question: Mean Streets is a powerful tale of urban sin and guilt that marks Scorsese's arrival as an important cinematic voice and features electrifying performances from Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro.

numbered reviews: 1. I contend that Mean Streets (1973) is [Scorsese's] greatest work and his most underappreciated.
2. Everyone involved brings a near-dizzying rhythm to this quintessential 'New York movie' and its collection of outsider-characters, all intoxicated on themselves.
3. Scorsese gives us Catholic guilt, misguided loyalty and the urban nostalgia that would lead to such movies as Raging Bull and even New York, New York.
4. One of those movies that you should see, even if it is only to watch a masterful director's first superior film.
5. Its greatness lies in its leanness, with nary a word, a move, a gesture that's nonessential.
6. A ferociously original film.
7. A true rough diamond, Scorsese's breakthrough may be uneven, but at its heart lies fledgling genius.
8. One of Scorsese's true classics.
9. "Mean Streets" is more than a rambunctious time capsule of Italian American experience, it is groundbreaking film that announces the career of a truly original voice in world cinema.
10. [I] commend it without reservation.


question: Subtle and emotionally bleak, this gripping thriller features the Dardenne brothers' recognizable penchant for realism and very strong performances.

numbered reviews: 1. As filmmakers, the Dardennes are more concerned with probing the causes of crime than in glamorizing it.
2. I could see what they were trying to do, but it was a little too artsy and didn't really work for me.
3. The Dardennes are adroit at dangling the carrot, withholding just enough of the story's particulars to keep you curious without testing your patience.
4. Lorna's Silence is an interesting and entertaining film that poses a more difficult moral dilemma than its authors might have intended.
5. With a more linear plot and steadier camerawork than previous efforts, Lorna's Silence is among the Dardennes' more accessible films, despite a drawn-out finale that still doesn't quite satisfy.
6. In a just world, the Dardenne brothers would be as well known as the Coens; outside the United States they probably are already.
7. More entertaining on a base level than a Belgian film about poor people has any right to be.
8. Lorna's Silence doesn't work, but it's a beautiful misfire.
9. In casting the previously unknown Dobroshi, the brothers approach greatness with their lean portrait of simple humanity tested by desire and driven desperate by circumstances.
10. The film is spare, but intense.


question: Like its predecessor L'Auberge Espagnole, Russian Dolls is charmingly breezy and light.

numbered reviews: 1. A 30-year-old French writer's struggles with the challenges of work and love in his fast-paced and fragmented urban life.
2. Russian Dolls might not have as many layers as its namesake but when it's this sweet and feisty, it doesn't really matter.
3. The director's shallow stylistic ticks preclude identifiable emotional or behavioral reality.
4. Resonant with acute and accurate observations of people at that devastating stage in life where the glow and glory of youth is dimming into a dull realisation that fun spelt backwards is 'nuf, Russian Dolls is an achingly bitter sweet film.
5. Uma continuaзгo nгo apenas dispensбvel, mas que ainda consegue, em certo grau, diminuir nosso carinho pelo original.
6. [A] more finely wrought, well-matured version of the film that inspired it. Which, however, does not exclude a lot of meaningless fun!
7. The actors create engaging characterizations of young people continually evolving.
8. Intentional or not, many of Klapisch's tricks frustrate our connection to the characters, especially Xavier.
9. Meandering, overlong digital soap opera.
10. Reilly, who was born in Surrey in 1977, and has been active on the London stage as well as in movies, engages each man she meets onscreen with her face, her body, her breathing.


question: M Night Shayamalan's The Sixth Sense is a twisty ghost story with all the style of a classical Hollywood picture, but all the chills of a modern horror flick.

numbered reviews:
1. Of the big studio films released this summer, it's hands-down the best!
2. The story manages to keep one's interest engaged all the way through to the exhilaratingly unexpected ending, which effectively breathes new life into all the previous proceedings.
3. This ghost stuff works on a deeper level than the gross-out, and it's nice that Hollywood has rediscovered the art of the soul-freezing scare.
4. An unusually intelligent thriller!
5. The story doesn't cheat by resorting to action or scare clichжs. It sticks right to the main conflict and it keeps it in human terms.
6. The Sixth Sense has a kind of calm, sneaky self-confidence that allows it to take us down a strange path.
7. A unique, frightening movie that is never gratuitous or obvious.
8. One of the most original paranormal films I've ever seen.
9. A thought -- provoking suspenseful movie!
10. A psychological thriller that actually thrills!