Only a heart of steel can resist this pooch...The tale itself is slim, and while the plot is a bit contrived, and all of the loose ends tied up a bit too neatly in the film’s last five minutes, it should be remembered that For the Love of Benji is merely a star vehicle. The idea is to watch the dog act.

There is a parade of roadside set pieces involving may different ways to crash cars. Overlaid is citizens band radio jabber (hence, the title) which is loaded with downhome gags. Field is the hottest element in the film.

A magnificent film. George Lucas set out to make the biggest possible adventure fantasy out of his memories of serials and older action epics, and he succeeded brilliantly.

Cross of Iron more than anything else affirms director Sam Peckinpah's prowess as an action filmmaker of graphic mayhem.

The CB dialog exemplifies the good-natured horsing around that marks those channels, at the same time the serious emergency traffic that often saves lives.

Production features arch scripting by Richard Sale (from his novel), stilted acting by the cast and forced direction by J. Lee Thompson.

In a decade largely devoted to male buddy-buddy films, brutal rape fantasies, and impersonal special effects extravaganzas, Woody Allen has almost single-handedly kept alive the idea of heterosexual romance in American films. Annie Hall is a touching and hilarious love story that is Allen’s most three-dimensional film to date.

Excellent performances and direction (Donald Cammell), from a most credible and literate screenplay [from a novel by Dean R. Koontz], make production an intriguing achievement in story-telling.

Rabid, as the dictionary explains means both ‘affected with rabies’ and ‘extremely violent’. Using both definitions, Rabid, is so accurately titled that this one word tells all. Here is an extremely violent, sometimes nauseating, picture about a young woman affected with rabies, running around Montreal infecting others.

Most performances [in this adaptation of the Jack Higgins’ novel] are first rate with Sutherland exuding great credibility as the Irishman, and Caine thoroughly convincing as the Nazi commander. Pleasence gives a standout lifelike interpretation of Himmler.

John Frankenheimer’s film of Black Sunday is an intelligent and meticulous depiction of an act of outlandish terrorism – the planned slaughter of the Super Bowl stadium audience.

The story’s formula banality is credible most of the time and there’s some good actual US Navy search and rescue procedure interjected in the plot.

Like the character played by Paul Newman in Slap Shot, director George Roy Hill is ambivalent on the subject of violence in professional ice hockey. Half the time Hill invites the audience to get off on the mayhem, the other half of the time he decries it.

The Sentinel is a grubby, grotesque excursion into religioso psychodrama, notable for uniformly poor performances by a large cast of familiar names and direction that is hysterical and heavy-handed.

The Cassandra Crossing is a tired, hokey and sometimes unintentionally funny disaster film in which a trainload of disease-exposed passengers lurch to their fate.

Freaky Friday is certainly one of the most offbeat films Walt Disney Productions has ever made, but it isn't one of the best. A promising concept - quarreling mother and teenage daughter switch personalities for a day - has been bungled by a talky, repetitive screenplay and overbroad direction. Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster salvage some scenes through sheer behavioral charm.

The most fascinating aspect of this film is the dedicated training that turns average-built young men (frequently they refer to themselves as weaklings in their early youth) into superbly-created physical edifices.

The spitball script [from a story by Gail Morgan Hickman and S.W. Schurr] lurches along, stopping periodically for the blood-lettings and assorted running and jumping and chasing stuff.

Fact that the story is based on an actual, and shocking, incident makes all the more disappointing its transfer to the screen. The action zigs and zags between the cluttered set of characters.

Peter Bogdanovich's film is an okay comedy-drama about the early days of motion pictures. Story begins with a group of barnstorming filmmakers in the pre-feature film era, later segues to the adolescence of the industry.

The interplay between the stars is excellent, Cassavetes slowly but steadily digging his own grave as he reveals his shallowness in dealings with Falk, girl friend Carol Grace (a beautiful performance) and estranged wife Joyce Van Patten (a brief but excellent characterization).

The new A Star Is Born has the rare distinction of being a superlative remake. Barbra Streisand's performance as the rising star is her finest screen work to date, while Kris Kristofferson's magnificent portrayal of her failing benefactor realizes all the promise first shown five years earlier in Cisko Pike.

Faithful in substantial degree not only to the letter but also the spirit of the 1933 classic for RKO, this $22 million-plus version neatly balances superb special effects with solid dramatic credibility.

Jones is a pleasant light comedian whose style is perfectly suited to the WASPish world of Disney. As his wife, Suzanne Pleshette has her first film role in five years, and her beauty and intelligence livens a part that might have been dull without her.

The Pink Panther Strikes Again is a hilarious film about the further misadventures of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. Action proceeds smartly through plot-advancing action scenes, interleaved with excellent non-dialog sequences featuring Sellers and underscored superbly by Henry Mancini.

Bound for Glory is outstanding biographical cinema, not only of the late Woody Guthrie but also of the 1930s Depression era which served to disillusion, inspire and radicalize him and millions of other Americans.

While art by definition must trigger certain emotional responses, occasionally there’s too-obvious a feeling of really being manipulated and stroked. Fact that Rocky gets his big chance from cynical schemers–with a black public hero as the instigator–rests uneasily at moments. Then there are occasional flashes that the film may be patronizing the lower end of the blue-collar mentality, as much if not more than the characters who keep putting Rocky down on the screen. However, Avildsen is noted for creating such ambiguities.

While falling short of its comedy promise (except when Richard Pryor is on the screen), Silver Streak is an okay adventure comedy starring Gene Wilder on the lam from crooked art thieves aboard a trans-continental train.