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Bill Cosford
Bill Cosford's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Miami Herald
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Alien (1979) |
There are no moral choices, no Deer Hunter ambiguity or Midnight Express propaganda. There is only the quandary over whether to stick it out until the end, edge of the seat and all, or bolt for the exits and a dreamless sleep. Alien is very scary. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Nov 16, 2023
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Cocoon (1985) |
This is a great deal of performing talent in one small space, and Howard, whether by innate good sense or blind good luck (I’d like to think it’s the former), doesn’t waste a moment of it. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Nov 12, 2023
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Goodfellas (1990) |
The simple fact, as exhilarating as it is dreadful, is that after a life of crime, Hill had but one regret -- that he had to stop. This is the engine of GoodFellas, an idea as elemental as it is radical. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Oct 18, 2023
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Raging Bull (1980) |
Without preachment... Raging Bull draws a peculiar character, lays him out and opens him up for us to see. This is a character study of richness and texture, and if it ends without explaining much, it remains a piece of beautiful work. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Oct 10, 2023
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Moscow on the Hudson (1984) |
Williams is just not very funny in a medium as structured as the conventional Hollywood movie. And neither, it becomes apparent, is Paul Mazursky. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 17, 2023
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A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) |
A better reason to see Dream Warriors, if indeed there is one, is that it's really pretty gross and neat. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jul 18, 2023
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Patriot Games (1992) |
It's a slam-bang action picture, but it has a kind of maturity, too -- at the end you know you've seen something. It ought to be a big hit. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jun 06, 2023
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The Color Purple (1985) |
Spielberg is entirely too sure-handed a filmmaker to fail at material this rich. The Color Purple is immensely satisfying at last, and an honest tearjerker. For all its flaws and for all its many, artsy minutes, this ambitious film is an achievement. - Miami Herald
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| Posted May 25, 2023
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A Chorus Line (1985) |
A Chorus Line is overblown and self-conscious, a travesty upon its celebrated source material and, for a film about dancers, much too casual in recording their art. It is also one of the singular pleasures of this movie year. - Miami Herald
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| Posted May 25, 2023
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An American Tail (1986) |
An American Tail is simply not remarkable. It's handsome, wholesome and eager to please, but its theme seems well beyond the ken of the very young. Worse, the plot has a dreadful familiarity to it -- the borrowings are extensive. - Miami Herald
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| Posted May 19, 2023
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Silkwood (1983) |
One of the best-performed films of 1983, with the result that even those times when Silkwood seems to be repeating itself are likely as not to be illuminated by fine acting. - Miami Herald
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| Posted May 13, 2023
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Yentl (1983) |
It has what one-man shows do when they are working right: It has conviction, and a sense of the artist's vision. - Miami Herald
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| Posted May 12, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) |
This is a well-made film, and will prove immensely entertaining for kids. It won't bore most grown-ups either. But it's the last, and it's clear that no one at the top of the production regrets it for a moment. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Apr 25, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) |
What Spielberg does is use the Lucas tricks to propel an old-fashioned fantasy played broadly enough so that the laughs come as easily as the thrills. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Apr 18, 2023
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9 to 5 (1980) |
Nine to Five is an elongated sitcom, a thing of sight gags and weary punchlines, and utterly predictable situations. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Thelma & Louise (1991) |
The casting is perfect. Sarandon and Davis play off one another expertly, they have better "chemistry" than some male-female combinations now in theaters, and they're wonderfully funny. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992) |
Just Another Girl on the IRT is a perfect example of why there needs to be an American independent filmmaking movement. Hollywood doesn’t make them quite like this; Hollywood never did.
- Miami Herald
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| Posted Jan 10, 2023
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A Dry White Season (1989) |
A Dry White Season hits with the force of its convictions, and it hits hard. But it could have been more. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jan 03, 2023
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Deadly Friend (1986) |
The direction by Wes Craven is as clunky as the undead heroine, and the film is dull despite its gore, no mean feat. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Dec 09, 2022
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Dances With Wolves (1990) |
The result is big, muscular and full of theme. It’s also clumsy and obvious, but there hasn’t been a first film of this sheer bravado since Robert Redford made Ordinary People. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Nov 03, 2022
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Martin (1978) |
A film full of style, full of twists on the conventions of movie horror. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Sep 28, 2022
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Platoon (1986) |
Platoon rings with authenticity, shrieks and crackles with it. It’s not much fun. Instead, it's powerful, terribly sad, a dirge for lost lives, lost souls there and here. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 23, 2022
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Creepshow (1982) |
There’s a nice, dated quality to the vignette, like watching a festival of old Hitchcock TV melodramas. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 09, 2022
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Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) |
Kramer vs Kramer is a great bit of moviemaking, funny and sad and not a bit manipulative, with “Oscars” stamped all over it. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 05, 2022
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Rain Man (1988) |
There’s no surprise [in the story]. The delight is in the fineness of the storytelling, by Barry Levinson from a wonderful script by Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow, and in the performances by Cruise and Hoffman. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 03, 2022
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The Last Emperor (1987) |
The movie is about an idle life in the midst of a great storm. Alas, we get lots of idleness and not much storm. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 01, 2022
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Glory (1989) |
Glory leaves you with not just the sense of its characters’ triumph over injustice, but their destruction by the very system that empowered them to begin with. There’s no escaping that story, either -- even if Glory doesn’t really tell it. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jul 25, 2022
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Driving Miss Daisy (1989) |
It's occasionally quite funny, and relentlessly good-hearted. And never, ever does it whack you over the head with its theme. And that's OK, too. Given the story's earnest but determinedly unstartling formula, the blow might not be noticed.
