The most powerful study of the Vietnam era since "Apocalypse Now"...Roland Joffe's direction is gripping, unflagging, if sometimes ragged. But the flaws strengthen the film, give it a more realistic edge, which truly reflects the time and captures the joy of forgiveness and friendship refound. [18 Jan 1985, p.25]

The usual complement of classy Brits and a host of Indian extras add the final touches to this vastly enjoyable, sprawling entertainment. Lean truly catches the sunset over the British Empire. [18 Jan 1985, p.25]

I love the unsettling details.

Unfortunately for the makers of Tuff Turf, the plot's as hokey as they come; the dialogue is dreadful ("Life isn't a problem to be solved, it's a mystery to be lived!"); and kids in 1985 are just too sophisticated for such juvenile tripe. Right kids? Right? [1 Feb 1985, p.19]

Gibson, the thinking man's Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Spacek, a rawboned Raggedy Ann, are nearly silent partners in this largely visual parable. Despite their good looks and best efforts, the film falters. [11 Jan 1985, p.19]

Heckerling seems lost and distracted here -- the framing is careless, and the film moves with a stuttering pace. Why is this talented director being channeled into projects like this?

And all this twaddle about how people are more important than dollars, in a sequel that was rushed out by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to capitalize on the summertime windfall of "Breakin' " is almost hilarious.

The movie has an engaging surface, but it's all surface -- it's like watching an outsize TV.

Some of director Alan Parker's compositions here are striking, expressionistic shots of dark shapes silhouetted against the blue light streaming through the asylum window. Then again, they're all the same -- after two hours, you're bored by them.

Billed as a romantic comedy, the movie is certainly funny, but it's also as darkly disturbing as any this year.

Protocol is the kind of corny screwball comedy you thought nobody made anymore. By the end, its ersatz political moralism is almost too much to take; but buoyed by Buck Henry's often hilarious script, a wiggy performance by Goldie Hawn as a not-so-dumb blond, and director Herbert Ross' sure comic touch, Protocol is pleasant piffle for a Sunday afternoon. [21 Dec 1984, p.F1]

Despite Allen's sincere face; Bridges' quirky, effective portrayal; some exquisite effects; and many funny moments, the film falters at the finish, if not a little before. Mostly it never delivers what it promises -- an alien with all the right answers. [14 Dec 1984, p.31]

An entertaining, light-hearted cops and robots action adventure decked out in high-tech finery. [14 Dec 1984, p.31]

Francis Ford Coppola magically recreates the era, its movies and its music, in this razzle-dazzle celebration, some fact and some fiction.

David Lynch's disastrous film adaptation of Fank Herbert's science-fiction classic turns epic to myopic. [14 Dec 1984, p.31]

2010 is a one-man tour de fizzle, a yawnfest so plodding it seems to have been made by the famous monolith itself. [7 Dec 1984, p.D1]

Don't blame the fellas. They're good when they're together, but that doesn't happen nearly often enough in this sporadically amusing script. [07 Dec 1984, p.39]

The result is a movie that can be wonderfully languid and wonderfully breakneck as well, a formula movie so gleefully bedizened with quirks that it always seems better than it is. [5 Dec. 1984, p.C1]

Director Jeannot Szwarc could have done more with the action scenes, but he has a snappy sense of pace and comic timing. Blond, blue-eyed Slater brings an engaging sweetness to Supergirl; and she plays Linda with an awkward, gawky girlishness, subtly different from her Supergirl role.

Can contemporary romance be this flat?

For such a low-budget movie, Nightmare on Elm Street is extraordinarily polished. The script is consistently witty, the camera work (by cinematographer Jacques Haitkin) crisp and expressive.

A cheaply made science-fiction movie that enters the atmosphere without ever igniting.

Chuck Norris fans will not be disappointed by Missing in Action, a bang-bang-you're-dead exploitation flick from the Cannon Group in which the action is rarely missing. [19 Nov 1984, p.C3]

Silent Night, Deadly Night takes off from the notion that Santa Claus is an ax murderer, but it never quite lives up to the delicious perversity of its premise. An idea this shocking has to be earned; instead, director Charles Sellier Jr. ("The Boogens") gives us another casually constructed splatter flick that has more to do with morbid arithmetic (the body count continues!) than movies.

The movie is full of half-witted Hollywood satire (the Devil's an agent -- get it?), lame wordplay, and easy moralism about family being more important than career blah blah blah. [09 Nov 1984, p.F8]

No Small Affair is a good example of the revised teen sex movie, which centers on a Morose Young Man unimpressed by the wild life swirling around him -- he'll take romance. But even the facile crudeness of a movie like Porky's seems to have demanded too much of screenwriters Charles Bolt and Terence Mulcahy.

Almost as powerful as the stage version, craftily recreating the small Louisiana town and the nearby military barracks housing companies of black soldiers in 1944 -- and incidentally providing a splendid showcase for a squadron of black performers who should rarely be out of work from now on. [28 Sep 1984, p.C1]

A slickly made, shoot-'em-up sci-fi fantasia, it stands for the proposition that, inside the most staid local theater, there is a drive-in yearning to be free. [29 Oct 1984, p.B4]