Eastwood’s subject is wasted lives and wasted talent; Wilson’s charisma and Hollywood’s money prove irresistible, and their sheer power brings noteworthy results—but they emerge from a needless vortex of ruin.

Is it a great movie? I don't think so. But it's a triumphant piece of filmmaking -- journalism presented with the brio of drama. [24 Sept 1990]

The movie doesn't have Dahl's narrative confidence and it goes in for a little sweetening, but it has major compensations.

This uninhibited and uproarious monster bash, directed by Joe Dante, is more quick-witted and ironic than the original; it sets forth a savvy, slaphappy agenda before the opening credits and follows it straight through to the end, and even beyond.

Lumet wrote the script alone, and he's so busy laying on the rancorous, bantering atmosphere that he waits too long to get to the plot; the movie becomes torpid.

Keene films the supernatural tale of timeless rusticity with fanatical attention to the barren and craggy seaside setting; her stunningly spare yet phantasmagorical images fuse the forces of nature with the spirit of mystery. Björk brings an otherworldly calm to her visionary role, and occasionally sings.

A tacky, lighthearted parody of crime-wave movies--camp for kiddies.

Although the script is a conventional melodrama, the director, Edward Zwick, has made something more thoughtful than that.

Bad fun. This sophisticated variant of the LA. cops-and-coke-and-art-world thrillers has a creepy, rhythmic quality that sucks you in and keeps you amused.

Filmed in 1969 but unreleased until 1989, Michael Roemer’s dyspeptic comedy, about a small-time gangster newly freed from prison, bares unhealed and unspoken wounds of New York Jewish life.

Moore, a big shambling joker who's the director, producer, writer, and star, deadpans his way through interviews with an assortment of unlikely people, who are used as stooges. And he does something that is humanly very offensive: Roger & Me uses its leftism as a superior attitude.

Shelton doesn't quite engage with the material; the picture is lame and rhythmless. Still, it's never boring, and it offers a ribald view of Southern politics that contrasts with the stern melodramatic portrait of Earl's older brother Huey as a fascistic demagogue in the 1949 film All the King's Men.

Disney-style kitsch. It's technologically sophisticated, but with just about all the simpering old Disney values in place.

A the start, Lemmon has vanished almost totally into his role, but soon he's so insufferably perky and boyish and obliging that you feel he deserves the puling lines that Goldberg gives him.

A combination of raw pulp and gooey kitsch.

The director, Roland Joffe, and his co-screenwriter, Bruce Robinson, took this inherently dramatic subject and got lost in it; the script is a shambles.

A movie in which 80s glamour is being defined...The three stars seem perfect at what they're doing.

The only sanity here is in some of the acting. Rourke does a fine, competent job, but the movie is stolen clear away by Morgan Freeman and Forest Whitaker as antagonists -- a tough minded veteran police detective and a warm, idealistic prison doctor.

Marlon Brando is airily light and masterly as the veteran anti-apartheid barrister who takes the case even though he knows that he can't get anywhere with the rigged court. He saves the picture for the (short) time onscreen. But the director, Euzhan Palcy, seems lost; her work is heavy-handed, and the script (by Colin Welland and the director, from a novel by Andre Brink) is earnest and didactic.

A great, intense movie about war and rape...Directed by Brian De Palma, the movie is the culmination of his best work. Sean Penn gives a daring performance as the squad's 20-year-old leader; Michael J. Fox is impressive as the solider who can't keep quiet.

Lee is nimble-witted, and he’s always on the offensive; he stays in your face until you’re too exhausted to resist. You have to watch your reactions closely or he’ll speed right past you, get you to nod assent to an argument you haven’t fully realized he was making. Most American movies just want to knock you senseless immediately and get it over with; Do the Right Thing tries to wear you down, and its strategies are fascinating.

It has so many unpredictable spins that what's missing doesn't seem to matter much. The images sing. [10 July 1989]

The picture draws out the obvious and turns itself into a classic. [26 June 1989]

The picture seems to crumble... because the writer and director don't distinguish Loew's fantasies from his actual life... But with Cage in the role we certainly see the delusions at work. This daring kid starts over the top and just keeps going. He's airily amazing. [12 June 1989]

The action simply doesn't have the exhilarating, leaping precision that Spielberg gave us in the past... The joyous sureness is missing. [12 June 1989]

The movie is never plain boring, but its comic pathos and Southern-gothic cuteness can grate on you.

As a wisecracking , intermittently violent lunatic, Michael Keaton electrifies this quirky farce. The film isn't the knockout it might have been if it had a few big wild routines. And yes, it's sentimental. But the sentimentality isn't overplayed, and Keaton's fast rap cauterizes much of it.

John Cusack and Mahoney have to carry the unconvincing melodramatic portion of the plot, but they carry it stunningly. [15 May 1989]