question: A life-affirming, if saccharine, epic treatment of a spirit-lifting figure in sports history.

numbered reviews: 1. Screened at Loews Lincoln Square
2. It has the fine performances and dramatic heft of a late-fall picture, but drops the self-importance and plays up the feel-goodness the way the best summer crowd-pleasers do.
3. Brings every underdog theme out of the stable, making a movie with familiar themes seem as handsome as a thoroughbred, albeit one that has trouble in the homestretch.
4. Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit is for the ages. Ross' version is designed to last only until the next Oscar season rolls around.
5. Ultimately, the highlight of Seabiscuit is its memorable performances, superior to the merely passable screenplay they must support.
6. It's too long and too sappy, but it manages to be fine entertainment nonetheless.
7. With such mythical elements, director Gary Ross puts together a warm and handsome production, a beautiful cast and a well structured script that has the right chemistry for a mainstream shot in the arm.
8. "Seabiscuit" isn't the unabashed masterpiece that I had hoped for but it is an exciting, well-crafted sports drama about an unlikely athlete.
9. Likable but hopelessly folksy.
10. Even though Seabiscuit is a little on the long side, it works more often than not.


question: With its delightfully retro production design, Computer Chess is an inventive, intelligent, and humorous comedy that celebrates the eccentricity and uniqueness of its subject.

numbered reviews: 1. Dryly humorous and wonderfully weird, this is a preternaturally mundane evocation of early 80s nerdery and an almost scary peek at the history of AI.
2. Shot in archaic black-and-white video, Bujalski's weird, sly period film is highly entertaining both as ensemble comedy and an off-the-wall head trip.
3. Entirely original and unprecedented -- a formalist coup that is at once visionary and retro, thoughtful and hilarious.
4. Computer Chess will make you scratch your head and wonder what it's up to - but there's no doubt you'll never have seen a film quite like it.
5. In the end, you simply wish the characters (and the actors) were in a more subtle and focused film. "Computer Chess" plays a risky game. Unfortunately, it loses.
6. A supremely intelligent, beautifully constructed film, interweaving comedy and character, satire and subtext
7. Computer Chess is one of the most original and satisfying movies I've seen in ages.
8. Bujalski gives us a glitchy, geeky 80s Marienbad populated by sex addicts and lolcats, with results that are both funny ha ha, and the other kind.
9. Throw in the bad haircuts, clip-on ties, and some earnest theorizing about the possible uses of these new machines and you have what is apparently meant to be a dry satire.
10. It becomes something that's hard to decipher; hard to put into words in a review. That's a good thing.


question: Mickey Rourke gives a performance for the ages in The Wrestler, a richly affecting, heart-wrenching yet ultimately rewarding drama.

numbered reviews: 1. It's a hell of a performance -- and a hellish one -- in a film that isn't entirely sure what to do with it.
2. The balance and nuance of this portrait hold realities that perhaps only Rourke can fully understand.
3. Rourke and Tomei bring a tender, lived-in honesty to their sad roles.
4. Director, Darren Aronofsky, and the writer, Robert D. Siegel, have turned the story of this washed-up faux gladiator into a film of authentic beauty and commanding consequence.
5. The movie feeds off Rourke, who plays a genuinely decent guy who never lets his dawning self-awareness interfere with his responsibility to give the fans a show.
6. The Wrestler is about one thing - Mickey Rourke - and that makes the movie both fascinating and limited.
7. Darren Aronofsky tells a solid character-driven drama with simplicity and impact.
8. Director Aronofsky gets all the details right in a movie that feels like a tribute to so many who were gone too soon: Curt Hennig, Road Warrior Hawk, Rick Rude, et al...this one's for you.
9. The best wrestling movie ever made. I'm sorry, No Holds Barred, you've been topped.
10. Director Darren Aronofsky puts himself up as a major contender with this film, based on a really excellent and uncompromising screenplay by Robert D. Siegel.


question: End of Watch has the energy, devotion to characters, and charismatic performances to overcome the familiar pitfalls of its genre and handheld format.

numbered reviews:
1. ... a maddeningly entertaining piece of pulp fiction, a solid B-movie artfully distressed for the sort of middlebrow audience that might dismiss Dredd 3D as a cinematized first person shooter game. Which means that film critics like me will love it.
2. Gyllenhaal and Peńa work together like a well-oiled machine, as if they really had spent months or years in each other's company. Their dialogue feels raw and spontaneous.
3. The extreme juxtaposition of a large and loving Mexican family..and the cold-blooded psychopathy of Mexican drug cartels spilling into L.A.'s South Central neighborhood...really slams home the value of a life often treated cheaply.
4. Shallow down inside, "End of Watch" is a music-video Frappuccino of quick cuts, sparkling banter, serial crises, grisly violence and tongue-jerk profanity.
5. End of Watch is so inventive, and so anchored by two highly enjoyable performances, that it makes for one of the more singular, if not entirely successful, entries in a genre that often suffers from stale sameness.
6. End of Watch is one thriller where the adrenaline rush, considerable as it is, is almost always put in the service of character. Happily, the character on display turns out to be considerable, too.
7. Both actors are marvelous -- this may be the most nuanced and far-ranging performance Gyllenhaal has ever given -- and writer-director David Ayer is unapologetically frank about the dangers these men face.
8. Gyllenhaal and Pena have the sort of buddy-movie chemistry film directors can only dream of capturing.
9. Intense, gripping, funny, and absolutely fantastic.
10. I'm not sure who appointed David Ayer poet laureate for the LAPD, but at least he takes the job seriously.