson does a bangup job tightening the suspense screws inside the Pentagon. Costner, much more vibrant than he was allowed to be in "The Untouchables," brings great dash and conviction to material that probably doesn't deserve it, and Hackman finds pockets of humanity in his badguy role. The result is taut, stylish and, for those willing to suspend about three tons of disbelief, a good deal of fun. [24 Aug 1987, p.60]

Goes on too long, and much of it is hooey, but it’s hard not to have a good time.

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]

Defies any expectations you bring to it. There are sights in Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's eye-opening documentary that will confirm and confound both right and left.

Refreshingly, the movie doesn't treat you like a moron who needs to be told which woman to root for. If Ben has to choose, why shouldn't you?

Silver gets rich Delancey detail and savory acting from a charming cast, especially Irving and Riegert, whose subtle, funny-sad performance is a small miracle of cliche-avoidance. But finally "Crossing Delancey" confuses charm with the cutes. [05 Sep 1988, p.61A]

Director Stuart Rosenberg and screenwriter W. D. Richter have a strong, grim, angry story to tell, and the urgency of their convictions overcomes the frequent clumsiness and confusion of the telling. Unsparing in its evocation of brutality, and unswerving in its commitment to Brubaker's radical, uncompromising ideals, the film at its best provokes a powerful sense of tension and outrage. [23 June 1980, p.75]

Of course, hanging over this ironic tale is the deeper historical irony--that many of the "good guy" rebels Charlie is funding (and we're cheering) will become our mortal enemies...It's as if "Titanic" ended with a celebratory shipboard banquet, followed by a postscript: by the way, it sank.

For a number of reasons The Duchess isn't all it could have been. It's fun, but falls short of fabulous.

If The Pope doesn't fly Sinatra-high or dig Scorsese-deep, it is an appealing commercial movie with a gritty sense of the city, an effective narrative drive and a very watchable cast of pungent performers. [25 June 1984, p.68]

The plot is madcap nonsense, and the comic aim is sometimes very broad and very low, but the belly-laugh quotient in Arthur (The In-Laws) Hiller's movie is the highest since the last Midler movie, Ruthless People. [26 Jan 1987, p.76]

A brainy three-ring circus.

Holofcener has a wonderful breezy touch. She hides life issues in such sweet moments, you barely notice them as they go down.

The name's Dalton, Timothy Dalton, and in the film The Living Daylights he abandons the winks, the arched eyebrow and laid-back smile to get down to the dirty business of espionage. [27 July 1987, p.56]

I'll take the Disney any day, in spite of the fact that the characters are cardboard, that the dialogue belongs in a deflated cartoon balloon, that the ending is hopelessly murky and that the acting -- by Schell, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux and especially Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster and Joseph Bottoms -- is abysmal. The magic of Peter Ellenshaw's production designs disarms the critical mind: the child in me had a dandy time. [24 Dec 1979, p.79]

The Turning Point has its flaws - some overwritten scenes and lapses into staginess and sentimentality - but they are those of heady excess and are easily forgiven. One has the sense of a project perfectly matched to the people who made it. [28 Nov 1977, p.97]

Fortunately, whenever the movie starts to sag, Depp flies to the rescue. It’s a truly piratical performance: with his flamboyantly fluttering fingers he steals every scene in the movie.

Expect to be confused for 10 minutes. Then sit back and enjoy the ride.

A fairy tale reminding us that childhood fears are deep and tangled as tree roots.

With an arsenal of cool f/x at their disposal, the Wachowskis have come up with a dizzyingly enjoyable junk movie that has just enough on its mind to keep the pleasure from being a guilty one.

Edwards has given Dudley Moore his best vehicle since Arthur. [31 Dec 1984, p.67]

Nickelodeon is Bogdanovich's sweet funny homage to the days before World War I when America played with its new toy, the movies, in those converted storefronts or jerry-built pantheons where for a nickel you could enter the new magic darkness of electric centuryIn that flickering, faintly salacious darkness, a new innocence was born. [27 Dec 1976, p.56]

In Wildcats, Hawn remains a pre-eminently delicious comedienne, even if the notion of a "Goldie Hawn movie" is becoming perilously predictable. [17 Feb 1986, p.68]

Directed, with neither prurience nor sentimentality, by Alan Clarke, the film is a celebration of the survival instincts of two game, practical girls, but a bleak wind blows just below the surface. [03 Aug 1987, p.67]

We're here for catty one-liners, movie-star camaraderie and fur-flying vengeance, and, in spite of a regrettable wimpiness that creeps in toward the end, that's what we get.

