question: Disturbing, controversial, but entirely engrossing, Hard Candy is well written with strong lead performances, especially that of newcomer Ellen Page. A movie that stays with the viewer long after leaving the theater.

numbered reviews: 1. It's well worth seeing, because it is well made -- apart from a few gaps in logic -- and well acted.
2. Hard Candy is not perfect, but it is a provocative piece of filmmaking with a dark and daring heart that makes it worth seeing.
3. If Slade's intent is so clever, then why is the film so stupid as to hamfist a two-hour anti-pedophilia PSA down the throats of an entire culture that, by and large, already agrees with the premise...?
4. A calculated provocation with pretensions to public service value (think of the infamous 'molester' episode of 'Diff'rent Strokes').
5. ... icky, incoherent thriller ...
6. The aptly named Hard Candy is a challenging, flawed but strangely engrossing film.
7. Hard Candy is an exploitation film, with very little happening but a guy getting tortured for about 75 minutes of screen time.
8. ... a film that gives you something to think about, raising questions that linger long after the theater lights have brightened.
9. It's cinematic S&M, a bondage-control game masquerading as a thriller.
10. ... no matter who does what to whom, what you're looking at is My Torture Session with Andrew, in one way or another.


question: Though it's harmless as family entertainment and has moments of charm, The Santa Clause 2 is also predictable and forgettable.

numbered reviews: 1. If you want to put your kids in the mood for Christmas, or just put the fear of being naughty in them - this is the movie to see. You might just get a little enjoyment yourself.
2. Playful and light-hearted, the story is a kids' delight and bearable for parents, too, as long as you don't mind plot holes you could fly a sleigh through and plenty of goofy mugging for the camera.
3. More of the same tinsel-draped malarkey that made the original film into a big hit, but it's more engaging, assured and funny, and I liked it more.
4. Has plenty of ingenious takes on North Pole mythology to skate over the rough spots of a scattered script.
5. There's just not enough of that old corny ho-ho-ho in The Santa Clause 2 to make it a qualified holiday hit.
6. What soured me on The Santa Clause 2 was that Santa bumps up against 21st century reality so hard, it's icky.
7. The film has a nearly terminal case of the cutes, and it's neither as funny nor as charming as it thinks it is.
8. Not so much funny as aggressively sitcom-cute, it's full of throwaway one-liners, not-quite jokes, and a determined TV amiability that Allen personifies.
9. Allen, with hardworking charm, single-handedly saves it from family-values monotony.
10. Like most Disney releases, Santa Clause 2 is a conflagration of trite family film clichés and, as such, is logically, emotionally and spiritually wrong.


question: A curious, not always seamless, amalgamation of Kubrick's chilly bleakness and Spielberg's warm-hearted optimism, A.I. is, in a word, fascinating.

numbered reviews: 1. The best fairy tale -- the most disturbing, complex and intellectually challenging boy's adventure story -- Mr. Spielberg has made.
2. The first really strange, risk-taking, Hollywood movie I've seen in 2001.
3. Jude Law's Gigolo Joe [is] a Jiminy Cricket with a libido, even if it is mechanical.
4. An often disjointed melange drawn from classic stories and old movies.
5. Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law make this into a must-see experience.
6. It's the kind of screwup you get only from a master filmmaker.
7. A haunting and wondrous story about the thin and rapidly blurring line between reality and illusion.
8. Aside from the tantalizing moral questions, A.I. is a delight visually.
9. You're encouraged to ponder complex questions while enjoying an amazing ride.
10. At best it's brilliant, but lukewarm -- lacking Spielberg's emotional heat and Kubrick's icy intellect.


question: Religulous is funny and offensive in equal measure, and aims less to change hearts and minds than to inspire conversation.

numbered reviews:
1. Smart, hilarious and thoroughly entertaining.
2. A refreshingly courageous and long overdue lecture that is equally enlightening, entertaining and provocative.
3. Maher has gone for easy targets. He comes up with the odd funny gag, but you get the feeling that he is as dogmatic about his doubt as the believers are about their faith.
4. I'm all for a documentary about the mass hysteria of our warring creeds, but stand-up satirist Bill Maher turns out to be the wrong man to make it.
5. It was much more thought-provoking than I was expecting, but his blatant bias made me feel that he was no less a fundamentalist than the religious people he was criticising.
6. Often funny, frequently unfair, mostly simplistic, at times offensively unethical and ultimately limited.
7. Fortunately for filmgoers, the sight of Bill Maher laying the smacketh down on God is, to quote Homer Simpson, truly "sacrilicious".
8. Over-extended but nonetheless thought provoking and humorous documentary.
9. Shooting fish in a barrel is the order of the day in comedian Bill Maher's faintly tiresome attack on religion.
10. Maher crucifies the kooks. What he singularly fails to do, though, is engage with anyone sensible. By mocking the loonies he squanders the precious high ground. A real pity.