question: A quiet but moving film anchored by the unexpected depth of Ashley Judd's performance.

numbered reviews: 1. Subdued and deliberate, but also sensitive and quietly moving. And it gives Judd a chance to shine as a real actress again.
2. If and when Come Early Morning ever resurfaces on DVD, order it immediately-and while you're at it, order Chasing Amy too, if you haven't already seen it, and enjoy a dandy double feature with two country girls of enormous talent.
3. Judd surely deserves the lion's share of kudos for the movie's success...
4. custom made for Judd; she's brilliant
5. With an honest and starkly minimalist approach, Adams paints a vivid, often painful portrait of a woman who has nothing to look forward to except the next one-night stand.
6. What Come Early Morning does is create an utterly convincing central character, and surround her with a milieu and backstory that is sincere and convincing.
7. Overall, the film lacks energy and the plot has no driving force.
8. The best thing about Adams' film is its unhurried, casual naturalism.
9. The writing and directing by Joey Lauren Adams express an admirable naturalness and eschews rose-tinted solutions.
10. ...nothing less than a minor key wonder of a film, a character study of novelistic complexity with a sure sense of place and purpose that seems akin to movies made before Hollywood discovered its corporate destiny.


question: A cult classic as gut-bustingly hilarious as it is blithely ridiculous, Monty Python and the Holy Grail has lost none of its exceedingly silly charm.

numbered reviews: 1. While it has its moments of classic hilarity, they aren't enough to encourage me to swap Python quotes over email during afternoon office boredom.
2. The film itself is of course genius; wonderfully funny; a classic. The new Special Edition DVD is a Pythonite's fondest wish.
3. Still plenty of fun.
4. The funniest movie of 1975 and probably the silliest movie ever made.
5. For inspired lunacy, few films surpass Holy Grail.
6. MPatHG is a satire that instructs with its informed irreverence, a piece that knows the rules before it breaks them and has shown itself over the course of twenty-six years to be almost as immediate and hilarious as it was upon initial release.
7. Crammed with acres of quotable dialogue, the film plows along from one inspired bit to the next.
8. Really smart people improvising really silly gags and bits, most of which work, some of which don't.
9. A superb work of insanely silly escapism.
10. Has been so quoted and requoted that the scenes and words feel tattooed onto the psychic membrane.


question: Annette Bening delivers a captivating performance in Being Julia, a sophisticated comedy that follows a 1930s stage diva who experiences an identity crisis at age 40.

numbered reviews: 1. Annette Bening finally finds a role that will ease her into advancing age with style but grace.
2. Bening keeps you off-balance as you wait to see what Julia does next.
3. Even with the whimsically understated Irons as the oblivious husband and that lion Michael Gambon as the ghost of Julia's acting teacher, director István Szabó's movie leaves no impression.
4. Everything is in place for a tour de force film. Yet the end result is so lackluster and pedestrian, a more fitting title is Being and Nothingness.
5. A tour de force and an utter delight.
6. [Bening] pulls out all the stops playing a limelight-loving stage diva in 1930s London, and her vivacious performance should guarantee her a spot on Oscar's list of Best Actress nominees.
7. It's an immensely satisfying and stylish entry in the grand tradition of films about the theater.
8. Movies don't get much more inoffensively middlebrow than Being Julia.
9. Bening alone makes it worth the price of admission.
10. In addition to good performances from support players such as Canadians Bruce Greenwood and Sheila McCarthy, Being Julia also features consummate British pro Michael Gambon as a ghost and young Lucy Punch in a sexy, career-making turn.


question: A powerful, thought-provoking film that covers different angles of its topic without resorting to preaching, Dead Man Walking will cause the viewer to reflect regardless of their political viewpoint.

numbered reviews:
1. It will send you home with more than a few long thoughts.
2. A tour de force acting performance by Sarandon.
3. This feels like a giant cop-out.
4. Its final moments leave us awash in emotion.
5. An entirely superb experience at the movies, but never have we seen anything on the big screen reduce grown men to tears like this drama.
6. An extremely affecting experience
7. One of the best things a film can do is make us reflect on our convictions and beliefs. Dead Man Walking powerfully forces this reflection through its compellingly ambiguous subject matter and superb performances by Sarandon and Penn.
8. Sarandon, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for this role, is superb, but Penn is extraordinary.
9. The picture is cloudy in intent.
10. Robbins, who also wrote the script, is no Truman Capote, let alone a Victor Hugo, and his film trips up constantly on indecisiveness about what it is he's trying to say.