The real world has caught up with him, and [Waters'] off-kilter comedy seems disappointingly mundane and mainstream.

Regrettably, director Hal Ashby has allowed both the protagonist, folk-singer Woody Guthrie, played with surprising canniness and authority by David Carradine, and the Depression setting to drift away in pictorial reverie and dramatically evasive heroworship. [16 Feb 1977, p.B1]

The movie's a mixed bag, probably because the script was written by drug-traffic expert Oliver Stone of "Scarface" and "Midnight Express" and David Lee Henry of "The Evil Men Do" on the one hand, and directed by sensitive guy Hal Ashby of "Harold and Maude" and "Coming Home" on the other. It's an unhappy hybrid, a valiant but impractical attempt to upgrade the genre. [25 Apr 1986, p.27]

A spotty documentary of the Rolling Stones 1981 concert tour. [11 Feb 1983, p.23]

More and more it seems that when all else fails, the director says, "Then let's make it zany." [09 Oct 1982, p.C11]

Eugenio Zanetti's set design is wonderful. But the movie isn't enough to make people check the shadows when they leave the theater.

None of this is by way of saying that Cats is bad, per se. In fact, some of the songs are pretty toe-tapping at times.

Floating in an unconvincing middle ground between realism and madcap fantasy, The Fall of the American Empire is at its best when Arcand is taking his potshots from a sly side angle.

Mostly, this is a problem of storytelling, not acting. Moss is riveting, even if the material is not.

Child's Play 2 is an inevitable sequel that's not as good as its progenitor, but better than most movies with the numbers 2 through 8 in their titles. Thin plot-wise, it caters to an audience apparently amused on the first go-round by the antics of a foul-mouthed doll named Chucky.

It is unsparing when it comes to gruesome descriptions and ominous characters, but it's got more giggles than goose bumps. The Exorcist III isn't about to scare anybody.

Yet despite the stirring performance at its heart, the movie is ultimately too restricted by its own dramatic conventions, and it only seldom comes to life.

If the story is fun — and it is fitfully, only after a protracted, sloggy set up — it’s a lot less so than either of the first two films.

Like too many genre directors these days, Ken Wiederhorn went for a mix of horror and comedy, and it's probably not his fault he succeeded mostly with the latter.

The movie, in short, rides on a revenge plot and a beauty-and-the-beast subplot, and there's some nice photography and production design; screen writer L.M. Kit Carson lends some Texas texture and funny lines. But mostly, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is straight blood and guts. [23 Aug 1986, p.D11]

"5" has none of the pizazz of "1" and "3" and is only marginally better than "2" and "4," the worst of the "Elms."

A soulless replica of Don Seigel's 1956 model and Philip Kaufman's 1978 update.

There are entertaining touches in this blackly comic grotesquerie, but it is no more frightening than a teenage slasher movie. Perkins, in his first stab at directing, never gives us time to anticipate. At best, he parodies the classic, but without restraint. [04 July 1986, p.N29]

A trashy Japanese production with special guest Raymond Burr. [27 Sep 1985, p.25]

The effects are generally good, and those Cenobites are definitely not the kind of folks you'd have over on New Year's Eve. Still, it's odd that the most intriguing, and threatening, items in the film are those darn puzzle boxes.

What starts out as a moody arthouse flick rapidly becomes an uneven B-movie yukfest (sometimes intentional, sometimes not), with low-budget concessions to the Hollywood cop-versus-killer industry.

Though Mother has already collected two prizes for its screenplay, it's really rather thin. If it weren't so slow and repetitious, there'd only be enough whining and grousing for a Seinfeld episode. [10 Jan 1997, p.D01]

Like a faked antique that copies the physical characteristics of the original but misses the spirit, the new animated Disney film, The Fox and the Hound, looks like Bambi and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but exudes phony innocence. [10 July 1981, p.17]

The film lacks the very imagination it touts, along with another trait that it links to exceptional athleticism. That’s obsession.

Without a story or, for that matter, any theme but a kind of aimless nostalgia, you peel and peel away at it only to find, in the end, nothing.

If Rogers moves through the film somewhat lethargically, Six Pack's bare-bones plot doesn't provide much inspiration. [20 July 1982, p.B4]

A wild, inventive ride through the unconscious, by way of Art History 101 and An Introduction to Film Tropes. The story of a famous psychoanalyst struggling with his Oedipal demons with the help of some hardened burglars isn’t a story at all, really, but a decidedly rickety scaffold on which Krstic can hang his images, an array of ecstatic references to the painters and directors who have inspired him.

