Sayles' script is an intelligent look at a woman's struggle in 1930s society, and it conveys the proper mood for the character and the times. Teague's direction manages to capture the era on a shoestring budget, and the performances he gets from his cast are solid.

The film is pleasantly humorous, though the jokes are aimed at those interested in history.

Breaking Away is a very funny and touching story about love, growing up, bicycle racing, and class consciousness.

The sight of Dracula climbing down a wall headfirst is the highlight of the entire movie; the rest of the film is just another plodding remake. The familiar story is given no new twists, save for an updated Edwardian setting and a few automobiles.

All in all a fascinating film with an outstanding musical score consisting of jukebox hits from the period.

The gadgets are up to the usual Bond standards, but fancy effects do not a movie make, and 007 is less satisfying floating around in space than when his feet are more or less firmly planted on the ground.

If you liked camp, you may like this film. If you hated camp, you may also like this film. If you like good comedies, you probably won't like this film.

Conway's constant pratfalls and frightened, anxious looks may be a riot for the kids, but anyone over the age of six will find them just plain dumb.

And while this director's cut doesn't really differ all that much from the original 1979 release, it contains a few minutes of never-before seen footage, including one serious bitch slap and an entire scene in which Ripley stumbles upon a few not-quite-dead crew members whose terrible fates foreshadow James Cameron's 1986 sequel.

Cute without being insipid, funny without being childish, The Muppet Movie contains enough magic to please all ages.

The pace of this movie is a bit slow, but Siegel's deliberate, sparse direction works to the benefit of a film where time is all his characters have. Surprisingly, there are few exciting set pieces and relatively little violence, yet Escape is relentlessly tense.

This time Stallone both wrote and directed the film, and though his handling of the actors and camera is less assured than John Avildsen's in Rocky, he keeps things moving at a good pace and delivers another charming performance himself.

A bleak, often repugnant rumination on the harsh realities of urban life, Driller Killer will offend tender sensibilities. But Ferrara is already a distinctive and conscientious talent behind the camera, unmistakably concerned with more than gore-filled exploitation.

The comedy is strictly from the hit-or-miss school, but director Hiller keeps things moving so fast there isn't time to ponder over the failed bits.

To cash in on footage from a film Lee did not finish before his death, producer Chow puts in a double and uses out-takes for this kung-fu mess.

A wonderfully creative, bizarre, delightfully terrifying horror film that never fails to surprise.

Powerful and disturbing on both a physical and mental level, The Brood is the first Cronenberg film to use name actors, and marked a significant progression in the director's exploration of biological horror.

Celebrated Italian horror maestro Dario Argento (SUSPIRIA, DEEP RED) co-produced and provided the lively rock score with his band, Goblin. Though all of the performances are at least adequate, this is not an actor's movie. Believe it or not, this is a film about ideas as well as gore. Nonetheless, this is strong medicine and not for all tastes.

Perceptive, kinetic and entirely believable.

The whole thing is soggy cardboard.

After Bruce Lee's death, a gaping hole plagued the martial arts genre, but former karate champ Norris helped close that gap.

In less assured hands, this could have wound up as a disaster, but director Edouard Molinaro was skillfully able to film the long-running play and wring every drop of humor from it.

Director William Richert has turned Richard Condon's novel about the insanity of the American power structure into a wickedly funny black comedy spiced up by some deliciously off-the-wall performances.

Neat and quirky, this is undoubtedly one of the freshest black comedies around.

This sweet and innocent movie about teen romance won't fail to bring a tear and a smile in its heart-tugging finale.

For every bit that works there are three that don't, and the movie becomes somewhat tedious at times. Hamilton, however, is obviously having a good time with his role and has a field day with the Bela Lugosi accent.

The film uses the locations well and Gazzara's performance is an actor's dream. But SAINT JACK never quite becomes the "important" film it seems to aspire to be. The story is told in too meandering a style and the many well-acted characterizations never mesh together.

An updated version of the more gritty original, given an inappropriately lush look by director Zeffirelli.

Nicely directed with a great sense of the oppressiveness of the outdoors. Nature is the villain in this well-filmed second feature by Australian director Eggleston.

The sometimes self-conscious and too-earnest Fonda and the occasionally hammy Lemmon both rise beautifully to the occasion, delivering performances that are among their best.

As senseless as the story is the film contains several memorably creepy scenes, as is to be expected from any film in which mannequins spring to life.

The battle of wits is peppered with funny lines and the suspense seldom flags.

There is much to recommend in this film, and sheer energy pours off the screen in every frame.

Deft comedy set in a neurotic town. People may argue about the relative merits of Annie Hall vis-a-vis Manhattan, which is a better and more fully realized film. By this time Allen had forsworn the glib one-liner and spent more time developing well-rounded characters.

