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.