The current installment is a bit funnier than its predecessor, but the success of the Panther series has never depended solely on laughs. Blake Edwards's slick, seamless directions makes even the flimsiest routines seem stylish; in addition to its comic virtues, this is one of the best-looking movies of its kind in recent memory. [27 Dec 1976, p.57]

A glossy, engrossing piece of work. Yet the story feels worked up, inorganic. [10 June 1985, p.88]

The peril of making a movie about monochromatic people is that you'll make a monochromatic movie, and Brooks hasn't entirely avoided this problem. Basically, his imagination doesn't include other people: the audience is trapped inside one insanity and starts to crave variety. Still, few comics cut so close to the bone of daily life, and that's to be cherished. [25 Feb 1985, p.85]

Under the reins of Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen"), the Alien franchise has lost none of its taste for acid-spewing, flesh-impaling, entrail-dripping gore.

The latest Star Trek is the most down-to-earth, and certainly the funniest, movie in the series, further evidence of the show's amazing durability. [1 Dec. 1986, p.89]

There's almost nothing you haven't seen before in this slick, preposterous, but occasionally exciting thriller. An angry Ford absorbs, and dishes out, massive punishment for a fellow his age, while Virginia Madsen is sadly wasted as his wife.

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]

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]

In spite of the fact that everything turns out exactly as you think it will, director Curtis (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) Hanson's movie, written by Denis O'Neill, is a tense, satisfying entertainment. [30 Sep 1994, p.69]

The movie, which ricochets between farce and poignancy, casts just enough romantic pixie dust to leave you smiling. It's certainly not the last word on the subject, but it's an amiable start.

Beverly Hills Cop is no masterpiece, but it uses Murphy to maximum effect. At its best, the movie is exactly as brazen, charming and mercurial as Murphy himself, which is to say it is unimaginable without him. [3 Dec. 1984, p.81]

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]

Sometimes flat, The Human Factor is nonetheless a lucidly impressive return to form for the 73-year-old director. It's not really a thriller at all, but an understated, uncompromising dissection of an event: an anatomy of the murder of a soul. [11 Feb 1980, p.82]

Fawcett is admirable; evoking the pathos of beauty that turns from a blessing into a target, her own beauty is deepening into courage and talent. [1 Sept 1986, p.86]

Hackman is brilliant at being almost -- but not quite -- ordinary, and Archer gives a compelling performance as the witness who wants to "do the right thing," but is afraid. [01 Oct 1990, p.70D]

Even when the film capitulates to its predictable feminist battle cry, director Howard Zieff maintains his poise, demonstrating the gift for light comic timing he showed in Hearts of the West. But the best reason for seeing Private Benjamin is Goldie Hawn, who proves herself a comic leading lady of the first order, a Cinderella in reverse who could charm the brass off the Joint Chiefs of Staff. [20 Oct 1980, p.84]

Crash has no plot to speak of. It's a cinematic tone poem of collisions and coitus.

This movie's got a real story to tell, and the sheer urgency in its voice wins you over. [02 Oct 1978, p.85]

It's all kept light and funny, but underlying the broad sight gags is a movie that actually has something to say about competition, fathers and sons, machismo and caffeine.

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.

A fanciful, featherweight, mostly charming concoction predicated on the old romantic myth that there is one true soul mate out there for us all.

Slides gracefully between comedy and pathos (it aims for tragedy, but doesn't quite get there).

You may emerge more exhausted than elated. Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn't be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not "Hamlet." Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun.

For all its violence - the movie has an almost fetishistic fascination with the destructive power of gunfire - the mayhem in The Gauntlet is as harmless as a comic book. You don't believe a minute of it, but at the end of the quest, it's hard not to chuckle and cheer. [02 Jan 1978, p.59]

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]

As ludicrous as the dialogue by screenwriter/director Walter Hill may be, the film's visual scheme is hypnotic. Dark, moody and muscular, its style gets under your skin even if your brain rebels. [21 Aug 1978, p.66]

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.

Brims with youthful exhuberance, it just needs to cut to the quick a little quicker.

No better children's film has appeared all year, but my bet is it'll be the grown-ups, not the kids, who come away with a lump in the throat.

Though the tale is told with crisp sangfroid and a wonderful twist, there's hardly a scene I haven't seen somewhere else.

It's a picturesque tale that, hobbled by its episodic structure, never achieves full steam.

Still, even if the movie's vast reach exceeds its grasp, it's a spellbinding history lesson. The Good Shepherd demands you watch it like a spy: alert, paranoid, never knowing whom you can trust, or who will stab you in the back.

Henry & June doesn't finally cohere, but there's something noble in its evocation of the erotic in all its pleasure and pathos. [22 Oct 1990, p.74]

Strictly as exploitation, Bad Boys is a pretty slick piece of work. It's overlong and short on characterization. But it's unsentimental about its teen-age hoods and unsparing about the nastiness of juvenile jails. [28 Mar 1983, p.73]

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]

Imagine "The War of the Roses" remade as a James Bond fantasy, with appropriately high-tech weaponry, and you have some idea of what Doug Liman's heavily armed comedy has in store.

