If it's challenges you're after, forget cracking "The Da Vinci Code." Wordplay captures the exhilaration that comes from navigating the ins and outs of complex puzzles.Read Full Review »
80
The New York Times: Phillip Lopate
Whatever the documentary's flaws, the filmmakers should be saluted for giving us a rare glimpse of life in these trenches.Read Full Review »
80
Time: Richard Corliss
This film is as smart and funny as its topic and its stars.Read Full Review »
75
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Lisa Schwarzbaum
Shortz's gentle manner and French-foreign-agent mustache go a long way toward making him a thinking girl's pinup nerd - and this despite the man's pitiless insistence on making the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle ''tough as a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.''Read Full Review »
75
ROLLING STONE: Peter Travers
There's more palm-sweating suspense in one minute of this baby than in all of "The Omen."Read Full Review »
75
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert
The film is made with a lot of style and visual ingenuity.Read Full Review »
Creadon and his editor, Douglas Blush, add verve to an otherwise talky exercise by cutting Wordplay as if it were a puzzle itself, with Across and Down camera moves and blocks of black space. A visual pun altogether worthy of those being filled in on screen.Read Full Review »
70
Village Voice: Michael Atkinson
Another doc sharing some of its cultural DNA, the spelling-bee melodrama Spellbound, had children, families, social conventions--Creadon's film has only words and people with a little time to waste.Read Full Review »
70
Salon.com: Stephanie Zacharek
At its best when Creadon is burrowing deep into the world of the puzzles themselves, particularly when he sits down with puzzle constructor extraordinaire Merl Reagle.Read Full Review »
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