Virtually nonstop exhilaration--a dramatic comedy not quite like any other, and one that sets new standards for Mr. Allen as well as for all American moviemakers. [7 February 1986]

As a comedy of manners it has a dependably keen aim, with its most wicked barbs leavened by Mr. Mazursky's obvious fondness for his characters.

Youngblood seems chiefly designed as a vehicle for Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Lowe seems well able to handle more demanding material. But once the film descends into the usual platitudes about doing one's best and making the grade, it begins to seem aimless.

THE muddy football game that concludes The Best of Times is such a rouser that it almost makes up for the incomplete passes and stopped runs that precede it.

Ideas and issues in this film are as scarce as hen's teeth. In their place are little signposts that tell us what we are supposed to believe without thinking...Power is a well-meaning, witless, insufferably smug movie that -if it does anything at all, and I'm not sure it does - anesthetizes legitimate outrage at some of the things going on in our society.

Horton Foote's funny, exquisitely performed film adaptation of his own play, directed for the screen by Peter Masterson. The Trip to Bountiful is almost as unstoppable as Carrie Watts.

Despite the presence of such performers as E. G. Marshall and Sean McClory and the comedy team of Penn (the hustler) and Teller (the Arab), My Chauffeur remains a victim of low literacy, muddled characterizations, frequently rudimentary acting and unrealized yearnings toward humor.

Iron Eagle is a very shrewd teen-age variation on the Rambo/Missing in Action formula, a military rescue movie with a nice young hero and a fun-loving feeling.

What is well worth watching here, much more so than the train itself, is Jon Voight, who gives a fiery performance in an unusually hard-edged role.

Troll has a knowing tone that's more smart-alecky than clever. And it hovers uncomfortably between comedy and horror, without ever landing decisively in either camp. The film is as funny as it gets in a sequence that has Sonny Bono pretending to be a great ladies' man.

[It] has a gentle approach to its characters and an occasionally striking visual style. What it doesn't have is much momentum or originality.

The film is a witless, tedious contrivance based on the life of the Canadian rower Ned Hanlan, who lived a century ago.

The film sounds pretty silly, and it is, but it's not painful to watch. Harley Cokliss, the director, and John Carpenter, Desmond Nakano and William Gray, who wrote the screenplay, never allow credibility to worry them, or even those of us in the audience. Like a stolen car, it moves pretty fast, if erratically. It has a tendency to put Quint into impossible situations from which he walks away with unexplained ease.

Has a droll tone that sets it well above comedy's lowest common denominator. But it also has a bloodlessness that keeps it from being funny very often.

It's also a mess, but one that's so giddily misguided that it's sometimes a good deal of fun for all of the wrong reasons...It's so bad that one suspects there must be a good story behind it.

Though big in physical scope and of a beauty that suggests a kind of drunken, barbaric lyricism, ''Ran'' has the terrible logic and clarity of a morality tale seen in tight close-up, of a myth that, while being utterly specific and particular in its time and place, remains ageless, infinitely adaptable.

A costly, awful-looking science-fiction epic with one of the weirdest story lines ever to hit the screen.

With the exception of Miss Streep's performance, the pleasures of Out of Africa are all peripheral – David Watkin's photography, the landscapes, the shots of animal life – all of which would fit neatly into a National Geographic layout.

Brazil may not be the best film of the year, but it's a remarkable accomplishment for Mr. Gilliam, whose satirical and cautionary impulses work beautifully together. His film's ambitious visual style bears this out, combining grim, overpowering architecture with clever throwaway touches.

Some parts of it are rapturous and stirring, others hugely improbable, and the film moves unpredictably from one mode to another. From another director, this might be fatally confusing, but Mr. Spielberg's showmanship is still with him. Although the combination of his sensibilities and Miss Walker's amounts to a colossal mismatch, Mr. Spielberg's ''Color Purple'' manages to have momentum, warmth and staying power all the same.

there is so little genuine wit to be found in ''Clue.'' The film does have a speedy pace, but that could hardly be confused with Mr. Hawks's madcap humor; instead, it involves a lot of running around through secret passages, and some slapstick routines involving dead bodies. The actors are meant to function as an ensemble, but that merely means that they often repeat the same line simultaneously.

Derivative as it was, ''Romancing the Stone'' did have a certain spunk, thanks to its contrast between the workaday life of Joan Wilder, romance novelist (played so gamely by Kathleen Turner), and the far-flung adventures into which the screenplay propelled her. Sadly for the sequel, the novelty in that contrast was more than used up the first time around. This time, through no fault of his own, the director Lewis Teague (the first film was directed by Robert Zemeckis) has little more to do than construct a retread.

A Chorus Line is less a movie than an expensive souvenir program.

There are seeds of something funny in the film's beginning and in its premise, but they are soon dissipated by so little sustained wit, and so much scenery.

Fool for Love has several exceptional things going for it, namely the performances by Mr. Shepard as Eddie, Kim Basinger as May and Harry Dean Stanton as the Old Man.

Not only the best movie to feature an Egyptian blowgun in several years, but also one of the few really stylish and entertaining American movies of 1985.

The comforting sameness of all the ''Rockys'' and the overbearing star quality of Mr. Stallone in his lovable-lug incarnation may well make Rocky IV another hit. But when it flashes back to its antecedents, particularly to the original ''Rocky'' with its bashful heroine and self-effacing star, it becomes clear how bloated and hollow the story has become.

White Nights is only tolerable when Mr. Baryshnikov is on screen, especially when he is dancing alone or with Mr. Hines, with whom he does a couple of ballet-tap numbers that are of an order of excellence that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.