Maybe it's too much to ask that rationality and surprise accompany Heat's blood, bullets and busted-up cars. Red Heat is just lukewarm. [17 Jun 1988, p.1D]

Though his film is like no other baseball movie, it may remind you of Paul Newman's hockey comedy Slap Shot: a knowing look at sport's underbelly - punctuated by jelly-belly laughs. [15 June 1988]

Unpretentious as it is, Big takes you beyond laughter, to where you live. And there's nothing small about that. [3 Jun 1988, p.1D]

Rambo III is hardly the first Stallone-y baloney to climax with a commie wipeout; it is the first to palm off its star as the product of a Buddhist monastery. Like, whew. Rambo in a monastery is almost as stomach-turning as E.T. in a brothel. [25 May 1988, p.1D]

Writer/director Frank LaLoggia's chiller about the dark underbelly of an idyllic small town is so effectively heartfelt yet also creepy that it's surprising he couldn't parlay it into more assignments.

At 120 minutes, Colors is one of the longest cop dramas in movie history, and all the clichés are packed into the second hour. It fades in the stretch - and so may too many moviegoers. [15 Apr 1988]

So original that it'll be years before a major filmmaker attempts another one. We're talking black-belt cult-movie status here. [30 Mar 1988]

If Hairspray is clean and sweet, don't cry sellout. Taken as a pointed burlesque of a serious racial issue, this is what Spike Lee's School Daze should have been. It's also a PG (for "Pretty Darn Good'') simply on its own.

I enjoyed everything about Moonstruck except for its meandering mid-section. On cassette, with vino accompaniment, it may seem perfect. In theaters, with a diet drink, it still rates as the holiday sleeper. [18 Dec 1987]

Emperor is like Full Metal Jacket - uneven, fuzzy, imperfect, and one of the reasons the movies were invented. [20 Nov 1987, p.1D]

News is right, completely right, until it slips just a bit at the end.By that time it hardly matters because you've seen the best of the holiday films, as well as the most all-around entertaining movie of 1987 - a bittersweet media comedy-drama that surpasses its potential. [16 Dec 1987, p.1D]

It's slick, melodramatic, even inherently trashy - but a blue-chip moviegoer investment. [11 Dec 1987, p.1D]

A faithful, technically brilliant, but also dramatically malnourished film of J.G. Ballard's popular World War II novel. [08 Dec 1987]

Crystal is such a panic - and normally uptight Patinkin is so attractively relaxed as a Spanish swordsman - that Bride's charms just can't be ignored. [25 Sept 1987]

Motivations are murky, the dialogue is flat. But the movie never lets too much plot get between the dance numbers. [21 Aug 1987]

Director Joel Schumacher, whose pastel color schemes vitalized St. Elmo's Fire, gives this a sensual, at times even erotic, sheen. And a few subplot issues - single motherhood, runaway kids, midlife dating - hint that at least someone involved with this project intended to go after bigger game. [31 Jul 1987, p.4D]

Summer School is like summer school: you go, then quickly realize you would much rather be doing something else. [22 July 1987]

Though Robocop is too well-crafted to be entirely loathsome, it's at best an amoral goof. Yet like the comparably silly Lethal Weapon, it cynically pushes all the right action-audience buttons. Better duck - here comes a monster hit. [17 Jul 1987]

A contender for the year's best film.

Full of love, Spaceballs is full of laughs; after 13 years of screen disappointments, Brooks has almost delivered another Young Frankenstein. May the box office be with it. [24 Jun 1987, p.1D]

Best scenes: Campbell pondering whether to squash her dismembered head in a vice, and a later quandary when he must shotgun his own dismembered hand. Moral: Pimples aren't the worst thing that can happen to your body. [11 Sept 1987, Life, p.3D]

This is one of the best re-creations ever of the early-'50s Midwest. [11 Sept 1987, Life, p.3D]

As crazed as its predecessor after a slower start. [21 Sep 2007, p.11D]

The result may prove to be too much for even cult horror nuts. This complete 121-minute "director's cut" is tough to follow, so you can see why home viewers were mystified by the early '80s Vestron tape that cut nearly 40 minutes out of the movie and scrambled the order of scenes. [2 June 2000, p.10E]

Director Jack Clayton's gloomy adaptation of Ray Bradbury's short story was an odd choice for Disney in its straighter-arrow days, and the film flopped even after several scenes were reshot long after principal photography was completed. Yet this odd horror-Americana mix about a supernatural traveling carnival has a cult, plus two aptly cast antagonist leads in Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce. [04 Oct 1996]

