The dialogue and action in One False Move seems instinctive and unforced. There isn't an iota of caricature, there isn't an affectation of "style," there isn't a false note sounded.

Basic Instinct's characters lack psychology and therefore motive. Admittedly they possess pathology, but that's not enough to maintain suspense in a movie with plot holes big enough to drive a tank through.

An exotic and erotic love story about an interracial couple whose cultures have more in common than they ever imagined. [12 Feb 1992, p.D]

Unusually gripping.

The muddled huddle that is Necessary Roughness is one long fumble strewn with offensive lines.

It's a joyride until you think about the film's biggest contradiction. How come this movie celebrating the superiority of human feelings over machine precision is most alive when thrilling in the mechanical perfection of the Terminator and T-1000? Inside Terminator 2 beats a human heart. But its soul is that of a killer machine.

Every time Problem Child gets an interesting edge, it loses it.

Full of macho swagger and unabashed hero-worship.

Zemeckis and Gale obviously paid attention to quality control in finishing the trilogy. They could not, however, hope to reach the quality of their first effort. [25 May 1990, p.5]

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer contrasts the mundane and the domestic with the appalling. The tone doesn't vary at all, and it's not a pretty picture, but movies that burn their images into your consciousness like this one are very, very rare. It is admittedly hard to look, but this is a portrait that demands to be seen.

Basic as a home movie -- and twice as touching -- Charles Lane's Sidewalk Stories is a black-and-white silent comedy that pays tribute both to Charles Chaplin's The Kid (1921) and to the urban homeless. [06 Apr 1990, p.4]

Fans of the original should relish going back to Back to the Future, as long as they keep in mind that in movies - as in life - you can't go home again. And if you do, things aren't likely to be the same. [22 Nov 1989, p.E1]

Licence to Kill continues the salvage operation begun in The Living Daylights and rescues a series that was in danger of shooting itself in the foot.

If Batman did nothing else but restore pulp-art shadow to the icon sanitized in his pop-art TV reincarnation, it would be an achievement. Tim Burton's Batman, starring a subdued Michael Keaton as you-know-who and a supercharged Jack Nicholson as the Joker, handily accomplishes that mission.

Baker's life, like his music, was as sad as it was beautiful. And Weber's movie - obsessed with Baker's image as much as with his songs - hits all the right notes.

Somebody should tell Ward that winning isn't everything. Character is. And this is what his movie lacks.

Penny Marshall brings a logic to the premise that is sustained through most of the movie. And where the other movies snickered at the sexual possibilities in the idea, she faces up to them with both candor and taste.

The Big Easy is an extremely enjoyable (and well-lubricated) vehicle for two actors who aren't quite yet stars, but should be.

Apart from Connery, the star of the film is Mamet's deadpan script, which obviously inspired one of the movie's baldest old-movie tributes.

A small, quiet film that walks tall and resonates long after.

A comedy that belongs back on the drawing board.

The triumphant masterpiece of Akira Kurosawa's fertile twilight.

It is an exploitation picture disguised as a hipster comedy.

Too bad it's hog-tied by a ridiculously familiar plot, uneven direction and characters of such dizzying simplicity that you wish the demons would get to them just to smack some sense into their heads. [26 Sept 1983, p.D3]

The frenzy and off-the-cuff spontaneity of live '50s TV comedy is lovingly captured, and O'Toole won a best-actor Oscar nomination. [25 Dec 1998, p.22]

If we approach the unfamiliar with fear and apprehension, we will be met with fear and apprehension. But if we approach with sympathy and curiosity, we will be rewarded with same. And our souls, not to mention our bicycles, will soar to the heavens. [2002 re-release]

Blessed are the Pythons for making holy wit of the Holy Writ.

One of the rare rock films that produces the effect of a live concert: After each number, the audience erupts into applause.