question: With little of the ingenuity of previous installments, The Final Destination is predictable, disposable horror fare.

numbered reviews: 1. "The Final Destination" takes a franchise that was never very good to begin with and somehow fails to come within reaching distance of the abysmally lowered artistic bar set by its predecessors.
2. This series has clearly run out of ideas. The deaths are tired.
3. You never saw so much ducking and weaving, or heard such gasps of happy horror, outside a funfair.
4. The one-dimensional acting and dialogue has been taken to even more laughable levels. But that matters little as the invisible grim reaper is the star of the film.
5. Business as usual courtesy of ever-more outlandish ways for people to die.
6. The film-makers' inventiveness with each death is at once camp and heartless; every scene is so heavily loaded with the potential for violent calamity that after a while one's cynical laugh turns to a weary "whatever..."
7. Entertaining fourquel, heightened by smart direction and the best 3D effects since My Bloody Valentine.
8. It amounts to a kind of formulaic silliness, where horrific things only really happen to unreal people.
9. The Final Destination is a mean little film with little brains on its side.
10. With a plot that's virtually identical to parts 1, 2 and 3, this fourth movie has one new gimmick that makes it worth a look: it's in 3D. And the filmmakers have a lot of fun with it, gleefully revving up the grisly carnage.


question: As gripping as it is inspiring, Last Days in Vietnam offers a surprisingly fresh -- and heart-wrenching -- perspective on the end of the Vietnam War.

numbered reviews: 1. Anyone who thinks history is dry stuff should see "Last Days in Vietnam" - and heed its lessons.
2. "Last Days in Vietnam" will be broadcast in April on the long-running PBS series "American Experience." But it holds up on a bigger screen and deserves a large audience earlier than that.
3. A film of great sadness, but also a galvanizing depiction of heroism.
4. This is a solidly involving documentary that reminds us of one of the worst parts of our history, and of some of the best people who were a part of it.
5. It's a work that informs, inspires and angers, as it recounts the final hours of a war that Kennedy's uncle John began with the best of intentions, and President Gerald Ford ended with the worst of betrayals.
6. There is enough triumph and tragedy and heroism and heartbreak here to fill three or four features, but director Rory Kennedy smartly packs everything into just 98 minutes, and so captures the rushed, chaotic, just-keep-going feel of those dark days.
7. Sometimes the stories we think we know, the stories where we don't want to hear another word, turn out to be the most involving of all, the ones we in fact know the least about. So it is with "Last Days in Vietnam."
8. Deja vu, all over again, and riveting.
9. A painstaking look at the heart-breaking situation that unfolded as the Vietnam War came to an abrupt end.
10. As a portrait of America in a moment both of idealism and betrayal, the movie is heartbreaking as well as inspiring.


question: Though this ambitious noir crime-drama captures the atmosphere of its era, it suffers from subpar performances, a convoluted story, and the inevitable comparisons to other, more successful films of its genre.

numbered reviews: 1. This is so laughable it must be intended as camp. I was disappointed this wasn't a serious examination of the real Black Dahlia case. Oh, well, sometimes you don't get what you pay for and it's a pleasant surprise.
2. Unless you're familiar with the source material, following the intricacies of the Black Dahlia plot can be a frustrating experience and one that all but requires a detailed set of notes in order to keep up with the key players.
3. Not about the horrific murder and lacks erotic appeal. Hartnett cries a lot. De Palma kills the golden goose.
4. De Palma and Ellroy - for the most part it's a marriage made in noir nirvana.
5. The real case of the Black Dahlia was never solved, and watching this film we understand why: the story is just way too complicated.
6. The second half feels heavy and unfulfilled, potential greatness reduced to a good movie plagued with problems.
7. The Black Dahlia case was already the basis for an excellent, infinitely-better fictionalized film built around it, 1981's True Confessions starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall.
8. De Palma's Black Dahlia captures exactly what I see in my head when I read James Ellroy's novels.
9. Too ragged a film translation from the book and the headlines, far from fully satisfying, but a tour de force of style and mood.
10. The tragedy of Black Dahlia is that there is no finality for anyone--solving the "mystery," so to speak, counts for next-to-nothing.


question: Hal Ashby's comedy is too dark and twisted for some, and occasionally oversteps its bounds, but there's no denying the film's warm humor and big heart.

numbered reviews:
1. One of the most life-affirming films I have ever seen.
2. They remain among cinema's most disconcerting odd couples.
3. A treasure that's as applicable today as it was more than three decades ago.
4. Gives true romance a new meaning.
5. This black comedy pairs a 79-year-old swinger with a suicidal 20-year-old. They go to funerals and philosophize together in between Cort's humorously staged suicide attempts.
6. A whimsical love story; Cort is cuddly, Gordon is larger-than-life. An enchanting piece.
7. One of the classic American romance stories
8. Classic dark comedy that's starting to show its age.
9. Dark, lovably eccentric tale of platonic love that works on logic uniquely its own.
10. Dark delight.