Q: 1. The most courageous thing about it, from today's standards, is that it closes without an obligatory happy ending, and an audience that has watched for 187 minutes doesn't get a tidy, mindless conclusion.
2. It is a spotty, uneven drama.
3. the liberal message is delivered with a heavy hand, but the film also boasts some stirring action and intelligent dialogue.
4. An absolute classic by one of the great American directors.
5. Kubrick's gladiator film is the pinnacle of sword-and-sandal epics.
6. Meant to be seen on the big screen.
7. It's especially strong, and more typical of Kubrick, in the first half -- before satire gives way to sentiment.
8. Rousing in patches, but kitschy in so many others - a mixed bag.
9. Director Stanley Kubrick was obviously just collecting a paycheck for this one, though he stages some intricate battle scenes. Too bad he obviously couldn't have cared less about the lame love story and political machinations behind the scenes.
10. Many scenes ring passionate and rousing, while others are campy and silly, and somehow they all work together.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: Featuring terrific performances and epic action, Kubrick's restored swords-and-sandals epic is a true classic.
1. Snakes was the best instantly disposable cinematic event I've attended since Bride of Chucky was launched on an unsuspecting world eight years ago.
2. This kind of film should be like a porno: Don't even bother trying to come up with a plot, just cut to the money shot.
3. ...mostly delivers what the title promises and the anticipation hoped for...mostly.
4. Put simply, this is quite possibly the most fun you'll have in the cinema all year. If you like the title, you'll love the film. Highly recommended.
5. Imagine if you will that a monstrous, CGI-sized jumbo python has squeezed together Airport and Alligator. What you'd then have is Snakes on a Plane.
6. The movie isn't just mediocre -- it's profoundly mediocre.
7. Snakes on a Plane has an irresistible title and an impressive promotional campaign -- but pitches aren't plots, and marketing isn't moviemaking.
8. Pretty fun and takes advantage of its goofy premise in every way it can ... [but] I really don't envy the position this movie found itself in.
9. The movie plays to every expectation the viewer might have -- the more absurd, the better. In this regard, it doesn't miss a trick.
10. This repitilian horror thriller is the stuff of which nightmares are made.
Consensus: Snakes on a Plane lives up to its title, featuring snakes on a plane. It isn't perfect, but then again, it doesn't need to be.
Q: 1. [N]owhere near as provocative as you think it's gonna be, as you've been led to believe it's gonna be... which is something of a disappointment.
2. Cockeyed and raffishly amusing tale of redemption, spilling over with blues music and southern-fried sexism.
3. Brewer's reworking of Southern mythologies can sometimes seem condescending, even though his affection for the region's culture is palpable. But there's no denying he knows how to spin a yarn and create vivid, indelible images.
4. It's all outrageous and patently stereotypical but Brewer and the actors invest these representations with everything they have. It's great to see Jackson working hard here to create a character instead of simply Superflying a bunch of snakes on a plane.
5. Writer-director Craig Brewer does several things very right in his follow-up to the overrated Hustle & Flow (which also boasted a dubious grasp of gender relations). But subtlety is not one of them, and neither is a lack of raging misogyny.
6. Black Snake Moan plays its grim subject matter for laughs, imitating the laugh-to-keep-from-crying quality of the blues tunes on its soundtrack.
7. Maybe Jackson should avoid any more movies with 'snake' in the title.
8. A cartoonish Baby Doll, with a suggestive blues song title, about sex, guilt and redemption. Black Snake is also a rather flimsy parable unable to support the weight of Brewers ambition.
9. Black Snake Moan is an odd little number. It tries to be a lot of things at different times, but isn't particularly successful in any genre.
10. If writer/director Craig Brewer were a member of the X-Men, he would be called 'FirstActo,' and his mutant power would be creating dynamic openings to movies. His enemy would be consistency.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: Uninhibited performances, skillful direction, and a killer blues soundtrack elevate Black Snake Moan beyond its outlandish premise.
1. You know how some movies just ring so utterly true that they defy your expectations and take a predictable genre to new and unexpected places? This is not one of those movies.
2. Some films are ripped from the headlines, others are ripped from the pages of Cosmopolitan.
3. A great excuse for staying single.
4. This is a charmless, lifeless affair that had me leaving the theater in a mood more appropriate to a funeral than a wedding.
5. You could call this horrid romantic comedy One Wedding and a Funeral, with stress on the funeral.
6. One wedding. No funerals. A pretty woman. Lots of borrowed somethings, but nothing new.
7. Following this botched ceremony, anyone fond of Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney will be left standing at the altar in tears.
8. 'The Wedding Date' doesn't exactly resurrect romantic comedy, but it proves there's still life in the genre.
9. Clare Kilner's cast frolics in the countryside in an appropriately British-romantic-comedy fashion, and at times the characters trade silly snaps, but Dana Fox's screenplay is structurally shaky.
10. To say that the script is bottom-of-the-barrel would be too kind; this one was already decomposing under a mountain of mulch before Debra Messing unwisely fished it out.
Consensus: Critics are leaving The Wedding Date at the alter, calling it shopworn, bland, and lightweight.
Q: 1. A rambling road movie with noble intentions and an excess of speechifying.
2. The elder actresses simmer as they warily interact, but the dialogue is more schematic than dramatic...
3. The milieu he chooses -- essentially one long, queerly prosaic car ride to nowhere -- robs the film of much of its dramatic force.
4. Portman and the audience are stranded in the middle, on the outside looking in, with nothing to do and patience increasingly wearing thin.
5. There's an art to ambiguity -- there really is... Left to their own devices, viewers will fill in the blanks, but when the movie starts filling them in itself, you have to wonder about the mismatch.
6. While Portman does outshine everyone and everything on screen and though she certainly gets credit for making the résumé sacrifice in the spirit of embracing her heritage, Free Zone does nothing for her in return
7. Without much effort you can imagine the corkboard littered with index cards mapping out the political clashes this cast is asked to act out in their robotic interactions.
8. Much of it is labored and overemphatic.
9. An exceptional new film.
10. A minor movie on a major subject, a drama with an almost unbearable lightness.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A:
Consensus: The symbolism in this cinematic metaphor on conflicts in the Middle East becomes so overbearing that it's hard to care about the characters or their plight.