Writer Tesich, previously responsible for Four Friends and Breaking Away, serves Irving's material straight up - the adaptation is thorough and four-square and seemingly unconscious of the bizarre nature of Garp's odyssey through modern mores. The strategy works. [23 July 1982]

Entertainments like this are what Hollywood is said to be all about: larger than life personalities redeeming material smaller than a breadbox. [23 July 1982]

If the title is half-familiar, the contents are wholly surprising. Happily, all of the bitterness is gone. Sadly, so has most of the humor. What remains is a conclusion startling but unmistakable - Woody Allen has grown bland. [16 July 1982]

A bouncy, witty, pleasurably scary children's movie that adults will enjoy more than they may care to confess. [02 July 1982]

In the end, this musical is not a disgrace - Huston has too much experience to let the thing die. But he cannot summon the magic required to let it live. Watching Annie is like being buried alive in balloons. [21 May 1982]

When the plot isn't lagging, it displays holes sufficiently gaping to accommodate a whole squadron of Firefoxes. [19 June 1982]

It's one modern film worthy of being called a contemporary classic. [2002 re-release]

The one surprise, in a product purposely designed not to surprise, is the performance of Connie Stevens as Yvette Mason, the good-looking but aging and overweeningly vain "fun" teacher every high school student has run across ("I love your hair, Miss Mason," cracks one of the coeds, "all 300 pounds of it"). Somehow, Miss Stevens pulls a character out of cotton candy. [11 June 1982]

A funnier, faster, altogether more energetic film than Star Trek I, The Wrath of Khan doesn't linger over its modest special effects. This is really down-home week with Captain - now Admiral - Kirk and the boys. [5 June 1982]

For Steven Spielberg, who confines his Midas touch here to the roles of co-writer and producer, has refreshingly set out to reverse the standard ratio of the standard scare flick - that is, to frighten us a little and charm us a lot. Even more refreshingly, he succeeds. [4 June 1982]

Rocky III, unlike its twin predecessors, is a charmlessly manipulative movie. The magic is kaput. [28 May 1982]

The Escape Artist looks as if it may be intended for children, but it's so fuzzy in detail and character that it fails in its premise as either adventure or fantasy. [29 May 1982]

Just as John Carpenter seems to generate box-office smashes incidentally to his search for intriguing shades of blue, Miller is so enthused with his camera angles that the movie has ended before he's aware there's only 20 lines of dialogue in it and not a single character better defined than Max's mutt. [22 May 1982]

An excessively brutal adventure comic book is exactly what it has set out to be - a medieval Heavy Metal. [14 May 1982]

Wrong Is Right shows the comic subtlety of The Jeffersons on a slow night. Everything else may be topsy-turvy in the world, but unfunny still isn't funny even in the Oval Office. [15 May 1982]

Even if your idea of a good time is watching a man dressed as a malevolent oak tree extend his branches and literally tear a woman's heart from her chest, I think you ought to pass on The Sword and the Sorcerer. [26 Apr 1982]

This film is all shiny inspirational veneer. It leads you to issues but it won't let you think...It may be good for you, but it's not entertainment. And it may not be good for you: lurking at the penumbra of the film's sunny celebration of brotherhood is the faint but unmistakable shadow of anti-Semitism. [26 Sept 1981]

Cat People, a remake by the not noticeably gifted director Paul Schrader, of a 1942 RKO mood piece about a lady who thought herself capable of turning into a panther, is many things, not every one of them bad: as a B-movie, this fantasy of a young woman who develops the distressing habit of changing shape after sex is moderately entertaining. [05 Apr 1982]

It's obvious Some Kind Of Hero was never meant to be more than what it is - a cute "uplifting" comedy - but Pryor's performance pushes your expectations. It makes you wish someone would give him an honest dramatic part, and that he could work with a director who wouldn't let him get away with his transparent heart-tugging tricks. Director Michael Pressman has a good touch with his actors, but falters structurally to accommodate Kirkwood's script. [3 Apr 1982]

Eating Raoul is often very funny, but it guns down its targets (hot tubs, taco stands) without revealing anything new about them - it's broader than parody, less pointed than satire - and it crudely manipulates the audience into congratulating itself on its own hipness. [15 Oct 1982]

Porky's is crafty, offensive retro-fantasy for one gender. [20 Mar 1982]

As a psychological thriller, it's not so much either thrilling or psychological as it is wonderfully absurd. [25 Mar 1982]

There may be almost nothing about this comedy that is new; but there is almost nothing about this comedy that is not funny...Victoria/Victoria is marvellous vaudeville. [19 March 1982]

Missing, which should easily turn out to be one of the year's best films, is essentially the taut, moving story of three people, two countries and one institution. [13 Feb 1982]

A serious and funny and subtle work - a work of art - that was easy to confuse with exploitation teeny-bopper quickies because it did what the quickies had tried to do. But Diner did it right. [22 Apr 1982]

The Loveless is neither trashy nor fun. It's art - or so it thinks, but its self-consciousness is grating and its congratulation of the audience for getting the camp is patronizing. [10 Sep 1982]

Deserves - to be "watched" with steam on the windshield and passion in the air. When the monster in a monster flick packs all the fearsome wallop of an overripe avocado, one needs some diversion.[8 June 1982]

While no classic, this yarn, directed by Australian Fred Schepisi, is solid entertainment. [30 Jan 1988]