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

Q & A is an uncommonly ambitious thriller, but it rarely goes solemn -- it's a raw, rude Cook's tour of the New York underworld, from transvestite bars to precinct offices to Mafia mansions -- with a violent side trip to San Juan thrown in. [07 May 1990, p.65]

An ambitious, intense, but overdetermined exploration of the varieties of ethnic intolerance.

Russell has created what is surely the loudest, most assaultive movie musical ever made and stretched the genre into a new realm - the phantasmagorical nightmare. [24 Mar 1975, p.24]

The movie's one pleasure is watching Sarandon turn a cliche into a woman crackling with carnality and spirit. [22 Oct 1990, p.74]

Despite an overwrought finale, this stylish horror film is genuinely creepy. See it before the inevitable Hollywood remake.

A delirious example of grrrl power, Hong Kong style.

Take the movie's first words to heart: watch closely. You'll be well rewarded.

Wonderfully cast and acted, Parents establishes an intriguing comic metaphor about the dark side of the nuclear American family but unfortunately doesn't know where to take it. In the end, the wafer-thin script capitulates to the routine horror-movie conventions it's been battling against. But at least until then it puts up a good fight. [13 Feb 1989, p.79]

Proyas floods the screen with cinematic and literary references ranging from Murnau and Lang to Kafka and Orwell, creating a unique yet utterly convincing world.

Aims for a "Princess Bride" mix of whimsy and wonderment, the sardonic and the romantic, with only sporadic success. Both visually and narratively cluttered, the film diverts more than it enchants.

The secret of their endurance is not just in the grossness of their humor -- though their new film is even funkier and funnier than "Up in Smoke." As flipped out as their patchwork story gets, it always stays in touch with a very specific urban reality, a world where you make jokes out of taking a urine sample to your parole officer and find hilarity in Cheech's pathetic attempt to sing his naive Mexican-American protest song. [11 Aug 1980, p.69]

Since somebody this year was bound to make a movie called Valley Girl, let's be grateful the job fell to director Martha Coolidge, who has a light, satirical touch, and screenwriters Wayne Crawford and Andrew Lane, whose modest exploitation movie is thoroughly good-natured. [09 May 1983, p.85]

In a project laden with pitfalls, Malle has kept his balance and produced an elegant, ironic and poignant film about our troublesome hearts, minds and bodies. [10 Apr 1978, p.106]

For about an hour the writing, acting and direction coalesce in a prismatic, hyperkinetic ode to end-of-century doom. And then the two-hours-plus film starts to subside into genre convention. [16 Oct 1995, p.86]

Mamet brings an unusual level of intelligence to this boys'-adventure formula, and an edgy understanding of the ongoing games of one-upmanship men play. After a rocky, dutifully expositional beginning, The Edge turns into an unusually gripping suspense movie, its peril all the more effective for being unfashionably low-tech.

As drama, The Dark Crystal comes fully alive only at its rousing climax, and it's hampered by the Ken Doll blandness of our hero. As a bestiary, however, it is bountiful -- a prodigious and amusing parade of things that do much more than go bump in the night. [27 Dec 1982, p.61]

Talk Radio feels like a sketch inflated beyond the breaking point. Sure, it's disturbing. So is watching Morton Downey Jr. Stone seems to believe that he's lifting the lid off the creepy-crawly American unconscious. Perhaps. Or maybe Talk Radio is just a movie in love with the hysterical sound of its own voice.[9 Jan 1989, p.54]

Ultimately, this is a war of boorishness vs. sensitivity, and the filmmakers waffle.

The cruelly funny Margot at the Wedding shares many of the virtues of "Squid"--it's psychologically astute, sociologically dead on, refreshingly unformulaic--but it's a considerably tougher, less ingratiating movie. People who insist on likable, "sympathetic" protagonists may find it a bitter pill to swallow.

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.

Luhrmann has raised the level of his game, deconstructing the Hollywood musical -- a genre all but left for dead -- and reassembling it with a potency that hasn’t been seen since “Cabaret.”

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]

It's filled with Mann's signature macho verisimilitude, but essentially it's the stuff of what, in saner fiscal times, would have been a B movie. Miami Vice delivers the thrills, atmosphere and romance it promises, but it doesn't resonate like major Mann.

She's (Zellweger) so disarming and so deeply Bridget -- gliding between mortifying slapstick and pathos -- that she's entirely won you over by the time the credits have rolled. The opening credits.

Ferrell is a hoot. So is much of this witty holiday family entertainment, which, up until the end, when the “true spirit of Christmas” must be reaffirmed, happily favors slapstick over treacle.

Cobb is a refreshingly spiky antidote to Cataclysm all the Hollywood paeans to the suffering glory of the game. Ty Cobb approached baseball as he approached life: take no prisoners and leave scorched earth behind you. His greatness and his monstrosity can't be untangled. Cobb allows us to honor his achievements, but with no false illusions. It puts the ball in our hands: if this is an American hero, we need to figure out why. [12 Dec 1994, p.72]

A lightly entertaining, though not hilarious, film parody of comic book heroes.

