Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
For an ostensibly soul-deep movie like this to work, we need more than smirks and scowls.

Name : Linda Holmes / Alias : NPR
It's fun to watch Chris Rock; it's just fun. And there are parts of this film where it's fun to watch him in exactly the ways he wants it to be.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's a slap-happy movie and often scurrilously funny - the sound of a gifted comic mind finally finding its onscreen voice.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Rock's ambitious passion project - he wrote, directed and stars in it - is a bawdy, uninhibited yet thoughtful social satire about fame vs. artistic fulfillment.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Top Five is a reminder that as often as comedy fails us, sometimes it's our best hope for resuscitation. Seeing it at the end of a crap week, I suddenly felt I could breathe again.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
An innovative take on familiar material, Top Five is an exquisitely paced, rich, idiosyncratic, satirical, yet deeply moving free-form comedy about a Hollywood star who is shadowed for one day by a New York Times reporter.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Rock has said that he wanted to make a movie that captures the energy of his stand-up. Top Five fits the bill.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"Top Five" has the bright, high-gloss feel of the most delicious wish-fulfillment fantasies, but it derives its spiky, propulsive energy from the adamantly forthright figure at its center.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
The sweetest surprise in this raunchy comic ride is how artfully Rock lets down his guard. His confident, prowling wit as a stand-up has finally found its way to the screen, enhanced by a bracing vulnerability.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
[Rock is] still not all the way there in "Top Five," his third effort as writer-director-star. But the movie has so many laughs it hardly matters.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Rock is on a roll again.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Just when it seemed like Chris Rock had already done plenty for the culture, along comes his latest work as a writer and director, "Top Five." And it's one of the most vibrant, sly romantic comedies this year.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
A disorganized, dawdling mess of a movie that is rarely anything less than charming.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Welcome back, Chris Rock.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The mess never coheres, but it sends off you on a high anyway.

Name : David Haglund / Alias : Slate
Extremely enjoyable .

Name : Anna Silman / Alias : Salon.com
Rock still hasn't figured out exactly what he wants you to think of him, but the way the film reflects that uncertainty may be the most interesting thing about it.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
In "Top Five," you sense Rock trying to load all these disparate talents onto a conventional romantic-comedy structure. It's a close call, but it holds.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
The movie marks the first time Rock's stand-up persona - cutting, vulnerable, afraid of no sacred cows - has survived intact on the way to the multiplex. That alone is reason for fans to celebrate.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
With "Top Five," Rock has finally made the transition to true movie stardom.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Top Five finds Rock in an elevated form, at 49. Things change, sometimes for the better.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
What lingers hours later aren't just the laughs but the people.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
Like Rock's best stand-up shows, Top Five mixes the sweet with the salty, the naughty with the remarkably kind. It celebrates the darkly hilarious with the light of whip-smart observations.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
It can be delightful, intelligent, crude, clumsy and culturally tone-deaf, depending on which scene is rolling by. One minute it's a major letdown, the next minute a joy to watch.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
It can be hard for a movie to dwell on the problems of the rich and famous without seeming a touch self-serving, but Rock always keeps things in perspective.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The writing is strong enough that when the humor gives way to drama in the second half, there's enough at stake to keep us interested, although Rock still has plenty of jokes in store for the finale.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
To the writing, Rock brings the discipline of his stand-up. Even with some improvisation, there is not one throwaway line in this fat-free script.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
"Top Five" is a funny movie, but Rock has his sights set higher than lowbrow, and for the most part, he succeeds.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Top Five is Rock's most accomplished work yet, a truly personal story whose comedic riffs on love, race, sex, and celebrity are carefully woven into a credible romantic plot.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
Chris Rock wrote, directed, and stars in this genial, splendidly constructed, occasionally hilarious comic drama with a reflexive twist.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
You come away from it with the thrilling sensation that you're seeing an artist you thought you knew reinvent himself.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
A romantic comedy that's also an extended riff on art, identity, authenticity and what it means to be a black entertainer .

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Mr. Rock has made a pyrotechnic pinwheel of a personal comedy, and he's had the wisdom to share it with a strong co-star. While he sends sparks flying every which way, Rosario Dawson keeps the story grounded in calm intelligence and classic romance.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
"Top Five" may be Chris Rock's biggest and boldest film as a director and writer, but a sharper, smarter, realer script would have made it far more than just a lazy, lightweight laughfest.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Richard Roeper.com
A seriously funny, semi-autobiographical film that might be the most accomplished work Chris Rock has ever done for the big screen.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
On the surface, a lost-artist comedy in the vein of Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, but more deeply, a referendum on the dead-end choices Rock himself might be feeling.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
You'll likely leave the theater smiling. And when's the last time you cold say that about a Chris Rock movie?

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The movie, which alternates between hilariously vulgar gags and some electric improvs and riffs by Rock and his cast of all-stars, has the crackle and pop of a live performance - it energizes you.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Raunchy in extremis, often funny and at times touching, "Top Five" is Chris Rock's sincere attempt to craft a film career largely detached from his stand-up clowning.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Rock's fast-talking rhythms are all over this movie, and they lift it up; it's like dropping in on a party full of funny people, and leaving before the evening fades.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
As an actor, Rock doesn't create much of a spark with Dawson, and as a director, he tends to let scenes go on too long.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
A classic example of a documentary that discovers its subject in the process of its making.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
If John Steinbeck were writing in the second decade of the 21st century, "The Overnighters" is precisely the story he'd want to tell.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
[A] tough-minded, admirably unresolved film .

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The movie might seem like just another liberal do-gooder profile, yet a shocker ending throws new and disturbing light on the situation, amplifying the Christian themes at the heart of the story.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"The Overnighters" is commendable for many reasons, not the least of which is the way it allows complex issues to remain complex. There is a clear conflict between the pastor and the town, but there's no good vs. evil.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
Through patience, skill, discretion, and trust, Jesse Moss has taken a seemingly small town story and turned it into both a microcosm of today's most urgent issues and a portrait of a single suffering soul.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
Moss uses images of drill towers or blistering flame as visual metaphors for other things transpiring on screen: the fracturing of a family, the heated fury that comes with a sense of betrayal.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A scenario with present-day echoes of "The Grapes of Wrath" yields perceptive insights into the way we view outsiders.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The film features stunning third-act revelations that compel viewers to rethink its characters' actions and motivations.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
Composed of multiple layers - more than one of which might bring tears to your eyes - this shape-shifting documentary begins as one thing and ends as quite another.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A sobering must-see, The Overnighters speaks to the eternal dilemma of doing the right thing in a community beset by suspicion and fear.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
So much of "The Overnighters" tells all sorts of truths, and Moss earned the trust of his subjects, whatever they might think of the result.

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
An urgent portrait of compassion under fire.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Moss was basically a one-man production crew, which explains how he was able to film such intimate, painful conversations. His work is haunting - one of the best documentaries of the year.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Moss uncovers something greater than a vision of a divided community; he's made a drama as prickly and surprising as any fictional character study.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Filmmaker Jesse Moss frames his shots beautifully; the landscapes look like Andrew Wyeth paintings.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
It develops into a study of obsession, hypocrisy, righteousness and self-doubt, questioning motive and then gob-smacking the audience with the wholly unexpected.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
The Overnighters sounds like the sort of dry news blurb you'd skim over in the Sunday paper, but it unfolds into an epic tragedy.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It's the rare documentary in which truly unpredictable events unfold and no assumption is safe.