Young directed under his preferred nom de plume (Bernard Shakey), and you'll either want to see this or you won't. Will it influence your decision to add that Devo - yes, Devo - plays nuclear power workers who glow? [01 Sep 1995, p.12D]

What remains is a great Vangelis score, astonishing production design, Hauer's career role -- and a movie that deserves its cult reputation despite an unloving heart. [11 Sept 1992]

A great movie just got greater, thanks to this thorough restoration. [Director's Cut; 27 June 1997, p.D3]

It'll never be fast food, which is probably both its virtue and limitation. [26 June 2009, p.12D]

Williams is only adequate, but nearly everyone else here is great, including Jerry Orbach (Ciello mentor) and Bob Balaban (hardball Justice Department creep). [25 May 2007, p.4E]

This sleeper never caught on with the masses but became a cult movie after making a lot of the year's 10-best lists. [19 Sept 1997, p.13D]

Director Taylor Hackford is so enthusiastic reminiscing on an alternate soundtrack that he almost convinces you that this diminutive cult movie is better than it is. [27 Dec 1996]

Director Richard Rush's unique moviemaking saga is one of the consummate screen treats of its day, though its offbeat subject matter and tone caused it some problems. [23 Nov 2001, p.8E]

Oft-touted as director Walter Hill's best film, this is probably tops of umpteen Westerns about the James-Younger-Miller outlaw clans. [24 Feb 1995, p.14D]

A strong first half has Jill Clayburgh oozing bile when weasel husband Michael Murphy dumps her. Writer/director Paul Mazursky's sexual-political screen landmark wobbles some when she takes up with artist Alan Bates. [13 Jan 2006, p.14D]

Haphazard in its narrative but consistently mesmerizing until an overdose of communist rah-rah in the late going. [08 Dec 2005, p.4E]

Another of director David Cronenberg's queasy early horror films that, like The Brood and Videodrome, gets under your skin. [04 Jun 2004]

Sissy Spacek goes vengefully telekinetic in one of director Brian De Palma's best movies, and her scenes with mom Piper Laurie (both actresses were Oscar-nominated) release a lot of energy themselves. [29 Jun 2004]

The 1975 film not only succeeds as a rollicking cinematic costume drama, but lends insights into the mindset of countries of the region such as Afghanistan and how their culture clashes with that of the West. [01 Mar 2003]

A masterpiece. (9 Jan 1998, p.3D)

You still get Tim Curry in drag, young Susan Sarandon in her skimpies and an enthusiastic score. [16 Nov 1990, p.3D]

Now that we no longer expect the world from any of them, the movie is an amusing 88-minute trifle with Beatty in a gigolo mustache and Nicholson with Art Garfunkel curls. [05 Jun 1998]

Teamed again after Midnight Cowboy, writer Waldo Salt and director John Schlesinger make a costly flop of Nathanael West's great novella about underbelly '30s Hollywood. Karen Black is just OK as craven screen wannabe Fay Greener, but, along with M*A*S*H, this is Donald Sutherland's greatest lead (as a dweeb named Homer Simpson). [08 Jun 2004]

Screenwriter Alan Sharp's dialogue, as edgy as his name, combines with Penn's incisive direction to create memorable characters played by Hackman, Ward, Jennifer Warren and a young James Woods as an auto mechanic you don't want messing with your points and plugs. [22 July 2005, p.6E]

The movies are so much fun that even detractors of Charlton Heston (Cardinal Richelieu) and Raquel Welch (taking pratfalls as "Constance") readily admit that both carry more than their load here. [01 May 1998]

Cassavetes wrote and directed on his standard improvisational shoestring. The oft-shattering result, which runs 2 1/2 hours, is so uneasily lifelike that the academy temporarily ignored its prejudice against independent productions by rewarding Rowlands and Cassavetes with Oscar nominations. [18 Sep 1992, p.3D]

This is still a great Carney performance and inspired casting by writer/director Paul Mazursky. [16 Sep 2005]

A lot of cinematic ineptitude and moral turpitude can be forgiven in the final 40 minutes, when Halicki redeems his movie by staging one of the greatest car chase scenes in history -- one without much, if any, fakery. [01 Dec 2000, p.8E]

These swashbuckling romps are packed with the kind of slapstick and throwaway asides you may not expect before noting both were directed by Richard Lester, the man who molded the Beatles on screen. [01 May 1998]

As the suddenly somber Hickey, the traveling salesman who rudely stops regaling assorted skid-row barflies with flip patter in 1912 New York, Lee Marvin is very good in a role that Jason Robards always owned. Otherwise, the actors are all on a "wow" level. [04 Apr 2003]