The End never really lives up to its beginning. It's much too long and, after a while, the one-track theme - how a man reacts when he's suddenly told he has less than three months to live - begins to get old. [26 May 1978, p.20]

Ponderously cliched and predictable. [19 July 1996, p.N33]

Mischiefin other words, is echt teen sex comedy, hitting its marks in the way a skilled carpenter drives home his millionth nail. Even the deviations from the formula, like the movie's sweet, naive tone, are only predictable extensions of the formula.

Photograph goes a little too far in implementing Batra’s favored style of storytelling. Sometimes, less isn’t more, but — as in this case — not quite enough.

Alternately fascinating and disappointing biopic about French scientist Marie ­Curie.

The Final Countdown emerges from a round trip through this time-bending exercise flattened into a two-dimensional letdown. [01 Aug 1980, p.C7]

For all its boldness of concept and carnage, The Prowler is never entirely satisfying. There are too many missed opportunities to transcend the genre’s schlock, too many passages where nothing happens, too many scares that fall flat. Still, it’s an intriguing artifact of an earlier horror-movie era, one that toys with the idea of villains and victims while slashing the slasher formula to bits.

A mannered, gratuitous exercise in Grand Guignol dreadfulness that was made by and with unknowns. [03 June 1978, p.B6]

There isn't much conceptual or stylistic integrity in Tightrope. It's calculated to function at the most expedient and spurious levels of nightmarish artifice. [17 Aug 1984, p.D1]

Let’s just say that, for the right audience, Junior may deliver. But there’s a whole lot of pregnancy to go through first.

Stallone hasn't done himself proud in Paradise Alley. The film could still use a director, a scenario writer and someone to discourage the star from lapsing into happy-go-lucky imitations of Lee J. Cobb. Still, there's something likeable about this zany manipulator. [10 Nov 1978, p.E1]

F.I.S.T. may be given patronizing credit for reflecting some vague desire to do an important picture about the perils of corruption within the American political system. Unfortunately, it can't be given credit for realizing that desire with much skill or credibility. [26 Apr 1978, p.B1]

Never makes a subatomic particle of melodramatic or psychological sense yet nevertheless provokes an overwhelming proportion of women spectators into screaming fits. [19 Aug 1981, p.C1]

The film is smart, literary, nuanced, slightly stagy — and pedigreed to within an inch of its life. It practically reeks of dusty, yellowed pages and engraved-leather bookbinding.

Flexploitation pure and simple -- nothing but savagery, sex and sinew.

A jazz piece may be improvised, sketched out in the process of creation, but a movie resists that kind of spontaneity -- or requires skills that are beyond Lee's talents at the moment.

Director Michael Apted (Coal Miner's Daughter) settles for a movie of pat moralism, a pamphleteer's parable of how drugs destroy families.

Eagle flops around trying to sustain a premise that defies suspenseful elaboration from the outset. No one with his wits about him believes the conspirators will succeed in capturing or shooting Churchill. More to the point, who would want them to? We're asked to suspend disbelief for the sake of a gimmick that not only insults common sense and general knowledge but also betrays old loyalties and convictions. [26 Mar 1977, p.B5]

Easily the worst of the four movies drawn from S.E. Hinton novels to date, and that's saying a lot. [9 Nov 1985, p.G14]

A more modest, down-to-earth disappointment than Firefox, it benefits from a fair amount of incidental entertainment value, much of it supplied by a distinctive and often humorous supporting cast. [18 Dec 1982, p.C4]

The young actors are quite proficient and un-sappy too -- it's not their fault if they too often seem like chessmen being moved around on the director's board, composed into picturesque tableaux.

He's the anticop, one blood-soaked, quasi-psychotic symptom of Hollywood's desire to outgun, outkill and out-carchase itself.

Shamelessly catering to fans of the original film, while giving them nothing new, its story and humor are also inexplicably calibrated for a much younger demographic than those old enough to have seen the first film when it came out.

The movie is a capable and attractive enough biopic, if also less than riveting cinema.

Between the gang's patois and Seagal's soft speaking, Marked for Death almost begs for subtitles; the breaking of bones, however, comes through loud and clear.

While the details of Nureyev’s 1961 defection in Paris are thrilling, the film falls into the trap of many historical dramas, rendering the story as surprisingly clunky, especially considering the nimbleness of its subjects.

This story has explosive screen possibilities. What it seems to lack is an incendiary star. [22 Mar 1978, p.D9]

A funny thing happened while watching Luce. With only a half-hour or so of the movie left to go, it suddenly occurred to me: I wasn’t sure what the movie was actually about. Or, more accurately, it was about so much that, at the point where most films are starting to wrap things up, this one felt like it was still just setting the stage.

This may be the world’s first movie micro-targeted to several thousand of the people who live and/or work in Washington, and no one else.