The script is a jumbled bag of war-movie cliches, and hack director J. Lee Thompson--who surpassed himself precisely once, with Cape Fear--is on auto-pilot throughout.

Boring, contrived, and manipulative.

Real Life delivers a pointed critique of the influence of media on our lives; it is also one of the funniest looks at filmmaking ever put on screen.

The simple story is enlivened by an intelligent, compassionate screenplay, whose sole deficiency is that it makes no attempt to represent the management point of view. Field's performance is flawless.

The Warriors is a visual feast. Director Hill fills the frame with vibrant colors, bright lights, and nonstop motion. The uniforms of the various gangs are unique, funny, fearsome, and more than a bit theatrical. The exciting fight scenes are brilliantly choreographed, and instead of focusing on the violence, Hill concentrates on pure movement (most of the cast were actually dancers).

Though the script is a bit dense and the film slightly overlong, it's exciting and engrossing on all levels.

An entertaining thriller that stumbles occasionally on overlong dialogue sequences.

An exceedingly beautiful film, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK seems to aspire to be an existential thriller of some sort. At times the film seems to tread in BLACK NARCISSUS territory with its depiction of barely controlled sexual hysteria and its eccentric lyrical quality. It's all pretty overheated and underexplained but this arty, vague, and possibly supernatural movie lingers on in the memory.

Whatever its flaws, this is one of very few American films to deal with fundamentalist beliefs about predestination, faith, and sin with empathy and intellectual acuity.

Ice Castles collapses under the weight of sentimental overkill.

The film collapses midway--because of unsure and sloppy direction, splintered story continuity, and the overacting of Adams, Cartwright, and others. The battle between Sutherland and the aliens in the "pod factory" at the end is simply absurd and sophomoric.

There's no accounting for the success of this over the failure of Eastwood's infinitely superior Bronco Billy. The year 1978 was the year of heavy pictures, with The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and Midnight Express. Perhaps people just wanted to sit back, eat some popcorn, and have a good old evening of cheer and laughter.

Although this film suffered from some miscasting--especially the choice of Shields, whose performance is more than mildly distressing--King of the Gypsies offers an often fascinating look at gypsy culture in America.

The film burdens itself with too many story lines and an overlong (though beautifully photographed) prologue, but things really get moving when Reeve takes the screen.

Brutally memorable, The Deer Hunter is an emotionally draining production that draws a vivid portrait of its characters and their milieu--and succeeds in showing the devastating effect of the war on their lives, as well as their brave attempts at renewal. Unfortunately, the film falters when it comes to the larger questions of America's involvement in Vietnam.

The action sequences, especially the climax, are painfully deficient, one of the many demerits of Hamilton's dull direction. Only the cast makes this worth catching for less demanding fans of the war genre.

All technical credits are first rate, but Friedkin doesn't draw enough on his substantial cinematic talent.

Director Meir Zarchi may have been trying to make a point about the horrors of rape, brutality, revenge, and reprisal, but he simply isn't a good enough director to extract any relevance or nuance from his exploitative material. Watch Wes Craven's Last House On The Left instead.

The bitter-sweet story of young lovers caught up in an political struggle waged by farmers against the grain trade, the banks and the railroads, NORTHERN LIGHTS brings back a forgotten era of American history and evokes the austere beauty of the Northern Plains.

Animator Ralph Bakshi's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings"trilogy is an entertaining film, but in attempting to remain faithful to the source material, Bakshi tries to cover too much ground.

Aside from the obligatory shots of the dummy looking sinister, director Attenborough fails to evoke an effectively eerie mood, concentrating instead on the "drama" between Hopkins and Ann-Margaret.

The spirit of the book is captured here as the rabbits, faced with problems of ecology, are forced to find a new home. Their trek is filled with surprises and adventures, as well as bloodshed. The job of personifying the rabbits is nicely achieved due to expert readings by the cast.

There's nary a drop of blood on screen in this rollicking funhouse of a movie but there is enough sheer cinematic ingenuity on display to coax screams out of the most jaded gorehound.

Sidney Lumet's overblown direction strips the story of its magic, Ross is too old for the part and never quite captures Dorothy's innocence, and Pryor is wasted in a film ill-suited to his talents.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes employs calculatedly bad acting, ridiculous special effects, and inane dialog. Though it succeeded to some degree in achieving its goal, it's a thoroughly dull, unfunny effort.

The film is compelling, albeit pretty silly in its elaborate "what if?" plot.

Although the premise of Goin' South is clever, the story is unbelievable and, under Nicholson's first grip as a director, is unwieldy and directionless. The tale is presented in disjointed, confusing, poorly set sequences. Nicholson the actor is mildly amusing, as are some of his riotous gang members, DeVito and Belushi (the latter appearing only briefly, irrespective of his high billing). But the whole film deteriorates midway into amateurish mugging and slapstick.

Riveting from the word go. The acting is superb, the direction is excellent, and Moroder's score is exhilarating.

