Problem: 1. Robert Altman manages to make the separate units into a seamless whole, aided by an impressive ensemble cast.
2. One of the great films of the 1990s
3. If you enjoy all the subpar rip-offs that came later, like Magnolia, do yourself a favor and see this movie now.
4. A banquet of delicious performances, a sharp situational comedy, and an acrid send-up of contemporary mores.
5. An absolutely brilliant, 3-hour examination of detached, dysfunctional behavior in modern America. Easily one of Altman's best films.
6. Robert Altman revisited Nashville territory, and surpassed it, with this 1993 masterpiece.
7. The interwoven stories articulate a virus of self-absorbtion that's overtaken family-lives, romances and friendships.
8. Rarely has a slice-of-life film been so delicious to consume.
9. The lives are often desperate and the characters inarticulate, but the group portrait is as grandly, sometimes as hilariously, realized as anything the director has ever done.
10. Short Cuts is deliberately fragmentary, laudable for its individual scenes and even more so for their cohesion.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer: Robert Altman's ensemble drama deftly integrates its disparate characters and episodes into a funny, poignant, emotionally satisfying whole.


Problem: 1. Sweetgrass is an unexpectedly intoxicating documentary, unexpected because it blends high artistic standards with the grueling reality of one of the toughest, most exhausting of work environments.
2. Mostly wordless and better for it..."Sweetgrass" is best when focused on the sheep.
3. What starts out looking like a 4H film soon develops narrative power, and a rough natural humor. You'll be hearing bleating in your sleep for days, which is more pleasant than it sounds.
4. In an extraordinary series of tableaux that are alternately idyllic and severe, Sweetgrass defies the conventions of what most of us regard as a documentary film.
5. Should adequately serve as a modestly diverting meditation on the changing scene in America.
6. Suggests the opening chapter of 2001 by way of Au Hasard Balthazar.
7. Call me old-fashioned, but I find the spectacle of hundreds of sheep descending a mountainside like the conquistadors at the beginning of Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God more impressive than all the vistas of Avatar's Pandora.
8. If you're used to the ADD pace of modern filmmaking, Sweetgrass will probably drive you crazy. If you can adjust, it could widen your soul.
9. Even viewers caught unaware of just how natural this documentary is could easily find themselves mesmerized by its unique charms.
10. There are audience rewards for sticking with the herd and its lonesome cowboys.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer: At once tender and unsentimental, Sweetgrass gracefully captures the beauty and hardships of a dying way of life.


Problem: 1. A moderately clever genre diversion that wants us to believe it's something more.
2. Never have I seen reality come crashing down in a film in a more literal--and disappointing--way.
3. An ungainly ghostly potboiler that digs furiously away in the same thematic graveyard as this summer's most revelatory sleeper hit, but doesn't unearth anything that's worthy of attention.
4. The more we know, the less we care.
5. Stir of Echoes might have worked just fine a few decades ago, but it now seems too simply schematic to spook us as much as it wants to.
6. There is a definitive moment at which the movie self-destructs, and its sad to see that happen when Echoes was shaping up to be an intensely powerful film.
7. Stir of Echoes is studded with potent fright scenes and built on a rock-solid performance by the ever - dependable Kevin Bacon.
8. This brisk, well-acted supernatural drama can stand on its own as a most effective chiller.
9. In its own smart, spooky way, Stir of Echoes, with Kevin Bacon, is nearly as good as its Bruce Willis predecessor.
10. One of the creepiest films to be released since Se7en.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer:
Kevin Bacon's acting is so genuine that it's creepy and director David Keopp knows how to create true suspense.