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]

At times Southern Comfort seems like a kind of war game itself--an academic exercise, perfectly executed but a little cut and dried. Still, it's an exercise passed with flying colors. The objective is sighted, the mission accomplished, the audience properly pummeled. [05 Oct 1981, p.78]

De Niro's exquisite underacting seems partly designed as a foil for Duvall's special ability to express repressed rage and explosive anxiety. They develop a complex and riveting relationship that's one of the most brilliant brother acts in screen history. [28 Sept 1981, p.87]

It's obviously a dangerously stretched premise, but writer-director Andrew Bergman keeps the plot rolling so fast you don't really mind. Bergman, who wrote "The InLaws" and "Blazing Saddles," mixes his comic punches well, from low slapstick to English-major jokes to Jewish social satire. [12 Oct 1981, p.99A]

A small, lovingly detailed story of wartime hardship and smalltown malice, Raggedy Man proceeds with a quiet, lyric, slightly sentimental charm, but it doesn't trust its own modest virtues. [05 Oct 1981, p.78]

A heavyweight contender unafraid to take on some of the most harrowing moral and social dilemmas of the day... Prince of the City takes us into the jungle and into the halls of justice, and forces us to see how precarious the line between them is. It's a true horror story. [24 Aug 1981, p.67]

This is state-of-the-art stuff, and clearly Landis is as proud of it as those kid prodigies who build computers out of Q-Tips. Landis also out-palms Brian De Palma, not only giving you nightmares about massacres but double nightmares that go on to meta-massacres just when you think they're over. But despite all of this super-sophistication the movie is finally just as silly as the old horror pictures it ambiguously kids. There's nothing like a rotting, wisecracking corpse to embody the bubble-gum nihilism of the Wise-Guy Wave. [7 Sept 1981, p.82]

The fun of They All Laughed is that it's both blithe and knowing, a work carefree in its spirit and careful in its art, somehow French in the way of (so help me!) Rene Clair. [30 Nov 1981, p.105]

Heavy Metal is the bummer version of "Star Wars," an expression of adolescent revenge against the world. What gives the movie its thoroughly unpleasant integrity is the suspicion it arouses that the guys who dreamed this stuff up mean business. If only they'd saved it for their shrinks. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]

When the dust settles, you may well suspect you've been taken for a sentimental ride, which is not what one normally expects from director John Huston. What he does bring to Evan Jones and Yabo Yablonsky's proficient script is his confident, unhurried pacing and his ease in mixing the professional actors and professional soccer players into a seamless ensemble. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]

De Palma has brought back Travolta's edge and intelligence. Relieved of having to give a star turn, Travolta seems happy to buckle down and do a straight-ahead, no-frills acting job. [27 July 1981, p.74]

You cannot accuse Wolfen of dullness. Though he hasn't the least interest in developing his characters, Wadleigh keeps you on your toes with a steady diet of dismembered bodies, red herrings (make that Red for the terrorists and Indians) and the sheer lunacy of the concept, which must be seen to be disbelieved. [03 Aug 1981, p.51]

Eye of the Needle never really catches fire. Marquand and screenwriter Stanley Mann may have overestimated the strength of their story: they serve it up unembellished, with competent but imperhat...Eye of the Needle isn't a bad film, just an unnecessary one: it was a better movie as a book. [3 August 1981, p.50]

Arthur is not the best comedy of the season, which is a pity because it has the best comic team--Dudley Moore as a childish, perpetually soused millionaire named Arthur Bach and John Gielgud as his snobbish, reprimanding and adoring valet, Hobson. [27 July 1981, p.75]

With pretty Martin Hewitt as David and pretty Brooke Shields as Jade, what you get is an overwrought teen make-out movie. [27 July 1981, p.74]

Zorro, the Gay Blade doesn't have an offensive or pretentious bone in its body; it's one of the few comedies around that can properly be called cute. That's no put down. [3 Aug 1981, p.50]

Escape From New York gets more conventional as it goes along, settling for chases and narrow escapes when it could have had wild social satire as well. Carpenter has a deeply ingrained B-movie sensibility--which is both his strength and limitation. He does clean work, but settles for too little. [27 July 1981, p. 75]

Cute, anthropomorphic animals, old-fashioned American rural locales and alternating doses of sentimentality and scares firmly place The Fox and the Hound in the classic Disney mold. [13 July 1981, p.81]

This movie has teeth, and it's not afraid to bite. [6 July 1981, p.7]

For Your Eyes Only is one giant second-unit film, an anthology of action episodes held together by the thinnest of plot lines. Most of these episodes are terrific in their exhilaratingly absurd energy: Steven Spielberg himself would not sneer at them. [29 June 1981, p.72]

A dark slice of sword and sorcery that could have used some of Walt's old storytelling sense. [13 July 1981, p.81]

As breezy and charming an entertainment as any barnyard ever produced. [6 July 1981, p.75]

Superman II is a success, a stirring sequel to the smash of '79. Whether you will prefer it to the original is like choosing between root beer and Fresca. They're both bubbly, but the flavor is different. What the follow-up doesn't have is the epic lyricism of Richard Donner's version; it's harder edged, fleeter on its feet, less reverential. [22 June 1981, p.87]

Criticizing it is like spitting in the wind, but at the risk of sounding like the spoilsport villain of the piece (a snippety liberal Washington bureaucrat, wouldn't you know), there's a smug, bully-boy spirit underneath this supposedly merry romp. The message is Go for It, and the theme song tells us 'Youv'e gotta have a dream to, make a dream come true," but what have our dreams come to? Breaking the 55-mph speed limit? In this movie, paradise is being able to land a Piper Cubin a busy city street to pick up another six-pack. Unfettered individualism has come to this: drive hard and carry a big Schlitz. [13 July 1981, p.81]

In the end, the virgin Andromeda (Judi Bowker) is chained to a cliff as a sacrifice to the sea dragon Kraken, while Perseus gallops to the rescue. If you are a small child, you may care what happens. If you are of age, you will have long since slipped off for a stiff drink. [06 July 1981, p.75]

By this time your face is twisted out of shape from reacting to Brooks's nonstop gags with either a yock or a wince. The trouble is that Brooks (who wrote, produced and directed the movie) doesn't develop anything: just like King Louis, he skeet-shoots the audience with his gags. He needs the creative help he had on his biggest hits, "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein." Good bad taste is too precious to be bollixed up. [22 June 1981, p.87]

A rancidly hilarious slice of Americana. [01 Jun 1981, p.91]

Bustin' Loose has a fair share of laughs, none of which is supplied by Tyson, who is totally wasted in an oppressively upright role and lacks the light touch that might have transformed it into something more quirky. For his first effort as producer, Pryor earns a mixed report. He's given himself a good showcase, but his gifts as a dangerous, subversive comic are undermined by his desire to make Uplifting Statements. [01 June 1981, p.91]