question: Solid performances lift this drama to a higher level.

numbered reviews: 1. Streep shines!
2. Streep's work elevates what is otherwise a middling melodrama that's part coming-to-terms-with-your-family story and part 'few-months-to-live' plot.
3. Streep's performance mesmerizes, but it is Zellweger's engrossing portrayal as the selfish daughter that sells her as a serious Hollywood actress.
4. One True Thing has the most honest, layered and authentic family dynamic of any American movie in recent memory.
5. Instead of being just about coping with cancer, it tells an interesting story about a young woman coming to terms with the fact that her parents are not who she always thought they were.
6. Even director Carl Franklin...can't prevent One True Thing from descending into chick-movie hell.
7. The film is helped, by wonderful performances by two of the top talents in the business in Streep and Hurt, and Zellweger stays right with them.
8. One True Thing demonstrates that the power of simple things, the transcendent nature of the ordinary, can make for riveting filmmaking.
9. Thanks to Carl Franklin's clever direction, which always stays real close to the characters, what could have been a TV movie-of-the-week becomes a thought-provoking and touching film.
10. Brings extraordinary honesty and keen emotional pitch to the family drama.


question: Despite strong performances from Bruce Willis and Mos Def, 16 Blocks is a shopworn entry in the buddy-action genre.

numbered reviews: 1. Idiotic, for sure, but what saves 16 Blocks is Richard Donner's slick direction and the occasional flash of humor you get in most Bruce Willis flicks, whether it's in the script or not. He can scarcely say a line without smirking.
2. Contrived to an excruciating degree and mawkishly emotional, 16 Blocks is a manufactured and predictable action-thriller that conveniently forgets all logic.
3. The two characters have the luxury of real, reflective time to fill, something so rare in an age of zip-bang-crash-zap action-pic editing as to be classified as 'old-fashioned.'
4. It's nice to see director Richard Donner back in action, but his style yearns for a tight, effective screenplay -- something that is not provided here.
5. It's a popcorn picture that is a perfect pick for a cold or rainy March day.
6. Basically an outdoor version of Assault on Precinct 13, but though it's...just a popcorn movie, it's an expertly crafted, enjoyable accompaniment to the kernels.
7. takes its premise and runs it straight into the ground with an insouciant gusto
8. The weary Willis and the whiner Def outnumbered and outgunned in a maze of concrete and heavy traffic by desperate cops gone very bad.
9. A strong action movie with a vicious punch and well defined, interesting characters .
10. An action thriller exactly like every other.


question: As a visually stunning tribute to lives lost in tragedy, World Trade Center succeeds unequivocally, and it is more politically muted than many of Stone's other works.

numbered reviews: 1. It's a straightforward, respectful, carefully upbeat survival story and tribute to the victims, survivors and rescuers of that day five years ago that changed our world forever.
2. [A] humanist movie of enormous empathy.
3. With this unflinching account of that day, Stone has made the most important film of his long career.
4. Even when Stone is clumsy, he at least seems to recognize that he can't possibly re-create the experience of these policemen: The best he can do is put it onstage, reminding us that this happened to someone else and not to us.
5. The filmmaker and his colleagues have brought the sensibility of an old-fashioned Hollywood disaster movie, and a mediocre one at that.
6. Stone takes one of the most tragic events of this century and focuses on the hope, humanity and determination that also held sway amid the darkness.
7. Stone slyly sneaks virtuoso moments into his story, bringing a modest elegance to a script that frequently feels creakily old-fashioned.
8. The old Stone was not exactly a bargain, but he was never this pious or this conventional.
9. Stone and Berloff give us time to meditate on this disaster, finding optimism in its aftermath. No filmmakers will put together the whole puzzle surrounding that dreadful day, but they've handed us a crucial piece.
10. Weighing in on "World Trade Center" is difficult; it's well-crafted, but it's also sluggish and meek.


question: An undisputed masterpiece and perhaps Hollywood's quintessential statement on love and romance, Casablanca has only improved with age, boasting career-defining performances from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

numbered reviews:
1. The casting for this movie seems influenced by divine inspiration.
2. One of the best screenplays ever filmed.
3. One of the handful of films that lives up to its hype. This movie defines "classic."
4. What more can a person say about a movie that defines the word 'classic'?
5. It is one of the most timeless of all movies in terms of topic, emotion, acting and motivation.
6. Every bit the classic.
7. Casablanca is a must-have DVD. It is a nearly flawless presentation of a film that has set the standard for "timeless."
8. This is arguably my favorite film of all time, and I could spend hours extolling its virtues.
9. This movie is like Hamlet in that, even if you haven't seen either one of them, you are probably familiar with much of the dialogue.
10. The classic and much-loved romantic melodrama Casablanca (1942), always found on top-ten lists of films,