question: This muddled comedy has a few laughs, but never sustains a consistent tone.

numbered reviews: 1. Social commentary mingles with stupid comedy in this humorless update of a 1977 George Segal-Jane Fonda romp.
2. Fun With Dick and Jane is exactly that - a bit of holiday fun.
3. It's fun, and that's fine.
4. This Dick & Jane is precisely the kind of social-problem comedy you'd expect from well-intentioned millionaires unaccustomed to putting their money where their mouths are.
5. Fun with Dick and Jane seems proud of its satirical association with the recent corporate scandals. But the movie wants the credit without doing the work.
6. This is something that should have waited for the February doldrums when theatergoers are starved for entertainment.
7. Most of it plays out as sub-medium-grade farce, but Carrey has some funny calisthenic bits where he appears to have the pliability of a rubber toy.
8. Fun With Dick and Jane is a silly comedy, but it draws some blood...
9. The comic payoff is slow to come and culminates in a kind of triumph-of-the-little-guy ending that only Frank Capra can pull off.
10. This kind of zany stuff is Carrey's forte, and so it is for Leoni, too. They make a grand pair, and their willingness to look stupid -- not to mention risking injury with various leaps and pratfalls -- gives the movie humour and energy.


question: American Teen skates some thin ice with its documentary ethics but, in the end, presents a charming and stylish (if packaged) tale.

numbered reviews: 1. At what point does the filming of kids behaving immaturely become an invasion of privacy, even if parents signed consent forms?
2. American Teen is The Breakfast Club in real time.
3. This being senior year, Burstein can't help but capture some genuine drama, but there's a stage-managed quality to the movie that reminded me of MTV reality shows.
4. American Teen shows how a documentary can be as moving and suspenseful as the best narrative feature.
5. This is an odd little film that really sneaks up on you, packing a much bigger emotional punch than you'd anticipate.
6. Eventually Burstein moves past these objections and slips under your skin.
7. Faux-doc or not, Burstein's film is funny and engaging, and it gives us an amazing intimacy and identification with these characters as it skillfully strips away the layers of their cliched teenage stereotypes to reveal the true person beneath.
8. Burstein's camera is right on Mitch's face when he presumably first notices Hannah playing with her band on the school's stage - happy accident? planted idea? editing with hindsight?
9. Our appetite for watching young people do silly, overly sincere, and sometimes brave things has been slaked by the glut of junk-food TV shows on the subject.
10. Burstein either isn't aware of or has made a conscious decision to ignore the very "non-fiction" filmmaking that her subjects and their peers are likely most exposed to.


question: Sharp performances by Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan can't save this forgettable, formulaic chick flick from its comic failings.

numbered reviews: 1. How you feel about Made of Honor depends on how you feel about Dempsey. If you like Grey's Dr. McDreamy, you'll like Tom and the movie. If not? There are plenty of other nondescript romantic comedies out there from which to choose.
2. A film so dreadful and humiliating that it's reassuring to know Dempsey can keep his day job.
3. Movies like this make Cupid want to change careers.
4. At its best, a romantic comedy celebrates one of humanity's greatest yearnings: to give and to find the love of a lifetime. At its worst (and this is where Made of Honor comes in), it can leave you with a bad taste, not just in your mouth but in your soul
5. Certain formula-driven romantic comedies reach a point where the audience realizes it won't be much fun watching the main character get his way. Nor will it be much fun watching him get his comeuppance. This is not where you want your audience.
6. Not good, not bad, just there, the film faithfully crosses off one timeworn cliché after the next.
7. The plotting ranges from predictable to ridiculous and with the exception of a handful of laugh-out-loud moments, Dempsey's frequent shirtlessness is the film's main appeal. The rest is as unpalatable as stale wedding cake.
8. It's touching work that makes Dempsey's plastic sincerity look as thin as the film's posters.
9. Made of Honor is the kind of formulaic fare -- there's even that turn-the-car-around-and-get-me-back-to-the-church moment -- that depends on the wit of the script and the spark of its stars. In those departments, the film is just middling.
10. Overly familiar and predictable. Its debts to both When Harry Met Sally and My Best Friend's Wedding are considerable.


question: Children of Men works on every level: as a violent chase thriller, a fantastical cautionary tale, and a sophisticated human drama about societies struggling to live. This taut and thought-provoking tale may not have the showy special effects normally found in movies of this genre, but you won't care one bit after the story kicks in, about a dystopic future where women can no longer conceive and hope lies within one woman who holds the key to humanity's survival. It will have you riveted.

numbered reviews:
1. Classic dystopian British science fiction that draws powerful and moving parallels to the state of the world.
2. Owen delivers one of his best performances as a lifeless man, whose activist spirit is unexpectedly reignited by his contact with Kee.
3. If you thought the battle scenes in... Saving Private Ryan were tough going, the final 20 minutes of Children of Men will not only shake you, they'll have you revising your expectations about just how realistic cinematic portrayals of combat can get.
4. And yet... And yet... For all its fine parts, Children Of Men is somehow less than the sum.
5. Cuaron doesn't treat his future world like fictitious science fiction. He seems to be saying that our current paths will lead to an apocalypse not unlike this one.
6. Ultimately grimy, both in subject matter and visually, thanks to set designers Jim Clay and Geoffrey Kirkland), the picture is frightening and powerful.
7. By letting his film lapse into a standard action movie, Cuaron I think has suffered a regrettable failure of imagination.
8. Children of Men is like an elongated episode of Doctor Who for adults, without the funny bits, David Tennant's oozy charm and the ironic sense of its own fundamental silliness.
9. It's a disturbing tale that is exceptionally uncomfortable to watch because it's almost believable in spite of how ludicrous it first appears.
10. Fortunately, the film rarely slows down long enough to proselytize, especially in the hellish refugee-camp climax, a horrid polyglot of ceaseless conflict that could be any war zone on the planet.