Brooks' bravery is spiriting; in his debut he has written an unlikeable character doing unlikeable things to likeable people. One wishes his talent as a director matched his chutzpah. [17 Mar 1979]

This is Sally Field's movie. Her performance - hyperbole completely aside - is peerless, one of the major achievements by an actress in the movies of any place and of any time. Reuben tells Norma Rae that when he wants a smart, loud, profane, sloppy, hardworking woman he'll call on her. From now on, when directors want legerdemain that becomes art, they're going to call on Sally Field.[10 Mar 1979]

Walter Hill, who directed Charles Bronson's Hard Times, puts the action sequences (that's a euphemism for head-bashing and crotch-gouging) together with panache and this exploitation picture strolls right along. [10 Feb 1979]

On the most rudimentary levels - basic believability and coherent exposition - Hardcore is a joke without a punch line. [03 Mar 1979]

Miss Johnson may not be an actress, but her lack of emotional resources and her bland ingenuousness conspire to give the manipulative, sentimental, unconvincing conceit of Ice Castles a naive force that occasionally approaches the simple pleasures of Rocky. [29 Jan 1979]

The re-make, directed by Philip Kaufman, has lost its intellectual innocence and throws in everything from Chariots of the Gods to recombinant DNA - it's as clever and hip as a New Times investigative piece. Paradoxically, by being so smart, the re-make seems a bit dumber than the original. But it's dumb in a nice way. [22 Dec 1978]

Every Which Way But Loose is a fists-out-and-up Burt Reynolds movie without Burt Reynolds. I never thought I'd miss the Beverly Hills good ol' boy so much. [22 Dec 1978]

Estimates of the movie's costs range between $35-and $70-million; whatever the price, it was not too much to pay. As gods go, Superman is one of the godliest; his movie is one of the best.

Stark and haunting, and still unbearable to watch at times, The Deer Hunter remains a powerful movie experience. Unlike the broad strokes of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, the 1979 best-picture Oscar-winner provides a more personal take on the human casualties of the Vietnam War.

Rosen has not so much adapted Watership Down as he has intelligently condensed it, and compensated for the simplifications with pleasures books can't provide. [20 Jan 1979]

This low-budget horror film, sophisticated far beyond its budget, is the work of John Carpenter, an authentic prodigy whose style recalls both Martin Scorsese and the Brian De Palma of "Carrie," but who has a metaphysical, sophomoric sense of humor both of those directors lack.

Neither Nicholson nor the talented Miss Steenburgen, in her film debut, could rise above the patched-together script. The promising parody of anti-mythic Westerns, and of mellerdrammers (the railroad wants to snitch Julia's land), decays into a love story whose parameters are all too narrow and all too familiar. [07 Oct 1978]

Alan Parker has directed the film as if he were a sniper: you never know when you're going to get hit next, but from the first moments you know you're being aimed at. The opening, with Hayes taping hash to his chest only to be apprehended at the airport, must have looked like standard stuff in Oliver Stone's script, but on screen it's unadulterated adrenalin, filmed with fast cuts timed in counterpoint to the sound of Hayes' pounding heart. [25 Oct 1978]

The problem with Paradise Alley is that it has been made by the character Stallone was playing in Rocky: it has the cinematic mind of a 14-year-old in the glossy body of a major movie. [14 Nov 1978]

Days of Heaven is so unapologetically beautiful, so calculatingly gorgeous, it is certain to arouse resentment in the minds of those who find visual hedonism a sin in movies, and to arouse suspicion, if not outrage, in those who require that movies have heart. [22 Sept. 1978]

Slickly-made parapsychological murder mystery featuring a solid performance by Faye Dunaway as a fashion photographer who sees murders in her mind's eye. [06 Sep 1978]

Even though Rain comes up short in overall effect, it is noteworthy for the singularly powerful performance of Nick Nolte. [14 Aug 1978]

Animal House is the sort of film you hate yourself for laughing at. It is so gross and tasteless you feel you should be disgusted but it's hard to be offended by something that is so sidesplittingly funny. [05 Aug 1978]

The stunts in Hooper resemble a collection of greatest hits. It's nice to have all those great songs together but the emotional impact of the first time you heard the single on the radio is gone. [25 July 1978]

Perhaps Hill simply failed in his attempt to make of The Driver something more than an action picture. The trouble is that he doesn't do enough to elevate the film above the level of the genre. [29 July 1978]

There are pratfalls and car chases and explosions enough to please youngsters but the adult appeal of the Pink Panther series has disappeared. [24 July 1978]

Although director John Berry equips him with a bottle at every opportunity in an effort to recreate the bumbling but lovable charm of Matthau's performance, Curtis is never a sympathetic character. Curtis is by nature far too slick and suave a character ever to be a lovable curmudgeon. [04 July 1978]

