The relationship between man and beast develops slowly and mystically - the island interlude, utterly without dialogue, lasts 50 minutes, and is one of the most sustained, lyrical, rapturous sequences in the history of motion pictures, a visual symphony whose beauty cannot be oversold. [15 Mar 1980]

The biggest anti-bonus of all, however, is the subject itself: running amok in middle-age. The French have already gnawed that particular turkey meatless. Now it has been passed to North Americans, who are picking the bones. Those bones rattle. [6 Oct 1979]

Time After Time is jolly good escapism. [01 Oct 1979]

The kind of schlock that is impervious to criticism. Take it seriously and you look like a fool; evaluate it on its own comic-strip terms and you are reduced to talking about costumes and special effects. [04 Apr 1979]

Except in the performances of John Savage, as Hettinger, and James Woods, as Powell, there is little attempt to probe the reasons for behavior, and except in the stylized filming of the murder, there is little attempt to assign special importance to one event over another. The picture is a textbook example of the limits of objective reporting. [06 Oct 1979]

William Smith, who plays Lucky Lonnie, a drag-strip racer in David Cronenberg's Fast Company, is a personification of country singer Waylon Jennings' voice: powerful and rich and funky and gentle. He doesn't hold Fast Company together - a vise the size of Paraguay couldn't hold Fast Company together - but his presence gives the movie an entirely undeserved distinction. [03 Oct 1979]

Movies have always been - at their most extravagantly appealing, sensually exciting and rationally disturbing-pieces of art with the power to bypass our defences. A few times in the history of movies, one caught glimpses of a power that could turn the screen experience into a hallucinatory celebration of irrationality, of pure feeling, and even, perhaps, of insanity. Apocalypse Now goes further in that direction more successfully than any movie ever has. [21 May 1979]

Despite these advantages, North Dallas Forty's descents into farce and into the lone man versus the corrupt system mentality deprive it of real resonance. It's still not the honest portrait of professional athletics that sport buffs have been waiting for. It is, though, a stylish cut above most films of this type. [4 Aug 1979]

Films about haunted houses have come a long way since the days when things simply went bump in the night, but The Amityville Horror may make you wish things would get back to basics. Peppered with visual red herrings, fast editing and cheap shocks, this is a product that promises an apocalypse of horror, delivers a few vague samples, but trails to an ending without providing a meaty climax. [28 July 1979]

The Villain is itself an extended cartoon, a cartoon with live actors as its director Hal Needham redundantly describes it. The result: while we still guffaw once or twice, our suffering increases proportionately as we are made to sit through a full 80 minutes of numbing mindlessness. [25 July 1979]

It is emphatically not for people who like either Twain or the more sophisticated manifestations of the Arthurian legend (the Camelot musical or Thomas Berger's Arthur Rex) but it is a well-directed, nicely acted bit of slapstick that has young audiences squealing with delight. [13 Aug 1979]

One of the best, funniest, most surprising and likeable American films of the year. [27 Aug 1979]

Dracula may not be as big a success as it should be - we don't like our myths dissected, after all, and there is an uneasy (but workable) truce in the film between subtle stylization and the demands of the contemporary horror audience for gore. [14 Jul 1979]

The Frisco Kid, billed as a comedy, is about a gentle Polish rabbi of 1850 who is instructed to cross America and become spiritual leader of an eagerly awaiting congregation in San Francisco. But the movie is propelled more by violence - in action, in dialogue and in editing - than by humor. No wonder there are so few good kosher westerns. [24 July 1979]

You may find yourself having more kinky fun in The Wanderers than you have had in any American movie for a long time, but when you try to grasp the meaning of what you've seen, you find yourself clutching at moonbeams. [31 Aug 1979]

THE BOND by which to compare all other Bonds is Goldfinger and by that standard Moonraker, the 11th chapter in the exploits of Agent 007, is second-best. But, by the standards of most of the other candy served up as summer fare, Moonraker is marzipan - it's so insubstantial it melts in your mouth, but its flavor is distinctive and you can't get enough of it. [30 June 1979]

For most of the movie, Murray desperately throws in schtick after schtick to try to keep the film afloat (Meatballs doesn't deserve him, and he certainly doesn't deserve it), but when facing Makepeace, who isn't allowed to do anything but trade a petulant pout for a wait-'til-the-sun-shines-Nellie smile, he caves in under the sentimental good cheer and becomes a nice guy, a role he is not especially suited to play. [2 July 1979]

The best thriller of 2003 was made in 1979.

The major reason for Escape's success is Siegel's effortless expertise in re-creating the atmosphere of Alcatraz, an atmosphere in which, as the Warden says, good citizens were not made, but good prisoners were. As photographed by Bruce Surtees in rainy black and blue, the dogged, slow-motion swim through excelsior that constitutes prison existence is painfully and convincingly reproduced. For Eastwood, there is an extra bonus: if the milieu doesn't provide him with a reason for his stubbornly characteristic grimness, it does at least provide an excuse. [23 June 1979]

Perhaps it is Stallone's candor with respect to his commerciality that is the key to the success of both Rockys - they're not trying to con you behind your back. Right out in front, they are unpretentiously calculated, manipulative, unbelievable, faux naif, sentimental. And irresistible. Stallone's stitched-together innocence hides its seams. [16 June 1979]

In The In-Laws, there is nothing to keep Alan Arkin and Peter Falk from becoming one of the most enchanting comedy teams in movies - nothing except direction, script and cinematography. [20 Jun 1979]

There is one thing you can say for the new horror film Phantasm (at the York): it certainly has its moment. [5 May 1979]

Any culture that can create the kind of self-criticism exemplified in work of the Pittsburgh horror master is far from a lost cause. [29 June 1979]

Over The Edge is a good, dangerous film, and it's good in part because it is dangerous - it puts you in touch with these kids' frustrations, and it allows you to feel the relief an explosion brings. [25 June 1982]

Fat and sassless Champ a loser on all counts. [09 Apr 1979]

To give filmmaker Russ Meyer his own due, the women here are freed up to love sex as much as are the men, although it's pretty obvious his message was less directed at 1970s feminists than at horny guys hoping beyond hope that chicks want 24-hour-a-day fornication. [31 Jan 2004, p.48]

Evil isn't a matter of banality in The China Syndrome; it's a barracuda in a three-piece suit. The film is thus weakened both politically and esthetically. The weakness does not stand in the way of the movie's cumulative effect, which is to weaken the knees, but as you make your way out of the theatre, knee-caps clicking like castanets, you may stop to wonder what kind of shape you'd be in if the one-eyed king's vision had been bifold.[24 March 1979]

Hair is entertaining - even fabulously entertaining - because it is so strange, so young, so innocent, so beneficent and adolescent, so lovable and so loving; it is entertaining because it is - all of it is - so impossible, so remote, so inconceivable in any place anywhere outside of a Hollywood musical. [28 Mar 1979]