question: Swordfish is big on explosions, but critics dislike how it skimps on plot and logic. Also, the sight of a person typing at a computer just isn't that interesting.

numbered reviews: 1. It's skillfully mounted and fitfully intriguing.
2. The movie tries too hard to make working on computers sexy. (Trust us, it's not.)
3. Too much routine stuff amid the excess relegates the hyperactive Swordfish to the level of costly dross.
4. Even the grandest stunts need some sort of storyline to be strung along, and the one in Swordfish is laughably flimsy.
5. Mostly it's about upping the ante on gratuitous movie violence.
6. Uses ultra-modern trappings but fills them with time-worn cliches.
7. In spite of its obvious, visible flaws, the movie works viscerally.
8. Mostly standard gunfire and carnage at ear-splitting sound levels.
9. Like a cigarette, it's damn tasty, full of blistering action and surprisingly sly humor, but not very good for you.
10. With all due disrespect to Freddie Prinze Jr., John Travolta is fast becoming the new harbinger of bad cinema.


question: It's far from his most thought-provoking work, but Tabloid finds Errol Morris as smart, spirited, and engaging as ever.

numbered reviews: 1. With its cutesy cut-out graphics and mock-emphatic headlines, Tabloid sends up the hysteria of supermarket-rag coverage, but that's also the fuel that keeps it running.
2. The viewer is left with no clear indication of what really happened, but with a vibrant portrait of a compelling character. That's what Morris is after.
3. Morris's subject is sexual fantasy and a particular kind of American stupidity-the ability to substitute self-justification for self-knowledge. His tone is merry.
4. It is quite simply one of the craziest stories ever told, made all the crazier by the fact that it's true. Or at least some version of it is true.
5. William Carlos Williams wrote "The pure products of America/ Go crazy," and the funny, freaky Tabloid captures that contrast, that promise, that curse.
6. Tabloid, Errol Morris' latest wild and woolly portrait of human self-delusion, is a scandal-sheet dream come to life.
7. The movie is guilty of condescending toward its subjects, though most of them appear to be having a fabulous time telling tales.
8. Doesn't tell us anything about sleazy journalism or the insatiable thirst for gossip that we didn't already know. Far-fetched and overblown just about sums it up.
9. A tale of obsession and abduction, self-delusion and sexual confusion, Errol Morris' Tabloid stands as an almost giddy affirmation of the old cliche: Truth is stranger than fiction.
10. "Tabloid" is the hilariously strange-but-true documentary of Joyce McKinney, a media-savvy nutcase decades ahead of her time, thank the Lord.


question: With his sturdy cast and confident direction, Sean Penn has turned a complex work of non-fiction like Into the Wild into an accessible and poignant character study.

numbered reviews: 1. Deserts, mountains, railroads, bears and a sad and lonely epiphany about the nature of human existence!
2. With the whole of America as his backdrop, Penn pulls off his most ambitious movie yet. The result is a beautiful and thought-provoking road movie.
3. Emile Hirsch captures all of the arrogance, integrity, naiveté and charm of this complex, troubled young man.
4. Sean Penn obviously poured all his passion into this, with nearly as much raw, naked zeal as his psychologically scarred yet inspired protagonist.
5. With consistently drop-dead gorgeous cinematography, Into the Wild tells a touching and ultimately harrowing tale of personal growth.
6. In his fourth and best film to date, Sean Penn has made an eco-road movie that refreshes and invigorates. Exquisitely shot, robustly acted and deeply felt, it's a potent ode to wanderlust and human pluck.
7. Beautifully shot and perfectly acted, Into The Wild will appeal to anyone who has looked out of the office window and wondered what it'd be like to pack a bag and just start walking.
8. The photography is of the sort you'd find in any half decent nature documentary, with cloying emphasis placed firmly (and sometimes clumsily) on the idea that our neglectful, selfish and not to mention rampantly capitalist ways are destroying the planet.
9. This is a great, great film.
10. Sean Penn's first masterpiece as a director.


question: Though lushly atmospheric, The Dreamers doesn't engage or provoke as much as it should.

numbered reviews:
1. This isn't one of those old 'adults-only' movies. This is, simply, a movie only for adults -- and worthy of their attention and debate.
2. There's not a moment in the film's belabored 115-minute running time that feels emotionally authentic.
3. For the easily titillated, among whose company I count myself, the rewards are plenty in this curious ménage ŕ trois among college students in 1968 Paris.
4. A kind of art-house Showgirls -- which actually exceeds Showgirls in its self-indulgence, shallowness and sheer stupidity.
5. The Dreamers didn't put me to sleep, but I did start wishing they'd reenact a better movie.
6. Encapsulates the sense of innocence and adventure we all wish to carry
7. Works best when viewed as a tone poem that examines the present through the prism of the past.
8. The siblings, in particular, grow so irritating with their cultural tunnel-vision that even the film's explicit sex grows monotonous, and its lack of humor grows irritating.
9. As an erotic valentine to 1960s Paris, it's unlike anything else you are likely to find.
10. An ode to the kind of discerning, obsessive movie love that flourished at the time and has never been matched, before or since.