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]

Ultimately an easy film to like. As portrayed by Pauline Collins, reprising the role she originated on stage, the title character is imbued with such slyness and spirit that we're able to forgive the idiosyncracies, the glibness and event he staleness of this feminist manifesto. That Collins never strains from the film's weight is one of the acting triumphs of the year. [18 Sept 1989, p.80c]

You may not swallow every coincidental encounter and hair's-breadth escape, but this crisp, complex thriller makes you care what happens every moment; Hackman brings such road-worn humanity to his part you may not realize until the end that this Everyman is a Superman in middle-age disguise. [4 Sept 1989, p.68]

Casualties of War is De Palma's best work in years -- it's powerful, meticulous filmmaking -- yet it may be a movie easier to admire than love. Ultimately the drama seems too cut and dried; Eriksson wrestle with his conscience, but the audience never has to. "Casualties" has the visceral impact of a good movie; it lacks the resonance of a great one.

Just about everything in Turner & Hooch is predictable, and the one thing that isn't is unforgivable...Turner & Hooch is expertly executed dreck. [14 Aug 1989, p.56]

A pure, rousingly entertaining action movie which makes it clear that "binary oppositions" are good guys vs. bad guys and "ideological meanings" are us vs. them[17 July 1989, p.52]

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]

"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]

Under Buddy Van Horn's nonchalant direction, the Eastwood/Peters romantic chemistry is rather low voltage, but they both seem to be enjoying themselves. Keep your expectations modest, and you will, too. [12 Jun 1989, p.67]

Moving like a dream that explodes into reality, Chocolat is blessed with superb acting, especially by its star, the African-born Bankole. His quiet eloquence and suppressed passion express the human cost of an unjust political system. [27 Mar 1989, p.68]

Hasn't the South as a cornucopia of Lovable Eccentrics worn out its welcome? After Tennessee Williams? After Carson McCullers? After -- what, you say your appetite for L.E.'s is insatiable? Then Miss Firecracker, which Beth Henley has adapted from her 1984 play, is your heaping platter of that delicacy. [01 May 1989, p.75]

Unfortunately, much of this lineup turns out to be a carbon copy of the "Bull Durham" lineup. We have the wild young fireballer (Charlie Sheen); the veteran catcher (Tom Berenger); the veteran catcher's veteran girlfriend who also happens to be a baseball expert ('You ought to open your stance a little - they're pitching you inside"); and, the superstitious Cuban who sacrifices chickens, kisses snakes and lists his religion as "voodoo."

Noyce orchestrates the suspense with impressive visual flair, using the constricted setting to great advantage. But an hour into the tale impatience sets in when it becomes clear that neither he nor screen-writer Terry Hayes has anything more in mind than pressing our fear buttons. Ultimately, this is just a waterlogged damsel-in-distress movie. [17 Apr 1989, p.72]

Lehmann isn't in perfect control - the movie gets off to a flat-footed start, and the conclusion is chaotic - but when Heathers hits its stride, it reaches wild and original comic heights. [2 April 1989]

Fletch Lives feels like TV, but at least it's clever, unpretentious TV. [20 Mar 1989, p.83]

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]

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]

Writer John Patrick Shanley, whose mix of comedy and romantic whimsy produced intoxicating results in Moonstruck, mixes thrills, social satire and romantic whimsy in The January Man and gets mush. The whodunit is spectacularly implausible, the comedy misjudged, the romance forced. [30 Jan 1989, p.70]

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]

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]

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]

Basinger almost redeems this mess: whether feasting on battery fluid or learning to kiss from a tourist-guide hologram, her earnest ditziness is out of this world. [02 Jan 1989, p.58]

Nice as it is to see these actors again, the trouble with this less than necessary sequel is that it merely attempts to duplicate the experience of the original, with the inevitable loss of freshness. We get geriatric high jinks (instead of break-dancing, a basketball game), another dose of extraterrestrial sex between Steve Guttenberg and Tahnee Welch, saintly Antareans in peril, deathbed scenes and another spaceship liftoff. As the man once said, deja vu ain't what it used to be. [29 Nov 1988, p.87]

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]

A Cry in the Dark is no mere courtroom drama. Schepisi turns this tabloid story into a kind of splintered epic, a scathing portrait of Australian provincialism and prejudice at its most virulent. [16 Nov 1988, p.86C]

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]

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]

Punchline is never less than compelling, never less than smart. Seltzer and company have made a disturbingly entertaining movie about the manic-depressive world of comedy. [26 Sept 1988, p.58]