Done up strictly for laughs, this might have been fine. But the picture actually starts taking itself seriously, and that spells instant yawns. [16 Dec 1989]

If Blaze is not historically or psychologically reliable, it is a reliable good time. This is a meaningless movie, but there's no arguing with Ron Shelton's skills as a frothy screwball romantic: in Blaze, nobody gets burned. [14 Dec 1989]

Seidelman isn't that exclusive - any cliche will do, the cruder the better. [8 Dec 1989]

Given Part II's quality, the final sequence, a series of clips from next summer's Part III, may be a major miscalculation. "To be concluded," reads the final title. Sounds more like a threat than a promise. [22 Nov 1989, p.C9]

Everything Terms of Endearment's detractors accused Terms of being: a synthetic, manipulative tragi-comedy with performances more appropriate to a proscenium arch - or to a drag show - than to the wide screen. And yet, there are moments in the movie of high comedy and sequences of searing truth. At its worst, Steel Magnolias is vastly inferior to Designing Women; at its best, it brings to mind (but never equals) Tennessee Williams. [20 Nov 1989]

Forman's treatment is another matter entirely - infinitely more subtle and, using the intrinsic bias of film, far more naturalistic. [18 Nov 1989]

As it stands, Murphy has put his idols and friends in front of a camera, given them a watered down version of The Sting and hoped they'd make the best of it. They don't. [23 Nov 1989, p.C12]

Dad, showcasing Jack Lemmon in a rubber wrinkle mask (he looks like an elderly E.T.), would no doubt have won more Emmy awards for Goldberg had it aired on the tube, but on screen, it's a tearjerking embarrassment.

Clever and confident use of limited resources in an unfamiliar medium. Kenneth Branagh has made the right choice nine out of 10 times, and the tenth is easily forgiven because of the youthful ardor of that bright face and that bright talent. [10 Nov 1989]

Honorable, instructive, courageous: Fat Man and Little Boy, the true story of the creation of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M., is admirable in every respect save one - it's a lousy movie. [20 Oct 1989]

Flagrantly flawed but never less than fascinating film that does indeed blend the funny Woody and the serious Woody.

Plot ain't where it's at here. An Innocent Man is guilty as charged and innocent as hell. [06 Oct 1989]

Black Rain is really an extended exercise in pure style, a pretty picture in constant motion painted by a very commercial artist. In fact, the style is so uncontaminated by substance that everything here - plot, character, theme - gets subordinated to the glitzy sights and ambient sounds. [22 Sep 1989]

Thoughtful, if predictable, movie: set against the Soweto Uprising of 1976 (but shot in and around Harare, Zimbabwe), the picture proffers two families, one white and headed by schoolteacher Ben du Toit (Donald Sutherland), the other black and headed by Ben's gardener, Gordon Ngubene (Winston Ntshona). Both are devastated by apartheid, but to different degrees and for different reasons. [22 Sept 1989]

Sea Of Love has got a lot of things going for it: it's got two strong lead performances; it's got some down-and-dirty dialogue and a few sexy scenes and a couple of yuks and a nifty title tune. What it ain't got is plot, and thus suspense, and thus thrills. [15 Sep 1989]

The ads give this a Lamborghini label, but under the hood, it's just a clunker that putzes along like a suburban sedan. [26 Aug 1989]

Joe Pytka does display an occasional nice touch with mood and atmosphere - at its infrequent best, the humor here is almost wry. But his editing is as jumpy as a mare in heat. [19 Aug 1989]

A searing tale effectively told. And superbly acted. [18 Aug 1989]

Once again, Candy does his slob-with-a-heart-of-gold number. He's good at it. He can be a funny fellow. He can even carry a mediocre picture all by his lonesome, squeezing a lot out of a little. What he can't do is squeeze that much out of this little. [16 Aug 1989]

Parenthood is a charming, amusing piece of work. It doesn't say anything new - Howard clings as tightly to tradition as Norman Rockwell - but it says the old things with enough wit and eloquence to keep them going for another generation. [2 Aug 1989, p.C7]

Hanks doesn't quite manage a miracle this time, but thanks to a competent (if sometimes scatter-brained) script and a co-star who looks like a cross between Orson Welles and a spawn of the devil and who produces saliva like OPEC produces oil, Turner and Hooch ends up an amusing diversion that sprays gags - messy gags, wise-ass gags - as often as Hooch sprays the furniture with his excess spittle. Which is very often indeed. [28 July 1989]

The laughs just keep rolling as 'Weird Al' makes a movie. Overheard from a still-convulsing woman after a recent screening of Weird Al Yankovic's UHF: "I'm sorry, but that's funny." I'm sorry, but she's right. Yuks you feel obliged to apologize for are yuks nonetheless. And UHF prompts a lot of apologies.

Shag bounces through elements of farce and satire, music and romance without straining too hard and with a few more laughs than one would expect from a picture that seems patched together from such a wide variety of genre films. Like a perfect Southern belle, Shag is smarter and funnier than you expect it to be, but never smarter and funnier than it has to be.[21 July 1989]

Can't find it in your vast collection of Fleming first editions? Not to worry. Seems the producers - a.k.a. the Cubby Broccoli Cottage Industry - have run plumb out of titles. And everything else too. [14 July 1989]

The comedy is warm and witty and wafer-thin, as easy on the palate as a raspberry sorbet on a summer afternoon.

Lee has forged a work of art in the classic sense -- art that delights and instructs.

In short, Batman is terrific - funny, smart and sensitive too, the perfect cinematic date.

The cheery result is enough to renew one's faith in Uncle Walt and the boys - a family picture that transcends the cliche, a light-bright romp where the sentiment isn't cheap and where the action isn't childish. Now there's a novelty item for you. [27 June 1989]