question: Powerfully moving and emotionally resonant, Wild finds director Jean-Marc Vallée and star Reese Witherspoon working at the peak of their respective powers.

numbered reviews: 1. Jean-Marc Valle knows how to draw out raw, transformative performances from his actors, a skill needed in the transformation of "America's sweetheart" Reese Witherspoon into a wreck of a woman finding redemption, and do so without any pretense.
2. Once again, Valleé has taken an obvious awards movie that shouldn't be very good and made it mostly okay. It's the kind of movie that makes me want to say "good job," but also "why?"
3. For the most part, though, what we understand about Cheryl is communicated with great care, in a dreamy, frequently witty layering of sound and images, past and present that lingers well beyond the film's stirring final moments.
4. I'm not wild about Wild, but it's fair to say that it's a decent film, well shot and performed, with an interesting structure that provides emotional and narrative complexity.
5. This is a more-than-obvious bid on Witherspoon's part for a second Oscar, and if one can accept the extreme calculation at play here it's not necessarily a bad thing.
6. Warm and uplifting, but with an edge. Reese Witherspoon has never been better.
7. Reese Witherspoon delivers her best performance since she won the Best Actress Oscar for 'Walk the Line' a decade ago.
8. What Witherspoon does with expression and not a lot of dialogue is so good, you wish that there weren't flashbacks or voiceover and they'd just trust her to tell the whole story.
9. It's an entrancingly lush visual experience, but one which also captures something of the loneliness, the fatigue, and the bleary, squinting alienation that travel can inflict.
10. The premise sounds corny, but Vallée, in collaboration with screenwriter Nick Hornby, gives the film its energy by pulling the narrative apart.


question: A predictable plot and cheesy special effects make Cursed a less-than-scary experience.

numbered reviews: 1. It's telling that one of the giddiest scenes (a lycanthropy-powered wrestling match), reaches for inspiration from Teen Wolf Too.
2. Cursed may as well be retitled Guilty Pleasure, because that's exactly what it is.
3. Makes you long for the days when teenage werewolves were beady-eyed, slavering versions of hairy-palm jokes.
4. Poor special effects, a silly looking werewolf and clunky comic writing help to spoil what should have been a fun B-movie.
5. A stylish and fun homage to a classic horror subgenre.
6. However flawed this screamer may be, it's still Wes Craven!
7. Before it was reworked for a PG-13 it might have been a more interesting movie than the lame, tame and more of the same werewolf yarn that skulked into theaters last week.
8. not quite edgy enough to be cool and it's certainly nowhere near scary enough for most horror fans
9. The scariest thing in the movie is a cameo by Scott Baio.
10. Still, no movie starring Ricci has ever been a total waste - if you're curious, it will be worth a three-buck DVD rental in a few months.


question: Kids will be entertained by the straightforward plot and cute animals, and adults will be charmed by how quiet and humble the production is, a fine translation of E.B. White's genteel prose.

numbered reviews: 1. Charlotte's Web adapts a classic, which is not to say it is one.
2. Charlotte's Web ends on a grace note that should keep you feeling whimsical for many days after.
3. As my daughter noted after the movie, Wilbur isn't any ordinary pig. As Charlotte writes in her web, he is 'some pig.' That, he is, and here he gets his just due with a movie that honors his humility and grace in fine fashion.
4. The ads promise magic, but apart from the requisite heart-tugging finale, what it delivers is uneventful.
5. Fanning isn't quite right. No doubt the ubiquitous young lady is the first child actor anyone pictures as Fern, but is there ever a moment in which the audience isn't aware they're watching Dakota Fanning in the part?
6. The heart-wrenching ending left a preview audience -- adults included -- shamelessly blubbering.
7. Like its porcine protagonist, E.B. White's classic 1952 story Charlotte's Web manages to be both radiant and humble. If only the same could be said for Gary Winick's live-action adaptation, which is neither.
8. Unfortunately, Charlotte's Web is an unremarkable collection of cute kids, talking animals and syrupy sentiment. There's little of White's original spare style and even less to entertain anyone but the very undemanding.
9. Children of all ages, even those not old enough to read, can enjoy the journey.
10. Director Gary Winick and writers Susannah Grant and Karey Kirkpatrick preserve White's lovely observations, often using his language.


question: The Little Death may appeal to fans of dark, risqué comedy, but it's ultimately too rough and uneven to hang together as a wholly satisfying viewing experience.

numbered reviews:
1. Lawson either needed to flesh out these characters or view their failings with stiffer cynicism.
2. ...this hypersexualized riff on Wild Tales is at its best when depicting the tenderness and sweet intentions of Maeve and Paul.
3. It's perched uneasily on a fence separating a rote comic sketch film from something weirder, stranger, and less engaged with offering reassuring domestic homilies.
4. "La Ronde" this is not.
5. A brightly performed, amusing and provocative entertainment that might have you rethinking what constitutes a normal sex life.
6. The set-up is a bit like that old Woody Allen's farce Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex crossed with Love Actually, though it's better than either because there's a disarming depth and poignancy here as well.
7. There are moments of bad taste black comic brilliance in this feature debut.
8. The film is truly much more than it reads on its surface, a far cry from the tired and formulaic rom-coms moviegoers have come to expect from Hollywood.
9. Overcooked at times and not always cohesive, Josh Lawson's debut feature about intimacy is a case of hit or miss, but in its favour, there are some very funny ideas coupled with some priceless moments
10. The Little Death is just a mostly laughless tour of unlikeable, depressive suburbanites.