A reasonably engaging kids' flick that is given humor and heartbreak by director Michael Dinner and a cast of splendidly scruffy young players. [11 Feb 1985, p.73]

Copycat is satisfyingly tense, but the disgusto factor is balanced by its obvious theatricality--neatly captured in the contrasting performaces of Weaver and Hunter, the one playing neurotic standard poodle to the other's tightly wound terrier. [6 Nov 1995, pg.86]

Jumpy and ironic, Downey is a quicksilver delight and Kilmer is funny as the gay Perry. But Black’s inventive, self-conscious script--heavy on voice-over narration--can be too clever for its own good. The movie is baroque fun, but exhausting.

Kasdan has made a winning if overly pat first feature notable for its keen ear, its preference for character over plot and its refreshing modesty.

Poison's rich layers of juxtaposed images can't be easily digested in one viewing. The acting is uneven, the lighting sometimes dim, the tone at times deliberately awkward. But this suggestive, discordant movie takes you places you haven't been.

The self-deluded, 21-year-old heroine, can be an awful pain, but her meddling misjudgments are redeemed by her wit, grace and budding moral intelligence, and it's Gwyneth Paltrow's triumph that we always keep sight of that potential as she blithely plucks all the wrong heartstrings in town.

Director Sam Raimi, working from David Koepp's screenplay, wisely anchors his big action-adventure flick on Maguire's modest but beguiling persona.

At its screeching, wall-breaking best, “T3” achieves heavy-metal slapstick.

The dedication of the Canadian team strains belief at times, and for good reason.

Mandoki's gripping film may pull on the heartstrings too knowingly, but it's hard to forget the sight of the village’s children lying silent and still on every rooftop, praying the recruiting soldiers below will pass them by.

It's one of those juicy stories that have the added virtue of being true.

Domestic violence has never been more savagely portrayed on screen.

This is a cute, clever "Superman," without the epic audacity of Richard Donner's Supe I, one of the most underrated of movies, despite the $300 million it grossed. [20 June 1983, p.83]

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]

It's basically a mindless paean to goofing off, with interludes of dubious seriousness. [16 June 1986]

For all its retro design, Spirit actually represents a delicate marriage of the hand and the computer.

Living Out Loud is far from seamless -- the last third of the movie has a choppy rhythm and an ending that doesn't quite work -- but it's alive in all the ways that count.

Intelligent, deadly serious, made in a spirit of patriotism and protest, Redford's movie is more civics lesson than drama and doesn't pretend otherwise. It is what it is: a call to action.

The film is laudable, but Grass's book was lacerating. [21 Apr 1980, p.90]

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]

Gets too earnest for its own good. But Billy Ray and Terry George’s screenplay, taken from a John Katzenbach novel, is expertly plotted.

Wouldn't it have been more fascinating if, just once, they had to argue, as all debate teams must, against their own beliefs? That would have really tested these amazing kids' mettle--and the movie's too.

With a strong soundtrack and a little humor, In Too Deep remains good entertainment.

Ameche and Mantegna play off each other with lovely comic finesse. In the old shoeshine man's slightly befuddled dignity and the young hustler's inappropriate bravado, Amechi and Mantegna discover a delightful and touching dance of the Old World and the New. Odd couples are a dime a dozen in movies; these two make Things Change rare coin. [31 Oct 1988, p.72]

Director Donald Wrye handles this chestnut with restraint, scoring points about media madness and the fear of success without getting messagy. [05 Feb 1979, p.79]

The jaggedness will put many people off, which is a shame, because this is a rewarding film that asks only that you stay alert and use your senses. [15 Mar 1976, p.89]

For sheer off-the-wall audacity, Tim Burton's demented Beetlejuice certainly demands respect, even if it's more enjoyable in concept that in execution. [4 Apr 1988, p.72]

With Rachel Portman's music tugging too hard for tears, the movie sometimes comes dangerously close to being the soap opera McPherson worked so hard to disguise.

Children of Men leaves too many questions unanswered, yet it has a stunning visceral impact. You can forgive a lot in the face of filmmaking this dazzling.

