Malcolm Johnson
Malcolm Johnson's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Hartford Courant
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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The Color Purple (1985) |
If Whoopi Goldberg does not take home an Oscar for her deeply felt, finely detailed metamorphosis from timid, beaten youth to proud and free middle age, then there is no justice or discernment in Hollywood today. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 25, 2023
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Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) |
While wildly uneven in its look and writing, this creation of co-directors Eric Radomski and Bruce W. Timm and Alan Burnett... moves along at a blazing pace, cleverly interweaving the lives of Batman the fledgling crime fighter and the mature Dark Knight. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 23, 2023
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An American Tail (1986) |
The sights and most of the sounds are always eye-filling and occasionally thrilling. The mouse's-eye views of old Manhattan are stunningly rendered, as are the bird's-eye panoramas. And Horner's score has sweep and splendor. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 19, 2023
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Magic (1978) |
It is fun to watch, chiefly because of the deftness and bravura of Anthony Hopkins's brilliantly split personality in the leading role, but... One yearns for the sidelights and starts that Alfred Hitchcock might have brought to this story. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 17, 2023
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Girlfriends (1978) |
Whatever its passing faults, Girlfriends is finally a warm and likable film, which presents a credible feeling of the world and abounds in subtle pictorial and emotional effects. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 17, 2023
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Heavenly Creatures (1994) |
Heavenly Creatures explores the chasm between the happy, devoted feelings of the very young and the cynical, ruined hearts of their elders. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 16, 2023
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Crossing Delancey (1988) |
Silver compromises Sandler's ideas and undercuts the performances of her leads when she makes Crossing Delancey needlessly cute and broad. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 15, 2023
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Yentl (1983) |
Good intentions notwithstanding, its attainments are almost entirely hollow, even insulting to the Eastern European Jewish culture it pretends to depict. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 12, 2023
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Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) |
Incredibly enough, "Raiders" packs more fun and excitement onto the screen than either [Jaws or Star Wars]. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 04, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) |
Once again, the experience is like going to those Saturday movies of the '40s. Yet it's really better than that, because there has never been an action-adventure director whose dedication goes as deep as Spielberg's. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Apr 25, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) |
There is hardly a moment of Temple of Doom that isn't either heart-stopping or nerve-racking. And if the film has any fault, this is it. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Apr 18, 2023
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3 Women (1977) |
Held together by the fine acting of the leading roles, especially Shelley Duvall... - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Apr 07, 2023
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Army of Darkness (1992) |
There's action aplenty across Army of Darkness, and enough camp references to keep obscurantists chuckling. But like his Evil Dead bloodbaths, Raimi's new goriest seems aimed at a narrow audience. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Mar 31, 2023
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Boys on the Side (1995) |
Too soon though, Boys on the Side turns schizophrenic, funny one minute, much darker the next. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Mar 14, 2023
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9 to 5 (1980) |
Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton, make Nine to Five work. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Thelma & Louise (1991) |
Although Sarandon and Davis fill this road picture with heart, its brains are in neutral almost from the start. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Feb 28, 2023
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Godzilla (1998) |
This Godzilla is finally about technology, about how movies can weave together miniatures, animatronics, computer-generated images, and yes, men in rubber suits. It is a marvel but also something of a noisy bore. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Wild Things (1998) |
Wild Things becomes too clever for its own good. It is all plot and sex, and its characters come across as neither believable nor especially amusing. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Feb 02, 2023
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The Big Lebowski (1998) |
Unfortunately, though, Bridges does not do much for The Dude, unlike William Hurt as a somewhat similar type in The Big Chill. He is all hair and very little else as he pilots his rust mobile about L.A. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jan 20, 2023
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Down in the Delta (1998) |
It looks well on the big screen, though already seen on television's Showtime. Woodard is thus ineligible for an Oscar nomination, but this is one of the most involving and deeply wrought performances by an actor of boundless variety. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jan 05, 2023
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Deadly Friend (1986) |
Disappointing teen horror film. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Dec 09, 2022
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Braveheart (1995) |
Full of grandeur one moment, then a bit absurd, bordering on Monty Python and the Holy Grail territory. Yet overall, despite momentary lapses, this must be voted a victory for Gibson, who shows a brave heart and a canny head as a filmmaker. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Nov 18, 2022
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Dances With Wolves (1990) |
Whatever its flaws, however, this is a grand and caring film that every lover of the medium should see. It is admirable for many reasons including the madness of its conception and execution. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Nov 07, 2022
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Gladiator (2000) |
Such magnitude demands a heroically proportioned star, and Russell Crowe is the man, muscled but mournful and quietly spiritual. All hail, Maximus. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Nov 02, 2022
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Fright Night (1985) |
Not quite powerful enough to make Fright Night a great vampire experience. Too much of the film is plodded and studio bound. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Sep 14, 2022
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Days of Heaven (1978) |
Days of Heaven is unquestionably the most visually ravishing film in a very long time... The images of Néstor Almendros, rhythmically assembled by editor Billy Weber, make Malick's film a sensualist's delight that one yearns to experience again. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 30, 2022
