The horror fan who climbs into his movie seat looking for an experience as intense as a roller-coaster ride will be more teased than satisfied. The director of "Lolita," "Dr. Strangelove" and "Clockwork Orange" is simply working with less interesting material: The Shining is a slender, barely believable tale being asked to carry a lot of style and weight. [13 June 1980, p.19]

It's more a brave movie than it is a good one, but at least Singleton has faced the unknown. And he deserves credit for the attempt.

As a mindless popcorn shootout, Wyatt Earp is highly watchable. But this three-hour drama, starring Kevin Costner as the straight-shooting marshal, takes its time sliding out of the saddle.

As a persona of epic polarities, [Harrison Ford] animates this muddled, metaphysical journey into the jungle.

Writer-director Stephan Elliott is obviously fond of his characters, and this may account for the upbeat story line, but it blinds him to how very annoying two hours of dishing can be.

True to his resume, director Lyne produces a frenetic battery of visceral images, ominous music and that ol' faithful standby, the eerie background chorus. To give Lyne his relentless due, this does make for some heart-thumping moments. But it also causes Ladder to fall ultimately flat on its surrealistic face, the victim of too many fake-art sequences.

The movie is a mess from start to finish. But then again, this jerky, haphazard approach is part of the movie's goofy charm.

The movie isn't mindless; it just has a mind that's a bit junky and muddled. And to their credit, Arnold and his collaborators haven't played it safe. Last Action Hero is a stretch. Unfortunately, it's a stretch that proves the star wasn't that elastic to begin with.

Landis's handling of the cop business is unnecessarily laborious, but Murphy's patented insincerity is winning. And a few of the slapstick set pieces are genuinely thrilling, especially a riotous nighttime chase scene.

One doesn't leave this movie profoundly shocked about our collectively inured state, or the fact that Stone got us to laugh at caricatured violence. One merely leaves puzzled and wondering: Is that it? He's not telling us anything. He's riffing on a theme and--intentionally or not--contributing to the junk pile he supposedly decries.

This is an impassioned movie, made with conviction and evangelical verve. It's also hysterical and overbearing and alienating.

Behind the lens Murray has an uneven touch (or perhaps his co-director does), and "Quick Change" is given to slow moments and miscalculations. But in front of the camera, he is as wonderfully acerbic as ever, equal parts anger and hurt feelings as he grapples with the rot of the Apple, the roar of subway, the smell of the crowds.

Roger Spottiswoode's Air America is partly glorious, partly junk, but unfortunately not in equal parts.

The movie isn't a disaster, and if you responded to the first one, its memory may carry you over the roughness, the excessive, ugly violence and lack of conviction here. Hill and his stars are merely going through the motions, but the motions are immensely familiar. If you've been there before, then you've been there.

Coming to America isn't as aggressively awful as the "Cop" films or "The Golden Child," but at least in those films there was something to react to. In making Coming to America, Murphy seems to have set his sights on the lowest prize imaginable. He aspires to blandness.

Though Empire of the Sun is a profoundly perplexing, frustrating object, there are things in it to marvel at and enjoy.

Douglas plays Gekko with a terrible intensity. He raves and rants, but he has a rascal's humor.

This is not a "good movie" -- in fact, it's a sprawling mess -- but I like it. And I mean that sincerely, you knucklehead.

Yankovic, an advocate of the Monty Python and Mel Brooks schools of comedy, favors yechy burlesque, and UHF, with its scant plot, is basically a variety show with skits, sight gags and gross stuff. "Weird" reminds us there's nothing quite like a good booger joke for pure entertainment.

As derivative interplanetary clunkers go, Flash Gordon is good for a few laughs -- some of them intentional. [05 Dec 1980, p.F1]

The film loses courage (or imagination) and hews to the Spielberg school of climactic denouement, so that teen farce and special effects take over. By the time the thing has played out, that subtle scare/laugh mix is a thing of the past and you feel as though you just walked out of "Breaking Away" or Goonies. Ah well.

Put the whole movie down to cartoonery...This is a drive-in theater battle of wills between the forces of evil and the forces of good.

The oddest thing about this sweet but not entirely satisfying documentary is how little food is involved.

Presents an America that is as much about the pathological display of imperial power -- a showmanship of arrogance and violence -- as policy.

The film is visually mannered and full of posing and longueurs. But it is stylish, very French (despite its American origins) and diverting if well short of brilliant.

It's hardly a muckraking piece but more a celebration of racing at the high end and the extremely prosperous folks who play it.

Todd Haynes's Poison is a vision of unrelenting, febrile darkness. It presents three disparate stories in three greatly varied styles, all inspired by the work of Jean Genet, and its effect, as a whole, is like that of an especially vile infection; it moves diabolically through your system, spreading fever and nausea as it goes.

After slapstick farces as exuberant and hilarious as Sleeper and Love and Death, it comes as a soft, fuzzy, mildly diverting letdown.