Paul Sylbert's production design is handsome, William A. Fraker's cinematography is beautiful and Dave Grusin's music winning. All in all, Heaven Can Wait is a fantastic fantasy. [28 June 1978]

One good thing B-grade trucker movies have is a quality we can call non-intellectual honesty. As a rule, they have no pretentions to do anything other than amuse the viewer. Peckinpah tries to do more and fails. [03 July 1978]

Travolta's star presence is confirmed in Grease, a weak musical comedy vehicle . The strength of Travolta's performance isn't from dialogue but shots of Travolta reacting, suddenly becoming macho when he realizes the gang is watching him talk to his girlfriend or smothering a giggle after accidentally elbowing Olivia Newton-John in the breast. These moments alone make Grease worthwhile. [17 Jun 1978, p.P31]

Don Taylor, a director who specializes in sequels and imitations dutifully puts image to celluloid without distinction. [10 June 1978]

This tale of a visiting feline from outer space is liable to send anyone over the mental age of eight scurrying to the refuge of the candy bar. [17 Aug 1978]

Big Wednesday is American writer-director John Milius' attempt to use surfing as a metaphor for life. It doesn't work. [27 June 1978]

It works on virtually every level: script, acting, direction and, above all, music. For anyone who cares about the origins of rock 'n' roll, this film is compulsory viewing. [01 July 1978]

An absurdist comedy such as The End, with the tone teetering from slapstick to sorrow, is quite another matter, requiring a sophistication Reynolds simply doesn't have. [27 May 1978]

Gripping to watch but ultimately misses the target. [29 Apr 1978]

Apart from the ideology of the film, Pretty Baby is exquisitely executed. Shields, Sarandon and Carradine all give substantial but generally low key performances. [11 Apr 1978]

Straight Time is an exquistitely crafted film, loaded with good performances, propelled by excellent direction and brimming with heart-wrenching suspense. Unfortunately, it is also overwhelmingly depressing. [24 Mar 1978]

Clayburgh is in every frame of the film and you never tire of her even when you occasionally weary of writer-producer-director Paul Mazursky's cuteness. [21 Mar 1978]

A ghoul's dinner of undigested indelicacies pilfered from other horror feasts; the undeniable ability of the chef, director David K. Lynch, has been utilized to create a cream sauce in which the victuals cook without ever cooking together. [18 Sep 1979]

Cassavetes' latest film, Opening Night, tries to deal with aging, a problem of genuine importance to an increasing proportion of the population but the movie ends up floundering and finally sinking beneath its own weight. [23 Dec 1977]

As slow as Eastwood appears onscreen, he's learned a thing or two about fast pacing as a director. The action is frequent, occasionally inventive, and, aided by some searing trumpet playing on the soundtrack by Art Pepper, fairly tense. Unfortunately, he overdoes it. [23 Dec 1977]

If you enjoyed previous Simon comedies like Plaza Suite, it is virtually guaranteed that you will enjoy Goodbye Girl. If you have not previously enjoyed Simon's work, Goodbye Girl will not convert you. [21 Dec 1977]

Although Ritchie has blown Semi-Tough as a film, many individual moments are very funny and worthy of praise. [18 Nov 1977]

The dancing is lovely, the story is secondary. [17 Nov 1977]

A series of implausable adventures, everything from killer cockroaches to world-tilting flash floods, punctuate this otherwise stupid action picture about Third World War survivors. [16 Nov 1977]

Producer Joseph Levine has spared no expense but achieved very little in this $25- million all-star extravaganza. [16 Nov 1977]

Star Wars is the most entertaining sci-fi movie of the decade.

If anything, this film is a cautionary tale for those who clamour for the driverless car.

John Frankenheimer does an excellent job of maintaining tension in an implausible situation in Black Sunday. Good performance by Bruce Dern as the loony. [31 Dec 1977]

At times a bit plodding, Voyage of the Damned certainly succeeds in making its point, as did the conniving Hitler: It's harder to condemn the perpetrators of racism when you turn away their victims at your door. [17 Sep 2005, p.12]

A drawing-room murder mystery that had some extremely funny moments. [24 June 1978]

Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick are perfectly caste as two naive waifs who stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter after car trouble on a rainy night. The supporting cast is appropriately, well, let's say idiosyncratic, but for my money it's Tim Curry as the mad doctor who steals the show. Surely he stands as the most charismatic transsexual Transylvanian ever. [1 Dec 1990]

Working "lobbed" and "scimitar" into that same sentence hovers near the empyrean of genius.

This excellent British film is an eerie, thoroughly engrossing thriller about the disappearance of a youngster and the events that follow when a policeman goes to a small, privately owned island to investigate. [23 Jan 1988]

One of Robert Altman's lesser known gems, Thieves Like Us, brings Depression-era rural Mississippi to life with the story of three convicted killers on the lam from prison.

