|
|
North
(1994)
|
Manohla Dargis
|
Perhaps, along the way, Rob Reiner's inner child got trampled, smothered under all that borscht-belt waggery.
Posted Jan 24, 2026
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The American President
(1995)
|
Ella Taylor
|
Reiner and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin may be reaching for '30s-style banterama, but what they end up with is a '50s-style romantic simper with two hopelessly miscast leads.
Posted Jan 22, 2026
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Misery
(1990)
|
John Powers
|
Misery zips right along, propelled by its queasy, cruel humor, and by its two fine stars.
Posted Jan 22, 2026
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Sure Thing
(1985)
|
Michael Dare
|
Rob Reiner's direction is subtle and precise as it was on Spinal Tap, and he gives us a host of standout supporting characters and performances that deserve films of their own.
Posted Jan 07, 2026
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Princess Bride
(1987)
|
Laurie Ochoa
|
We've yawned through the demographically perfect bliss of studio films for so long that The Princess Bride... seems too good to be true. But director Rob Reiner and writer William Goldman awaken us from our slumber with a jolt of pure Hollywood magic.
Posted Jan 07, 2026
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Hook
(1991)
|
Steve Erickson
|
Neither Spielberg nor his writers can be accused of exploiting the idea without caring about it: they do care about it, up to a point. But that's the point at which they simply don't know what to do with it.
Posted Dec 19, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Christine
(1983)
|
Michael Ventura
|
This is the movie of somebody interested in having a tongue-in-cheek good time with an American obsession, no more and no less. It's a fast ride in a hot car.
Posted Dec 16, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Big Top Pee-wee
(1988)
|
Helen Knode
|
Technically agile and graced with some perfectly good acting, Big Top Pee-wee doesn't exactly succeed as a comedy, because its theme is so weird and incongruous.
Posted Dec 13, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Abyss
(1989)
|
Elvis Mitchell
|
A solid-looking structure from a distance, when you get close enough to see it, you discover that the movie's not only chocolate but hollow.
Posted Dec 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
True Lies
(1994)
|
Elizabeth Pincus
|
It's more of a waltz through espionage lite, with a real tango thrown in to cement its stamp of sophistication.
Posted Dec 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Abyss
(1989)
|
Henry Sheehan
|
As an adventure story, The Abyss is pretty good.
Posted Dec 09, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
(1991)
|
John Powers
|
In the end, what's scariest about this movie isn't the T-1000 or the evocation of nuclear holocaust - it's that even Cameron's most violent excesses are a helluva lot of fun to watch.
Posted Dec 08, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Terminator
(1984)
|
Michael Dare
|
You'll be able to guess the twist if you've ever read a Marvel Comic, but the plot isn't the attraction here, it's the action. Arnold takes a licking and keeps on ticking in a performance that's chilly con carnage.
Posted Dec 08, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Running Man
(1987)
|
Michael Dare
|
Schwarzenegger's consolidated all of his most audience-pleasing traits into one perfectly packaged product -- 90 percent brawn and 10 percent wiseacre.
Posted Nov 06, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Die My Love
(2025)
|
Amy Nicholson
|
As good and committed as Jennifer Lawrence is, there were times I wanted to rescue her from her own movie, to protect her from the fate of Faye Dunaway when “Mommie Dearest” turned another blond Oscar winner into a joke.
Posted Nov 05, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Predator
(1987)
|
Michael Dare
|
Instead of just splicing together Rambo and Aliens, these dudes have spent untold millions producing a fight between Arnold Schwarzenegger and a special effect that succeeds on a slam-bang visceral level but doesn't even attempt anything else.
Posted Oct 31, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Predator 2
(1990)
|
John Powers
|
You will look in vain for Arnold Schwarzenegger... You will look in vain for many things.
Posted Oct 31, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
From Beyond
(1986)
|
Michael Dare
|
From Beyond is exemplary.
Posted Oct 19, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Desert Hearts
(1985)
|
Helen Knode
|
It's precisely as art that Desert Hearts fails most dismally.
Posted Oct 12, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
My Beautiful Laundrette
(1985)
|
John Powers
|
This movie is about what movies should be about. It's about politics and screwing, fighting and making money, guilt and love and anger; it's about the juice and blood that make life worthwhile.
Posted Oct 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Celluloid Closet
(1995)
|
Manohla Dargis
|
Too bad the resulting film is not a landmark, or, for that matter, particularly new.
Posted Oct 08, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Quadrophenia
(1979)
|
Michael Ventura
|
Excellent. The best movie I have ever seen about being young in the world tat rock 'n' roll sings to.
Posted Sep 26, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Hard Times
(1975)
|
Michael Ventura
|
What holds the hold thing together -- gives it the dreamy distant look of a fairy tale, and the familiarity of a folk tale -- is Hill's beautifully visual direction.
Posted Sep 26, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Boogie Nights
(1997)
|
Manohla Dargis
|
Boogie Nights is a big, bold movie not just because it embraces nearly a decade's worth of human drama, but because it is a wildly, belligerently cinematic creation.
