A hot-wired crime thriller that captures Thompson's flair for hard action, malicious wit and fevered eroticism.

Roaring into the microphone with all the passion he can't put into his life, Slater gives this movie what it otherwise so desperately lacks: a reason for being.

Starting with the outrageous and building from there, he ignites a slight love-on-the-run novel, creating a bonfire of a movie that confirms his reputation as the most exciting and innovative filmmaker of his generation.

The movie that might have been goes down in flames.

Towne doesn't weave all the elements as deftly as before, and his political observations seem secondhand.

A film that could have been the first cleareyed view of the jazz world from a black perspective ends as a romanticized fable. For the only time in his remarkable career, Spike Lee has failed to tell it like it is.

The first Young Guns, in 1988, was an endurance test for all but those who think ogling young actors in tight britches is a fascinating way to spend two hours. Though it seems impossible, the sequel is even more excruciating.

Even readers with reservations about the ways the film fails to measure up to the book should appreciate a smart, passionate, steadily engrossing thriller in a summer of mindless zap.

Hartley's debut deserves heralding; he combines a rigorous social conscience with the exuberance of fresh comic thinking.

With Brando around, The Freshman has a snappy madness that’s hard to resist.

Though saddled with hoary jokes, Goldberg at least pumps some funky life into the bland proceedings.

Derivative and blindingly dull, Quick Change is an occasion for a quick nap.

A wise man once said that every film is a documentary of its own making, and Philip Hartman’s No Picnic doubles as a chronicle not just of a lost paradise but a forgotten era — of downtown NYC, of genuinely independent moviemaking, of an alternate version of the “greed is good” go-go Eighties.

Screenwriter Robert Towne has certainly not challenged his gifts -- the script is loaded with stock cars and stock characters -- but he does deliver what's necessary: a workable setup for exciting NASCAR racing footage shot on sixteen Winston Cup tracks from Daytona to Watkins Glen.

It's difficult to imagine a summer film programmed more cynically than this repugnant sequel. RoboCop 2 is all machine, and it's all vile.

After all the hype, the movie of Dick Tracy turns out to be a great big beautiful bore.

Williams is an actor of protean gifts, a super pitchman when it comes to putting across flimsy material (Dead Poets Society). But even he can't palm off this lemon as a peach. When it's not being offensive, Ken Friedman's screenplay is merely oafish.

This SCI-FI swill is the brain-child of director Mark L. Lester (Class of 1984), who says it’s really about “kids and the future of urban public education.” No, it’s not. It’s about kids and teachers kicking ass for two benumbing hours. What a waste.

Though Exit is often bold and imaginative, it is also curiously lifeless. The screenplay, by Desmond Nakano (Boulevard Nights), which combines the novel’s six separate stories, never adds up to a coherent whole.

Limp exercise in erotica...Rourke appears comatose, and Otis, though lovely in or out of her skimpy wardrobe, wears the pained expression of a woman who has accidentally stepped into something squishy and rank.

Lumet has a reputation for speed, and when a film doesn’t engage him, as in Family Business, the result seems rushed, sloppy. But in Q&A, with all the actors perfectly cast and on his wavelength, he works wonders. Nolte is electrifying.

This thriller is so gritty it could chafe your eyeballs...Miami Blues is high on its own malevolence.

Kasdan has inexplicably reduced flesh-and-blood characters to cartoons.

Despite the lofty tone of his literary, artistic and metaphysical allusions, Greenaway is working the same streets of human depravity as John Waters; he's just more pretentious about it. At best, Greenaway's film is a provocative and diabolically funny foray into the roots of passion and cruelty. At worst, the symbolic bric-a-brac gets so thick you lose sight of the characters.

In Cry-Baby, Waters has created a crackpot jamboree that captures the Fifties, then parodies and transcends the period; any resemblance to Nineties greed, prejudice and repression is intentional. At forty-three, Waters remains unrepentantly juvenile. It’s his saving grace. What he can’t fight, he ridicules. The mirror Waters holds up to the world is distorted, turning everyone into a grotesque. But we can still see ourselves in it And laugh.

Hook may keep the action spinning, but the noise you hear isn’t life. It’s the sound of symbols crashing.

