question: The Sentinel starts off well enough but quickly wears thin with too many plot holes and conventional action sequences.

numbered reviews: 1. Desperately wants to be as thrilling as ... In the Line of Fire, but it has much more in common (from a quality standpoint) with "Guarding Tess.
2. worse than those episodes of 24 featuring cougars chasing Kim Bauer
3. Recommend this one to a friend with a bum ticker. Not a single moment in the 108-minute running time is sufficient to even quicken the pulse.
4. Just good enough to not embarrass anyone involved.
5. sleepy
6. And that's really the point here: The Sentinel is about boys, bonding, squabbling, scheming, running, and shooting. Shooting a lot.
7. A political thriller that lacks thrills--and motivation.
8. The characters are underwritten but the stars' natural charisma holds our attention and keeps us on their side, the action scenes are crisply filmed, and the location shots provide an authentic feel.
9. In an age when surprise endings and indie budgets are hip and trendy, it's nice to get a decent throwback thriller. The script may be manufactured, but the sweat stains are real.
10. Director Clark Johnson ("S.W.A.T.") brings a little style to what is otherwise a pretty meat and potatoes presidential thriller with a solid if unexceptional cast.


question: Acted out with both physical and psychological nakedness by its two leads, Intimacy is an unflinchingly honest look at alienation.

numbered reviews: 1. The exceptional performances by all concerned ... give heft and dimension to the movie's ambiguities and blank spaces.
2. Powerfully acted, intensely carnal.
3. A lacerating study of sexual alienation.
4. The movie has physical honesty, and reaches for emotional honesty, too.
5. Intimacy feeds on its achingly honest lead performances.
6. It's acidic and bitter, and, if you're like me (that is, a glutton for punishment), you'll eat it up.
7. [Rylance and Fox] are such good actors that they convey pain or loss with the smallest twitch of a mouth or the briefest glance.
8. We're left with a voyeuristic view of some strangers' lives whom we're never interested in other than, of course, an initial prurient curiosity.
9. Intimacy is gentle and humane, a film about vulnerability, fragility, susceptibility.
10. It's clearly a censorship landmark, but little else.


question: Shaun of the Dead cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit.

numbered reviews: 1. The most entertaining horror movie set in the British Isles since An American Werewolf in London.
2. It not only functions as a parody of the genre, it works as a straight-up entry, and ends up being a loving homage.
3. Ridiculous and heartfelt, it's both the funniest zombie movie and the scariest romantic comedy you're likely to ever see.
4. It's Dude, Where's My Car? meets 28 Days Later... Perhaps Dude, Where's My Zombie? would be more appropriate.
5. Like all self-respecting zombie flicks, the oft-funny Shaun of the Dead deals as much with wicked social commentary as it does with gruesome murder and maniacal mayhem.
6. British-import "Rom-Zom-Com" has a little undead life to it, but it's definitely a zombie-come-lately.
7. Spiced with a healthy supply of jokes and enough gross-out gags to keep youthful audiences gagging happily.
8. It's frequently laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly scary.
9. Finally, a great zombie movie! Disguised as a romantic comedy!
10. 'Shaun of the Dead' is that rarest of birds-a film that not only lives up to its considerable hype, it actually exceeds it.


question: Though challengingly cryptic at times, Code Unknown still manages to resonate.

numbered reviews:
1. Even if it's a bit 'foreign' and arty, it's also consistently gripping, thoughtful, powerful stuff, assembled in an unusual way that catches us off guard and never preaches.
2. Packed with provocative ideas and fragments of provocative ideas.
3. The emotional landscape is observed with detachment; you have to connect the almost hidden dots to empathise with the characters or form the message, and it's hard.
4. Code Unknown is a film that will thrill connoisseurs of alienation and loneliness, and I say that with the utmost sincerity.
5. Despite the film's Bressonian rigours, its emotional force should finally give the lie to Haneke's reputation as a coldly academic film-maker.
6. [Haneke's] socio-political condemnations assume an aggressively hectoring tone.
7. Michael Haneke's only attempt to be emotionally salient.
8. The director toys with the entire idea of unlocking the code of violence, the small and individually insignificant elements that add up to tales of either joy or horror.
9. An interesting concept... [but] one doomed by a lack of characterization, Code Unknown remains a jumble of unknowable elements.
10. Worthy, challenging, heavily art-house-centric feature that explores ideas of immigration, communication, xenophobia and representations of reality within fiction.