Olivia Colman, Kaitlyn Dever and Jim Gaffigan round out a talented yet crowded ensemble cast, which has so many principal characters — all flawed in a different way — that the filmmakers are unable at times to devote the attention that each one deserves.

Black Sunday takes such a plodding literal-minded approach with an extravagant thriller premise that we have more than enough time to watch the gears working and all too often jamming. [01 Apr 1977, p.B1]

There are some amusing (and even poignant) moments between Franky and the two girls, who are the movie’s most interesting characters. But all the parents come across as stiff and hollow, and so does Ballas.

The Driver is a chase melodrama abstracted to the verge of pointlessness. [31 July 1978, p.B1]

The plot synopsis bears may a suspicious resemblance to "Alien." [6 Nov 1981, p.23]

Despite this sporadic funny stuff and the enthusiastic cast members, "Zorro" degenerates into a ponderous trifle. By turns, Peter Medak's direction seems stuffy and scattered and Hamilton's Spanish and English accents keep getting lost on the soundtrack. [25 July 1981, p.C9]

The director appears to be stuck with rather drab shots from inside the racers showing one car creeping ahead and then falling back. The effect is not exactly thrilling, but the audience is obviously eager to be thrilled and more than willing to do its imaginative share. Greased Lightning never generates enough momentum to meet the audience half-way. [16 July 1977, p.E5]

A talky European Grand Prix thriller/romantic potboiler. [14 Sep 2007, p.WE38]

The Tin Drum is likely to be remembered as another conspicuous example of why the urge to film certain books ought to be resisted. [25 Apr 1980, p.C1]

If this is corporate synergy fired up to a terrifying new level, there’s still enough heart at the movie’s center to keep it from becoming all business.

At times, the movie struggles to maintain the critical balance between detachment from and engagement with the thing it’s making fun of.

This is by no means the first film, nor the first film about the movie industry, in which the epitome of emotion is represented by a character talking on the telephone while oral sex is being performed on him. [3 July 1981, p.19]

If you’re a fan of broad black comedy — the kind in which someone blasts a hole in someone else’s head, and then the next camera shot is framed by that gaping aperture — Villains may be your cup of strong tea. The dialogue by writer-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen is less than witty, and peppered with a heavy sprinkling of dully numbing f-bombs.

For all of its foodie appeal, however, Ramen Shop is a wispily sentimental enterprise, full of perfunctory transitions, maudlin plot twists and awkward time shifts between past and present.

The result won’t sway nonbelievers, but is mostly watchable and occasionally even moving.

The film never wholly or satisfyingly engages with why Elizabeth becomes so convinced of Todd’s innocence.

The movie version of The Onion Field offers a compelling buildup of suspense and apprehension, culminating in the shocking murder of a young policeman. But it gradually begins to diminish in force, transforming a gripping, realistic reenactment of a murder case into a prosaic and somewhat baffling grind. [19 Oct 1979, p.B1]

Unfortunately, in the filmmaker’s narrative-feature debut, she takes the theme of betrayal and turns it into fodder for a sitcom, and not a particularly funny one at that.

Not so much a film as a frolic that established the escapist Elvis formula: an exotic location, curvaceous girls, an inane script and an album's worth of songs. From here on, Elvis is basic boy scout. The music is pastiche Hawaiian, the plot is ridiculous, and the box-office grosses and record sales were incredible. [13 Aug 1987, p.B7]

The movie has its flaws. Still, for anyone with a soft spot for the mute gaze of man’s best friend, it’s hard not to shed a tear — or two — during The Art of Racing in the Rain.

It’s all very eventful, to be sure, but there is little insight offered up into any kind of larger meaning, whether psychological, musical or sociological.

In retrospect, and viewed as either a once-topical curio or a nostalgic artifact from Hollywood's golden era, On the Beach doesn't seem lousy. It seems naively, even innocently, preachy. [28 May 2000, p.G01]

There's style and humor, but the visual excess overwhelms the weak plot. [29 Apr 1983, p.17]

Tuff Turf is a youthsploitation movie that has fun with its formula, and for that, two cheers. But director Fritz Kiersch's twists promise more than they deliver -- it's just more grist for the run-of-the-mill.

The action is sufficiently gripping, even if the drama plays out along predictably violent lines.

There’s fun to be had revisiting the cleverly conceived world of the 2017 “Jungle,” in which teenagers found themselves magically transported inside a video game. But even with a new mission, some upgrades and a lot of character swapping, we’re still playing the same game over again.

Unfortunately, The Champ does not let well enough alone. It slogs on for about two reels too many, concluding on a note of utterly contrived tragedy that should make just about everyone feel wretchedly deceived. [04 Apr 1979, p.B1]