1. Game of Shadows makes better use of director Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes on steroids" concept.
2. More Rambo than Miss Marple ... Audiences will flock to see a dizzying swirl of furious fisticuffs, blazing gunfights, and theater-rocking explosions. Me, I'll be home watching my Columbo box sets.
3. Fantastical, furious and really funny -- even better than the 2009 film which revived the Holmes franchise.
4. It's all bigger and louder and so much less.
5. There's no fun quite as shallow as the fun of watching actors goof with one another, which is pretty much the single card that A Game of Shadows has to play.
6. Same Victorian clutter, same overstuffed frames, same Guy Ritchie directorial hyperactivity.
7. If you liked the first film, you should like this one as well. It plays almost like a second half of a four-hour movie, after all.
8. You don't need a deerstalker and a magnifying glass to track the subtext of this fatiguing Arthur Conan Don't Ask-Don't Tell 'bromance.'
9. In an act of criminal negligence, Ritchie has wasted Robert Downey Jr. in a sequel that eliminates smarts in favor of relentless headbanging.
10. ... a singularly joyless endeavor, a murky mishmash of skullduggery, ho-hum CG and formulaic cliff-hanger escapes that would have been old hat around the time of 'The Great Train Robbery.'
Consensus: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a good yarn thanks to its well-matched leading men but overall stumbles duplicating the well-oiled thrills of the original.
1. Definitely a labor of love for all involved.
2. The story is good, the comedy is goofy but still solid.
3. Absurd and convincing at the same time.
4. Wag the Dog could have been a one-joke scenario, but it's consistently rescued from monotony by a smart script.
5. Wicked, poisonous fun.
6. One belly laugh after another.
7. Wag the Dog nonetheless makes a perfect bookend piece for Network.
8. As a cautionary tale, Wag the Dog may find itself somewhat in the position of preaching to the converted, but the pews will radiate with the sounds of laughter.
9. Hoffman, De Niro and Heche all seem to have fun with David Mamet's screenplay, as do supporting players Denis Leary, William H. Macy and Willie Nelson.
10. A bright idea well realized by director Barry Levinson.
Consensus: Smart, well-acted, and uncomfortably prescient political satire from director Barry Levinson and and all-star cast.
1. A strikingly constructed, handsomely HD-filmed museum display piece.
2. ...undoubtedly possesses the feel of an overlong and distinctly self-indulgent piece of work...
3. It's not an elegant piece of filmmaking.
4. Bad biographical dramas try to tell you everything about a person's life; good biographical dramas leave you inspired to find out the things not on-screen. Che is, by that yardstick, a very good biographical drama.
5. 'Che' fails to image a being of flesh who elicits empathy.
6. A lengthy and complex portrait of Che as a revolutionary, a leader of a guerilla band, a doctor, a believer in obedience and loyalty, and a man willing to suffer for his beliefs.
7. An epic life becomes an epic movie in Steven Soderbergh's brilliant four-hour-plus look at two chapters in the life of revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.
8. Che is by no means a breezy sit, but no matter what your politics, it's a bracing tonic in a season of flaccid Oscar bait.
9. A measure of the movie's strength and weakness is its reliance on Del Toro's charisma in the central role.
10. Soderbergh's most ambitious film to date.

Consensus: Though lengthy and at times plodding, Soderbergh's vision and Benicio Del Toro's understated performance ensure that Che always fascinates.