Cult director Don Siegel bookended Dirty Harry with this esteemed toughie. [08 Mar 1996]

Forget Lassie and Flicka. Two years before Richard Zanuck and David Brown gave us a new kind of animal picture with Jaws, they produced a ssssssickie that gave character actor Strother Martin a rare lead. [22 Aug 2006, p.4D]

Robert Altman's oddball send up of the late Raymond Chandler got a rigidly polarized response, but I love it. [21 Jun 1991, p.3D]

Eddie Albert's Oscar-nominated slow burn as the loathing father in The Heartbreak Kid is the funniest portrayal of Midwestern WASP-ism in movie history. [08 Feb 2002]

Drivers congest highways, while many of their cars inevitably end up as twisted scrap. The final Monsieur Hulot comedy from France's Jacques Tati couldn't possibly be more topical. [18 Jul 2008, p.13D]

This is impressive on costuming and hunk fronts (with Billy Dee Williams the key factor in both), while Diana Ross is better than OK in a performance whose Oscar nomination was probably a fait accompli. Otherwise, this lumpy 2 1/2-hour biopic of Billie Holiday hasn't improved since it was critically drubbed -- four other nominations or not -- as one of the most ponderous of all showbiz chronicles. [11 Nov 2005]

This critical smash was graphic, yet laced with macabre humor. [30 Oct 2007, p.2D]

Despite Paul Newman and Lee Marvin, a deserving flop about modern-day cattle hucksters; at times here (call the rest home), I think Newman sounds like Wally Cox. [01 Mar 1991, p.3D]

Ivan Passer directs with the kind of objective integrity that's rare today, but the script doesn't jell. [14 July 1989, p.3D]

This would be profoundly offensive, if you could tell what was going on. [15 Jun 1992, p.6D]

Underrated Jerry Schatzberg directed (he later did Pacino's 1973 Scarecrow), and the script is by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, so it's smart. [22 Jun 2007, p.3D]

With gorgeous Australian outback photography and minimal dialogue co-defining it as "pure" cinema, Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece was once designated by Premiere magazine as its "most wanted" movie on video. [04 Apr 1997, p.3D]

Generally unheralded, this is one of the really good Douglas performances, smoothly matched by Fonda's. [12 Jan 2007, p.6E]

Robert Altman's first movie after M*A*S*H introduced Shelley Duvall and was among the director's personal favorites. All kinds of icons are satirically skewered, from Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz to Steve McQueen's sweater-clad Bullitt character. [04 Jan 2008, p.11D]

This unearthed cheapie and fast-forwarder's delight is redeemed by the dubbed- in cathedral tones (they're vintage gladiator pic) coming from our hero's larnyx. [20 Dec 1991, p.3D]

Still mesmerizes on the strength of George C. Scott's chew-your-behind performance. [5 Nov. 1999, p.6E]

Though dully directed and a bit prettified by Martin Ritt, James Wong Howe's outdoor Pennsylvania vistas often combine stirringly with Henry Mancini's score. [26 Jul 1996, p.3D]

Dolly lost a fortune and helped to all but kill the genre, yet this famed musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker is more fun than its rep indicates. [15 Nov 2005, p.8D]

The best fictional movie about skiing. [27 Nov 2009, p.13D]

Looked at from the vantage point of more than three decades later, the movie is frequently incoherent; the dialogue sounds like it was being made up on the spot; and the acting is spotty in many cases. [01 May 2004, p.70]

Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom brilliantly perform knockabout stage routines in director William Friedkin's energetically patchwork portrayal of New York burlesque in the 1920s. [23 May 2008, p.10E]

Though it seems even spottier today than it did in '68, Cassavetes' most acclaimed work rebounds impressively after a near-unbearable opening half-hour. [29 Mar 1996]

This is director Stanley Donen's spotty but superior original -- made before Dudley Moore's superstardom but after his and co-star/co-writer Peter Cook's Beyond the Fringe stage glory. [06 Apr 2007, p.8E]

Director Roman Polanski co-stars with and directs wife Sharon Tate in their only collaboration. That's one reason this box office bomb, which came out less than two years before Tate was murdered by Charles Manson's crew, has picked up a following. [08 Oct 2004, p.4E]

Among the great cult movies of the '60s, this was director John Boorman's second feature and first of note after his debut with the Dave Clark Five's Having a Wild Weekend. [08 Jul 2005]