Not Hitchcock's best, but far from his worst. [01 Mar 1997, p.11]

Clunky and preachy, but Freeman's three robots - named Huey, Dewey and Louie - are adorable. [21 Jul 2011]

You can practically taste the grit and grime of the mean streets of this North of England setting. [17 Aug 1996, p.11]

Director Martin Ritt (Hud) keeps the movie powerful and tense until the ending, which is crudely manipulative. [22 Aug 1998, p.11]

Persona still conveys a power to lift the scalp and scramble the brain, and the fact that it's out-of-time says less about it being dated than it does about it remaining a radically visionary work.

John Frankenheimer created this eccentrically brilliant thriller, an exercise in mid-sixties paranoia. [12 Jan 2002, p.R25]

Lumet uses every claustrophobic camera angle in the book to make the viewer feel as trapped as the characters. [04 Nov 2000, p.12]

Few swords clash until the 100-minute mark of Harakiri, making it one of the most patient action films ever, but also one of the most beautifully composed. [24 Mar 2006, p.R13]

Something amazing happens in it just about every 90 seconds: From one moment to the next you have no idea where the director is going. It's as if the screen has been hard-wired directly to Fuller's id. [13 Mar 1998]

With its wit, speed and bawdiness, it revolutionized screen comedy and influenced directors from Richard Lester to Francis Coppola. [05 Jan 1990]

This is an oddball classic that leaves you weak with pleasure. [11 Mar 1988]

A former mental patient and her family spend a summer on an isolated island, in a classic Bergman portrait where family dysfunction and existential terror meet. [31 Jul 2007, p.R1]

The movie has a great Duke Ellington score, and director Martin Ritt tries for a Beat sensibility that's not authentic, but is acceptable. [30 Dec 1995]

The Absent-Minded Professor, from 1961, starred the late Fred MacMurray in one of his best-remembered comic roles, as a scientist named Brainerd who discovers a substance he dubs "flubber" (for "flying rubber," since it enables people and objects to fly). [08 Jan 1993]

Adolph Green always said that they based the warm, maternal and loyal main character on Holliday herself; perhaps that's why she manages to more than save it, she makes it very worthwhile to watch. [21 Jul 1990]

Established Bergman as a director of arresting visual and intellectual power. [6 March 1993]

It still stands up as astonishingly sleazy entertainment. [15 Jun 2002, p.R1]

Very light-hearted and glamorous. [09 Nov 2002, p.R24]

Great describes The Band Wagon, which followed Singin' in the Rain by a year and has similar fun satirizing the excesses of show business. [18 Mar 2005, p.R33]

A sweet if predictable tale about teaching and learning and parents and kids, it's all made easier on the eyes by Grant, whose trademark suaveness never allows him to quite slip into the role of bedraggled father of five. [19 Nov 2005, p.9]

There's one, and only one, good reason to rent this movie - the music. [08 Sep 1990]

The third of four films teaming Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, this 1947 feature is a cinema classic. [20 Nov 2009, p.R21]

A classic film that only low-down no-good viewers could fail to like. [18 Dec 2004, p.8]

Unlike the book, the movie slides into idealistic Hollywood convenience (the state-run labour camps, for example, are paradise compared to the privately owned versions), but the story is driven by gritty realism and remarkable acting. [31 July 2009, p.R20]

One of the best fantasies ever made. [13 Mar 2009, p.R20]

In set design, choreography, performances and music, The Wizard of Oz is a brilliant bauble of collective filmmaking, in what may have been Hollywood's greatest single year. [06 Nov 1998]

This 70-minute movie is the most startling, breakneck comedy of the Marx Brothers' career... Next to Chaplin's "The Great Dictator", this is the purest satire of dictatorship on film. [20 Jan 1996]

The film's brisk pace is a bit wearing once the one-hour mark is passed, but the high energy and intelligence is quite charismatic over all.

Director Roger Goldby tinkers with important issues around aging, only to steamroll it all with a slipshod script.

Ostensibly an homage to Woody Allen’s Manhattan, Louis C.K.’s “secret” movie – it comes to TIFF only a few months after it was shot, with no prior publicity – is more an overlong rebuke to allegations of the filmmaker’s own sexual misconduct.

The filmmakers make excellent use of the Manitoba shooting location (perfect for an eerie mood of societal isolation) and the story's key theme – can we be responsible for things that are out of our control? – is a compelling one. Unlike its lead characters, you can safely, if not eagerly, approach Radius without fear of dying.

Heist movies usually focus on the crime; road movies on the road. American Woman flicks at those genres, but its focus is somewhere else – on the relationships that develop in the liminal spaces between moments of intensity.