Hal Lipper

Hot Shots is consistently funny, but it produces more guffaws than laughs. Its jokes read better than they play on screen. It's not The Naked Gun, though considerably better than The Naked Gun 2 It suffers a bit from its underdeveloped plot: a bunch of greedy industrialists want Harley's squadron to crash and burn so they can sell the Navy a new, super-expensive warplane model. [2 Aug 1991, p.6]

Dante's movie is so helter-skelter, that he can't generate the uncomfortable mood the moment requires. It's the balloon principle. The 'Burbs is so full of hot air it simply blows up in its own face. [17 Feb 1989, p.6]

It's witty, wise, nasty and frothy. But it's also frantically paced, leaving its cast and the audience in its wake as it plows forward. [31 May 1991, p.6]

10 Cloverfield Lane superbly shuffles what we know (and don't) and what the characters are experiencing.

Envisioned as a surrealistic painting come to life, it is a delight to behold, yet it fails miserably as a compelling piece of storytelling. It is a listless, largely vapid tale, even though it has been revised over a dozen years by writer-director Barry Levinson. [18 Dec 1992, p.21]

There are some laws of nature we might as well accept: Gravity exists, the world is round, and movies with Pia Zadora, Robin Leach, Dr. Joyce Brothers and Annette Funicello are not funny. [24 March 1989, p.7]

If you let it, Damage can be an exhilarating and a devastating leap into the realm of erotic obsession. [22 Jan 1993, p.8]

Hiding Out is a hip movie. Hip but slow. It's an adult comedy hiding in an adolescent concept, burdened by humor that can be very knowing or nauseatingly sophomoric. [06 Nov 1987, p.3D]

Beaches, adapted from novelist Iris Rainer Dart's hankie-wringer, is truly horrid. Its only redeeming qualities are heartfelt performances by Midler and Barbara Hershey, as pen-pal buddies since pre-adolescence. [13 Jan 1989, p.6]

Rather than embellish the original movie, the filmmakers have merely strived to re-create it. [22 Mar 1991, p.6]

This movie is one of the biggest surprises of the new year: a tense suspense thriller, with darkly comic elements, that celebrates American excess while ridiculing it. [09 Mar 1990, p.23]

Three elements rescue Three Men and a Baby from its inherent shallowness: its casting, pacing and its infant. Nimoy capitalizes on parental instincts without being cloying or cute, so after viewing Three Men and a Baby's tender moments, it's practically impossible to dismiss the movie as mere fluff. [27 Nov 1987, p.7]

Cher rips through this material, dragging the audience behind her. It's because of her that Suspect is so intoxicating and that the lapses in Roth's script are practically forgotten in the excitement. [23 Oct 1987, p.1D]

It's a scathing, somewhat setbound movie about greed, manipulation and the depths to which some people sink to survive. It's a movie that a lot of Americans can identify with. That's what makes it so painful to endure. [02 Oct 1992, p.9]

This tender tale of two sisters coping with their free-spirited mother in innocent 1963 is just too cute. It needs some chinks in its gossamer-glazed armor. [14 Dec 1990, p.12]

Dafoe is every bit as commanding as he was in Platoon or The Last Temptation of Christ. But the essence of this movie is as difficult to grasp as its title, White Sands. [24 Apr 1992, p.9]

Lean on Me is the type of cloying, crowd-pleasing drama you can't help but like - a little bit - even if its situations are contrived and its direction is stilted.

Writer-director Luis Valdez's movie is an example of just how tedious a bio-pic can be. [24 July 1987, p.3D]

Director John G. Avildsen and screenwriters Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue do an amiable job balancing humor and pathos while investigating the ultimate nightmare of every sexually active unmarried adolescent. [16 Jan 1988, p.1D]

Avalon is a crowning effort by Levinson. He could stop making movies today and be satisfied with his Baltimore trilogy. [19 Oct 1990, p.6]

Miraculously, Chances Are has some engaging moments despite its saccharine script and Emile Ardolino's (Dirty Dancing) sluggish direction. [10 March 1989, p.10]

Overboard is predictable, yet charming. Russell exudes a natural earthiness that lends itself to this type of material. Hawn plays gamely along. While Overboard recalls director Marshall's (Nothing in Common) sitcom days, the movie is shot with the sort of graininess that can never be mistaken for television. It could look a lot better. [18 Dec 1987, p.7]

Reynolds can't sustain the movie's pacing, nor can he blend the disparate elements of this sweeping epic. Yet, there are touches that make Robin Hood enormously entertaining. The battles with flaming arrows, catapults and a forest city of catwalks and tree houses under siege are masterfully recorded. [14 June 1991, p.6]

Like its predecessors, A Dry White Season is too reserved to effectively depict the hell of South Africa. Its most powerful moments occur in the courtroom, in jail cells and morgues filled with dead black children when its starched white protagonist is safely off-screen. [06 Oct 1989, p.6]

Cool yet engrossing story of Merrill's fall from grace for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. [15 Mar 1991, p.7]

As if these weren't enough subplots to juggle, screenwriter McPherson revives the romance between boat captain Steve Guttenberg and Antarean Tawnee Welch. This sort of interspecies romance presumably violates Florida law and certainly counters any attempts at efficient storytelling. [23 Nov 1988, p.1D]

Bob Roberts is the meanest, most outrageous movie to come out of the emasculated American left in a decade. It's a triumphant satire. [25 Sep 1992, p.9]

Neophyte Joanou's camera is airborne so often it gives the impression Three O'Clock High was filmed between traffic reports by Chopper 8. It's an example of virtuoso film making solely for the sake of virtuosity. [9 Oct 1987, p.3D]