question: Blending hand-to-hand combat with breathtaking stunts and slapstick comedy, Supercop reminds us why Jackie Chan is one of the world's great entertainers.

numbered reviews: 1. Chan is fun to watch, no matter what silliness one has to put up with.
2. A super-charged, bang-up action flick the likes of which most Americans still have never seen.
3. An astonishingly fluid and funny movie that makes most American action pictures seem lethargic.
4. Jackie Chan makes his second leap at the American movie audience, following up Rumble in the Bronx with a far sharper mix of stunts, martial arts and Chan's own brand of breathtaking slapstick comedy.
5. Capable female action stars are a non-entity in Hollywood, but Khan packs a wallop both literally and in her screen presence.
6. Supercop is a better movie than Rumble in the Bronx, in large part because it's funnier.
7. Raucous, hilarious, and choreographed with breathtaking daring and subtlety, Supercop kicks ass with charm and wit.
8. Super thrills, super spills, super laughs and super stunts.
9. With martial arts superstar Jackie Chan, older may be better.
10. The plot is nothing more than an excuse for the series of spectacular action sequences in which Chan shows both his physical skills and great sense of humour.


question: A shocking and disturbing, but always compelling look at life in the slums of Rio de Janiero.

numbered reviews: 1. A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.
2. I came out of the theater feeling lucky to be alive.
3. It's like Scorsese meets Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, with a samba soundtrack.
4. One of the most uncompromisingly bleak films I've ever seen.
5. Hard to watch but even harder to tear your eyes away from.
6. One of those rare moviegoing experiences that simply flattens you with greatness from the word go.
7. If the traditional gangster flick has appeared to be hobbling on its last legs over the past few years, this lightning bolt of a movie proves that there are still fresh ways to tackle overly familiar material.
8. A lung-burning dash down Brazil's mean streets.
9. There's no denying City of God's effectiveness in dropping us into an environment crawling with deception, brutality and blind ambition.
10. It's a conspicuously stylish attention-getter that heralds the discovery of a major directorial talent.


question: Gags aren't that funny.

numbered reviews: 1. One of the summer's more pleasant surprises.
2. Brendan gets hit in the face a lot, that's good for a few laughs but you've already seen it in the trailer.
3. Dudley is merely a dud.
4. Barely gets a plus for comedy, but Brendan Fraser is always fun to see.
5. '90s live-action remake of '60s cartoon has iffy humor.
6. Surprisingly pleasant.
7. The fanciful associations and bad jokes are more often stupid than silly, making all the spectacle and contrived dance numbers seem a colossal waste.
8. Why in the wide, wide, world of sports would anybody make a big-budget feature film from a decades-old, animated cartoon parody of Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald movies?
9. Only for little kids or anyone with no discerning taste.
10. There's not one joke, one slapstick moment, one innuendo that's funny.


question: Energetic but empty, 12 Rounds' preposterous plot hurtles along at a rapid pace, but can't disguise the derivative script.

numbered reviews:
1. This big-budget action thriller excels at dishing out a plot that's a bit like a chess game on speed.
2. If you leave your brain in neutral, you should have a fairly enjoyable ride.
3. Those in the mood for something kinda dumb but lotsa fun look no further.
4. The kind of passable in-flight entertainment you could watch half-asleep.
5. It remains to be seen whether this crude, dumbly entertaining outing will encourage the director to tackle more of the Greek myths.
6. 12 Rounds's familiarity undercuts any kind of suspense it hopes to build, and for an action-packed romp it's incredibly dull.
7. A lunk-headed, brawling action movie with more muscle than brains and the kind of editing that feels like being repeatedly shot in the eyes with a staple gun.
8. One long blur of car stunts and digital clocks counting down to detonation - passable for lazy television viewing, but not worth the price of a ticket.
9. There's a decent little action movie somewhere inside '12 Rounds': a bit more complexity of character, a few more jokes and a hero who doesn't look like a two-by-four with a buzz cut might have gone a long way.
10. While 12 Rounds is well above average for an action movie, it's important not to get too carried away. This is, after all, a picture in which leading lady Ashley Scott is less appealing than her pet pug.