This lean, hard, ruggedly acted film is hardly ingratiating, but its clenched power has a cruel and compelling beauty. [04 July 1977, p.77]

An engaging and touching flight of fancy. [17 July 1995, p.60]

A mix-and-match crowd-pleaser that shouldn't add up, but delightfully does.

Gillespie’s movie walks a delicate line through a minefield of potential bad taste. Directed with patient, low-key sensitivity, it never goes for a cheap laugh at its protagonist’s expense.

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.

In the hard-driven, sitcomish Broadway production, these colorful disasters too often seemed willed and self-conscious. The difference here, under Bruce Beresford's direction, is the unalloyed pleasure of watching Spacek, Lange and Keaton devour these juicy parts with lip-smacking relish. [22 Dec 1986, p.75]

Using the distinctive cinematographer Barry Sonnefeld, who shot "Raising Arizona," DeVito gives his comedy a crisp, colorful pop look: you can almost see the broad cartoon outlines drawn around the figures. [14 Dec 1987, p.69]

What Eastwood and Streep have done is to bring a semblance of emotional reality to the story.

A thick stew of sex, violence and suspicion, Lee's movie -- spiked up with a virtually nonstop soundtrack -- definitely has the power to jangle your nerves.

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]

If the movie is a mess, it's a vital, entertaining mess -- the most interesting film Jewison (F.I.S.T., In the Heat of the Night) has made in years. [22 Oct 1979, p.102]

Just about everything in this lavish, animated feature is for the pigtail set, especially a big romance between Pocahontas (Irene Bedard) and the strapping John Smith (Mel Gibson).

There's no denying that Emmerich's film, though a good half hour too long, keeps us watching.

Scene by well-crafted scene. Mamet holds you in a tight grip. But this movie is troubling. His intricate murder mystery plot may be overdetermined -- it doesn't leave enough room to satisfactorily explore the richly suggestive themes of identity, loyalty and betrayal. Gold's transformation seems willed by artistic fiat. The bleakness of his ending is a kind of intellectual cop-out: it reduces all that we've seen to hollow ironies. Homicide plays like a house afire: what it adds up to may be less than it seems. [14 Oct 1991, p.70]

Speed Racer creates a timeless, visually seductive world suspended somewhere between the pop '60s and the sci-fi future.

Full of invention, but under the colorful icing is a slightly stale cake.

It’s sad to see such stunning work self-destruct. You walk out haunted by the movie that might have been.

Director Harold Becker ("The Onion Field," "Sea of Love") makes "City Hall" absorbing in its evocation of New York fauna and rhythms. The problem is in the screenplay. [19 Feb 1996, p.68]

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.

Scott's finesse can't entirely disguise the mechanical nature of Nicholas and Ted Griffin's script, which has one too many twists for its own good. Fun while it lasts, but it's a bit of a con job itself.

"The Final Frontier" is not as witty as the last installment, nor as well made as "The Search for Spock." But it has the Trek essence in spades. [19 June 1989, p.63]

For the most part, however, Beaches is lean cuisine. It's not quite good enough to ring with any authenticity and not quite tasteless enough to be a glitzy, trashy wallow. But it has one enormous, undeniable asset: Bette Midler. [26 Dec 1988, p.66]

Working from an intermittently clever script by Diane Thomas, director Robert Zemeckis, a talented Spielberg protege (Used Cars), sets his sights on fun and proceeds to blast away at our defenses. Some of the fun is real, but much of it seems grimly willed, which tends to be more exhausting than entertaining. Douglas himself is a less than ideal choice as a hip Indy Jones adventurer -- there's no sense of self-enjoyment in his swagger. But Turner more than compensates. [16 Apr 1984, p.93]

Brando's performance is enormous fun, but it's not just a joke. He's hilarious and gently mesmerizing at once, and director John Frankenheimer savvily adjusts the tone of his movie to fit Brando's daft brilliance...Let's face it -- this is one nutty movie. It's not exactly "good," but I sure had a good time.

It's hobbled by the too-familiar conventions of the musical biopic: with so many chapters of Charles's life to cover, Hackford's movie never finds a rhythm, a groove, to settle into. It wins its battles without winning the war.

In the second half the film meanders into all the danger areas one might expect: predictable plot twists, tearful separation scenes between the lovers, and even a joyful reunion in Rome.

Lowe and Spader are quite good as alter egos of the moral shallows. But the film goes from shallow to callow. Director Curtis Hanson and writer David Koepp have turned out a glossy but hollow film noir that makes virtue and decadence equally vapid. [26 Mar 1990, p.53]

But if the endpoint is a homiletic given, the journey itself is more charming, and less sentimental, than you might suspect.

There are just enough fresh, funny gags and witty throwaways to keep the 88-minute MIB2 percolating -- it fulfills its end of the bargain: a good time will be had by almost all.

American Flyers is too accomplished not to wring tears, but you may want to kick and scream before you succumb. [09 Sep 1985, p.90]

After the taut and troubling Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World feels like a breather. As usual, you can expect solid, no-fuss craftsmanship, but it's best to set your expectations down a notch.

