Splash, the story of a lovelorn bachelor who falls in love with a mermaid, deserves high marks both for technical verisimilitude and artistic merit.

Rarely has a film made a historic accomplishment seem so vivid and personal.

A picture that clearly aspires for more ends up with considerably less.

Unfortunately, it conveys the sense that the machinery has already started to wear down, and the inventiveness to wear thin. To be sure, the film abounds in action. Some new peril besets Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or the Princess Leia almost too regularly every 10 minutes. But there's a kind of desperation about it, a feeling that Lucas and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan are simply trying to figure out what they can do next to amuse the kiddies. The stuff of legend that inspired and elevated the earlier episodes has here been replaced largely by the stuff of comic books.

Writer B.J. Nelson has skillfully combined plot elements and situations which draw from the best of Westerns and anti-Establishment cop films.

Heart is an often enthralling film of determination, heartbreak and triumph.

Unbelievably crass. And extremely funny.

The director's touch of class is consistently present, but it may be a case of the wrong man for the job, since overall film plays unevenly, with a cliche and detached ambiance that robs the plotline of what passion it might have whipped up.

The chemistry between Hawn and Burt Reynolds is sublime in Norman Jewison's underappreciated gem, written by Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson and loosely based on their relationship.

Blade Runner is a cold, bold, bizarre and mesmerizing futuristic detective thriller that unites the British-born director of Alien with new box-office dynamo Harrison Ford for results that are as impressive as any film that's exploded through a projector so far this year.

An enticingly nasty little crime film in which all pleasures go sour before they can be enjoyed, it is ripe for rediscovery in Rialto's fine restoration, and will be many Americans' first encounter with star Patrick Dewaere, whose funny, bracingly strange turn here was among his last.

Steven Spielberg has done it again. He has created another instant American classic.

It has got an intriguing premise, an effective cast, and it has been expertly mounted.

It's the thrills that keep it moving.

De Niro, however, is brilliant and his performance should be a leading contender in this year's Oscar competition.

To attempt a critical evaluation of Orion's new Caddyshack is a little like describing the esthetic qualities of an outhouse.

The humor is an ingenious concoction of satire, spoof, burlesque, slapstick, raunchy dialogue and low-comedy sight gags. The jokes are directed at sex, politics, religion and almost everything else. The level of humor is not always consistent, but the filmmakers have thrown almost everything in with a shotgun approach and the routines work more often than not.

While Empire doesn't quite measure up to Star Wars in the freshness and originality of its script, and the plethora of space operas that has been jamming the screens ever since Star Wars has somewhat lessened the novelty of city-sized ships sailing the stratosphere, nevertheless this 20th Century-Fox release remains a rattling good entertainment, a worthy successor to the original — and far and away the best of its kind since Star Wars itself.

Gruesome violence, in which throats are slashed and heads are split open in realistic detail, is the sum content of Friday the 13th, a sick and sickening low budget feature that is being released by Paramount. It’s blatant exploitation of the lowest order.

Hal Ashby's direction is perfect in realizing the offbeat humor and gentle satire of the piece.

It’s comic-book material, but it has been brought to the screen with imagination and a delightful sense of tongue-in-cheek humor. Daniel Haller’s direction is perfectly in tune with the lighthearted script and he progresses the action with an infectious spirit.

For me, The Deer Hunter is THE great American film of 1978. I realize that we still have a few major releases yet to come, like Superman, but I can't imagine anything more timely, more important, more uncompromising than this Universal-EMI production.

Unquestionably, there is a good story here — as Universal itself demonstrated some years ago in Seven Bridges to Cross. But Friedkin has failed to tell it.

Carpenter creates excellent tension throughout and he avoids excessive blood and gore in the murder sequences. The violent actions are mostly implied more than graphically depicted, which serves to heighten the effect.

Battlestar Galactica is a poor man's version of Star Wars — poor in every detail, including writing, pacing, characterization and, above all, imagination.

Hooper has all the action that fans of this genre could ask for, plus a whole lot more.

While we can readily identify these characters, we can't identify with them simply because Hill never bothers to tell us what makes them tick.

The visuals here...are never less than stunning in their impact, yet always seem well within the realm of possibility. It is also to Spielberg's credit, however, that despite all of this visual opulence, his actors are never dwarfed.