question: While surprisingly sweeter and warm-hearted than previous Farrelly outings, Shallow Hal is also less funny and more bland.

numbered reviews: 1. Shallow Hal is the most endearing portrait of outcasts since last year's Ghost World.
2. The key to enjoying Shallow Hal is to discard as many expectations as you can about a Farelly Brothers film.
3. When the final act descends into preachiness, it's nearly earned the indulgence.
4. In delivering their message, the Farrelly Brothers seem to have compromised their nothing-is-sacred comedy spirit, but at least their hearts are in the right place.
5. There's just about enough charm and laughs here to keep Farrelly fans happy. Even the fat ones.
6. [An] insulting new comedy from Bobby and Peter Farrelly.
7. The film is not as funny as their best, but fascinates in the discomforting way it foregrounds the brothers' normally buried, facile moral dialectic.
8. The Farrellys take an artistic step backward with this soft, disappointingly sentimental comedy about the true nature of beauty; they seem to have forgotten their roots in the outrageous and gross-out.
9. With the relatively untested Black coming on awfully strong, the lack of directorial finesse lets the enterprise down, creating some clunky scenes and dead air where laughs might have been expected.
10. Romantic comedy is pretty tame for Farrelly Bros.


question: It may not rank with Scorsese's best work, but Shutter Island's gleefully unapologetic genre thrills represent the director at his most unrestrained.

numbered reviews: 1. When the big reveal hits, it's the first big yawn of the film, and the tension dies a sudden death as we wait impatiently for the film to tie up all of its loose ends.
2. Shutter Island, is even less 'important' than The Departed. But Scorsese is clearly enjoying himself with this old-school throwback to thrillers past. And it's hard not to revel in it with him.
3. Multiplex entertainment this distinctive and provocative doesn't come along every day: it's a head trip well worth taking. [Blu-ray]
4. Shutter Island, after an involving and entertaining beginning, settles for a victory by judges' decision rather than a final knockout.
5. A basically just kidding Boston offshore yarn featuring fleeing assorted lost and found psychos, born again Nazis, and Red Scare gulag rehab for unrepentant communists on the loose that, well, doesn't amount to a hill of baked beans.
6. ...a creepy psychological thriller...short on psychology, characterization, suspense, tension, or thrills.
7. Por momentos excesiva y algo decepcionante, resulta de todos modos un inquietante ejercicio sobre la locura servido con gran habilidad por Martin Scorsese.
8. Ilha do Medo é O Iluminado de Martin Scorsese.
9. Shutter Island is second-tier Scorsese, but not one of his misfires. It does the gothic horror genre proud, but fails to transcend it.
10. As psychological horror thrillers go, it might be flawed, but it's a technically masterful piece of work.


question: The Wonders offers a charming coming-of-age tale that doubles as a quietly effective tribute to a vanishing way of life.

numbered reviews: 1. A likable, if sentimental movie.
2. The drama is a bit episodic, but the performances are nuanced, and there's a lot of incisive observation about family dynamics, as well as bonus tips on beekeeping.
3. The plot may be gossamer-thin but the characters are sturdily drawn and life on the farm engrossingly evoked.
4. A beguilingly odd little coming-of-age tale set on the isolated farmstead of a family of beekeepers.
5. Aiming to capture a young teen's sense of belonging in a family determined to steer its own course, the pic has intermittent rewards yet isn't weighty enough.
6. Rohrwacher creates a moving, unsentimental portrait of a dying way of life.
7. The episodic storytelling style can seem haphazard but the writer-director Alice Rohrwacher succeeds wonderfully well in capturing the richness of the kids' lives in their own remote and often brutal world.
8. Wise beyond its years, like the teenage protag Gelsomina, Le Meraviglie (The Wonders) is a wistful but no-tears swan song recounting the disappearance of traditional rural lifestyle in Italy.
9. Like a rural Fellini, Rohrwacher mixes the mundane with the absurd to create a sometimes fabulous tale that always feels palpably real.
10. Without any of the self-importance, maudlin sentimentality or winking reflexivity that characterises most coming-of-age tales, Alice Rohrwacher's second feature is a patient argument for, and quiet toast to, a rapidly disappearing way of life.


question: A stylish and more focused sequel to The Transporter, the movie is over-the-top fun for fans of the first movie.

numbered reviews:
1. Besson doesn't fiddle with the first movie's formula -- impossible car chases punctuated by impossible martial arts sequences.
2. Careens wildly off course before finally running out of gas.
3. An embarrassment of giggles.
4. ...the plot has some crucially unclear exposition, and the stunt concepts are insanely implausible...but, somehow, that doesn't stop the whole from being absurdly pleasurable
5. If you actually go into this picture attempting to find any common sense in its plotline, you might want to have your head examined afterwards...
6. How well does the film succeed in what it seeks to accomplish? Well enough that I probably won't mind a 'Transporter 3.'
7. ..if it had the gumption to elevate its marketable value and challenge the notion of not being just another brainless and bombastic entry into the "crash and bash" sweepstakes
8. A vehicle for Statham to drive fast cars and beat the hell out of people, TRANSPORTER 2 provides a much-needed fix for action fans stuck in the late summer doldrums.
9. Statham still oozes virile charm but his unbelievable feats make him a super hero fantasy character which is not what audiences expect or want
10. In this second lap the brainless busyness and gaudy excess amount to utter overkill...nothing more than pointless speed and empty action.