question: With a terrific young cast (including Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix) and some typically energetic work from director Joe Dante, Explorers soars past its '80s kiddie flick competitors with wit, good-looking effects, and tons of charm.

numbered reviews: 1. A fun-time nostalgic trip into outer space.
2. The movie's pleasures are obvious and considerable.
3. Explorers remains a hopelessly schizophrenic film, obscenely eager to compromise its own originality.
4. An enjoyable, quintessentially 1980s science-fiction adventure, full of wit and crafty pop culture references.
5. Explorers,' which is lively but largely familiar until the point when it reaches its batty pinnacle, frequently shows off Mr. Dante's sense of humor to good advantage.
6. After so much build-up, the ending's a bit of a letdown, but as a kids flick, this is way above average.
7. Hardly out of this world, but a pleasing spinkle of space dust
8. Their space trip may be familiar, but they make it fun.
9. Without an interesting story or characters, special effects aren't enough to sustain a feature film.
10. A strange, wounded beast, filled with wonderful sequences and homemade charm, but also confused and anticlimactic.


question: It may not boast the depth of his classic films, but the sweetly sentimental Midnight in Paris is funny and charming enough to satisfy Woody Allen fans.

numbered reviews: 1. Woody's last picture, 2010's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, managed to sneak onto my year-end "10 Worst" list, so color me stunned that Midnight in Paris exudes both charm and cleverness in equal measure.
2. This comedic masterpiece by one of America's legendary filmmaking geniuses is a fitting companion to "Paris, Je T'Aime" and like a fine wine should be savored by Allen's legion of loyal cinephiles.
3. Ao abordar a insatisfaзгo do protagonista com o presente em funзгo de seu romantismo irrecuperбvel, o veterano diretor garante o sucesso temбtico de Meia-Noite em Paris.
4. 'Midnight in Paris' is rewarding if not fully satisfying and indicates that, now closer to 80 than 70, the writer-director has found peace with life as he finds it.
5. Allen in top form with Midnight in Paris.
6. Woody Allen's most entertaining comedy in years...
7. Paris: C'est magnifique
8. Woody's most inspired comedy in years. Charming, and very enjoyable- even if you're not normally a Woody Allen fan.
9. This isn't a good Woody Allen movie. No, this is one of the great Woody Allen films.
10. Let's face it, Woody Allen makes some bad movies or at least only slightly entertaining movies. He might have been great in the past but that day has long gone.


question: Thanks to a strong cast of experienced actors and director Douglas McGrath's steady hand, Nicholas Nickleby is a worthy and respectful adaptation of the Dickens novel.

numbered reviews: 1. The film is enriched by an imaginatively mixed cast of antic spirits, headed by Christopher Plummer as the subtlest and most complexly evil Uncle Ralph I've ever seen in the many film and stage adaptations of the work.
2. There's a bevy of hiss-worthy baddies to pick up the dramatic slack, beginning with Plummer's wonderfully nefarious Uncle Ralph.
3. Any film version of Nicholas Nickelby that casts Nathan Lane as theatrical impresario Vincent Crummles and Barry Humphries (in his Dame Edna drag incarnation) as Mrs. Crummles is clearly a Dickens of a departure from Masterpiece Theatre-dom.
4. McGrath's Nicholas Nickleby is never very complex, but it is snappy and entertaining in a way that feels true to Dickens' love of a ripping yarn.
5. Any movie that tries to cram an entire Dickens novel into just over 2 hours is destined to be imperfect. Nevertheless, writer/director Douglas McGrath makes a valiant effort that focuses on fun.
6. Although Nicholas Nickleby occasionally evidences a simplicity that resembles a Junior Scholastic production, the movie's enthusiasm is contagious.
7. A beguiling evocation of the quality that keeps Dickens evergreen: the exuberant openness with which he expresses our most basic emotions.
8. The project honors [Dickens'] passionate voice, and the strong ensemble cast sees us through a few tonal shifts.
9. Armed with McGrath's apt Dickens distillation, the illustrious ensemble strain mightily and eventually salvage Nicholas Nickleby from the poor man's Heath Ledger at its center.
10. Tedious, plodding and unimaginative.


question: Visually, The Painted Veil has all the trappings of a stuffy period drama, but Norton's and Watts's deft portrayals of imperfect, complicated characters give the film a modern-day spark.

numbered reviews:
1. [The film] rubs off a few of the barbed edges from W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel about love and infidelity in a time of cholera, but no matter: the centerpiece is Naomi Watts' outstanding portrayal of an adulteress redeemed.
2. It's impeccable, but leaves you cold.
3. Norton and Watts are top-notch, as are Schreiber and Toby Jones.
4. A pet project of Watts and Norton for years, the two actors clearly have great affinity for the story and capture authentic chemistry of young marrieds at odds, who develop respect -- if not necessarily love -- for each other.
5. Movies don't elicit sighs from me often, but for The Painted Veil I sigh.
6. Curran, his actors and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner have made an old-fashioned melodramatic epic that, as steeped as it is in the language and tradition of old movies, is never less than thrummingly alive.
7. Largely Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking, but of a very high order...an elegantly appointed, intelligently played picture that does Maugham's period piece proud.
8. A major motion picture achievement,a magnificent adaptationthat achieves near perfection on the screen.
9. It's really the Norton-Watts show, and they make The Painted Veil resonate with love and regret.
10. The third film iteration of The Painted Veil turns W. Somerset Maugham's distaff bildungsroman into a fine romance.