Somewhere along the line, Shanley let his gentle fable about the fear of love, responsibility and commitment degenerate into crude farce. And he has only himself to blame.

Bad Influence will do in a pinch if you're starved for intrigue. For a while, it's nasty fun watching Michael sink into depravity. Erotic and spine tingling, this thriller has undeniable allure. But Bad Influence lacks daring, moral ambiguity and the pleasures of the unexpected, the elements that might give it distinction.

Hollywood has again turned a challenging book into negligible cinema. Forget the $13 million budget and the reputations involved. This Handmaid’s Tale is merely a piss-poor rehash of The Stepford Wives with delusions of grandeur.

Though the film has an evocative look reminiscent of Matthew Brady’s period photographs, Zwick has stuffed the actors’ mouths with numbing bombast. Glory is a shame.

Just what we didn't need: another kick-ass cop flick in which we know the guys are macho because they rough up their wives and the gals are hot because they totter on spike heels like hookers.

Of course, such Sixties films as Goodbye, Columbus and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice have trampled over similar terrain. But few can boast Roemer’s light touch, brisk pacing and anarchic comic spirit. The passing of time has given The Plot Against Harry a lost-and-found quality that is both innocent and seductive.

McNaughton has made a film of clutching terror that's meant to heighten our awareness instead of dulling it. At the end, Henry is still out there among us. And he's no B-movie monster in a hockey mask. He could be the guy next door. This film gives off a dark chill that follows you all the way home.

But Stone has found in Cruise the ideal actor to anchor the movie with simplicity and strength. Together they do more than show what happened to Kovic. Their fervent, consistently gripping film shows why it still urgently matters.

Freeman's nuanced acting is a marvel.

Hoff-man and Broderick manage an affecting reconciliation, and Connery remains a peerless charmer. Still, there’s no telling what drew these three to such trite material. It’s like hiring the Rolling Stones and forcing them to sing Barry Manilow.

Shelton obviously wants to distill something innocent and romantic from a relationship the world saw as sleazy. A noble mission. But he's left out a few essentials — like the facts.

Director Susan Seidelman takes aim at the box office with the team of movie queen Meryl Streep and TV slob queen Roseanne Barr. She misfires. Streep gets all the jokes, and Barr, looking stranded, plays it straight. Worse, nobody’s bothered to write them a big scene together. But for a while you can see the possibilities.

Under the astute direction of Danny DeVito, who does a sly turn as Oliver's attorney, this acid-dipped epic of revenge is killingly funny and dramatically daring.

No use fighting it. this laugh-getting, tear-jerking, part-affecting, part-appalling display of audience manipulation is practically critic-proof...The result can best be described as shamelessly entertaining.

The film is rapturously beautiful, enticing us into a lush, aristocratic world.

This bracing, original comedy may be mostly smoke and air, but it's not insubstantial. Mystery Train insinuates itself into the memory and lingers on.

Throughout his life, Brown refused to give in to public convention or his own despair; he wouldn't play the victim. Brown labored to express all of his feelings, not just the acceptable ones. Day Lewis works the same way. My Left Foot, a keen match of actor and subject, stands as an eloquent tribute to the talents of both.

In this risky, riveting film, our most prolific and provocative moviemaker uses his wit to touch a nerve. Crimes and Misdemeansors is so funny it hurts.

This flabby comedy deserves only one thing: to fall on its fat one.

Pfeiffer is a knockout; she’s the sexiest presence in movies today and an exceptional comic and dramatic actress, to boot.

Drugstore Cowboy improves. Not much, but in provocative ways.

It's risky making an action picture that breaks its violent stride to emphasize the difficulties of living up to preconceived ideas of masculinity. But it's that risk that makes Black Rain distinctive. By refusing to beat its Eastern and Western protagonists into comic-book pulp, the movie pays them, and the audience, a rare compliment.

When Short is onscreen, a movie that provides only fitful laughter bubbles over into bliss.

What makes the film distinctive, devastating and unforget-table is the way De Palma lets the actions of the characters speak volumes. There is no conflict between what De Palma and Rabe are trying to say. But their methods are different. De Palma shows; Rabe tells...This is a portrait of hell so harrowing it’s impossible to shake.

