What Friedkin's film is about is anybody's guess. If he just wanted to make a thriller, he has made a clumsy and unconvincing one. If he wanted to explore the psychology of his characters, he has left out most of the relevant information. If he intended to illuminate the tricky subject of S&M, he hasn't even scratched the surface. "Cruising" is quite effective in working up an atmosphere of dread: the ominous bar scenes are butch grand guignol, full of sweaty flesh, menacing shadows and barely glimpsed acts of degradation performed by glowering, bearded men in black leather and chains. But who are these people and why are they doing all these kinky things? Friedkin isn't interested in explaining his milieu; he merely offers it up as a superficially shocking tableau for the titillation and horror of his audience. [18 Feb 1980, p.92]

How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it.

What charm, quirkiness and warmth the movie possesses is due largely to them (Cage and Leoni).

This shamefully underpromoted, gloriously silly romp made me laugh harder than any other movie this summer. Make that this year.

Force 10 is funny, but not quite funny enough: too often one laughs at its implausibilities without knowing if the filmmakers are in on the joke. The old-fashioned script by Robin Chapman has just enough tongue in cheek so that the cliches can be taken as irony, but Guy Hamilton's direction tips the balance toward cliche. An old hand at engineering actors in and out of impossible pickles, Hamilton keeps the action going, but the surprises are so mechanically executed that they rarely amaze. [18 Dec 1978, p.85]

Torn between moody grandiosity and cartoonish mayhem, Daredevil tries to have it both ways, and succeeds at neither.

Though sprinkled with comic gems, Big Top Pee-wee runs out of gas in the home stretch. Kleiser, of Blue Lagoon fame, is too bland for the job -- the tame Big Top finale makes you yearn for the cartoonish pizzazz of Big Adventure director Tim Burton. [01 Aug 1988, p.54]

Soft to the point of squishiness, Phenomenon is rescued from terminal bathos by Travolta's radiant conviction.

It's harmless fun, but it underutilizes Murphy, who's largely reduced to doing virtuoso variations on his iconic smile.

Like the object of its lampooning -- television -- "Amazon" is lightweight and often predictable. Anyone who's left grade school by the time "Leave It to Beaver" came on the air might want to sit this one out. [5 Oct 1987, p.86]

Shot in crisp black and white, this homage to "La Dolce Vita" nonetheless lacks the charm and energy of Fellini's farcical original.

Kids will be bored, the rest of us baffled.

Glenn Close, Bette Midler and Roger Bart (who plays one half of a gay couple slated for Stepfordizing) are hilarious, and even Nicole Kidman flashes comedic gifts not seen since "To Die For."

It's just a standard, mediocre horror flick that wants to be taken seriously. The creators missed the point entirely: even teenagers know that there's no audience for this type of film anymore.

Armageddon is as irresistible as it's indefensible.

The bottom lineis that "Footloose" has a lively, sweet, infectious spirit, and for that one is willing to overlook some clunky scenes, fuzzy motivations, gratuitous brawls and the failure to evoke this town with any sociological coherence. It works because Bacon, always a fine actor, and Singer make a golden and winning couple; because Lithgow invests his ogreish character with troubled and compassionate shadings; because of Christopher Penn's scene-stealing performance as Bacon's naive lug of a friend; because the rocking sound track features hot new songs like "Let's Hear It for the Boy," performed by Deniece Williams; and because everyone, fundamentalists excepted, will identify with the kids. [20 Feb 1984, p.78]

The more the computer-generated images take over, the sillier The Haunting gets. By the end, the computers have chased all the scares away.

Kershner's accomplishment in the first half of RoboCop 2--which offers up the original's mixture of crunching action, dystopian satire and depraved villainy--is the genuine pathos this conflicted tin man evokes. But a curious thing happens to this sequel. It forgets what it's about. In the last third of the movie, the character of RoboCop vanishes behind his visor, the script loses its focus, and the special effects take over.

There's nothing sadder than a movie that tries to be adorable and isn't. Author! Author! tries so hard that the screen seems to sweat. [05 Jul 1982, p.72]

Just because Sandler's Sonny makes little sense as an actual human being doesn't mean he won't make you laugh.

Robert Redford need not worry that his golden-boy throne is in danger of being usurped by the ballyhooed newcomer Nick Nolte, whose performance here never transcends the boundaries of a Salem commercial...And anyone who can't help looking beyond the action for plausibility had better stay home. You're thinking too much if you can't accept Nolte's explanation for risking life and limb underwater: "I feel things, so I do 'em." And if you persist in wondering why no policeman ever gets curious about all these strange goings-on in sleepy little Bermuda, then you're nothing but a spoilsport. [27 June 1977, p.60]

It isn't a comedy - it's a sluggish adventure movie about an L.A.-to-Chicago train trip that wastes two considerable talents. [13 Dec 1976, p.106A]

One can forgive the orangutan's participation - he couldn't read the script - but what is Eastwood's excuse? James Fargo directed, every which way but well. [08 Jan 1979, p.60]

Gator is sloppily directed by Reynolds himself and filled with anti-ethnic humor that Reynolds has picked up from all those guest shots on the talk shows with Don Rickles et al. [13 Sep 1976, p.89]

The story is predictable, the science is dubious, the dialogue leaden and the acting indifferent. No matter. When Frankenheimer brings on his garish monster, it's as if the audience had never seen one before. Fear and tremblings shake the seats. [18 Jun 1979, p.54]

Director Joe Johnston ("Honey, I Shrunk the Kids") turns this fantasy into a mean-spirited exercise in terror.

In Wildcats, Hawn remains a pre-eminently delicious comedienne, even if the notion of a "Goldie Hawn movie" is becoming perilously predictable. [17 Feb 1986, p.68]

The peculiar thing about Into the Night is that while it fails to deliver the conventional goods, it succeeds as an unclassifiable mood piece, a quirky voyage into seedy all-night Los Angeles. There are nice cameos from Bruce McGill as Pfeiffer's surly brother, and from David Bowie as a deadly hit man. It's good to see Goldblum in a leading role, even though he is kept on a tight rein; Pfeiffer is alluring and touching, like a precious object made from base parts. For the first time in a Landis movie, real pain reaches the surface. Propelled by B. B. King's haunting blues, this oddball movie sneaks under the skin. [11 March 1985, p.70]