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The Deer Hunter (1978) |
The best performances, in fact, come from Walken, whose passage from gaiety to despair is wrenchingly terrible, and from Meryl Streep, who brings an utter reality to her playing of a smalltown sweetheart. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 30, 2022
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Annie Hall (1977) |
Beneath its wit there palpitates a wounded heart; the underlying sadness of the film gives it a dimension and reality that is missing from the more purely absurd and wisecracking Sleeper and Love and Death. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 26, 2022
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The Land Before Time (1988) |
Accompanied by Horner's choral-highlighted orchestral suite, Bluth's new animated adventure reveals a land before time in all of its endless mystery. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 23, 2022
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Copycat (1995) |
A serial killer drama that stands above the rest of the copycats. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 10, 2022
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Creepshow (1982) |
Like all films that unreel several barely related stories, Creepshow has its ups and downs. But most of what goes bump in the night, or slithers and crawls across this George A. Romero-Stephen King omnibus of five eerie tales, is delightfully creepy. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 09, 2022
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Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) |
Benton has directed the film with clarity and dynamism throughout, and his screenplay, adapted from Avery Corman's novel, is a model of accuracy and intelligence. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 05, 2022
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Rain Man (1988) |
With his concentrated, unshowy, truthful, sensitive rendering of the title character in Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman puts his Ishtar fiasco behind him and delivers one of the best performances of an imaginative and distinguished career. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 03, 2022
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The Last Emperor (1987) |
Although there are elements of universality in this story of a man shielded from reality, it's difficult to feel much pity for this poor little rich boy. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Aug 01, 2022
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Driving Miss Daisy (1989) |
An elegant, reserved, sometimes biting Tandy and a warm, dignified, wryly humorous Freeman play together wonderfully throughout the film in performances sure to win Oscar nominations. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jul 26, 2022
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Terms of Endearment (1983) |
All sorts of honors will undoubtedly accrue to Brooks. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi creator shows himself to be a formidable triple threat in his first feature film. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jul 20, 2022
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Gandhi (1982) |
Kingsley, who is making his film debut as Gandhi, has not only physically transformed himself into a near perfect incarnation of Gandhi over 55 years; he also expresses the unique dimensions of the man. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jul 19, 2022
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Chariots of Fire (1981) |
Chariots of Fire, director Hugh Hudson's rich and resonant recreation of a small but important British victory in the years between the wars, is itself a triumph, a return to the best days of the British cinema. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jul 14, 2022
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Ordinary People (1980) |
It is not a perfect film, but it is still an extremely fine one whose sustained insight and power overcome its drawbacks, which arise only from our wishes that such an honest and carefully crafted film not fail in any way. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jul 13, 2022
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Amadeus (1984) |
Even the enormous amount of talent and care bestowed upon Amadeus cannot obscure the essential hollowness of Peter Shaffer's febrile conjectures on the murder of history's most sublime composer at the hands of a jealous inferior. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jul 11, 2022
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Thief (1981) |
There are many reasons why Thief doesn't score, but its prime failing is the overweening script by Michael Mann. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jul 07, 2022
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Tess (1979) |
Tess is probably not a film for everyone, because of its length and its lack of "action," but it is unmistakably the work of a world-class film artist. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Jun 17, 2022
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The Last Starfighter (1984) |
In an era of commercial moviemaking which has produced one lame Star Wars clone after another... it's a pleasure to see something that's at least fairly original in the realm of science fiction. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted May 03, 2022
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The Witches of Eastwick (1987) |
"Witches" turns out to be an amusing, occasionally delicious supernatural comedy, even when special effects time arrives. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Apr 22, 2022
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Three Men and a Baby (1987) |
The Hollywood remake, an inferior copy of a less than effervescent French farce, will be lucky to run through Christmas. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Apr 19, 2022
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Mishima (1985) |
There is enough for many films here, but these four chapters form a compelling introduction to this man of many masks. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Apr 04, 2022
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The Silence of the Lambs (1991) |
Starling, played by a tight-lipped Foster with intelligence, fierce commitment and a half-erased rural Southern accent, and Lector, acted by Hopkins with glowing eyes and a caressing English purr, come together in a common pursuit. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Mar 23, 2022
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Titanic (1997) |
James Cameron's Titanic looks grand, but proceeds rather absurdly as it tells a tear-jerking but preposterous story of a love affair, viciously fought by the most dastardly villain since the demise of gaslight melodrama. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Mar 17, 2022
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) |
It is a brilliant and gripping film, and there is almost nothing in it that is out of place. Every performance is right, and many of them are far better than that. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Mar 05, 2022
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I Like It Like That (1994) |
Martin's vibrant, funny, deeply personal film again proves that the richest works on the contemporary American film horizon dome from the nation's poorest neighborhoods. - Hartford Courant
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| Posted Mar 01, 2022
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