question: The Patriot can be entertaining to watch, but it relies too much on formula and melodrama.

numbered reviews: 1. It's never boring, and it'll sweep you up in its momentum if you give it a chance.
2. Whether protecting his brood or his nation, Gibson is the quintessential American stoic.
3. A riveting, slick, graphically violent piece of entertainment.
4. The Patriot delivers what it promises.
5. A spectacle that could cause its audience to rise up against the dull treatment of this marvelous episode from history teachers.
6. A rip-snorting good flick that breaks the cinematic jinx against Revolutionary War stories.
7. The fight scenes are careful, powerful, stunning, and quite realistic.
8. The Patriot delivers, for the most part, effective, populist entertainment.
9. Having fought the British centuries before in Braveheart, Gibson brings the same intensity to The Patriot.
10. It wisely focuses upon common folk rather than prominent figures.


question: Though decidedly one-sided, The Cove is an impeccably crafted, suspenseful expose of the covert slaughter of dolphins in Japan.

numbered reviews: 1. I've seen hundreds of horror movies in my time, and I've never seen anything quite as disturbing as the final sequences of The Cove.
2. Staggeringly exposes the high-to-low complicity of many hands in the international captivity trade, though mostly it stands as a testament to one man's activist spirit and a reminder of how all social progress comes from the passion of the individual.
3. Tells you with its heart all you want to know about why it's necessary to free the dolphins from captivity and slaughter.
4. It turns out that wasn't a smile on Flipper's face.
5. [An] impassioned piece of agit-prop, which goes to great lengths to penetrate Taiji's tight security to expose this problem in gruesome detail.
6. A powerful, important and extremely well made documentary that demands to be seen.
7. An involving and persuasive film that remains frustratingly one-sided as it bandies about unsubstantiated accusations, fails to follow up on key issues and leaves you wanting to know much more.
8. Part-espionage thriller, part-documentary.
9. In this new, post-Michael Moore age of documentary filmmaking as lucrative big-screen fare, a documentary that educates without condescension, informs without bias and entertains without losing its focus is a valuable commodity.
10. If The Cove isn't in the running for next year's Best Doc Oscar, there's something terribly wrong with this world. Gripping exposé, harrowing horror-thriller and devastating agitprop, it takes us to "a little town with a big secret".


question: Though it sometimes feels cold and detached, The Claim is evocative, beautifully shot, and full of understated performances.

numbered reviews: 1. like a collegiate literature class in Thomas Hardy
2. Mature viewers only; kids won't be interested.
3. The emotions of the piece are as palpable as the neverending snowfall.
4. If the story was as crisp as the snow, and the plot advanced faster than a glacier, this might have been a better film.
5. While we wait, characters tromp through the snow a lot.
6. Broody and beautiful, The Claim is guaranteed to give you the chills.
7. One of the year's most visually stylistic films.
8. The Claim works best as an antitraditional Western epic that presents an allegorical drama of fate, retribution and redemption.
9. The audience is simply left with the task of fitting together the allegory's easy pieces.
10. At the center are the impeccable performances of all five leads.


question: A trip worth taking if one's not offended by gratuitous nudity and bad taste.

numbered reviews:
1. If you go in thinking it's just a stupid teenage sex comedy, it can be pretty funny.
2. The premise of the film is serviceable, but the execution is flawed and entirely underwhelming.
3. A woefully dumb picaresque that doubles as an inventory of stale stereotypes.
4. It's nothing spectacular, but Eurotrip plays its formula with enough humour and enthusiasm to at least make it acceptable.
5. "Brilliant" would be overstating it, but Eurotrip is a heck of a lot of fun.
6. Many words can be applied to Eurotrip: vulgar, crude, bawdy, sophomoric. The only one that really matters, though, is "funny."
7. There are a few laughs here, but if you've paid eight bucks for your ticket it comes to about $2 a laugh.
8. If Eurotrip were a comedian saying, 'Stop me if you've heard this one,' he'd get little more than half a syllable into his act.
9. This Eurotrip should be reserved for desperate video store selection only
10. It's a fast, enjoyable 92 minutes, funnier than the trailers might suggest. Nothing more, and nothing less.