question: While You Were Sleeping is built wholly from familiar ingredients, but assembled with such skill -- and with such a charming performance from Sandra Bullock -- that it gives formula a good name.

numbered reviews: 1. Director Jon Turteltaub's movie is just plain bad.
2. Cringe-inducing moments abound.
3. This appealing romantic comedy catapulted the ever-likeable sandra Bullock into major stardom
4. The film's casual warmth may make you tolerate some of the shortcomings -- especially since Bullock seems to be having such a fine time with her first starring role.
5. Bullock just about knocks herself exhausted being winsome and lovable.
6. Appealing family comedy with old-fashioned feel.
7. This smartly scripted Cinderella love story is crammed with charm and the expert direction of Jon Turteltaub hits all the right emotional buttons.
8. This year's Sleepless In Seattle. Only better.
9. It plays like a movie dreamed up by people in a studio marketing department who'd decided to bare their souls.
10. What the movie does offer is a delectable performance by Bullock, who is funny and vulnerable and almost makes you buy her character's diving into this charade.


question: The Right Stuff packs a lot of movie into its hefty running time, spinning a colorful, fact-based story out of consistently engaging characters in the midst of epochal events.

numbered reviews: 1. From the opening moments it is clear that we have the nearest modern equivalent to a Western: men of quiet virtue going skyward, leaving the tawdry world of log-rolling politicians behind.
2. Consistently compelling, capturing all the ambiguity and tension of the book.
3. The Right Stuff is a humdinger. Full of beauty, intelligence and excitement, this big-scale look at the development of the US space program and its pioneering aviators provides a fresh, entertaining look back at the recent past.
4. Educational, exciting action, great acting.
5. Historical drama as well as vastly entertaining adventure.
6. Though critically acclaimed, Philip Kaufman's superbly realized adventure about the early Space Age was a commercial flop, due to its satirical tone and unfortunately close association with the presidential candidacy of John Glenn.
7. History, melodrama, comedy and satire are skilfully combined in this consistently exciting adventure. Visually and dramatically it rarely sags, there's a vivid array of characters and though it's a film with issues, these never eclipse the human drama.
8. A great movie that unfortunately failed to attract audiences back in '83, this adaptation of Tom Wolfe's book about astronauts pays tribute to what we would like to believe represents the American spirit: hard work, perseverance, camaraderie and vision.
9. One of the scattered handful of truly great American movies in the first half of the 1980s.
10. Moviegoers seeking a grand yet edifying entertainment, right-stuffed with what Kaufman calls "seriousness of subject matter and a wild humor that comes out of left field," now know where to look...


question: Thanks to a smart script, spectacular set pieces, and charismatic performances from its leads, Men in Black is an entirely satisfying summer blockbuster hit.

numbered reviews: 1. What makes this wildly imaginative setup so much fun is the contrast between the deadpan gruffness of Jones and Torn, and the spectacularly strange environment in which they work.
2. Men In Black deserves credit for supplementing its special effects with a breezy script and genuinely charismatic performances by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.
3. Men in Black is the wryest, sharpest, most entertaining special effects film in recent memory, a simultaneous participant and mocking parody of the more-bang-for-your-buck behemoth genre.
4. [Director Barry Sonnenfeld] establishes the premise in the wildly entertaining first 45 minutes and then glides along for the rest of the film on the strength of a poker-faced comic sensibility.
5. Its attitude is poised somewhere between the deadpan ghoulishness of the Coen brothers and a Letterman-like sense of the absurdity of life in New York's rich ethnic stew.
6. Men in Black is moderately amusing, well-constructed and mercifully short, but it fails to deliver on the zaniness of its first half.
7. Men in Black, running a breezy 98 minutes, is a showpiece of laconic economy. It's quick, eccentric and deadly funny and for many young movie-goers it's likely to be a close encounter they'll want to see a second and third time.
8. A lean, punchy, fast paced, and extremely endearing sci-fi action comedy.
9. Great special effects, inventive alien designs and Smith and Jones's hip, hilarious double act make director Barry Sonnenfeld's Lethal Weapon-style buddy picture a fast-paced pleasure.
10. The plot, trifling as it is, doesn't much matter. What makes the movie such a hoot are the clever gags, imaginative special effects, and the snappy byplay between the well-matched Jones and Smith.


question: It isn't terribly deep, but it's witty and undeniably charming, and the cast is obviously having fun.

numbered reviews:
1. What summer movies are generally meant to be: big, light entertainment.
2. A refreshing addition to the rejuvenated genre.
3. This one has it all - romance, comedy, action and high-spirited adventure!
4. See website for more details.
5. True deft wit is just plum missing from this good-natured, flat-footed, eager-to- please, tee-hee Western.
6. ...an easygoing diversion that could've (and should've) been so much better...
7. Despite the attention of master scriptwriter William Goldman, this gentle tribute to the hit comedy western TV series missed a golden opportunity for a razor-sharp spoof. There's no doubt the stars had a ball, though.
8. Facetious and cynical, Mel Gibson's star vehicle is glossy and superficially enteratining, but doesn't begin to approximate the charm of James Garner and the original TV series.
9. Maverick never takes itself seriously, which establishes the tone for serious fun. Goldman's screenplay is a model of ingenuity, setting increasingly complicated traps for the three leads, and rather amazed that they wriggle free.
10. Maverick reminds us of what killed the western in the first place.