question: Despite its stylized and impressive sets, this horror-monster movie mish-mash suffers from endless cliches and wildly implausible plotlines.

numbered reviews: 1. If you gotta rip something off, might as well be a classic.
2. it isn't just tedious, it isn't just silly, no, it goes the distance until it actually becomes a personal affront to the sensibilities of everyone concerned
3. The first-time director Bruce Hunt is no stranger to inspired and stylish productions, but his horror-action film fails to inject new life into tired territory.
4. A turd held up to the flickering bulb of the projector would be a marked improvement.
5. Its job is to deliver a few jolty thrills and a couple of laughs and wrap things up before it starts to get too dumb.
6. Ten things I learned watching The Cave. 1. 'Beneath heaven lies hell. Beneath hell lies the cave.' 2. Beneath that lies the theater showing The Cave.
7. Vast and unexplainable, with plenty of places to hide. You'll want to find one.
8. Bruce Hunt's directing debut displays a cold-blooded efficiency and refreshing lack of Michael Bay-ish hyperactivity in what is otherwise a solid if unspectacular action-horror flick.
9. The best part is that it takes place in a couple of locales -- spelunking in a cave and diving underwater -- that we don't normally go, unless it's a nature documentary.
10. This latest exercise in claustrophobic mayhem is hole-y awful.


question: A more-miss -than-hit affair, Super Troopers will most likely appeal to those looking for something silly.

numbered reviews: 1. Jay Chandrasekhar helms this wacky vehicle with all the conviction of a defective police siren...feels more like an excuse for Chandrasekhar and his fratboy Broken Lizard comedy troupe players to merge and serve up their pet project just to kill some time
2. Just a long string of high school-style pranks and hazing exercises. And as with such gags in real life, they're never as much fun for those who aren't taking part.
3. The movie is as juvenile and silly as it looks. But it's also funnier than you would expect.
4. . Curiously, Super Troopers suffers because it doesn't have enough vices to merit its 103-minute length.
5. Tears out at a refreshingly reckless pace, then gradually settles into a law-abiding speed. [Blu-ray]
6. Sex and drug jokes abound in lowbrow comedy.
7. Filme amalucado, mas com grande espírito de diversăo. É incrível que o filme consiga estabelecer tamanha empatia por seus heróis, já que estes săo imbecis e só fazem besteira.
8. ...doesn't have enough plot or successful jokes to keep it afloat.
9. This is one of those films that makes movie critics embarassed to admit they liked it without first smoking a joint.
10. It made me yearn for the golden era of January, when Slackers was released.


question: While not the classic its predecessor is, this update is well-acted and conjures a chilling resonance.

numbered reviews: 1. The remake shakes down as a conventionally plotted thriller. It's the performances that make it exceptional.
2. While Demme's Manchurian Candidate may be unnecessary, it's a worthy homage to the original; lacking the first film's spark but containing smarts of its own.
3. Demme's filmmaking has lost none of its jazz.
4. With an inchoate admonition implanted in its aggrieved, post-modern heart, Demme's Manchurian Candidate is blippy and fractured and smeared with color.
5. A case of smart and talented people trying to jam a Cold War square into a Gulf War circle.
6. It shunts through the material, doing some interesting synthesizing, some genetic recombining, but it all adds up to something less powerful and interesting than the original.
7. This one plays more like a contemporary techno-thriller with ultra-clammy '70s conspiracy thriller overtones, and Demme milks the atmosphere of pervasive, sleep-deprived dread beautifully.
8. A fine and thought-provoking film in its own right.
9. This humorless and nonsensical update of The Manchurian Candidate - a total misread of Frankenheimer's classic original - never quite engages, devolving the original's camp and satire into self-serious melodrama.
10. A rather decent imitation in the end with political subtext and very good performances.


question: Chweneyagae's powerful performance carries this simple yet searing tale of a shantytown teenager's redemption.

numbered reviews:
1. At the heart is a breathtaking performance by South African actor Presley Chweneyagae.
2. The violence makes Tsotsi's character a little more challenging to embrace and makes the transformation tougher to achieve, but it's more rewarding in the long run.
3. This remarkable movie means to shake you, and boy does it ever.
4. The story's lame, condesending objective dictates that bringing-up-baby histrionics will melt the savage beast.
5. While some of the scenes are a bit melodramatic ... [Director] Hood does a terrific job drawing the audience into Tsotsi's world of violence, anger and, eventually, growth and maturation.
6. ...a thug-rehabilitation movie that goes to exaggerated lengths to redeem its criminal antihero.
7. What a simple and yet profound story this is.
8. Tsotsi does more than illustrate African hardships. It's a powerful appeal for us to appreciate the value of every human life, from infants to hardened of criminals.
9. If Hood's direction were anything more than blatantly cruel and crushingly obvious -- or if Chweneyagae were capable of more than one expression -- the film might have a reason for existing.
10. A mixture of thrilling documentary-style realism and Hollywood hokum, Tsotsi leaves you all but tasting the orange dust of Joburg's shantytowns and moved by the harrowing journey Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) is forced to take.