Posted Sep 24, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
To Sleep With Anger
(1990)
|
Ella Taylor
|
Although at times the film is inches away from being undermined by its own sweetness, it sleeps with the quietest of anger, showing us that it isn't necessary to shriek in order to subvert.
Posted Sep 23, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Camp Stories
(1997)
|
Paul Malcolm
|
Obviously one shouldn't expect Meatballs-inspired lunacy from a film set at an Orthodox Jewish summer camp, but director Herbert Beigel's Camp Stories swings so far the other way it's coma-inducing.
Posted Sep 22, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Hard Eight
(1996)
|
Ella Taylor
|
Paul Thomas Anderson's stylish, noirish feature debut so transcends its worn-out plot that for a while you believe you're seeing a film about something important: goodness, no less.
Posted Sep 22, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Night of the Living Dead
(1990)
|
Helen Knode
|
The remake can't possibly avoid appearing thin and a bit silly.
Posted Sep 18, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Toy Story
(1995)
|
Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
|
Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Don Rickles lend voices that are ably directed by John Lasseter.
Posted Sep 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
This Is Spinal Tap
(1984)
|
Michael Dare
|
The best film about rock and roll ever.
Posted Sep 09, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Darkman
(1990)
|
Helen Knode
|
The actors can't make us feel for Peyton, because they aren't given the tools to do it with. And if we don't care about Peyton, Darkman hardly makes sense.
Posted Aug 26, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Mortal Kombat
(1995)
|
Manohla Dargis
|
Mortal Kombat isn't the worst movie of the year, but it's easily the most forgettable.
Posted Aug 20, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Pumpkinhead
(1988)
|
Ben Kallen
|
Pumpkinhead has little of what gore audiences crave: the monster, who looks like E.T. on steroids, isn't very scary; there isn't much suspense.
Posted Aug 13, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
High and Low
(1963)
|
Mary Beth Crain
|
It's still gripping, still fascinating after 23 years.
Posted Aug 13, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Return of the Living Dead
(1985)
|
Michael Dare
|
The concept is petrifying, but the execution is hysterical.
Posted Aug 13, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
(1985)
|
F.X. Feeney
|
Pee Wee's Big Adventure is epic poetry of a slapstick order. It's also a riot.
Posted Jul 30, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Waterworld
(1995)
|
Manohla Dargis
|
Surprise, it neither stinks nor sinks.
Posted Jul 28, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
(1988)
|
John Powers
|
There's so much hilarious stuff here that you forgive the movie its dullish patches.
Posted Jul 24, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear
(1991)
|
Tom Carson
|
Much of what follows is nearly on a par with the first Naked Gun... But some of the fun has leaked out this time.
Posted Jul 23, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Red Rock West
(1993)
|
Manohla Dargis
|
A cowboy noir as lean and taut as Cage's belly, Red Rock isn't original, but it is fresh, in part because the film takes itself seriously.
Posted Jul 15, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Explorers
(1985)
|
F.X. Feeney
|
Explorers shows off director Joe Dante at his best.
Posted Jul 10, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Superman III
(1983)
|
Michael Ventura
|
Superman III stinks.
Posted Jul 07, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
(1987)
|
Mary Beth Crain
|
There's enough modern-day wish-fulfillment to make everybody happy.
Posted Jul 02, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Jurassic Park
(1993)
|
Ella Taylor
|
A stiff, preachy fright-fest with no story and no room for ours, no characters worthy of our affection or hatred, and almost no fantasy life.
Posted Jul 01, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
(1997)
|
Manohla Dargis
|
Spielberg and his screenwriter David Koepp have failed to absorb the single most important lesson from the movies they've looted: If your people aren't interesting, at least make your monsters memorable.
Posted Jun 30, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Supergirl
(1984)
|
Michael Dare
|
Supergirl is a superdog, with fine actors uttering nonsensical dialogue under nincompoop direction.
Posted Jun 27, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Day of the Dead
(1985)
|
Michael Dare
|
If you stomach can take it, you will definitely be amused by this.
Posted Jun 25, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Apollo 13
(1995)
|
Manohla Dargis
|
Vietnam -- or, more precisely, its absence -- haunts Apollo 13, along with the civil-rights movement and women's liberation. In fact, the entire country has gone MIA, in its place a land shaped more along the lines of Mayberry, RFD.
Posted Jun 25, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
Return to Oz
(1985)
|
Mary Beth Crain
|
There is virtually no humor, one of the most vital elements in The Wizard of Oz, and the characters are either completely mechanical or annoyingly one-dimensional.
Posted Jun 19, 2025
Edit critic review
|
|
|
The Next Karate Kid
(1994)
|
Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
|
Better to rent John G. Avildsen's sweet first installment than to drop your bucks on this one.
Posted May 29, 2025
Edit critic review
|
Continue with Google
>