Tries too hard to prove it has a "heart" when the whole point is that its subjects do not.

For those who believe that movies are a proper place to explore the riddle of sex, no holds barred, this movie is de rigueur.

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]

Robert Rodriguez's second effort is a funny, craftily written piece of low-grade horror crapola.

Paradise Alley lacks Rocky's primal simplicity: It's a parade of outrageous ploys that come pelting at you from all angles. [13 Nov 1978, p.106]

Relieved of his courting duties, Allen gives his funniest performance in ages.

The preposterousness of the premise (concocted by writers Perry Howze and Randy Howze) is the appeal of Chances Are. The problem is the execution. Where "Heaven Can Wait" seduced you into belief with its expert comic timing and romantic urgency, director Emile ("Dirty Dancing") Ardolino's fantasy grows increasingly labored as it piles improbability upon psychological impossibility. [20 March 1989, p.83]

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.

In the antic, melancholy comedy The Royal Tenenbaums, the singular Wes Anderson (“Rushmore”) abandons his native Texas for a storybook vision of New York.

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]

Unlike some other Landis movies, the harmlessly silly Three Amigos never wanders too far afield in pursuit of a laugh. It's a well-wrought giggle machine. [15 Dec 1986, p.83]

Iceman may boil down to a disappointingly sentimental/mystical concept, but Schepisi is such a fluid, exciting filmmaker that you remain thrilled by his images even if you're dismayed by the direction the plot takes. [16 Apr 1984, p.92]

Careening wildly between fairy tale and drama it doesn't know when to call it quits.

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.

Has a quiet sense of community, a wry, unsentimental sweetness, that grows on you. It's a patient movie for impatient times.

Zoo avoids any taint of exploitation, but it errs on the opposite extreme. I came away from it wanting a little less Art and a lot more simple reportage.

A surprisingly earnest and cautionary movie, careful to attract female viewers and not freak parents out too badly.

The Hunger is slick, silly and not without thrills. [09 May 1983, p.85]

Not every movie -- even one based on an unproduced Kurosawa screenplay -- has to be about Life itself. Oh well, enjoy it for the thrills, and don't worry about trying to keep a straight face. [30 Dec 1985, p.62]

For all its shortcomings, The Human Stain is an honorable, sometimes moving attempt, better at evoking the poignancy of Silk's autumnal affair than exploring the moral ambiguities of his deception.

Part satire, part love story and, in its lurid deprogramming scenes, pure horror story. Not everything jells, and one never fully believes the hero's transformation from skepticism to subservience. Yet Kotcheff has again delivered a compelling entertainment and one savvy enough to raise more questions than it answers. [25 Oct 1982, p.119]

Under the Cherry Moon is not recommended for seekers of good taste, but if you're looking for a giddy, outre night at the movies, Prince is your man. [21 Jul 1986, p.65]

Through the laughter, though, there is real empathy for the characters. It's a light-hearted movie.

The demands of the historical epic form seem to hobble Jordan's imagination. He's a director who's at his best when he can follow the dark logic of his own subconscious.

Eastwood is climbing peaks as a director that Eastwood the actor can't scale. Perhaps it's time to cut the rope. [01 Oct 1990, p.70D]

Sort of like a Jennifer Lopez video: pretty to look at, easy on the ears, but ultimately completely vacuous and lackluster.

Holes in the script cause the narrative to burp at times.

This movie is so angrily honest that it's a bit dotty. But the battles between Turner and Perkins have a real ferocity, and Turner's internal battle between sexual pride and fear is poignant and pertinent. [29 Oct 1984, p.134]

Its battle scenes have a raw, gritty power that's closer to an actual documentary than any other Vietnam movie (the director, John Irvin, is an Englishman with an extensive background in documentaries, including ones about Vietnam). But its uncompromising indictment of the antiwar movement back home is much too simplistic and undercuts the film's tremendous momentum as a record of the combat soldiers' hellish ordeal. [14 Sept 1987, p.83]

"Ghost" comes on strong -- there's a crash-bang orchestral score, some romantic dialogue by William Goldman and many calendar shots of the savanna by Vilmos Zsigmond -- but it's hardly an epic. Kilmer's Irish accent is a flickering bulb, and Douglas, with his graying, stringy hair and beard, hams it up like a pirate with scurvy. That said, Goldman's screenplay is sharp and often unexpectedly funny. The lions are fabulously smart and evil, always one step ahead of the macho men's intricate plots to gun them down. And the man-against-beast fight scenes are twist-in-your-seat scary. Suffice it to say you haven't lived until you've dropped your rifle and a lion is chasing you up a tree. "Ghost" is no "Jaws," but it's got plenty of teeth. [21 Oct 1996, p.91]

For all the enhanced ingenuity of the special effects in The Lost World, the element of surprise and originality (the idea of cloning dinosaurs from fossilized DNA) is no longer present. And screenwriter David Koepp (the movie is very loosely based on Michael Crichton's sequel to his novel "Jurassic Park") has come up with a pretty conventional story line.