Director Richard Rush, who later made the classic The Stunt Man, overindulges the arty bike footage. But this is certainly an artifact of an age, photographed by Leslie (later Laszlo) Kovacs, who became one of Hollywood's best cinematographers. [02 Jan 2004, p.4E]

An intimate portrait of the Bringing It All Back Home Bob Dylan during his final acoustic tour through England, it hits with escalating emotional force as the decades go by, capturing a fleeting musical period as brilliantly as any movie ever has. [07 Jan 2000]

Donen (previously Hepburn's director in Funny Face and Charade) gets everything out of a brainstorm romantic teaming that didn't - and doesn't - spring automatically to mind. [05 Nov 1993, p.3D]

Anything but cutting-edge. [28 Jul 2003]

Victor Mature became a star in the 1940 original, which was simply called One Million, B.C. Happy New Year, Vic, but nothing in your version can compete with a blond Raquel Welch -- she wearing the latest '60s open-navel cavewoman garb here [27 Dec 1996, p.3D]

The drama sputters through a 70-minute second half. [14 July 2006, p.4E]

Michelangelo Antonioni's famed mod mystery (complete with a funny scene with The Yardbirds) examines the nature of reality-or-not as captured by photography -- throwing in sexual titillation and brilliant use of sound on the side. [20 Feb 2004, p.13D]

Sometimes uproarious but overly sentimental. [14 July 2003, p.1D]

This cult movie for the ages suggests a Twilight Zone episode taken to gruesome extremes. [09 May 1997, p.3D]

Despite little dialogue, the story and screenplay were Oscar-nominated -- and, at 50, Wilde's physique is amazing for an actor who once played Chopin. [18 Jan 2008, p.4D]

The movie is more fun than Breathless, a minority (though not sacrilegious) opinion. [10 Jan 2003]

A young-Turk poker player challenges an old pro the way pool shooter Paul Newman took on Jackie Gleason in The Hustler, though the result lacks its predecessor's depth. Carrying Kid is one of the best casts ever. [03 Jun 2005, p.7E]

Ahead of its time in its attitude toward unwed motherhood, director Otto Preminger's psychological drama has always gotten the same pro/con reaction that typifies Preminger's career. On the chilly side, it also has a great understated Olivier performance, an effective Paul Glass score and some of the era's best widescreen black-and-white photography. [28 Jan 2005, p.4D]

Lots of sand but no day at the beach for its characters -- and not, from all appearances, the actors, either. Among the best of director Sidney Lumet's movies not set in New York. [08 Jun 2007, p.8E]

The definitive time capsule of mid-'60s swinging London. [05 Dec 2003]

Federico Fellini's first film (co-directed with Alberto Lattuada) would make a compatible living room double bill with FF's 1986 Ginger and Fred...Pleasing all the way through. [17 Mar 1989, p.3D]

Set in mid-1944 France, it's a contest of wills between a Resistance railway inspector and a smooth Nazi general (Quiz Show's Paul Scofield) over purloined French art treasures. Filmed on location, often in inhumanly cold weather, the film eschewed the use of railcar models - running real trains into each other and off the track when the script frequently calls for it. [30 Sep 1994, p.3D]

Director Frank Sinatra (on screen, he's a medic) was probably going for Kurosawa-like profundity here. Unfortunately, the other actors include Clint Walker and Tommy Sands. [05 Apr 1991, p.3D]

Vincente Minnelli and Pat Boone didn't work together every day, which is only one of the factors here to titillate fanciers of oddball cinema. There's also a dreadful but thoroughly offbeat script (from George Axelrod's play) about a male screenwriter who's shot by a jealous husband, only to be reincarnated as a woman. [07 May 1999]

Chayefsky's untempered windiness and direction (by Arthur Hiller) so impersonal that this D-day black comedy could just as well be an I Dream of Jeannie episode. [22 June 1990, p.3D]

Back when anthology TV shows such as The Twilight Zone and Thriller were in their heyday, the movies, too, entertained a spate of horror/supernatural multistory features that fans still regard with affection. Director Mario Bava, whose earlier single-story satanic yarn Black Sunday picked up a wide following, turned Sabbath into one of the best. [11 Aug 2000, 8E]

Philandering pilot Cliff Robertson overprotects sister Jane Fonda's virginity in a comedy as queasily dated as Ask Any Girl, Shirley MacLaine's 1959 office politics primer. It probably rates a few points for skewering the sexual double standard, and the era's New York locales are still as attractive as Mel Torme's title tune. [04 Oct 1996]

Irredeemably dull. [13 Aug 2004]