Q: 1. Busts your holiday sweets-stuffed gut with farcical laughter.
2. a rare family comedy for grown-ups that's worth your time.
3. If this movie doesn't put you in the Christmas spirit, you're either dead...or Jewish.
4. Yet another of those dysfunctional-family-at-the-holidays movies that aim to elicit smiles of recognition but are more likely to make you wince in pain.
5. What's striking and, to my bloodshot eye, welcome about this year's edition, The Family Stone, is the rather chic urbanity with which writer-director Thomas Bezucha serves up the old genre standby.
6. The plot is motored more by convenience than credible character behavior and for much of the time, the cockles of our hearts remain unwarmed.
7. Almost everything about The Family Stone is so schematic and prefabricated that it should come with its own easy-to-follow blueprint.
8. A potentially interesting tale flailing haplessly in the quicksand of holiday-movie formula, this domestic dramedy from writer-director Thomas Bezucha is most potently read in reverse of its intentions.
9. Sarah Jessica Parker's nimble performance is reason alone to see this creaky fairy tale about a Manhattan executive marrying into an unhappy family.
10. I love it dearly. I have seen it twice. I will see it again. If there is any hope for the longevity of movies, it will become an annual holiday classic.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: This family holiday dramedy features fine performances but awkward shifts of tone.
1. Episodic and occasionally annoying and bland, the movie goes melodramatic long before the finale.
2. A parcel of high calibre stars isn't enough to save the morbid and dragging A Thousand Acres.
3. While many scenes are passionately acted and directed, the overall film is disjointed, and lacks a logical progression of time.
4. Little more than slightly affecting.
5. It has treachery, sexual abuse, sexual infidelity, dysfunctional families, repressed memories, sibling rivalry, storms, hatred, jealousy, you name it. What it lacks is more than sketchy motivation for the characters' actions.
6. Sinks it well below what it should achieve.
7. Although the plot is undeniably overwrought at times, the characters remain strong and reliable, and it's their believability that pulls us through.
8. Enter A Thousand Acres at your own risk.
9. Pfeiffer excepted, the filmmakers reap little from the rich soil they have been handed.
10. You'll be shocked to discover how much of the novel's richness has been lost.
Consensus: A Thousand Acres makes disappointingly sudsy stuff out of the source material, but benefits from solid performances by a strong cast.
Q: 1. It's simultaneously a lot more expensive and a lot cheaper.
2. Clever and impressive. Slow-paced scary. Does not disappoint.
3. For those able to roll with its slow-burn suggestiveness, this superior installment inspires a not-especially-pleasant, Pavlovian level of twitch response that few horror franchises can muster.
4. You have to have seen the first one in order to make any sense out of this one. For those who haven't it is a muddled mess
5. Once again, somebody is being haunted by a demon, and once again the demon seems less like the Prince of Darkness than the King of the Whoopee Cushion.
6. Less scary than a toaster.
7. Even knowing what's likely to come -- the doors opening on their own, the skeptical characters scoffing at metaphysical explanations, the unheeded warnings from paranormally gifted guests -- doesn't make it any less nailbiting to watch.
8. In classic fashion, Paranormal Activity 2 repeats its predecessor on a slightly bigger scale to considerably lesser effect.
9. Just when we're ready to write the whole thing off as a waste of time, Paranormal Activity 2 steps up to deliver a quietly brilliant ninth inning save.
10. can't quite evoke the escalating dread and moments of sheer terror that Peli orchestrated so maliciously in the original film, but it still delivers more than its share of tension and scares
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: Paranormal Activity 2 doesn't cover any new ground, but its premise is still scary -- and in some respects, it's a better film than the original.
1. Basically, what Sphere delivers is a mediocre Outer Limits TV script resting atop a massive, needlessly complex superstructure of overplotting, high-dollar f/x and banal head games.
2. Even though they lose it somewhat in end, the film has so much intelligence and energy than it is well worth seeing.
3. Sphere winds up just a load of balls.
4. The only excellence is in the acting, and even then the screenplay puts the characters through so many U-turns that dramatic momentum is impossible.
5. Making yet again the mistake that more is more, director Barry Levinson piles on the concepts with such increasing rapidity that clarity takes a back seat to spectacle, and believability is stretched to the breaking point.
6. Sphere is a high concept, overly calculated, expensive, long, badly written, and terribly concluded waste of time.
7. Director Barry Levinson still has his strong visual sense -- both the infinite water and ultimate confinement are effectively creepy -- but the story starts dragging about halfway through.
8. It is an annoying and distracting movie, where the actors lose all of their prospect for existing, and the story loses all faith in the material and gives up just as it seems to begin.
9. Cool premise and eerie buildup from the first hour, ultimately downshifts into an unsatisfying film that drags long past its bedtime, and turns into a gobbledygook of psychological head games and illusions.
10. Somewhere out there, maybe there's a small cadre of film-goers who will appreciate Sphere's dubious charms, but I'm not among them.
Consensus: Sphere features an A-level cast working with B-grade material, with a story seen previously in superior science-fiction films.
Q: 1. It's not Miyazaki's best work, but it is leagues beyond any traditional 2-D animation out of 3-D-mad Hollywood lately, and more beguiling than anything Disney's done in ages.
2. A gorgeous, life-affirming piece whose anti-war message is particularly timely.
3. Emphatically passionate and fraught with greater meaning.
4. The visual power of Miyazaki's animation is as strong as ever, but it's all for naught when you can't make heads or tails of the story on screen.
5. Glitches in storytelling and stunt casting cannot overshadow the wondrous sights that Miyazaki doles out for our approval.
6. The story works on many levels, including as an anti-war fable, but its central theme is about the matchless power of love.
7. While there's no denying Miyazaki's visual flair and tip-top draughtsmanship, I found myself less than enchanted by the mile-high convolutions of the plot, and frankly bored by the final half-hour.
8. Miyazaki's expertise at drafting, along with his eye for detail and ability to infuse a story with heart, results in a wonderfully entertaining film.
9. Howl's Moving Castle moves -- in short, choppy, jumpy jerks that will never make anyone forget how fluid the truly great hand-drawn cartoons look by comparison.
10. With such an unfocused, impenetrable center, the film grows dull.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A:
Consensus: Exquisitely illustrated by master animator Miyazaki, Howl's Moving Castle will delight children with its fantastical story and touch the hearts and minds of older viewers as well.