Frankie & Johnny is a hard movie to dislike. Marshall and McNally have a real fondness for their characters and a deep trunkful of showbiz savvy. The playwright's delicious one-liners detonate with precision timing. The supporting characters, expertly played, have the kind of instant familiarity of regulars on a favorite TV sitcom. [14 Oct 1991, p.68]

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]

Visually, the Bluth effort is disappointingly drab and murky, and the story line may prove too thin to keep the little natives from restlessness. [28 Nov 1988, p.87]

Moment by moment, Sea of Love holds you in a tight grip. It's a stylish diversion, though it never gets much below its self-consciously "hot" surface. [18 Sep 1989, p.81]

I Am Legend can't seem to make up its mind just what kind of movie it wants to be.

Penn and McGuane have made an intelligent, entertaining Western, nicely balanced between the protagonists and the well-woven, colorful tapestry in which they're placed. [24 May 1976, p.103]

Hugo's themes may be timeless, but in this version the viewer is all too aware of the passing time. [04 May 1998, p.81]

All the ingredients for a classic doomed-by-overnight-success movie can be found in the trajectory of Jean Michel Basquiat's short, sad life.

It powerfully manipulates our emotions of outrage and revenge but tends to sacrifice human subtlety for polemics. It leaves the thin aftertaste of a TV movie. It doesn't help that McGillis give a dull, leaden performance, rendering her side of the story more perfunctory than it needed to be. Foster must carry the show alone; she seems to compact a lifetime of hard knocks into this furious, touching performance. [24 Oct 1988, p.74]

Shelton's strength is character, streetwise wit and funky, lived-in sexuality. Snipes, one of our most versatile young actors, gets to demonstrate his wonderful comic chops, and Harrelson, whose goofiness is part of his scam, partners him beautifully.

It doesn't try to knock your socks off. But if quiet integrity and grave charm count for anything, Brest has made an important debut. [14 Jan 1980, p.86]

The considerable virtues of THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN reflect the temperament of its author and star, Alan Alda. Decency, dependability, cozy sexuality: these are the qualities Alda projects as the star of TV's "M*A*S*H," and they are the underpinings of this intelligent, beautifully acted cautionary tale about the conflict between the siren call of success and the responsibilities of a private life. [27 Aug 1979, p.62]

Columbus's Harry Potter has many delights, but the magical alchemy that the book seemed to achieve so effortlessly eludes it.

In every detail - the superb soundtrack, the rich cinematography, the dinstinctively edgy editing - Rain Man reveals itself as a movie made with care, smarts, and a refreshing refusal to settle for the unexpected. [19 Dec 1988]

Here's a surprise: of the four actors in Closer, Clive Owen is the least famous, but he delivers the most memorable performance.

Peter Sellers's marvelously inept French Inspector Clouseau takes his fifth bow in Revenge of the Pink Panther - and you can't help loving it. Sellers and writer-director Blake Edwards clearly have no interest in tampering with their pat, profitable formula. They give us what we have come to expect from the series: a slapstick farce with raucous sight gags, wild chases and crass jokes that must be inspired by Playboy cartoons. [24 July 1978, p.59]

Shampoo achieves a fine comic distance by setting itself so specifically in the past, but it doesn't - to its credit - try to get you, in the present, off the hook. [10 Feb 1975, p.51]

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]

Foxes is a funny, rueful, sexy little movie about coming of age in a junk-food culture. [10 Mar 1980, p.88]

It's the casting of Iraq vet and non-professional Jake McLaughlin as Specialist Bonner, who fought alongside Deerfield's son in Iraq, that strikes a deeper emotional chord. His scenes with Jones, fraught with a complicated mix of bitterness, concern and guilt, are the best things in the movie.

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]

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.

Films about great theatrical divas (so temperamental! So divine!) all strike familiar notes. This Somerset Maugham adaptation is no exception. But Annette Bening, playing the queen of the '30s London stage, makes it worth another go-round.

A film of ideas; meaty ideas about Catholicism, faith, and the true nature of jealousy, love and hate, that are rarely contemplated in today's cinema.

Compromising Positions has acting talent to burn and enough drollery to pass the time quite pleasantly. [9 Sept 1985, p.90]

People seeing Peter Bogdanovich's version of Michael Frayn's clockwork farce might find it hard to believe that the Broadway show, under Michael Blakemore's direction, was twice as funny as the movie. It was. But the movie happens to be twice as funny as anything else around.

A brainy three-ring circus.

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.

The result is fascinating -- a rich, strange, problematical movie full of wild tonal shifts and bravura moviemaking.

Arlington Road does a nice job of keeping things speculative enough to remain interesting.

Like Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," Indy is still big; it's just that, in the new world of movie franchises, The Crystal Skull feels smaller.

There's an ample sense of foreboding in Last Night -- but sadly, very little else.

