question: Vincent Cassel is mesmerizing in the lead role. Even if it's less focused than its predecessor, it's more fun.

numbered reviews: 1. Tonally different to its predecessor but just as engrossing.
2. The movie situates the audience directly in numerous lines of fire and automobile smash-ups, and dazzles with a low-key, yet gripping escape from a maximum security prison.
3. Though never less than entertaining, Killer Instinct and Public Enemy can't escape the shadow of the films they might have been. Both earn their place in the gangster canon. But not even Jacques Mesrine can escape the constraints of cinema.
4. This rambunctious and violent gangster drama more than sustains its lengthy running time, and makes one wonder why the Gallic gun-toter isn't better known internationally.
5. A triumphant conclusion to Jean-François Richet's exciting and enjoyable two-part story.
6. The second and final instalment of French gangster Jacques Mesrine's eventful life story arrives in cinemas, and is something of a let down.
7. While Killer Instinct is certainly worth checking out, this is far more satisfying than its predecessor, working as a self-contained satire on crime, media and celebrity.
8. Unlike its more lively predecessor, this is more interested in dissecting the criminal mindset.
9. All the world loves an outlaw. But how cheaply is that love won if all his partners and opponents have been drafted in from Dullsville-sur-Seine?
10. Vincent Cassel as Mesrine, keeps the plodding plot alive by delivering great one-liners with devilish charm. But only if the best bits had been squeezed into one movie could Jacques have been a thrill.


question: Though it has a mean streak, and does not cater to all tastes, Observe and Report has gut-busting laughs and a fully committed Seth Rogen in irresistible form.

numbered reviews: 1. Observe and Report wants very desperately to be a dark comedy. But it doesn't quite get there, as it's not funny enough to hit the comedy dismount and not clever enough to go fully dark.
2. Well, that's 85 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
3. One of the strangest and most daring films of the last five years.
4. A weirdly timely, pitch-black comedy about America the Insanely Angry.
5. It's the best comedy of the year so far because it demands that you forget your ideas about when it's okay to laugh.
6. A potentially brilliant conceptual comedy that fizzles because its writer and director, Jody Hill, doesn't have the guts to go with his spleen.
7. Observe and Report is one of those films that leaves you feeling confused about what you just watched. Luckily the last five minutes make up for the rest of the film.
8. Edgy and exploitive, this vigilante story earns its R-rating for pushing the acceptable boundaries of crude, dark comedy - but it's not for mainstream audiences.
9. Walking out of Observe and Report, I was torn between categorical loathing and perverse admiration.
10. The Jody Hill aesthetic is an acquired taste %u2013 one I thought I had but which Observe and Report tested severely.


question: A low-brow comedy, minus the comedy.

numbered reviews: 1. The question comes to mind: How do you make a Van Wilder movie without Van Wilder? The answer, after watching the end result, is you don't. Or at least you shouldn't.
2. The Rise of Taj is relatively pointless in the scheme of things, but refreshing in what it (mostly) doesn't resort to for laughs.
3. The four-years-in-the-making, badly recycled (not to mention awful) sequel might stain the honor of the Lampoon label if it hadn't already produced several even worse films.
4. Crikey, it's enough to give even stupid comedy a bad name.
5. Ryan Reynolds did Blade: Trinity, people. If he thinks a sequel is beneath him, you'd better believe it.
6. The film's incompetence is not limited to the writing, acting and directing. There are jarring jump cuts and continuity errors, and a laugh-out-loud eyeline mishap during a supposedly intimate conversation. One keeps expecting a boom mike to peek out.
7. In an askew way, Rise of Taj is a better film than Van Wilder, but when encountering cinematic crap on this level, it's hard to clearly distinguish the taste anymore.
8. Defines pedestrian filmmaking on every conceivable level, yet this embracement of mediocrity lends a surprising amount of legitimacy to its juvenile subject matter.
9. The laughs are low, the breasts are high, and the film is instantly forgettable.
10. As the movie itself is only occasionally entertaining, I invented my own competition: picking scenes from other movies that the Van Wilder 2 screenwriters ripped off because they didn't have any of their own ideas.


question: Affectionate without sacrificing honesty, Behind the Candelabra couples award-worthy performances from Michael Douglas and Matt Damon with some typically sharp direction from Steven Soderbergh.

numbered reviews:
1. The glitter and kitsch, and jaw-dropping performances by Michael Douglas as the middle-age Liberace and Matt Damon as his much younger boy-toy Scott Thorson, make this a wild ride without compare.
2. Douglas manages to take a real-life cartoon character and make him into a sometimes kind, often cruel, real person.
3. Director Steven Soderbergh's dramedy features great performances by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in the story of entertainer Liberace and his longtime lover.
4. The story as told is just too depressing, too empty and, most of all, too dead and gone.
5. All the joy, hurt and anger of any great cinema romance.
6. If this really is the end of the road for Soderbergh, then what a class act to finish on.
7. There's never a sense Douglas or director Steven Soderbergh is after a caricature, but there's still the sense that we sometimes get one.
8. Whether the biopic Behind the Candelabra ends up being a swan song for director Steven Soderbergh or merely the last entry in one phase of a long career, it's an impressive work.
9. Behind the Candelabra isn't a smear job, but it's not a revelation, either.
10. Soderbergh is clearly captivated, as are we all, by the rot underlying the glitz, but even with Douglas' nuanced performance, the film simplifies too many things.