question: While its premise is ripe for comedy -- and it certainly delivers its fair share of laughs -- Priscilla is also a surprisingly tender and thoughtful road movie with some outstanding performances.

numbered reviews: 1. It's too bad that the requirements of plotting require movies like this to crank up the event count, when actually what works is just the daily minutiae of Bernadette's life.
2. The year's one clear candidate for future cult status.
3. This is a road movie with a difference.
4. You may have Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' rattling through your head for a few days, but that's a small price to pay for an audience with true royalty.
5. For sheer camp value, Priscilla is a lot of fun, even if it has next to nothing to say.
6. Bernadette -- formerly Ralph -- turns out to be an excellent role for Stamp.
7. It's often very funny, looks great and is played to perfection.
8. You'll never look at The Matrix the same way again.
9. The film builds an enormously affectionate tribute to a band of outsiders.
10. The casting of the film was a stroke of genius.


question: Mike Nichols wrangles agreeably amusing performances from Robin Williams and Nathan Lane in this fun, if not quite essential, remake of the French comedy La Cage aux Folles.

numbered reviews: 1. Nathan Lane, I would personally like to send you a big, fat kiss of admiration.
2. An American remake with plenty of new pizazz.
3. Far less plastic than most cross-dressing comedies.
4. It's a rare event when a remake of a film rivals the greatness of the original.
5. The beauty of The Birdcage is that its jokes and its message are one and the same. These characters couldn't change themselves if they tried. And only a fool would want them to.
6. Birdcage does a remarkably good job of delivering a movie that puts its own decided spin on the tale.
7. [Not] nearly as funny as it has been made out to be.
8. Pretty funny comedy from the days when Williams didn't feel he had to be either A. TOTALLY CHARMING or B. ABSOLUTELY EVIL.
9. It is not the Broadway classic, but it's ok. Just for fun.
10. Shows no reason why it had to be made again.


question: This derivitive teen comedy tries to go for cute when it could use more bite.

numbered reviews: 1. Starting with the fact that its "high school students" look closer to 30 than 16, John Tucker Must Die is a film out of joint.
2. In the typical vein of high school teen movies full of joie de vivre, John Tucker Must Die is unadulterated fluff. Derivative but somewhat amusing.
3. [A] tart-tongued mediocrity.
4. John Tucker Must Die isn't half bad. It's about two-fifths bad, mostly toward the incoherent ending, but that ratio is... well, not bad.
5. There's something mildly charming about this cheerful revenge comedy's lack of any straightforward moral agenda.
6. This one is like watching 100 minutes of acne.
7. Hopeful cinephiles might long for pitch-black satire a la Heathers ... but this by-the-book high school revenge comedy has the spine of a wet ramen noodle.
8. ... it's so tediously formulaic, it never feels like more than a fourth-generation photocopy of the John Hughes template.
9. ... a teen payback comedy that squanders any potential it might have had on the altar of that all-important teen desire: It wants us to think it's cute.
10. This idiotic teen comedy settles for being silly and cutesy when just a little bit of snarkiness (a la Mean Girls) could have saved it.


question: The United States of Leland has its moments, but they're undermined by a muddled plot, unsympathetic characters, and frustratingly uneven performances.

numbered reviews:
1. Powerful and provocative--if perhaps a bit subdued.
2. Kevin Spacey, who produced the film, is wasted in completely unnecessary role.
3. A muddled and uninteresting psychological melodrama.
4. ... the ultimate result is like one of those college rock songs that hint at a depth that just isn't there.
5. "The United States Of Leland" deftly points out dilemmas in current American ideology that frequently escalate into tragedy.
6. Uneven drama that's too intense for kids.
7. Hoge seems to take delight in the fact that the film's conclusion is so frustratingly vague, whereas in fact it's both annoying and disappointing.
8. A very good film about the utter senselessness of murder...
9. An exasperating film about teen violence and suburban dysfunction that wears its confusion like a badge of honor.
10. What action there is in this movie takes forever to get going -- or maybe it just seems like forever because all of these characters are so unlikeable and unfathomable, and the dialogue between them is so trite and dumb.