question: Leviathan lives up to its title, offering trenchant, well-crafted social satire on a suitably grand scale.

numbered reviews: 1. It's strong work that's not always satisfying, but its silent power registers as intended, creating a hypnotic atmosphere of unrest that fuels several sensational scenes and a decidedly unsettling conclusion.
2. From its chamber-piece delicacy and bureaucratic detail to a grandeur and implacable pessimism that seem as ancient as the land itself, "Leviathan" is a distinctly Russian tragedy.
3. Zvyagintsev builds to a crescendo with the force of an ocean storm..."Leviathan" is a great, literary work of existential despair, as magnificent as its titular creature.
4. The film you expect it to be by the one-fifth mark is pretty much exactly the film it proves to be. But it's a stellar execution of that movie.
5. This is a portrait of people living under constant duress, trying to drown their sorrows in a bottle and sometimes behaving in misguided ways that will free them, if only temporarily, from their grim reality.
6. Enormously captivating, a study of oppression, human nature and the effect of the two things upon each other.
7. As harshly beautiful as the Barents Sea coastline where it is set, this parable inspired in part by the biblical tale of Job dumps more misfortune than one hapless man should ever have to endure.
8. Andrey Zvyagintsev's Oscar-nominated and vodka-soaked satire of modern Russia, which plays more like tragedy.
9. It's early in the year, but I suspect it's still not a stretch to say that the geography in Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan are some of the most quietly evocative landscapes of the year.
10. Call it what you like - a modern Russian epic, a crime drama, a black comedy or a scream in the dark - Leviathan is a shaggy masterpiece.


question: Fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how Metallica survives one of their more turbulent periods.

numbered reviews: 1. A mesmerizing spectacle.
2. If you're not a fan of Metallica, after this movie you will be.
3. Berlinger and Sinofsky are very good at both capturing the specifics of these men's quarrels and making them universal.
4. Transcends the rockumentary genre and becomes something uniquely its own.
5. Keeping the docu from feeling like a whine-fest is Hetfield, whose sharp-humored, powerful presence is always magnetic.
6. Less Therapeutica and more Alcoholica would have been welcome.
7. This is an engrossing film for anyone interested in the ongoing saga of the human condition.
8. To go through with this film took guts, honesty and even a kind of nobility -- and all of us who are fascinated by the unsolvable quandaries of pop culture owe the band for that.
9. The quartet appears to be mightily lacking in the brains and judgment departments.
10. Great theater.


question: Rob Zombie doesn't bring many new ideas to the table in Halloween, making it another bloody disappointment for fans of the franchise.

numbered reviews: 1. The set-up is tediously slow, while the later murders are packed so tightly it's like watching a blender on high speed.
2. Adeptly packaged in all facets of production, Halloween is nicely cast with a combination of Zombie regulars, familiar faces and compelling newcomers and satisfyingly constructed with camerawork that heightens the suspense on the page.
3. Rob Zombie's Halloween remake isn't scary, which is really all you need to know about it.
4. Revamping the influential 1978 shocker Halloween for a new generation of viewers, director Rob Zombie offers a film with more sex, more violence, no humor and zero scares.
5. Contains dialogue so nasty and stupid, you'd swear (right along with the characters) that the booker for Jerry Springer wrote it (Zombie did).
6. Trick or treat? Rob Zombie's "re-imagining" of John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic Halloween must sadly be consigned to the former category and it's not even a very interesting, suspenseful trick at that.
7. More of a Valentine to the original than a recycled cash-grab.
8. The most depressing thing of all is that Michael will likely survive even this dire endeavour.
9. The new Halloween has sympathy for the Devil, but not enough.
10. Rob Zombie's lousy remake of John Carpenter's 1978 slasher classic Halloween adds to the argument that horror movies are losing their box-office appeal because filmmakers no longer know how -- or have any desire -- to create genuine suspense.


question: Smart and inventive, The Arbor offers some intensely memorable twists on tired documentary tropes.

numbered reviews:
1. It's an appalling indictment of family dysfunction but there are shards of optimism, particularly the noble actions of the self-sacrificing couple who acted as foster parents for the adolescent Lorraine.
2. It's a powerful story, but muddled by the nagging distraction of having these voices lip-synched by actors.
3. Barnard has created a modernist, compassionate biopic: a tribute to her memory and her embattled community.
4. Original mixture of techniques makes this documentary provocative yet moving.
5. Brings the Dunbar story to life through a technique known as "verbatim theater," in which actors lip-synch testimony from the real people they're portraying.
6. Moving, bold, unconventional and impeccably staged, The Arbor is a worthy tribute to a powerfully artistic voice.
7. Barnard's boldest move is to unveil the irresponsible chaos of the playwright's private life, and to make us wonder if the art was worth the suffering, after all.
8. Intense, startlingly creative. . .bio-doc. . .and searing portrait of destructive inheritance of addiction and domestic violence within . . .one family. . .and neighborhood.
9. From the sublimely ridiculous to the simply sublime, The Arbor exists at the intersection of life and art, reality and performance, documentary and fiction, and it explores that terrain in a way no other movie quite has before.
10. An epic piece of theatrical detachment