question: Eagle Eye is a preposterously plotted thriller that borrows heavily from other superior films.

numbered reviews: 1. As the film drags on, there are several nauseatingly dogmatic moments that make you feel like you're trapped in some kind of uber-liberal rally.
2. In Eagle Eye, we're meant to fear our GPS.
3. Eagle Eye isn't awful, just trite ... it suffers from the same problem most high concept films have; it's all smoke, but no fire.
4. A warning about the threat in our own backyard -- but as often is the case with Hollywood blockbusters, the warning comes across more like fear-mongering than constructive social criticism. Personally, I prefer my cinema sans mongering.
5. Everything's chopped up into those woozy, bite-size snippets of flashing lights and spinning tires, thrown into a blender and then regurgitated on screen.
6. The trouble with Shia? He's no Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, or Cary Grant. And as for Caruso, well, Brian De Palma can rest easy.
7. ...one could certainly do far worse as far as movies of this ilk go.
8. Eagle Eye is a totally derivative, unoriginal techno-thriller, cribbing scenes and ideas from better films. ... But it's also thoroughly entertaining.
9. So colossally ridiculous (and transparently derivative) that willing suspension of disbelief is a fool's errand. [Blu-ray]
10. This is nobody's idea of an intelligent political thriller (or satire), but it is an orgy for the senses.


question: The prequel to the first full-length feature set in Bedrock, Viva Rock Vegas is a surprising improvement over The Flintstones. Aimed towards an audience of adults and children alike, critics feel Viva will appeal to a broad range of viewers.

numbered reviews: 1. Falls from interestingly loopy to tiresome.
2. A sad, strange, dismal thing to inflict upon a child, let alone their parents, who've taken them with something like, say, fun in mind.
3. It's not delightful or funny or exciting, and for long stretches, it looks exactly like hapless actors standing in front of big rocks and reciting sitcom dialogue.
4. What’s with the film’s odd preoccupation with such adult themes as class, money, and sex?
5. Um, no surprises here. Better than the original.
6. Full of leaden one-liners and dull puns.
7. This brightly colored, lowbrow comedy is so dumb it could get lost on its way to the take-up reel, and it's proud to be dumb. But it's also clueless: Who makes a movie about dating aimed squarely at 10-year-olds?
8. Anyone who hated the first movie will almost certainly hate this one too.
9. As entertainment for kids, or for adults, it misjudges its audience by at least a millennium.
10. Viva Rock Vegas yabba-dabba-doesn't.


question: A tiresome rom-com.

numbered reviews: 1. A lot like any number of romantic comedies, but there should always be room for another good one.
2. Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet star as a would-be couple in a pleasant romantic comedy without arty aspirations or low-brow yucks.
3. We're supposed to feel that they're made for each other, in the When Harry Met Sally vein, but we never feel the chemistry.
4. A delightful surprise: Previews promoted the movie's juvenile laughs, but they omitted the sizzling, heartfelt relationship at the center of the story.
5. A lot like a lot of other romantic comedies.
6. Love hurts.
7. A lot like love? Hardly. Would you believe, maybe, a little like mild indifference?
8. What Lynch strenuously avoids is any examination of who these two individuals are, how the passage of time affects them and what could possibly draw them back together given that neither one of them is a walk in the park.
9. The movie is 95 minutes long, and neither character says a single memorable thing. You've heard of being too clever by half? Ollie and Emily are not clever enough by three-quarters.
10. Kutcher is surprisingly well cast as the awkward, somewhat dorky Oliver, and Peet is charming and charismatic without being cloying or artificial.


question: About Elly offers viewers performances as powerful as its thought-provoking ideas, and adds another strong entry to Asghar Farhadi's impressive filmography.

numbered reviews:
1. One of the most remarkable Iranian films to surface in the last few years, About Elly is a small but compelling ensemble piece of surprising depth.
2. Farhadi constructs a taut story, as precariously balanced on luck and lies as that of a French farce, and then lets it spring holes before our eyes.
3. Rarely have layers of truth been so expertly peeled away than in About Elly, a drama from the Oscar-winning director of A Separation.
4. This superb, suspenseful film ... opens as a playful comedy of vacationing couples and awkward romance, one that might be set in the French countryside, but by the end has become a moral drama likely to corrode your certainties.
5. There is a mastery of tone here that shows a great director completely at home with his characters.
6. If it can be a touch too narratively byzantine and heavy-handed, it's still a quietly devastating throwback to the classics of drama.
7. A drama about guilt and responsibility set against the backdrop of male domination in Iranian society that even affects the secular and well-educated milieu depicted in this gripping drama.
8. You begin to wonder to what extent the film is a critique of an entire society in which the disparity between tradition and modernity is irreconcilable.
9. It's further confirmation of Farhadi's peerless skills as a dramatist, with a special talent for drawing prismatic meaning from simple premises.
10. As with director Asghar Farhadi's Oscar-winning "A Separation," this new film lets truth slowly be revealed through mystery - and after a shocking incident.