question: A sitcom-level twee mess that bakes in the typical manic pixie dream girl and boring, withdrawn boy hero.

numbered reviews: 1. Not all motion pictures are worth a thousand words. "The Art of Getting By" isn't even worth the price of a movie ticket.
2. A fairly typical coming-of-age drama...
3. This affected Wes Anderson clone [is] sheer drudgery to watch.
4. Inconsistent coming-of-age film includes teen drinking.
5. the story is filmed beautifully, but the spark of savage passions that should run through the experience like the gash of a bleeding wound is not there
6. Freddie Highmore became famous as a child actor in films like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but he's thoroughly unprepared for the challenges of an adult leading role.
7. An appealing small fry in such films as Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Highmore now turns up in his first significant role in years. To quote Fred Willard in A Mighty Wind, "Hey, wha' happened?"
8. Despite good performances by the leads, the action proceeds in dutiful lockstep, touching predictable dramatic bases to the accompaniment of predictable pop songs.
9. The Art of Getting By is a coming-of-age story about a geeky misfit who won't do any school work. It's not as riveting as it sounds.
10. The vapidity of The Art of Getting By goes beyond the anthill-sized dramatic stakes. The dialogue, while occasionally epigrammatic, is tone-deaf to individual speech rhythms.


question: A fascinating, emotional, and frank confessional from Iron Mike that sheds a sympathetic light on one of boxing's most controversial icons.

numbered reviews: 1. Toback fashions a sharp doc out of a blunt object.
2. Director James Toback gives the audience a raw and realistic view into one of the biggest names in sports of all time.
3. Hardly anyone thinks of ... Tyson as articulate and sincere. But director James Toback does and captures these qualities in a fascinating, sympathetic portrait. Tyson is a film of vast surprises.
4. Unless you just can't stand the sight of the guy, Tyson is a fascinating film.
5. The movie is a useful portrait of a mentally tortured man, but I'm not sure it documents anything definitively biographical about Tyson.
6. Deploying multiple split screens and a discreet but effective score, Tyson is hugely engrossing at the same time that it is not entirely credible.
7. Tyson is about the processes that make Mike Tyson.
8. It's like a Spalding Gray monologue performed by a maniac.
9. Emotionally and psychologically raw, this is a revelatory experience. Tyson has a Second Act, he could mentor a troubled teen like his savior Cus D'Amato.
10. Those who were furious at Tyson will be made even angrier by Toback's film, for here is a fresh provocation-an attempt to restore to Tyson the human dimensions that have been taken from him (by himself, of course, as well as by others).


question: Jim Carrey shines as the Grinch. Unfortunately, it's not enough to save this movie. You'd be better off watching the TV cartoon.

numbered reviews: 1. It boasts a central performance by Jim Carrey that's so physically manic and verbally clever that he's like a force of nature.
2. Audiences will feel like their own hearts are two sizes too large at the end of this wonderful sugarplum of a movie.
3. Only a real Scrooge could fail to enoy this tasty little holiday morsel.
4. Ron Howard seems much more engaged by the anarchy and mischief of the Grinch than he does with the pleasantries and communal feeling in Whoville. Perhaps there's hope for him yet.
5. Carrey, with another ground-breaking performance, single-handedly elevates it to something much better.
6. Carrey enables Ron Howard's version of the classic story to come across as more of a welcome endeavor than a pointless re-tread.
7. A movie with good set and costume design, and very little else.
8. One of the ugliest movies ever perpetrated on a mass audience.
9. ...severely (and unwittingly) alters the very source material beyond a point of explanation.
10. The movie feels like it is perpetually in conflict, torn between its desire to be both a light-hearted fable and a dark black comedy.


question: Viewers expecting an in-depth biopic will be disappointed, but The Runaways is as electric as the band's music, largely thanks to strong performances from Michael Shannon, Dakota Fanning, and Kristen Stewart.

numbered reviews:
1. Fanning and Stewart, playing the two leads, are timid and lifeless much of the time.
2. The drop of menstrual blood that hits the pavement in the first shot signals that this flashy, colorful film will offer a particularly female take on the cautionary blood-and-thunder passion play that audiences expect from their rock-and-roll biographies.
3. While Jett and Currie emerge as blurry, half-formed characters, Shannon's Fowley brings the contradictions the Runaways embodied into sharp, biting focus.
4. Music video director Floria Sigismondi shot this fascinating story on Super 16, giving the film a beautifully gritty 70's look. Fanning and Shannon are phenomenal.
5. It might sound square to suggest that making a movie about someone who didn't lose his mind on drugs, or cheat on his wife, would be a welcome change, but in truth, any change in approach would be welcome at this point.
6. Enjoyable, stylishly directed rock biopic with terrific performances from Fanning, Stewart and Shannon, though the fact that it's adapted from Currie's book means that only Cherie's story is explored in any depth.
7. Floria Sigismondi's flawed account of the rise and fall of short-lived, all-girl rock band The Runaways captures a genuine sense of the 1970s... the real '70s, not the wacky sitcom version.
8. For the most part it works, thanks to painstaking recreations of hazy disco-era dive bars, faded roller rinks and seedy motels, plus a ballsy performance by Kristen Stewart.
9. Parental Content Review
10. Okay, so it's not quite as rock'n'roll as what Garbage's Shirley Manson did to her boyfriend's corn flakes. But give the girls a chance, man.