Stands as a wonderful ensemble piece not unlike Woody Allen's dramas "Interiors" and "September."

Whatever its imperfections of structure and symmetry, Cry Freedom is an exciting film because of Attenborough's passionate feeling for the complex, bitter war for justice that's going on in South Africa. [09 Nov 1987, p.79]

Funny, sentimental, cheerfully bawdy story of a wedding reunion that stirs up a hornet's nest of old loves, lusts and jealousies.

Rosen's film has none of Baskshi's visual razzle-dazzle, but it is loaded with character, and it has the relentless momentum of a good war movie. [20 Nov 1978, p.79]

It's amazing how a sense of humor can turn a formula film into a frolic.

It's worth the price of admission just to hear Vilanch bouncing ideas off of a revved-up Robin Williams.

The script is lame...but U-571 works, thanks to the jittery handheld-camera work, the great, visceral sound editing and a few sneaky plot twists.

Badham's not-inconsiderable accomplishment is to have produced a decently entertaining romp composed entirely of borrowed parts. But however much one regrets to admit it, the movie is fun. [02 June 1986, p.75]

The overall effect of Grenaway's film is mixed: disturbing, too schematic to be entirely convincing, unforgettable as few movies are. A key element is the powerful acting of a distinguished cast. [23 Apr 1990, p.73]

Though the movie suffers from an underdeveloped plot, it does benefit from solid acting.

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 Rock and Scott work up some nice comic chemistry, but it’s the dependably warped Walken who steals the most scenes. The frenetically edited fight sequences will satisfy the blood lust of the target audience.

Condon's obvious attempts to draw parallels between Whale's life and his work tend to be heavy-handed, and detract from an otherwise intriguing film.

There's not much depth to the charaterizations, but they're uncommonly vivid for a horror movie. You believe that these wildly disparate people are friends, and the growing sexual affection between Sutherland and Adams is conveyed with a nice, understated warmth. [18 Dec 1978, p.85]

Ron Howard's version is--no surprise--a funny, audience-friendly entertainment that's ultimately less scathing satire than conventional Hollywood romantic comedy outfitted in trendy new clothes.

It's an engrossing tale, and Weir's languid, sun-dappled images are at once seductive and unnerving. Yet there's something hollow at the core, an unearned sense of importance, a reliance on mere mood to suggest mytsical depths. Why does Weir - and why should the audience - so easily accept these vanished schoolgirls as adolescent oracles, some sort of pagan Cassandras? The symbolic burden of Hanging Rock inevitably suggests the use of the Marabar Caves in E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India," but the comparison only points up the shallowness of Weir's conception. His movie is stylish and entertaining, but what he is pushing as metaphysical profundity is closer to metaphysical mush. [5 March 1979, p.105]

The true strength of the film lies in its vast ensemble of actors.

Ironweed is strong stuff. [21 Dec 1987, p.68]

As a character study, the film is sensitive and precise, but the weak plot often flounders. Ultimately, Rudolph is a master at conveying mood, and gives Afterglow a melancholy feel that wisely never gives in to total despair.

What stays with you finally is not the mystery's byzantine twists and turns, which are fun but don't resonate very deeply. It's the time, the place, the palpable feel of community. [2 Oct 1995, p.85]

Movies that make mental illness cute and poetic tend to give me the heebie-jeebies, and this one doesn't help its case by being evasively vague about the nature of Joon's condition. That said, it should be granted that Benny & Joon is one of the more palatable and inventive examples of this suspect genre, its inherent sappiness leavened by screenwriter Barry Berman's wit and director Jeremiah Chechik's clever use of familiar silent-comedy routines. [26 Apr 1993, p.64]

This new-wave fairy tale revels in unlikeliness and is not afraid to take its inspiration from sources as disparate as Diva, Madame Bovary and The Prince and the Pauper. The collision of inimical styles is its theme. Fortunately, even when the mile-a-minute plot is careering all over Manhattan, the movie seems to be following some cracked and sweet internal melody of its own. Which may be why this featherweight concoction lingers in the mind longer than you'd think possible. [08 Apr 1985, p.85]

The secret of Volcano's success as a better-than-average disasterama is its nonstop pace.

Donner has directed with a strong, quiet sense of human nuance that includes enough irony to give the bum's rush to the self pity that keeps trying to sneak into Max's Bar. [05 Jan 1981, p.55]