question: Beguiling effects transcend a predictable plot.

numbered reviews: 1. ... a frustrating cartoon of a movie...
2. Thrilling family fun.
3. An old-fashioned adventure film that ranks with the best of the genre.
4. Entertaining enough.
5. A family film about the heroics of a gorilla trying to stay alive in the face of human greed and violence.
6. King Kong has never looked so ... drowsy. Sleepy, boring tale of kind-hearted gorilla gets old real quick, but with Charlize Theron though, Disney proves men can have dirty thoughts while their children are entertained. Hooray Charlize!
7. King Kong light. Insipid Joe Young. Just because this film is rated PG doesn't mean it has to be written on the level of an orangutan.
8. So slavishly formulaic, so deprived of an any inspiration of any kind, that it very well could have been written by a monkey.
9. likely to please fans of the 1949 film as well as delight younger viewers who've never heard of the simian hero before.
10. Never get into a movie where you play opposite an animal, right? They should have listened.


question: Decidedly slower and less limber than the Olympic runners at the center of its story, the film nevertheless manages to make effectively stirring use of its spiritual and patriotic themes.

numbered reviews: 1. Based on the true story of two men who run in the 1924 Olympics, Hugh Hudson's oscar-winning film is absorbing and inspirational but also middlebrow
2. I've never stayed awake through this whole movie, despite many attempts with lots of coffee. It ranks in my book as the movie that least deserves a best picture honor
3. A period piece that explores timeless themes of temporal ambitions and higher purposes, of commitment and sacrifice, of ability and spirit.
4. The cast is impeccable from top to bottom, and the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat reliably go for the gut. [Blu-ray]
5. It's an exceptional film, about some exceptional people.
6. A bit stiff, but a genuinely engaging look at athletes with more than medals on their minds.
7. It's an uncomfortable reminder of how the memory can cheat and the Academy Awards can favor nostalgic sentimentalism over strong storytelling.
8. Although it is extremely well made, I frankly don't understand what the shouting is about. Good, yes; great, no.
9. Granted, this is a British film and so you expect a restrained, understated reaction from the runners, but it's this decided lack of fun that makes the movie drag so much.
10. What fails as drama are the races themselves, shot front-on so that we don't know who's winning until the tape is breasted, but Hugh Hudson's decision to use slow motion and David Watkin's beautiful lighting lend them a proper heroic burnish.


question: The movie that catapulted Ang Lee into the ranks of upper echelon Hollywood filmmakers, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon features a deft mix of amazing martial arts battles, beautiful scenery, and tasteful drama.

numbered reviews: 1. Within five minutes of the opening you'll wonder when was the last time you felt so alive, so excited in a cinema.
2. It's FANTASTIC!
3. The smartest and smartest-looking action movie of the year.
4. It's abundantly clear that Lee, in conjunction with fight choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping (famed for The Matrix), has brought to these standard tropes his own elevating, near-feline sensibilities.
5. It's a feeling akin to seeing Peter Pan fly for the first time or watching the first light-saber duel in Star Wars.
6. Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon mixes In the Mood for Love's unobtainable romance with Dancer in the Dark's selfless-to-the-end philosophy.
7. ...my expectations were high, and I wasn't disappointed.
8. Lo and behold. An action movie that isn't about 'seize the day' or 'follow your heart' opportunism.
9. You've never seen a martial arts film like this one.
10. A haunting, tragic fairy tale for the ages.


question: Despite a great cast, the characters in Margot at the Wedding are too unlikable to enthrall viewers.

numbered reviews:
1. If trauma can be entertaining, then Margot at the Wedding is it.
2. There isn't a pleasant, wholly likable character in the cast. But you can't avert your eyes from it.
3. Baumbach creates interesting, psychologically accurate characters, but he doesn't know when to stop.
4. Baumbach is not interested in weddings or preparations for weddings. He is not interested in much else but throwing his audience into the fire and giving us that dirty, nasty taste of family dysfunction in all its seething glory.
5. Margot is all mood swings and cries for help that everyone can hear except the person making them. It is Squid sapped of empathy and desperate for love.
6. Busy, overdrawn, and working much too hard to get to its less than impressive point, Margot at the Wedding is entertainment as inference.
7. Margot at the Wedding is a Christmas gift for high-class depressives: a compendium of malaise fit for an L.L. Bean catalog.
8. It's clear that Margot is a troubled soul in some kind of terrible pain, but the film does little to depict her as anything but a pushy, judgmental, and overly critical human being.
9. It's a movie in which everyone wants answers without being able to formulate the questions.
10. Nicole Kidman hasn't been in a movie this bleak since "Dogville."