http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,964819,00.html
This to me is what a good review looks like. While it is not persuading me one way or another to see the movie, it gives more than a simple plot synopsis. Enough is given away to get a good sense of what happens, but not so much that the movie is ruined. The author uses good language to describe not just the film but Kubrick and his directing style as well. For example, he says "His last smile will be one of emotional vacancy, for he has achieved the purity of madness." This paints a picture for us of the sort of quality that is put into the film; I can only assume terrible films have absolutely no shot of conveying something like this.
Something that the review suffers from a lack of is insight about the underlying themes of the movie. It focuses on the surface of the film rather than some of its implications/motivation, and how the film might have been received by the general viewing public at the time of its release, which is an important consideration to be made. Not enough thought was put into the fact that Kubrick was making this for a 1987 audience, rather than a random audience in general. The duality of man described by Joker fits in perfectly with the way the movie was presented in 2 distinct halves; Corliss focuses on the technical aspects so much that he misses this one key comparison (among many).
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