Director Armand Mastroianni, Marcello's American-born cousin, puts this oh-so-familiar material through its paces without injecting anything remotely resembling wit or personal style.

The performances are mostly good, and the direction and editing work wonders in the tight gray interiors of the juvenile prison. Not for everyone, but worthwhile viewing for the not-easily-shocked.

So unimaginative that it's more of a remake than a sequel. Reynolds and his buddies all act as if they're in a home movie as they rehash the same tired gags and dull chases that filled the original.

Lee Van Cleef (master of the menacing grin) makes the most of his role as the leader of a vengeful group of antiterrorists.

Trying to appeal to both old and young audiences, the movie ends up shooting itself in the foot.

Little more than a lengthy Twilight Zone episode.

THE HUNTER is more dead than alive. Supposedly based on a real bounty hunter's life, this episodic film never focuses on anything long enough for the audience to care about it, and characters race in and out of the story without introduction or development.

Too much time is spent on the forced romance between O'Keefe and Holcomb, an attractive waitress, however, and the slapstick becomes utterly mindless toward the end (as if the producer said, "Okay, it's time for this film to really get out of control!"). Still, the laughs keep coming.

All dressed up with no script to go, but a feverish nerve jangler nonetheless.

Powerful, humorous, and touching. (Review of Original Release)

The humor here is forced, incoherent, and sophomoric, made worse by Thomas Chong's amateurish direction.

Fresh from being terrorized in Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis stars in this slasher clone set to the wonderful thump of disco music. Prom Night is better than most slasher movies, mainly because it's funnier.

Though the effects work of Giannetto De Rossi is generally excellent and certainly stomach-churning, most of Zombie is slow and unintentionally funny. Fulci's work has its champions, but his films are mostly dim-witted and hold little interest for anyone other than hard-core gore fans.

Before director-writer Bob Zemeckis found success with blockbuster hits ROMANCING THE STONE and BACK TO THE FUTURE, he directed this raunchy, hysterically funny comedy. Kurt Russell turns in a brilliant performance.

This movie misfires in its attempt to combine a children's dog story and adult comedy by pairing Benji and Chevy Chase. Silly and slow-moving.

This poorly plotted film concerns three middle-class suburbanites who turn to crime when faced with poverty.

The onslaught of one-liners and sight gags in AIRPLANE! is so relentless that even the most dour viewer is ultimately won over--or exhausted.

Filled with holes big enough to drive a train through and moments of suspense that prove false alarms, the story concerns two young people (Shields and Chris Atkins) who are shipwrecked on an island, develop a sexual relationship as they mature, and so forth. At a little over 100 minutes, the film feels as if huge chunks of it were edited out for pace; however, the wrong chunks have been cut.

Lawrence B. Marcus's script, which pits real life against reel life, offers plenty of wit, with most of the bons mots handed to O'Toole.

Strictly for the young ones.

THE BLUES BROTHERS is a monument to waste, noise and misplaced cool, but it does have its engagingly nutty moments.

A very tough movie, Brubaker is not for the squeamish. Director Stuart Rosenberg, whose spotty career includes credits ranging from Move to The Amityville Horror, moved into a higher strata with this one, but no matter who's directing him, one can't escape the feeling that Redford is the man behind the man behind the camera.

Reynolds' attempt to emulate Cary Grant (or Tony Curtis doing Cary Grant, as he says in the picture) falls flat, though the picture is entertaining in spots, especially those with Niven.

Eastwood is perfection as the New Jersey shoe clerk who, like Miniver Cheevey, dreamed a nostalgic dream and took action to realize it. The actor-director could have gone over the top by satirizing the very character he played so well in spaghetti westerns; instead he gives a sincere, realistic performance that silenced detractors who thought he could only play violent loners.

Up The Academy is another in the seemingly endless parade of inane teenage comedies.

Director James Bridges fails to instill much life into a narrative peopled with vapid characters.

One of the better films concerning the tensions in Northern Ireland, THE OUTSIDER stars Craig Wasson as a young Irish-American inspired by his grandfather's patriotic tales of fighting the British years ago.

Written by Fraser Clarke Heston, son of Charlton, THE MOUNTAIN MEN is a mindless, bloody pseudo-western purporting to show the last days of the fur-trapping era.

Based on the comic strip created by Charles Schulz, this is the fourth and the best of the animated films devoted to the charming antics of the "Peanuts" gang.

This imitation of the classic AMERICAN GRAFFITI is set on Halloween night, 1965, when a group of teenagers decides to get back at the grown-ups for closing down the main drag street in Beverly Hills. Gags involving urination, obscenities, and racism are included in the fun; ripoffs from GRAFFITI include the sabotage of a police car and a disc jockey who plays tunes all night long.

A creepy, atmospheric little film that uses a great cast to its best advantage. Worth seeing.