Stupendously exciting and emotionally engulfing... With probing intelligence and passionate feeling, Cameron has raised the adventure film very close to the level of art.

A movie of prodigious power and feeling that is also high-spirited, hilarious and scorchingly erotic.

Parenthood, heartfelt and howlingly comic, also comes spiced with risk and mischief. Just when you fear the movie might be swept away on a tidal wave of wholesomeness, a line, a scene or a performance poke through to restore messy, perverse reality.

Drab in the extreme. Timothy Dalton's second and wheezing, final turn as 007 was barely recognizable as a Bond film.

A ravishing, romantic lark brimming over with style, intelligence and flashing wit.

All cast members seem willing to make total fools of themselves for our delectation. A fine but futile gesture. The bad news is that even with such yeoman efforts, it's still impossible to drag one tired joke around for nearly two hours. Like Bernie, the movie ends up dead on its feet.

Lewis’s vintage rock is still cause for cheering. Too bad the movie that contains these Killer sounds never rises above a whimper.

Lee offers no reassurance, no uplift, no call for all races to join hands and spout liberal platitudes. What he does offer is a devastating portrait of black America pushed to the limit, with the outcome still to be written. There’s only one way to do the wrong thing about Do the Right Thing: that would be to ignore it.

The bloodsuckers in this thriller may not have much bite, but here's a movie that can -- it's guaranteed -- drain the life out of an audience in minutes.

Once again, it’s the script (by newcomer David Rich) that shoots the picture’s promise all to hell.

Forgive the airhead plot that hinges on a spaceship crash-landing in the swimming pool of a Valley-girl manicurist, played by Geena Davis. The fun comes from Temple's protean visual wit and the irresistible charm of Davis, who just won an Oscar for her role in The Accidental Tourist. The agreeably tacky Earth Girls earns points for warmth, color and high spirits.

Go Ahead And Scoff. But This cheap-jack sequel to the 1982 cult favorite about a hunky scientist (Dick Durock) turned talking plant delivers more tacky hit-and-miss hilarity than a Cineplex-ful of teen-sex comedies.

Until the end, when Robinson allows the lunacy to run into rant, the provocative Advertising adds up to frightful good fun. That is, if you’re not put off by accepting a preening pocket of pus as a leading man.

Miss Firecracker is a spirited lark that happily survives most missteps; it’s shot through with enchantment.

To be honest, I started hearing things, too. Just when Jones was delivering an inexcusably sappy speech about baseball being "a symbol of all that was once good in America," I heard the words "If he keeps talking, I'm walking."

The plot ambles along, and Denzel is the essence of laid-back professionalism as he deals with corrupt officials, grisly crimes, lustful housewives, and his own divided loyalties. It's an odd, captivating little movie.

They Live, Carpenter’s 1988 paranoid freakout, deserves to be thought of as a masterpiece, an artist’s defiant last grab at substance before losing the thread. It’s a cheesy but lovable movie.

When a forty-four-year-old man makes a movie about his family and friends sitting around singing old tunes, you certainly don't expect an unforgettable amalgam of humor and heartbreak. But that is precisely what Terence Davies delivers.

If it is indeed possible for a film to be both stylish and tasteless, then A Fish Called Wanda certainly fills the bill.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the ultimate Thanksgiving film: John Hughes understood that it's all about the buildup. No matter if your journey is filled with near-death experiences, cars going up in flames, punches to the face and other disasters – getting to enjoy Thanksgiving with family and friends make the odyssey worth it. Everything else is just turkey.

A svelte jolt of everything that captures Prince at his most dazzling: the singing, the dancing, the multi-instrumental talent, the rapport with his band and those bolero-chic outfits.

Bigelow's artful handling of the magic & menace of the night is hauntingly apparent.

Dalton has training in classical theater; he has pedigree, looks, class. But as Bond he is – face it – dull as dirt. Too much spoofing is bad (see Moore), none is deadly (see Dalton).

A hand-me-down cast? Far from it. Masterson and Stoltz possess talent and charm to spare... Wonderful aspires to be little more than the hot-and- happening teen flick of the moment. At that it succeeds.

