question: A perfectly light, warmly funny romantic comedy that's kept afloat by Ron Howard's unobtrusive direction and charming performances from Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah.

numbered reviews: 1. A sweet good-hearted romance, and the first real sign that both star and director were here to stay.
2. Overlong, but makes a comedic 'splash' anyway.
3. Splash may feature a heroine with fins, but it's mostly a standard love story, albeit one with some delightful new twists.
4. It's also very funny, thanks largely to Candy in the lecherous fat sidekick role, and a string of set pieces that show Hannah as, quite literally, a fish out of water.
5. ideal Sunday afternoon entertainment
6. The movie is cute, light, and fluffy, perhaps not the laugh-fest I had remembered but enough to get by.
7. Splash is probably the ultimate fish-out-of-water film, primarily because it literally features a fish out of water.
8. Splash is a light-hearted comedy directed by Ron Howard that sparkles here and there thanks to its fairy tale elements.
9. Very dated, but still fun
10. It's too bad the relentlessly conventional minds that made this movie couldn't have made the leap from sitcom to comedy.


question: A bleak, but heartbreaking coming-of-age tale that resonates with truth.

numbered reviews: 1. The casting is impeccable, the dialogue raw and the impenetrable Glaswegian brogue is wisely translated with English subtitles.
2. Ken Loach's most effective film since My Name Is Joe.
3. From its gripping immediacy to its strong cast of unknowns, Sweet Sixteen feels almost like a documentary. Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty keep an evenhanded focus on harsh truths, and avoid melodrama and grandstanding.
4. Don't get too close; don't help out; let them make their own mistakes
5. Sweet Sixteen is a gritty film directed by Ken Loach about the spiritual dynamics of hope in the life of a resourceful and brave teenager living in poverty in Glasgow, Scotland.
6. An uncompromising look at life, with all its questionable triumphs and irreversible consequences, performed by a cast that is virtually untrained and entirely genuine, with a fully engaging performance by Martin Compston.
7. The film boasts sensational naturalistic performances and a raw edge that is undeniable. I don't think I can tell you that it's entertaining. It draws blood.
8. [Loach] allows us to look into lives we would otherwise ignore.
9. Loach's latest adheres so closely to his long-established narrative pattern -- overdetermined case study crowned with a morbid jolt -- that viewers might underestimate its wit, empathy, and careful characterizations.
10. Yes, this is a political movie (at least it has a political viewpoint), but, more than that, it's a character study of an individual who will not easily be forgotten.


question: Smart, stripped-down, and thrillingly grim, Blue Ruin proves that a well-told revenge story can still leave its audience on the edge of their seat.

numbered reviews: 1. [With] Blue Ruin, [director Jeremy Saulnier] muffles the humor with darkness and grounds the violence in a stumbling revenge fantasy enacted by a lost and fractured soul.
2. Blue Ruin is a confident venture that smartly doles out its story in pieces, leaving the audience to happily follow its trail of breadcrumbs.
3. A gory instant-classic cult film about a maladroit revenge killer.
4. Blue Ruin is the rare film that is nearly consistently tense, the suspense only temporarily subsiding about an hour into the story. It's a welcome respite.
5. Blue Ruin succeeds on the strength of Saulnier's skill at slowly escalating the tension, even with a would-be action protagonist who is almost comically inept.
6. An effective regional crime drama in the key of Jeff Nichols, but lacking his emotional and thematic complexity.
7. Not much is said, but much is communicated in a blood-soaked film that acts as its own accuser.
8. Blue Ruin stands out because of the way it frames this revenge mission as a preordained conclusion, an unstoppable journey toward a brutal end.
9. Though the film more than fulfills its genre requirements as a tense, diamond-sharp 90-minute thriller, Saulnier never lets the action get cartoonish or detach itself from the flawed characters perpetuating it.
10. It has more of a kinship with 'Shotgun Stories,' Jeff Nichols' film on a bloody family feud that brings Hatfield and McCoys-esque tussling into the supposedly tamed present day.


question: Thanks to a strong cast of experienced actors and director Douglas McGrath's steady hand, Nicholas Nickleby is a worthy and respectful adaptation of the Dickens novel.

numbered reviews:
1. The film is enriched by an imaginatively mixed cast of antic spirits, headed by Christopher Plummer as the subtlest and most complexly evil Uncle Ralph I've ever seen in the many film and stage adaptations of the work.
2. There's a bevy of hiss-worthy baddies to pick up the dramatic slack, beginning with Plummer's wonderfully nefarious Uncle Ralph.
3. Any film version of Nicholas Nickelby that casts Nathan Lane as theatrical impresario Vincent Crummles and Barry Humphries (in his Dame Edna drag incarnation) as Mrs. Crummles is clearly a Dickens of a departure from Masterpiece Theatre-dom.
4. McGrath's Nicholas Nickleby is never very complex, but it is snappy and entertaining in a way that feels true to Dickens' love of a ripping yarn.
5. Any movie that tries to cram an entire Dickens novel into just over 2 hours is destined to be imperfect. Nevertheless, writer/director Douglas McGrath makes a valiant effort that focuses on fun.
6. Although Nicholas Nickleby occasionally evidences a simplicity that resembles a Junior Scholastic production, the movie's enthusiasm is contagious.
7. A beguiling evocation of the quality that keeps Dickens evergreen: the exuberant openness with which he expresses our most basic emotions.
8. The project honors [Dickens'] passionate voice, and the strong ensemble cast sees us through a few tonal shifts.
9. Armed with McGrath's apt Dickens distillation, the illustrious ensemble strain mightily and eventually salvage Nicholas Nickleby from the poor man's Heath Ledger at its center.
10. Tedious, plodding and unimaginative.