question: Heavily reliant on stereotypes and shallow teen comedy clichés, I Love You Beth Cooper is a humorless affair that fails to capture the charm of its source novel.

numbered reviews: 1. Flip-flopping between flailing farce and dull drama is just one of the reasons that I Love You, Beth Cooper's graduation day comedy flunks.
2. This Chris Columbus film is as painfully unfunny as any movie this summer %u2013 or in recent memory. A chimp could have written this script...goes from grad to worse.
3. Here's the bottom line: Denis Cooverman might love Beth Cooper. But I don't.
4. Parental Content Review
5. If fun is what you're looking for, you might want to avoid I Love You, Beth Cooper, a drab and incoherent teen comedy.
6. The mood doesn't build on itself, the emotional moments barely register and you start to hope the sun will rise soon.
7. Forgettable teen comedy has lots of sex and drinking.
8. I Love You, Beth Cooper is yet another in the long line of shameless knock-offs being shoveled into theaters near you.
9. A disappointingly flabby teen flick that reaches for (and spectacularly fails to grasp) both the effective sincerity of a John Hughes film and the irresistible humor of Superbad.
10. Though one understands the desire to return to one's roots, root rot is always a consideration.


question: Rich in detail and warmly affectionate, Life Itself offers a joyful yet poignant tribute to a critical cinematic legacy.

numbered reviews: 1. "Life Itself" is suffused with a sense of finality: This is one of those rare films that actually shows what the end of someone's life can be like.
2. You observe as a materialist - who fully expected to return to the nothing from which he came - grapples with the very real notion that his consciousness will soon disappear.
3. If you ever wanted to find out what drives someone like Roger Ebert's passion for film, essentially what makes a great film critic like him tick, then this is one of the year's must-see docs.
4. "Life Itself" is a joy. It celebrates colorful characters, an indomitable spirit and a generous mind.
5. Far more than just a tribute to the career of the world's most famous and influential film critic, the often revelatory "Life Itself" is also a remarkably intimate portrait of a life well lived -- right up to the very last moment.
6. A layered look at experience and acceptance from a most eloquent man, and while it indulges an inevitable sense of sadness, it manages to capture the essence of the subject in surprising ways.
7. Even if I'd never heard of Roger Ebert, I'd have likely been highly moved by James' film, which is an inclusive, comprehensive, very entertaining look at a contemporary giant.
8. This is a uniquely powerful motion picture, the kind of open and honest portrayal I can't ever recall having seen about a celebrity.
9. [Ebert's] clear, sensible prose will probably hold up better than some of the more frantic efforts of his contemporaries. His greatest legacy, however, as this film documents, was his courage in the endgame of his life.
10. You don't have to give a damn about movie criticism to enjoy this movie. You may give a damn though once the lights come up.


question: Alternately beautiful and heartrending, Samson and Delilah is terrifically acted and shot, and presents a complex portrait of what it means to be Australian.

numbered reviews: 1. Like no Australian film I've seen. Timeless and also utterly contemporary, it will leave hearts bruised, but aching with joy.
2. Visually stunning, this impressive feature debut places an Aboriginal love on the run tale against a fascinating socio-cultural context that's little known to non-Australians.
3. Non-actors Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson don't so much perform their roles as live out the lives of those who have been around them. Their ability to involve us and to make their characters real is astonishing.
4. It's not in 3D, you won't have heard of the cast, and I suspect the budget was in the low five figures. However, this tender little gem is as good as anything you'll see this week.
5. Filled with brusque tenderness and dusty beauty, director Warwick Thornton's first feature is a fine and moving example of outback neorealism.
6. It couldn't be more powerful.
7. Director Warwick Thornton has a sharp eye and a big heart but his film is relentlessly grim.
8. Tender and beautifully acted, it's a unflinchingly bleak glimpse of life on Australia's margins.
9. Is it hopeful, or entirely hopeless? I don't know - but found myself finally moved by this desperately sad film and by the performances of Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson as the lovers themselves.
10. One of the most original, impressive Australian films for years.


question: The Dark Knight Rises is an ambitious, thoughtful, and potent action film that concludes Christopher Nolan's franchise in spectacular fashion.

numbered reviews:
1. This is the best Batman film yet...
2. Groping for shape and substance in the long shadow of The Dark Knight, this movie is an unexpected disappointment.
3. A thorny thicket redeemed by its willingness to at least highlight big problems. A film for our times, then.
4. It will be hard for any future version of Batman, or any superhero movie for that matter, to fully escape the shadow cast by these three films. All that's left to do is stand and applaud.
5. Hollywood always bets on the audience's willingness to settle for less than they deserve.
6. "The Dark Knight Rises" is overflowing with action, passionate performances, and is just completely and totally engrossing from beginning to end. Some are calling it a masterpiece, but it doesn't obtain the same level of brilliance its predecessor did.
7. Could've been titled 'Inception: Gotham City Edition.' About 90 minutes is near genius, the rest is useless. An endurable two hours and forty-five minutes, but I would never sit through it again - unless I could fast-forward to Catwoman's scenes.
8. 1) It isn't as good as the first two. 2) It's still pretty good. 3) Don't beat me.
9. The Dark Knight Rises joins the long list of finales that don't measure up to what's gone immediately before. But that doesn't mean it'll be any easier of an act to follow.
10. I'm not arguing that Rises should be Singin' in the Rain. But its Wagnerian ambitions are not matched by its material. It hasn't earned its darkness.