With remarkable visual panache and a keen sense of irony, Stanley Kubrick rehabilitates Stephen King's trashy, terrifying novel. Not a horror film in any traditional sense, but a perversely comic, occasionally frightening melodrama of intrafamilial rage, THE SHINING retains the Oedipal structure of King's narrative while running rings around its pulpy sensibility.

A darker, richer, and more elaborate film than the original; it suffers most from being just what it is: a middle chapter with no real ending. [Special Edition]

THE LONG RIDERS is one of the last great westerns made in America, directed tautly by Walter Hill from an excellent, well-researched script. The cinematography by Ric Waite is magnificent, the period is beautifully captured, and Ry Cooder's outstanding score nicely incorporates folk music of the era. The whole feeling of this film is one of antiquity, an atmosphere marvelously created by Hill and enhanced by a superb cast.

This is a wonderfully simple idea that succeeds very well indeed: take a bunch of kids from New York's High School of Performing Arts and let them strut their stuff. Fame shows us how much life there still is in moribund genres like the musical.

Obviously relishing the chance to show everything they couldn't back in the early days of exploitation horror, the New World gang breaks all the monster-movie taboos while injecting heavy doses of black humor.

This feeble attempt to revive the characters from the popular TV series "Get Smart" copies the show, but without the sharp humor that made it so popular.

A little stingy in the action and thrills department, but Moore, in his limited way, seems to be having a good time.

The Tin Drum is a disturbing film, rich with black humor, that takes a decidedly bitter and horrific look at the German people.

Although not as powerful, impressive, or exciting as Suspiria, Inferno is still intriguing, effective, and stylish enough to make the narrative unimportant.

One of the most genuinely haunting ghost stories in recent years, The Changeling is much eerier and more effective than the overrated and bombastic Poltergeist.

GILDA LIVE is simply "The Best of Gilda Radner," as the comedienne reprises her most popular characters from TV's "Saturday Night Live" (then at the peak of its initial success). Radner fans may find this a welcome compilation, but there's little here that wasn't done better on the TV show.

With cheesy special effects (even the volcano isn't convincing, considering the film cost $20 million) and a hole-ridden script, this film offers precious little to like.

The two leads are honestly played, and there is a nice feel for the scariness that sex has for adolescents, but the screenplay gets bogged down in silly subplots and stereotypes.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but definitely a must-see for fans of the band.

Vincent turns in a fine performance as the rootless drifter who enters a community gripped by fear and comes to care enough for its denizens to put himself on the line for them.

The rare expert film bio. Coal Miner's Daughter features an Oscar-winning performance by Sissy Spacek as country music queen Loretta Lynn. Masterfully directed by Michael Apted, the film traces the famed country singer's life from her beginnings in a tumbledown shack in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, through her huge success, marital discord, and battle with prescription drugs.

So ludicrous it's quite funny.

This remake of the classic Hitchcock mystery is a far cry from its predecessor, lacking the style and subtle humor of the master.

Although Foxes's attempt to delve into the problems of modern-day teenagers is admirable, its screenplay is frequently trite, lacks any leavening humor, and too easily ties together its plentiful loose ends with a contrived plot device.

The supporting cast is excellent, especially Scott Wilson as an astronaut who flipped out on the launching pad and aborted his mission. Offbeat, visionary, and challenging.

Wise Blood, an unusual mixture of comedy, tragedy, satire and horror, is an uningratiating but haunting work.

Though the plot is that of a simple revenge western, director George Miller infuses the film with a kinetic combination of visual style, amazing stunt work, creative costume design, and eccentric, detailed characterizations that practically jump out of the screen and grab the viewer by the throat.

Douglas grins and grimaces through his role as the ultimate defender of beautiful Fawcett, and it's all pretty dreadful.

Viewers are spared nothing as Steve Burns undergoes degrading brutality after brutality; virtually nobody is portrayed sympathetically.

The film's real problem is Carpenter's diffuse narrative, which introduces far too many characters--forcing the director consistently to cut away to each story strand, thus destroying much of the suspense. What does work, however, is Carpenter's unmatched visual style and the marvelous photography of Dean Cundey.

The film lacks the usual juvenile raunch, but it also lacks brains in telling its story of an all-night scavenger hunt, involving a lot of dumb jokes and predictable situations.

Abandoning the gritty realism of his first two films, BLUE COLLAR and HARDCORE, screenwriter-turned-director Schrader here adopted a sleek and stylish approach. The result was one of his most satisfying attempts to mesh a European sensibility and his own obsession with moral drift and emotional alienation.

Director Brest does a great job with a sensitive subject, drawing fine performances from everyone.

The third teaming of Redford and Fonda (after "The Chase" and "Barefoot in the Park"), HORSEMAN falls far short of what it might have been, starting out smart but getting sloppier and more sentimental as it goes along.

A triumph of style over substance.

An all-star, all-stupid comedy attempt that proves, once again, no actor can triumph over bad material.

An entertaining and well-crafted political satire that is definitely worth a look.