Watching [Hanks] in this career footnote now is a little like seeing an unformed lump of sculptor’s clay and knowing that there’s a famous statue just a few well-placed moves away.

What makes the film a classic is the skill with which the leads are so believable as heroin addicts, pivoting from intense love to hatred and dope sickness, all while maintaining the couple's signature snarl.

The problem was that it was supposed to be animated, but contractual obligations forced it to become a live-action movie — specifically, an unfunny, effects-driven, story-deprived live-action film about a talking duck.

The plot doesn’t make much sense, but the film is filled with lovely little moments courtesy of Bridges, who brings a casualness to this character that feels right.

Woods delivers one of his all-time great performances and Stone demonstrates the sheer ambition, both thematic and filmic, that would become a career theme.

What's good? A mesmeric, bottle-blond Christopher Walken as Max Zorin, hellbent on global domination as a product of Nazi experiments, Grace Jones' zowie star at his henchman, and Duran Duran's title song. Otherwise, I'm out.

Witless.

Savor their technique and the sizzling performances of Frances McDormand as an adulterous wife, Dan Hedaya as her vengeful husband and M. Emmet Walsh as a private detective from hell.

Wim Wenders’ heartbreaking, profoundly American masterpiece...The climactic scene – set in a peep-show booth – features a stunning autographical monologue that’s one of the most mesmerizing pieces of screen acting ever filmed.

The antithesis to the parent-friendly punks of Valley Girl, director Penelope Spheeris' stark, sobering look at the new generation gap pits aging California hippies against their disillusioned kids.

Basing a teen film on Romeo and Juliet? It'd had been done. Replacing a Montague and a Capulet with a San Fernando Valley shopping-mall habitue (Deborah Foreman) and a sensitive Hollywood punk (Nicolas Cage)? Now we're talking.

Francis Coppola's revision of his 1983 film of S.E. Hinton's best seller The Outsiders is funny, touching and revelatory, with twenty-two minutes of added footage and a new soundtrack featuring Elvis Presley. [Review of re-release]

The Secret of NIMH folds a commentary on the evils of animal experimentation and a salute to the bravery of single moms into a smart, gripping action-adventure framework, becoming an underappreciated touchstone for sensitive Eighties kids.

When E.T. debuts on DVD, you can choose between the new version, which better matches E.T.'s words to his lips, and the sweetly clunky, digitally deprived version redolent of penis breath. I don't need to phone home to know which one I'm buying. [2002 re-release]

Not since Lawrence of Arabia has there been a serious historical movie of this sweep, complexity and intelligence.

Watching the legendary Pele display his footwork on the field (that bicycle kick!), you almost believe the soccer god could have singlehandedly stopped Hitler's troops in their tracks.

The performance footage alone makes this worthy of study by musicologists and historians. There are too many great scenes to mention.

A fiercely poetic study of violence. Stunningly shot in black-and-white. [14 Dec 1989, p.23]

It's hard to turn a stoner comedy into a franchise – those require a little too much follow-through. But Cheech & Chong pulled it off with the immortal trilogy of Up in Smoke, Cheech & Chong's Next Movie and Nice Dreams. And like the Godfather and Star Wars trilogies, this one peaks with Chapter Two – with some help from Pee-wee Herman. "Man, if you had a second brain," says Cheech, "it would die of loneliness, man."

The Stunt Man is a bravura piece of moviemaking — a true popular work of modernist art. It makes the audience experience the uncertainty of the contemporary world in a visceral, often hilarious way.

A vibrant, bizarre hybrid of sci-fi and fantasy with avant-garde, jazz-inflected music by the composer, Forbidden Zone still remains unique decades after its inception.

Nicholas Meyer deftly mingles fish-out-of-water comedy and touching romance with discreetly gory danger.

Red herrings, rabbit holes and oddball detours lurk around every corner. It’s a film that can’t decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a nightmare, so it splits the difference. Even by 1979 standards, it’s a seriously warped film.

Appearances by Adam Ant, the Slits and Siouxsie and the Banshees, along with U.S. trans icon Jayne County, ground it in the moment, but Jarman's suggestion that even the most vocal nihilists would sell out their ideals — if given enough encouragement, naturally — provided a glimpse of the future.