question: It's sexist, juvenile, and dated, but Heavy Metal makes up for its flaws with eye-popping animation and a classic, smartly used soundtrack.

numbered reviews: 1. You have to conclude that its makers should have got out more.
2. A wildly sophomoric and stupid cartoon celebrating gore, rape and bad music.
3. Regardless of its dated stylishness (which still holds up remarkably well a decade plus later), Heavy Metal was a pioneering film in 1981 and remains a pivitol and infuential body of art today.
4. This is simply exploitation on a very juvenile level.
5. Some of the animation is first-rate, particularly in the more modest comedy segments, and even the heavy set pieces have greater flash and dazzle than anything Ralph Bakshi mustered around the same period.
6. Heavy Metal has been animated with great verve, and scored very well, with music much less ear-splitting than the title would suggest.
7. Heavy Metal despite all of its flaws and anacrhonisms, nevertheless represents something of a refreshment in today's sterile climate.
8. A bit of a mixed bag. Some eye popping animation, chock full of nudity, gore, and alien landscapes. The classic soundtrack is what makes it most worthwhile when the stories fall flat
9. Wild animation, tons of blaring rock music, and fanboy wish fulfillment fantasies of the freakiest order. Good campy fun.
10. ...visually stunning some of the time and stunningly juvenile the rest.


question: A paradigm-shifting classic of American cinema, Bonnie and Clyde packs a punch whose power continues to reverberate through thrillers decades later.

numbered reviews: 1. It is...the beauty of the screen images against the ugliness of the events that gives the film a constant and poignant sense of irony.
2. It is a film that took considerable risks, but somehow or another, all the gears clicked at the right time, and director Arthur Penn wound up with a national masterpiece he was never able to equal.
3. It should readily be apparent that there is something special about the production, with its brash, vivid style, indelible performances by movie icons, and bold mixture of violence and comedy, romance and tragedy.
4. It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie.
5. The film set new standards for screen violence but it alternated its scenes of mayhem with lyrical interludes and jaunty slapstick sequences accompanied by spirited banjo music.
6. Memorable and breathtaking.
7. A film of enormous aesthetic and historical importance. American filmmaking turned a corner with its release, and it can never now turn back.
8. You'll never root for the bad guys more than you will here.
9. With its weird landscape of dusty, derelict towns and verdant highways, stunningly shot by Burnett Guffey in muted tones of green and gold, it has the true quality of folk legend.
10. Dated in some ways, still shocking and powerful in others.


question: Faux horror schtick fails to elicit any laughs or scares.

numbered reviews: 1. Very funny; unconventionally effective!
2. It is very, very silly and funny, not to mention scary in all the right places.
3. Lake Placid is worth paying full admission price alone just to see Golden Girl sweetie Betty White feed a blind-folded cow to the croc and cuss out the feds.
4. There's a special look that actors get - avid yet resigned - when the movie they're starring in is so bad it practically billboards their stalled careers.
5. ...even though everything in sight defines cinematic repulsion, that doesn't mean you still can't have a good time.
6. Not as imaginatively campy as Tremors and certainly far from as suspenseful or unnerving as Jaws.
7. Where "Godzilla" makes the head hurt, "Placid" splashes up a bit fun. A solid "B" movie.
8. The best 'monster under water' pic since the original Jaws!
9. The funniest film of the summer!
10. An odd, derivative, but sporadically likeable film.


question: The Lost boys of Sudan works as both a riveting documentary and scathing indictment of colonialism.

numbered reviews:
1. A subtle but scathing consideration of American values.
2. An Oscar-worthy documentary.
3. Suffering brought on by colonialism documented in stunning documentary
4. Yearns to be optimistic (juxtaposed with the disaster of Sudan, it certainly has the right to be), yet that only ends up underscoring its ache of sadness.
5. Lost Boys of Sudan is a true strangers-in-a-strange-land story
6. For American viewers, Lost Boys of Sudan not only details a great tragedy a half-a-world away, but also illuminates much that's good and bad about life in our own country.
7. A potent, engrossing look at several young refugees from Sudan's disastrous, endless civil war who've been relocated to the U.S.
8. A pretty good documentary about a great subject.
9. Lacking that exotic 'foreign' focus and by failing to address the hardships of their early lives, we're left with a routine film about teenagers making mistakes or growing up too fast.
10. Reveals with remarkable clarity the clash of dreams vs. reality, hope vs. day-to-day despair.