question: Stylish, thrilling, and giddily kinetic, John Wick serves as a satisfying return to action for Keanu Reeves -- and what looks like it could be the first of a franchise.

numbered reviews: 1. Keanu Reeves quips and kicks and does it all with an impossible level of cool.
2. It's awesome, watch it at your earliest possible opportunity.
3. ... as close to a pure adrenaline rush as you're likely to find at the moment ... Forget the Bogeyman, Reeves' titular character is the Baryshnikov of professional killers.
4. Keanu Reeves is back. And he's angry.
5. Smart action film.
6. The best American action movie in a few years.
7. Revels in the killings.
8. Keanu Reeves met John Wick at the perfect moment of his career.
9. Stylishly violent and not much else.
10. After years, decades even, of watching violence onscreen, revenge movies just don't seem to have as strong an impact. This realization is where the terrific John Wick finds its inspiration.


question: Funny, heartfelt, and effortlessly cool, Swingers made stars out of Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, established Doug Liman as a director to watch.

numbered reviews: 1. It's not the most creative of plots, but it captures a generation and the down-on-your-luck-in-so-many-ways motif effectively: it's like comfort food, with more heart than Liman usually provides.
2. What it lacks as a cutting character drama, it makes up for in easily quaffable lifestyle porn, though it's up for debate whether one of those things is equal to the other.
3. Director-cinematographer Doug Liman gets points for breathing a bit of life into an already tired indie sub genre.
4. Four guys hang out, kid one another, get into scuffles and flash their gonadal searchlight for available women. Yikes, haven't there been enough variations on the multiple-buddy movie? Actually, no.
5. A winningly confident snapshot of the nightlives of a bunch of young showbiz wannabes in a very upto-the-minute Hollywood.
6. One of the sharpest male-oriented comedies of the 1990s.
7. Liman and Favreau concoct a consciously derivative world for these guys, and though it's appropriate to the movie, I got tired of it after a while.
8. The arc is nothing new, but the writing and pacing make it fresh and energetic, at least enough for it to have became a cult classic.
9. Ninety minutes spent learning how not to pick up girls. This is what the movies were made for, isn't it?
10. Directed in flair by Doug Liman, with winning performances from Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, this comedy is the most successful since Diner of what could be described as a cycle of "walking and talking" and "hanging out" pictures.


question: Though Wolf Creek is effectively horrific, it is still tasteless exploitation.

numbered reviews: 1. Killers don't need motivation anymore, just opportunity. And despite game efforts to throw us off the scene, to surprise us into who will live and tell the tale, there aren't any surprises.
2. What is the point, other than to show up the director's technical skill at presenting mutilation?
3. The four actors fit into their respective roles nicely, though in the case of Jarrat's bushman Mick, nice isn't quite the right word.
4. This is some horror flick.
5. There's no suspense, really, and the movie is carelessly vague about the victims, who have as much personality as lambs lining up for the slaughter.
6. The even pacing and attention to character detail is what makes that harrowing second half so effective.
7. There's no substitute for bad taste. And this one has it double-barreled, both in the timing of its release and as a movie, one said to be loosely based on fact.
8. Hey, here's an idea for the new year. What if a bunch of us get together somewhere and burn all copies of movies like "Wolf Creek?"
9. ... the ordeal is excruciating -- for the audience and for the victims...
10. Wolf Creek is wicked and witless -- cruel for the sake of cruelty.


question: George of the Jungle is faithful to its source material -- which, unfortunately, makes it a less-than-compelling feature film.

numbered reviews:
1. At the media screening, the guy sitting behind me could be heard loudly snoring during the third act. We should all be so lucky.
2. Depending on your point of view, this film is either truly awful or so bad it is good. In either case, be warned that a little of this repetitive movie can go a long way.
3. As yet another nostalgic live-action treatment of an old television cartoon series, George of the Jungle didn't have much going for it.
4. A few hip smarts get displayed here and there in this de facto, broadly comic Tarzan picture, which only reinforces the flailing feel that pervades a 92-minute running time.
5. Despite a few bright moments, however, too much of the film is made up of the kind of flailing manic behavior that passes for slapstick these days.
6. What really makes this work is Fraser, who plays it to the hilt.
7. Take only that part of you that is still 11 years old and check your brain at the door.
8. All of what made the animated George such an irreverent joy is watered down by sappiness, forced acting, and, worst of all, the plot.
9. The comedy in George of the Jungle is not sophisticated, but it is frequently audacious and irreverent.
10. The only resemblances to the classic cartoon are that trees still get in George's way, Shep the elephant still thinks he is a doggie, the ape named Ape still talks, and his girlfriend's name is still Ursula.