question: Bad script and confusing plot undermine the movie's impressive visuals.

numbered reviews: 1. Works on a more human level, although more through philosophical pondering than well-defined characters.
2. Never quite gets off the ground either, since none of its characters, human or simulated, is all that soulful to begin with.
3. One of the most beautiful science-fiction thrillers ever filmed, and one of the most absorbing!
4. The kind of science fiction you ruminate over.
5. The roles are underwritten and, especially in D'Onofrio's case, overacted.
6. Never has a film deteriorated so abruptly and so completely.
7. This is fascinating stuff and would be more so if the actors brought more energy to it.
8. The Thirteenth Floor is a film school project gone awry!
9. After a slow start, this becomes more interesting, with decent character development despite obvious plot holes.
10. The movie works. And yet it fails to be a great one because of the dissatisfying last hour, which gives us predictable twists and atrocious conclusions.


question: Ben Affleck proves his directing credentials in this gripping dramatic thriller, drawing strong performances from the excellent cast and bringing working-class Boston to the screen.

numbered reviews: 1. A terrific morally-challenged crime tale aptly directed by Ben Affleck.
2. The story includes too many twists, resulting in a sense of contrivance by film's end. Yet this is still a decent, serious film that's capably directed and very nicely acted.
3. By capturing a sense of society lost, by using both the media focus and the behind closed doors denouements that seem to follow such situations, Affleck produces tragedy on an epic Greek scale and moviemaking of classic neo-noir artistry.
4. Convoluted plotting inhibits clarity, with editing that resembles cut-and-paste jobs.
5. Casey Affleck has never had a pedestal like the one his brother provides him, and he earns it.
6. A bitterly sublime neo-noir: It's Beantown, Jake. Affleck has made us breathe the rot his characters were born to die in.
7. Gone Baby Gone quietly accumulates in power, leading to one of the more subtly devastating final shots in recent memory.
8. It's as real as life and death and, just as that implies, often unpleasant to consider -- just like a meal of a hat.
9. Ben Affleck declares his rightful place as an auteur with his own artistic vision and storytelling ability. More than just showing promise, his Gone Baby Gone directorial debut promises great things for his future as a filmmaker.
10. Affleck has smartly gone and selected a place which he knows well and a source text that assays it with skill and no small sense of moral complexity.


question: The initial set-up is unbelievable, the plotting is predictable and stale, and the comedy depends on repetitive pratfalls that soon get old.

numbered reviews: 1. True to its Nickelodeon roots, each scene oozes with sight gags, oddly astute pets, and gallons of goo. For adults, the films offers a bloated Brady Bunch covered in slop.
2. Needless remake of a tepid original.
3. It's terrible.
4. [A] shrill family comedy.
5. ... it loses a good deal of humour along with its social relevance.
6. He's got eight kids, she's got 10 and Yours, Mine & Ours is completely by the numbers.
7. The script is not nearly clever or original enough and Gosnell's direction goes into panic mode each time he stages the chaos.
8. The director, Raja Gosnell, is the auteur responsible for the Scooby-Doo movies, Big Momma's House and Home Alone 3. Enough said.
9. Watching Dennis Quaid falling face down into vats of goop, getting kissed by a pig and talking baby talk in Yours, Mine and Ours is one of those experiences that causes you to question your faith in Hollywood's motives.
10. The remake of the 1968 hit comedy 'Yours, Mine & Ours' is pretty much the same movie as the 2003 remake of 'Cheaper by the Dozen,' with Dennis Quaid taking Steve Martin's place as the family patriarch and butt of several painfully unfunny, slapstick gags.


question: Both naughtier and campier than Ronald Searle's original post war series, this St. Trinian's leans on high jinks instead of performances or witty dialogue.

numbered reviews:
1. Rupert Everett also expertly mangles the plum role once inhabited by Alastair Sim.
2. Camp fun, and catnip for a demographic that British cinema doesn't often bother to please.
3. Ofsted inspectors can expect nightmares; everyone else will be mildly amused.
4. While unlikely to have anyone cheering in the stalls, St Trinian's is nowhere near the calamity it should have been, even if it comes within striking distance more than once.
5. Rowdy 12-year-old British girls might get some modicum of narcissistic pleasure from "St. Trinian's" (loosely based on Ronald Searle's WWII era cartoons), but no one else will.
6. Innocence is entirely absent from this extremely dubious addition to the big-screen adventures of Ronald Searle's cartoon creations.
7. Colin Firth's humiliation is a thing of wonder. His entire career on screen and stage is beautifully sent up before our eyes.
8. A monumentally naff film.
9. that 'jolly hockey sticks' vibe feels outmoded with the only efforts to update the concept being shorter skirts and push-up bras.
10. Heavy-handed at times and poorly plotted, but energetic and funny. A suitably undignified return to the screen for the notorious school and its out-of-control pupils.