Flirts throughout with cliches, and some of the more melodramatic plot devices creak at the joints. Still, the potency of this pop romantic can't be denied. [24 Aug 1987]

Director Walter Hill has only the faintest interest in realism. His New York City is merely the backdrop for a bone-crunching fantasy that has more to do with science fiction and musicals than social commentary. When it's good - which is not often enough - it suggests what The Wiz, under happier circumstances, might have been. [26 Feb 1979, p.81]

It has a lovely score by Thomas Newman, stunning production design, striking costumes and gorgeous cinematography. Unfortunately, it just doesn't jell.

School Ties doesn't offer much fresh insight on its subject, but it tells its familiar tale well, adapting the straight-forward virtues of '50s storytelling to evoke that mythical era to which Pat Buchanan and friends would like us all to return. Mandel isn't a bludgeoner; his young, fresh cast is mighty good; and, to its credit, the movie resists the impulse to wrap everything up with a smiley ending. Anti-Semitism didn't go away in the '50s; it just lowered its voice for a while.[21 Sept 1992, p.78]

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

With a volatile combination of passion and bad manners, Araki ushers an old formula into the age of AIDS, and gives it new meaning. [31 Aug 1992, p.68]

You may leave the theater with a bit of a headache, but you'll feel amply compensated by the sense of having seen a master inventor at work.

I respect it enormously, but it feels like an art film in search of a movie.

While the elements in this coming-of-age saga may seem familiar, Eszterhas brings a fresh, immigrant's-eye perspective to his tale.

A style so chic, studied and murky it resembles a cross between a Nike commercial and a bad Polish art film.

At its best it's a marvel: bold, exciting and full of visions.

Lange gets deep into these numbers, the sound and spirit of Patsy seeming to stream through her face, body and hands with the musical equivalent of that hunger for living. Hominy Harmonies: Lange's energy, sensuality and intelligence pump iron into Getchell's script, which doesn't have the bite and color of his "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." [7 Oct 1985, p.88]

Altman has a sorcerer's ability to crack open scenes and invite us in to wander through them, and he keeps Vincent & Theo bristling with emotions and ideas.

A powerful and moving experience -- once it overcomes its clunky, badly written and clichéd first act.

A sweet and satisfying fantasy that reinvents the myth of the Fountain of Youth. [24 June 1985, p.70]

Technology has squeezed character to a few measly pixels on the digital screens. Explosions have replaced dramatic climaxes.

Greenaway uses the screen rather like the calligraphers of the story use the body so that the film becomes a kind of visual "pillow book;" a multi-layered series of inscriptions and reflections with almost hypnotic power.

This achingly funny film is a string of vignettes with no real plot, so it has periods of pointlessness--come to think of it, it's all pointless. But it has "cult classic" written all over it.

Flaws and all, this may be Spike's most purely enjoyable movie, and his best looking

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]

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

Wanted has one good plot twist in store (though it makes little sense), and its sense of humor about its own silliness keeps the fantasy afloat for a while. But as the body count rises, so does the portentous tone, and the relentlessness of Bekmambetov's overamped style becomes oppressive.

It's precisely at the finish line that Simon's calculations misfire and The Goodbye Girl collapses like a house of cards. The movie could have told us something about the wrenching collision of careers and romance, but it plays it safe, and in the end pays for it. [05 Dec 1977, p.109]

Looking for Mr. Goodbar could have been just another sensationalist movie version of a shocking best seller. But Richard Brooks has filmed it with power, seriousness and integrity. [24 Oct 1977, p.126]

Mangold is something of a pseudo-Scorsese, assembling elements of other pictures like "Internal Affairs" and "Bad Lieutenant" into an eclectic mix that lacks its own vital reality.

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]

Director Michael Lehmann ("Heathers") nimbly keeps this airy concoction afloat.

Small in scale, grittily realistic, charged with a fierce intelligence about how people live on the other side of the law, the film makes few concessions to an audience's expectations, but it has an edgy, lingering intensity. [03 Apr 1978, p.91]

There's an inspirational, hang-on-to-your-dreams message, but it comes only at the very end of a long, grim, painful journey. Holiday cheer is not what this movie is offering.

Although the film occasionally descends into mawkishness, Shyamalan is skilled at bringing the tension to excruciating heights.

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]

It's strange energy - sexy, morbid, not quite human. There's an awful lot of blood in the movie and a lot of flesh, but there's little flesh and blood. The Fury is the work of a brilliant, droll, sadistic puppeteer. [20 Mar 1978, p.93]

Price's vision was realistic and romantic at the same time, the violence painful but also sensual, the mood charged with a sweet hopelessness. Philip Kaufman's tough but tender film emphasizes this double vision. It's like Grease with brass knuckles. [16 July 1979, p.93]

In THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN, they're at their most golden, ethical and sexy. This ability to make right-mindedness so seductive, stylish and debonair is what makes The Electric Horseman such a sweet and beguiling movie. [17 Dec 1979, p.112]

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.

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

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

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