Subtlety is not the draw here: condom jokes and toilet humor alternate with car crashes and machine-gun killings. Yet the movie has a bouncy, comic-book appeal: sadism has rarely been so good-natured. [17 July 1989, p.53]

A thriller set on an Indian reservation in the 1970s, Thunderheart has both passion and power, enough to compensate for its sometimes murky plotting and a fair dose of melodramatic hokum.

It may sound sordid, but Arteta manages to bounce from brutality to comedy with only a few missteps -- and without the sweaty moralism that usually attends melodrama. The low-budget Star Maps may not be fully realized, but it's fully alive. [28 July 1997, p.69]

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]

Presumed Innocent is a slow fuse of a movie. It never quite explodes with the resonance Pakula intends. It tries too hard to be important. But the story it tells is a good one, and once it's got its hooks in you, there's no turning away. [30 July 1990, p.56]

It's preposterous, but never dull: Scott whips the action into a taut, tasty lather.

Spacek is brilliantly funny, slowly transforming Helen from a nervous 60s housewife into a liquored-up one. I could have watched her in the vibrating fat-burner, eyes closed, lazily gripping a martini glass, for hours.

The Stepfather has its thin, B-movie stretches, but it's a smart B movie, with a sly satirical edge. And when the bottom falls out of Jerry's dream, watch out: the movie gets downright hair-raising. [27 Feb 1987, p.79]

Director Charles ("The Mask") Russell is no James Cameron. He can produce a requisite amount of suspense and mayhem..., but his filmmaking is strictly B-movie generic. [01 Jul 1996 Pg.62]

Improbable as some of the plot may be, Lumet's movie -- directed with artful simplicity -- strikes powerful emotional chords. Running on Empty also happens to be the year's best teen romance: quirky Lorna (Martha Plimpton), in stubborn rebellion against her family's Wasp propriety, is a delightfully real teenager. [03 Oct 1988, p.57]

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.