question: Pay It Forward has strong performances from Spacey, Hunt, and Osment, but the movie itself is too emotionally manipulative and the ending is bad.

numbered reviews: 1. As Trevor, Haley Joel Osment ... is amazing again.
2. Hollywood feel-goodism at its best (or worst, depending on your Patch Adams tolerance quotient).
3. Right now, Hunt's performance is the strongest of the year. I don't know how anyone else can top it.
4. A rich experience, smart, courageous and bracingly powerful.
5. Worth going to see, mainly for Osment's superb thespian abilities.
6. The movie has a realistic sense of people's failings ... and it recognizes how hard it is to turn a life around.
7. The combination of restrained writing and direction and top-of-the-line acting is enough to make even confirmed agnostics want to believe in this unashamed fairy tale.
8. Inspired.
9. The idea is simple, sweet and catchy, like a pop song, and Pay it Forward is almost as irresistible as Trevor's idea.
10. I figured this movie was going to be a little sappy and it turned out to be a lot sappy, but I forgave it all the same. Why? Moving performances and an overwhelmingly earnest quality that dares you to be cynical.


question: The scenery is nice to look at, and Julia Roberts is as luminous as ever, but without the spiritual and emotional weight of the book that inspired it, Eat Pray Love is too shallow to resonate.

numbered reviews: 1. Italians have a phrase -Che posso fare?- meaning "What can I do?" that's sometimes used when the answer is: "Nothing, just go with it." Lots of things happen in Eat Pray Love that only the lonely and book club members will understand. You just go with it.
2. It's about something important, the search for meaning and happiness, about finding one's inner life amid the clutter and confusion of modern existence.
3. Roberts is precisely the right actress to play this character: She adamantly refuses to be adorable -- she'd rather just unleash that crazy, unladylike cackle.
4. If you're in the mood for a Julia Roberts film that provides two hours of "Calgon take me away", this is it.
5. The cast, led (by the nose) by Roberts, is pretty. The men are handsome and sensitive. The scenery is beautiful and the techs and production are first class. I still wish that Liz went back to Italy and had another pizza.
6. While Eat Pray Love has some enlightening, touching, visually breathtaking moments, you still end up praying it would end.
7. Rodney [Dangerfield] may have cracked about "praying after you eat," but this film reflects the need to surfeit before finding balance.
8. Let the cynics scoff - this is a movie that's beautiful to look at that will leave you with some food for thought, as well.
9. In a summer dominated (as always) by male-skewering titles, this is a richly rewarding experience for discerning grownups who wouldn't be caught dead seeing Grown Ups.
10. It's a shame the actors have to spoil cinematographer Robert Richardson's artistry by reciting the drivel that passes for dialog.


question: The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a heartfelt and sincere adaptation that's bolstered by strong lead performances.

numbered reviews: 1. Takes the other side of the bullied high-school outcast story and shows us a teen who discovers the fun of belonging.
2. Stephen Chbosky's script is insightful about the exhilaration of soul-piercing first love, and the misery of being swept into a relationship with someone who's forceful, determined and utterly wrong for you.
3. Chbosky plays this CW serial stuff for maximum earnestness, stressing the teenage tendency to assume that every new thing they're feeling is unprecedented in human history, keeping the tone just-moist-eyed throughout.
4. If [it] doesn't explore any new territory, it covers familiar ground engagingly, and sometimes touchingly.
5. It deserves to be regarded as a modern classic.
6. It has a sense of timelessness.
7. One of the truest coming-of-age films in recent memory.
8. The most pleasant and accomplished surprise of the year, a delightful, sweet, funny, and moving examination of teenage life that merits comparison to John Hughes and Cameron Crowe.
9. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" finds an unexpectedly moving freshness in the old clichés by remaining attentive to the nuances of what happens within and between unhappy teenagers.
10. As a director, Chbosky mirrors his central character's emotional state.


question: Smartly constructed and scathingly sharp, The Armstrong Lie presents an effective indictment of its unscrupulous subject -- as well as the sports culture that spawned him.

numbered reviews:
1. As a comprehensive look at the Armstrong affair, as well as an often complex examination of power dynamics in professional sports, it's fascinating and highly watchable.
2. Only when it gets personal does The Armstrong Lie pick up speed.
3. Gibney gives the truth as full an airing as seems humanly possible, given that the subject is a world-class liar.
4. A well made film about one messed up dude.
5. While there are no new explosive revelations in The Armstrong Lie - and, at just over two hours, it's a touch too long - it's still a mesmerizing cautionary tale.
6. The movie captures a very modern approach to public scandal: Confession without remorse.
7. The bitterest parts of Gibney's movie are the interviews with the former teammates who were caught doping, and whom Armstrong, when he was still officially clean, viciously turned on.
8. Gibney took a film that was supposed to be about the resurrection of a sports star and turned it into an epic indictment of one man and an entire culture. The lesson is obvious: Never throw anything out.
9. There's a palpable sense of sadness, more than outrage or betrayal, to the film.
10. This scalding documentary follows along the lines of classic Greek tragedy,revealing how the fear of humiliation is one of the greatest motivators in human behavior.