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]