Problem: 1. Pauly Shore's finest hour.
2. Now I remember why I keep hoping Pauly Shore never has a comeback.
3. Silly teen comedy has some Neanderthal behavior.
4. Encino Man saves its worst for last, especially with life lessons about Being Yourself.
5. The kind of movie that gives evolution a bad name.
6. This is every bit as insipid as it sounds, but it's also surprisingly innocent and has a most unexpected sweetness.
7. I found myself missing Jeff Spicoli.
8. ...and introducing Pauly Shore.
9. God help us all.
10. If you liked Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and the Wayne's World flicks, you should get guilty pleasure out of it.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer: Encino Man isn't the first unabashedly silly comedy to embrace its stupidity and amass a cult following, but whether or not it works for you will largely be determined by your tolerance for Pauly Shore.


Problem: 1. As filmmakers, the Dardennes are more concerned with probing the causes of crime than in glamorizing it.
2. I could see what they were trying to do, but it was a little too artsy and didn't really work for me.
3. The Dardennes are adroit at dangling the carrot, withholding just enough of the story's particulars to keep you curious without testing your patience.
4. Lorna's Silence is an interesting and entertaining film that poses a more difficult moral dilemma than its authors might have intended.
5. With a more linear plot and steadier camerawork than previous efforts, Lorna's Silence is among the Dardennes' more accessible films, despite a drawn-out finale that still doesn't quite satisfy.
6. In a just world, the Dardenne brothers would be as well known as the Coens; outside the United States they probably are already.
7. More entertaining on a base level than a Belgian film about poor people has any right to be.
8. Lorna's Silence doesn't work, but it's a beautiful misfire.
9. In casting the previously unknown Dobroshi, the brothers approach greatness with their lean portrait of simple humanity tested by desire and driven desperate by circumstances.
10. The film is spare, but intense.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer: Subtle and emotionally bleak, this gripping thriller features the Dardenne brothers' recognizable penchant for realism and very strong performances.


Problem: 1. .
2. North Country does a good job in ratcheting up the tension and unfairness until the audience is brought to the breaking point.
3. Studded with wasted performances, what should have been an important addition to popular films about women's rights winds up being the most insulting courtroom drama since Ally McBeal was put out of its misery.
4. If there was ever any thought that perhaps Whale Rider was a fluke, North Country should erase all doubt.
5. Director Niki Caro (Whale Rider) - - can make an intelligent, involving movie about sexism in the workplace without it feeling merely like a screeching, heavy-handed polemic.
6. North Country delivers an emotional wallop and a couple of performances worthy of recognition come award time.
7. Caro is both subtle and a deck-stacker.
8. Rewarding and sensitively rendered, the studio-produced North Country might revive a worthy subgenre last visited, in tarted-up fashion, by Erin Brockovich.
9. North Country, a potent (if didactic) drama, loosely based on a landmark court case involving workplace sexual harassment.
10. North Country can't help but be compared to such other women-against-the-system movies as Norma Rae, Silkwood, and Erin Brockovich, though it easily holds its own with all three.
What is the consensus?
****
Answer:
Though sometimes melodramatic and formulaic, North Country is nonetheless a rousing, powerful story of courage and humanity.