question: Lyrical, well-crafted and inventive, Jellyfish smartly mixes comedy, drama and magic realism.

numbered reviews: 1. Jellyfish is the kind of film that will ring true for some viewers, while striking others as too slight and precious.
2. A film of miniature treasures...a lyrical picture, not forceful. Give it some time, and it's almost sure to get under your skin.
3. It would be easier to recommend it if only, like its characters, it didn't drift quite so easily, aimlessly knocked about by the tide.
4. Like Amelie with an attitude, this sinister flick links strangers serendipitously, but with an almost shocking absence of naivete.
5. The fact that you care about each and every one of these people is testament to the filmmakers' understanding and abiding humanity.
6. There's enough material here for a miniseries, but the directors keep the proceedings to 78 brisk minutes without making the viewer feel cheated.
7. Jellyfish is the kind of movie in which the accidental connections between lonely city dwellers are given a magical glow of serendipity.
8. I appreciated and admired the craftsmanship of Jellyfish more than I loved it, and I found its whimsical, magic-realist touches a bit cloying.
9. conjures up a handful of winsome delights in its brief running time
10. Although it runs 78 minutes, it feels like 78 hours. This is a Jellyfish with no sting.


question: Last Train Home is a haunting, vivid documentary exploring the human toll of China's economic boom in intimate, unforgettable detail.

numbered reviews: 1. Contained in the simple story about one family's progress in the new China is a larger message about globalization and the rapid dismantling of an entire culture.
2. Last Train Home is an intimate portrait of an unfathomable immensity, focusing on a single family caught up in the world's largest mass migration.
3. A riveting and big picture look at the social phenomenon unique to modern-day China and its rise as a capitalist power.
4. This is essential viewing for understanding our world.
5. Sobering documentary examines the plight of migrant workers in China, as seen through the problems of the Zhang family.
6. Tells the story of a family caught, and possibly crushed, between the past and the future--a story that, on its own, is moving, even heartbreaking. Multiplied by 130 million, it becomes a terrifying and sobering panorama of the present.
7. It's depressing enough to watch this family's struggles with life. But their pain really hits home when you think that the pants you might be wearing could have contributed to it.
8. The Zhangs' story is only one among millions, and Fan's portrait serves equally as an indictment of a social and industrial system.
9. Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan presents the human cost of China's economic rise in terms any parent or child can understand.
10. Lixin Fan, handling his own cinematography, shoots with such a painterly eye that he almost undermines the social critique he's making.


question: Vibrant and violent, Viva Riva is a stylish, fast-paced crime drama.

numbered reviews: 1. Meet Riva (the spectacular Patsha Bay), a man who thrives on scarcity: he smuggles gas, and has recently come upon a mother lode-which becomes, of course, a powder keg.
2. Pulpy flourishes lend it the crude spirit of a Warner Brothers gangster picture from the 1930s, albeit one with an unexpectedly carnal edge.
3. The film looks and feels like another Pulp Fiction clone at times, but what emerges is a far more thoughtful work that makes important (and surprisingly) salient points about the humanistic struggles of developing countries.
4. The alien environment makes Viva Riva! a fascinating watch.
5. Worth checking out just based on the rarity of a movie with an empathetic black protagonist even being made about the Congo. The un-Tarzan!
6. Both exotic and engaging, with an earthy edge. But it also has a sophisticated side
7. What Munga has to say in this feature directorial debut is delivered via a quick-paced, gritty crime story that is both entertaining and enlightening.
8. A slick, exciting, well-made crime thriller, dripping with atmosphere.
9. It feels so raw and urgent and real.
10. A wild and seductive crime thriller, Viva Riva! is a promising early step for Congolese pulp cinema.


question: Epic in technical scale but breathlessly intimate in narrative scope, Boyhood is a sprawling investigation of the human condition.

numbered reviews:
1. And there's a sadness in that you just don't want Boyhood to end, with the film a remarkable accomplishment that won't be forgotten anytime soon.
2. Perhaps never has the long arc of the journey from childhood to college been portrayed as cohesively and convincingly as Richard Linklater has done in a film that can be plain on a moment-to-moment basis but is something quite special in its entirety.
3. A quite remarkable piece of cinema.
4. This is a movie where not much happens that probably hasn't happened to you, but which, in the aggregation of these moments, becomes something utterly profound.
5. Boyhood is the summation of Richard Linklater's entire career...A moving and masterful evocation of what it means to be a family, and all the hurt and hope that comes with it.
6. From the moment a train pulled into a station filmmakers have been trying to present life to us -- to tell us its story -- and Linklater may have now come the closest.
7. Linklater's third masterpiece in the past decade should only affect anyone who's ever been someone else's sibling, child, parent, lover or friend.
8. It seems appropriate that Boyhood was always in the background, charting its filmmaker's growth from Tape to Before Midnight. As Mason grew, so did the man who kept returning to his story.
9. Boyhood truly is a film about the human experience, and this is something everybody can relate to.
10. Captured in vivid images and told in Linklater's typically astute, observational style similar to his 'Before' movies, perhaps the greatest achievement is how natural it all flows together given the fractured manner in which the film was constructed.