question: It's sexist, juvenile, and dated, but Heavy Metal makes up for its flaws with eye-popping animation and a classic, smartly used soundtrack.

numbered reviews: 1. You have to conclude that its makers should have got out more.
2. A wildly sophomoric and stupid cartoon celebrating gore, rape and bad music.
3. Regardless of its dated stylishness (which still holds up remarkably well a decade plus later), Heavy Metal was a pioneering film in 1981 and remains a pivitol and infuential body of art today.
4. This is simply exploitation on a very juvenile level.
5. Some of the animation is first-rate, particularly in the more modest comedy segments, and even the heavy set pieces have greater flash and dazzle than anything Ralph Bakshi mustered around the same period.
6. Heavy Metal has been animated with great verve, and scored very well, with music much less ear-splitting than the title would suggest.
7. Heavy Metal despite all of its flaws and anacrhonisms, nevertheless represents something of a refreshment in today's sterile climate.
8. A bit of a mixed bag. Some eye popping animation, chock full of nudity, gore, and alien landscapes. The classic soundtrack is what makes it most worthwhile when the stories fall flat
9. Wild animation, tons of blaring rock music, and fanboy wish fulfillment fantasies of the freakiest order. Good campy fun.
10. ...visually stunning some of the time and stunningly juvenile the rest.


question: The Jackass gang might be running out of gross-out stunts, but this installment contains plenty of brilliantly brain-dead comedy -- and the 3-D adds a pungent new dimension.

numbered reviews: 1. Undeniably funny and frequently repulsive, the third Jackass movie isn't going to win any new fans or lose any old ones -- you already know whether you'll like it or not.
2. Fans of the series will know what to expect, and this ably delivers it.
3. The naked and the damned, or the damn-near naked and the volitionally damned, subject themselves, over and over, to pain, punishment and humiliation. I enjoyed it a lot.
4. It's a healthy form of sadomasochism, built on a simple, homespun philosophy: suffering is part of life, so you might as well enjoy it.
5. The performers are getting older, and their laughter seems as strained as it always does in zoo-format entertainments.
6. Why can't non-Jackass films show this kind of energy, clarity, force and ingenuity?
7. Their third and worst film will appeal most to the evolutionally challenged and anyone who retains an infantile obsession with bodily waste.
8. It might be the guiltiest of pleasures, but there's no question Jackass 3D delivers.
9. The real quibble with the film is that while a few stunts raise some decent laughs, too much of Jackass 3D relies on grossness for its own sake, which can become a tad tedious
10. The knuckleheads are back with another collection of random acts of idiocy, this time with a 3D camera at their disposal. The result is slightly more controlled than before, but just as stupid.


question: Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian is busy enough to keep the kids interested but the slapstick goes overboard and the special effects (however well executed) throw the production into mania.

numbered reviews: 1. Adults have the choice of either admiring the scenery or taking a nap. There's not much else worth doing. Certainly, paying attention to the story is an exercise in futility, but you're welcome to try...
2. A super-size rehash of the original.
3. If you aren't enchanted and a little thrilled by the sequel's setting -- well, you probably hate puppies and sunshine, too.
4. Smithsonian whips itself into a kind of frenzied exhilaration that's both fun and funny.
5. Your 12-and-unders will dig it, and it might even serve as a sort of movie-Bookmobile and get them to read a little history, or at least a little Wikipedia. But otherwise it's utterly dispensable.
6. Pleasant, innocuous and intermittently thrilling family entertainment.
7. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian seems to go on for several days and nights, though in fact it lasts just 105 minutes. I checked my watch. A lot.
8. The sequel to the big family hit Night at the Museum struggles with a big creative challenge. The sense of wonderment you feel in seeing museum displays magically come to life is not as strong the second time around.
9. The film offers enough ingenious touches and playful humor that the less-inspired elements hit with a screech.
10. Every bit as over-long, talky and cumbersome as its title.


question: Hirokazu Kore-eda's film may seem modest at first, but this family drama casts a delicate, entrancing spell.

numbered reviews:
1. It will strongly move you, but you won't be able to say exactly why. It illuminates 24 hours in the life of a Japanese family, and though it may appear that not much is happening, by the end everything is revealed.
2. Sensitively demonstrates how nothing much happening to this idiosyncratic family is the universal story of every family.
3. There's also a touch of Bergman-style family angst here, and in the tale of the drowned golden boy and the surviving son, even a little bit of Ordinary People.
4. ...seems more French than Japanese with its chaotic gathering and multi-layered and constant dialogue.
5. A gentle, absorbing drama that carefully modulates sentimentality with an eye for the way family members can be casually cruel to each other and outsiders.
6. Kore-eda, talented director that he is, never allows the story to sink into soap-opera melodrama, and he refrains from pointing fingers.
7. Hirokazu Kore-Eda's latest effort, further entrenches my belief he should be considered one of Japan's living treasures.
8. Kore-eda has an extraordinary grasp on his characters, modest people who clearly mean a great deal to him. They will to you, as well.
9. Hirokazu Koreeda has written and directed a family drama that tells a powerful story that can not be told through words alone.
10. The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has a deceptively simple touch with the quiet, stirring film Still Walking.