It's not a brisk 201 minutes but it is engrossing and rewarding, a painstakingly realistic account (oozing verisimiltude out of every frame, and there are a lot of frames) of three days in the life of the female protagonist of the title, portrayed by Delphine Seyrig.

Dull, humorless, and thankfully, the last of the Dracula films produced by Hammer.

Running a substantial 140 minutes, the film does, at the very least, give fans a chance to see many of their favorite players hamming it up.

An ambitious and sometimes-incisive look at the inner workings of an Italian-American family.

Stallone creates a thoroughly enjoyable character, constantly hustling and delivering a nonstop stream of chatter, showing the kind of engaging work he was capable of early in his career.

This movie is a reedited version of the television series, with the addition of Sensurround. Just as bad as the failed series. Lorne Greene should never have sold the Ponderosa.

The funniest of all the Cheech and Chong movies, UP IN SMOKE provides a feast of gags for the sympathetically minded.

Director Malick endows this simple, timeless story with the enormous scope and resonance of myth through a clear vision unclouded by sentimentality and by a deft juxtaposition of image, music, and character.

The silliness of the whole concept is handled with a sly sense of humor by director Dante, with some tongue-in-cheek appearances by Keenan Wynn, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Bartel, Barbara Steele, and Dick Miller adding to the fun.

Parts of the film are nasty enough to grip the audience, but a large portion is muddled and sometimes laughably pretentious.

A gripping action film that also illustrates the bitter disillusionment of Americans who witnessed the corruption, confusion, and moral chaos of the country's leadership during the Vietnam era.

Rude, rough, tasteless, but often hilarious.

Another mindless exercise in unexciting, unmotivated action sequences punctuated by moments of stupid, redneck, good-ol'-boy humor.

The sparse story of the struggle of the two men with their obsessions, and with each other, skillfully creates a mood that is hard to shake after the ending credits. The car chases are breathtaking.

Pathetic acting and a scattershot plot sink this pitiful attempt by producer Robert Stigwood to turn the landmark Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band into an engaging film.

The fifth picture of the Pink Panther series, this wasn't as good as most of the others. It's a bit too unfocused, and the scenes shift to locations all over the world, like a comic version of a James Bond movie, but a good cast led by Sellers, under Edwards' direction, still provides plenty of laughs.

A funny, successful, and very derivative crime-comedy.

A poorly made and utterly laughable film that has gained a minor cult status with "bad film" fans.

It's somewhat more energetic than the previous year's Breaking Training, and the Japanese locations are a plus, but so much silliness has been substituted for the solid situations and characterizations of the original that it's hard to believe the same people had anything to do with both pictures.

There are a few laughs from Grodin and Cannon, but Beatty and Christie are like 400-pound gorillas chasing a milkweed seed. The more Beatty concentrates, the more glazed and distracted he looks.

Kristofferson's performance is as monotone as his singing, showing few changes in dramatic emphasis. Unmotivated story riddled with confusion and disarray.

You just can't hate anything this energetic and happy.

More a remake than a sequel, this production seems like a pointless effort. With a plot virtually identical to that of the first film, the only real difference between the two--and it is significant--is that Spielberg didn't direct this one.

As in the Friday the 13th movies the only real interest here is observing the outrageous lengths filmmakers go to in devising "Can-you-top-this?" murders.

A fine Disney product scripted by cartoonist Key, who is also credited with Gus and The $1,000,000 Duck.

All in all a very funny movie with enough solid, believable story to take it beyond the realm of teenage summer fare.

Overlong but interesting thriller.

Although Brown (Endless Summer) captured the beauty and fun of his favorite sport in his "surfumentaries," Milius, whose work always seems underlain with weighty symbolic intent, infuses Big Wednesday with heavy-handed philosophy and all-around stupidity.

Busey did all his own singing and playing, as did Martin and Stroud as The Crickets, providing a welcome sense of realism. Busey's performance is terrific.

Martin is a shocking, thoughtful reworking of the vampire myth set in a dying American steel town. Well worth a look for anyone with even a passing interest in horror, and essential viewing for serious fright fans.

The film veers wildly from decent black comedy to dumb slapstick, and director Reynolds seems unsure of his own intentions. In a few places this film is quite funny, however, although De Luise and all the scenes he's in are unbearable.

Beautiful photography from Kovacs and an excellent acting job by Stallone.

This is silly stuff, and the gooey special effects make it ever sillier. Director Girdler--who died in a helicopter crash before the film was released--does a respectable job of making it all look rather slick and professional, but the big budget and all-star cast only add to the overall absurdity.

From a technical perspective, it's undoubtedly the most impressive and authentic concert film ever made.

After slowly introducing the characters, the film accelerates pace. Directer Zemeckis handles comedy well.

Another one of those movies that was more of a "deal" than it was a picture.