- Miami Herald
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| Posted Jul 25, 2022
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Terms of Endearment (1983) |
The story is manipulative to the edge of cynicism, and perhaps beyond. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jul 20, 2022
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Gandhi (1982) |
It is never more than a movie biography, the classic “biopic.” Its bigness comes from Kingsley and the memories of the man he plays, and Gandhi fails to transcend either. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jul 19, 2022
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Ordinary People (1980) |
It is an extraordinary movie, an irresistible event once it has drawn you into its rhythms, an experience gripping enough to bring gasps from the audience the night I saw it. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jul 13, 2022
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Amadeus (1984) |
Amadeus is long and slow, but it also is ornate and well-polished. It’s just that where there was once a theme -- a mediocre man’s rage at the gifts bestowed capriciously on another -- there is now merely a story. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jul 11, 2022
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Tess (1979) |
Polanski can make beautiful films, and this is certainly one. And he proves here that he can bring most of a great novel to the screen with remarkable fidelity and grace... What's missing is a measure of the passion of the Hardy story. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Jun 17, 2022
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The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) |
I was profoundly moved by The Last Temptation of Christ, struck by its passion. The film works as parable, and it works as drama. It's brawny and daring and beautiful, full of an eerie grace. - Miami Herald
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| Posted May 06, 2022
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Annie (1982) |
Annie is big! Annie is loud! Annie is wholesome fun for the whole family! And Annie is actually a bit of a bore. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Apr 15, 2022
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Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) |
You can make what you want of this American success story, but once you sit down to watch it’s going to make you cry. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Apr 07, 2022
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Mishima (1985) |
Mishima has power, though it takes a long time to recover the momentum of its first 15 minutes, which are beautifully filmed and driven by the most directly dramatic passages of Philip Glass’ score. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Apr 05, 2022
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Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) |
There’s a lot going on in Kiss of the Spider Woman, and though at bottom it is little more than a variant of two-guys-in-stir, it is so well made and ultimately so tender that it is likely to find a large American audience. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Apr 05, 2022
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The Silence of the Lambs (1991) |
It’s a tough little B-movie, but there's more to gross you out in one of Harris’ paragraphs than in all of Demme’s two hours. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Mar 23, 2022
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Excalibur (1981) |
It is almost as if Boorman were obliging some film-industry requirement to get the thing on record as opulently as possible and be done with it. The result is an expensive excursion into very safe territory. You'd think it could have been more. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Dec 29, 2021
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The Secret of NIMH (1982) |
The result of all this is what we recall from the great Disney period -- a cartoon of amazing depth of image and rich nuance. This may be a film for children, but its achievement is no less serious. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Nov 10, 2021
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Poltergeist II (1986) |
A sequel is a sequel is a sequel, as we shall have occasion to be reminded many times before autumn. And this amiable movie is very much a "II." - Miami Herald
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| Posted Nov 02, 2021
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Critters (1986) |
Critters is plotted like a movie but paced like a situation comedy and its budget is showing. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Oct 27, 2021
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Paris, Texas (1984) |
It would be worth seeing for Stanton's performance alone. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Oct 07, 2021
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Last Embrace (1979) |
Despite some solid performances, Last Embrace unravels quickly and sloppily. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Sep 24, 2021
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Ghost Story (1981) |
Irvin's rhythm is as monotonous as Chopsticks, his approach to a scare scene so static that the film's most gory special effects have virtually no impact. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Sep 19, 2021
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El Mariachi (1992) |
As goofy as a Saturday Night Live skit but as lethal as a clip from an Eastwood spaghetti western. [Full review in Spanish] - Miami Herald
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| Posted Sep 08, 2021
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Garbo Talks (1984) |
Carrie Fisher, once trapped in Star Wars, is a minor revelation; the movie seems funnier whenever she is on screen. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 22, 2021
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On Golden Pond (1981) |
Though On Golden Pond is a shameless bit of manipulation... the movie is relentlessly enjoyable. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 18, 2021
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The Hunt for Red October (1990) |
If you liked the Cold War, you'll love The Hunt for Red October. - Miami Herald
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| Posted Aug 18, 2021
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