A totally inane script designed to cash in on the rollerboogie craze.

All That Jazz is great-looking but not easy to watch; Fosse's indulgent vision at times approaches sour self-loathing, and nothing like the explicit open-heart surgery had been seen on mainstream American screens, let alone the morbid song-and-dance routines in an operating theater.

Kramer vs. Kramer is, essentially, a television movie that was raised into the feature category by the excellence of the execution.

Jerzy Kosinski's modern fable gets a terrific translation to the screen due to his tight screenplay, capable direction by Ashby, and a marvelous performance by Sellers, one unlike any other in his career.

While far from a bad film, The Human Factor fails to convey the desperation and stagnation felt by the Williamson character.

1941 is loaded with slam-bang sight gags and action, but comedy isn't director Steven Spielberg's forte and the movie isn't nearly as funny as it might have been.

The title truly lives up to the character.

Unfortunately, director Robert Wise has no feeling for Trek's pop insouciance, and the movie unfolds ponderously.

Bette Midler turns in a magnificent performance as a dissipated, Janis Joplin-like rock singer.

THE FISH THAT SAVED PITTSBURGH is about as entertaining and memorable as a sports celebrity Miller Lite commercial.

The first part of this film is an exceedingly taut little chiller that stands on its own, and in fact was once a short film entitled The Sitter. Director Fred Walton decided to expand the clever premise into a feature and, unfortunately, that is where the film begins to fall apart.

Though its emotions are big, the performances are so nicely nuanced that sentiment never overwhelms the story's emotional realism.

Very modest, but surprisingly sweet. The naive escapades of a group of American students studying in France for a year is given a charming, somewhat corny treatment by the authors of AMERICAN GRAFFITI--Huyck (who also directed) and Katz.

No character development, ridiculous situations, and a miserably written script attempting to indict corrupt legal and judicial systems add up to a tiresome and pointless film where Pacino is wasted as a witness to a parade of lunatics.

An $18 million, star-studded disaster film, which in itself is a major disaster.

Director Imamura effectively portrays some of the more negative aspects of the forces that have shaped modern Japanese people. In this manner the picture resembles his chilling films of teenage wanderlust made in the 1950s.

This touching and beautifully photographed, if slightly overlong, tale of a boy and his horse follows the escapades of young Alec Ramsey (Reno), who is traveling across the ocean with his father.

A funny if somewhat retrograde film.

While all of the acting is top-notch, Reynolds steals the show with his underplaying and understanding of the role.

Held together by the sheer power of Klaus Kinski's performance as the vampire, Nosferatu, the Vampyre evokes several scenes (practically shot-for-shot) from the Murnau classic while slightly altering some of the original's thematic structures.

Meyer makes a fine directorial debut, pacing the film for optimal suspense despite some obvious holes in the script.

This movie has pretensions to mediocrity, a goal far too high for it to reach.

Good acting and careful direction by Becker make it worth seeing, but the violence and the language may be too graphic for some tastes.

Well-made but often-boring.

Dry, dull, and terribly predictable.

Steiger and Ireland manage to give believable performances, but Bronson is unable to evoke a sense of hardness. The direction suffers from too little effective pacing and too much concentration on the pretty scenery.

Director Hyams tries desperately to evoke the feel of the best of the 1940s wartime romantic dramas but, despite solid performances from the leads, his screenplay is predictable and trite, leaving the audience little to look forward to.

Written by Joe Dante and directed by Allan Arkush, this refreshingly wacky teenage film is filled with warped humor (including mice exploding to Ramones music), and makes wonderful use of the "so dumb they're smart" Ramones, who stepped to the fore when Cheap Trick backed out of the project. Nothing is taken seriously and nothing should be--it's only rock 'n' roll.

While it may lack the sheer comic anarchy of their other work, Life of Brian may be probably the funniest collective efforts concocted by the British comedy troupe "Monty Python's Flying Circus," is their most sustained effort. (Review of Original Release)

The supersonic jet takes center stage, sparing audiences from most of the babbling of the two-dimensional characters.

Davis gives a lively and humanistic performance, and the direction by Gillian Armstrong (MRS. SOFFEL, HIGH TIDE), in her feature debut, matches her heroine's character: strong, with a good sense of wanting to get something done and then doing it. The mise-en-scene is well composed, and the story is well told in this wonderful Australian work.

A formula B movie about race car drivers, it's competent, but unmemorable as anything other than a footnote in Cronenberg's development.

Fawcett is given little to do other than get a suntan and try to look captivating, leaving the comic chores up to seasoned professionals Grodin and Carney, who are just great.

Pro football fans may be disillusioned by this excellent, honest, and often brutal expose of the play-for-pay game.

Norton's screenplay is predictable and the film suffers from its fragmented narrative. Some interest is provided by an unusual visual approach: the various segments employ separate film processes and aspect ratios in an attempt to supply visual analogues for the characters' situations.