question: The brilliant minds behind Shaun of the Dead successfully take a shot at the buddy cop genre with Hot Fuzz. The result is a bitingly satiric and hugely entertaining parody.

numbered reviews: 1. Not quite as inspired as "Shaun of the Dead" but near as damn it.
2. The soaring, rocking climax more than justifies any pacing issues mid-movie and pays off perfectly with the same winking deftness that Arrested Development episodes exhibited when tying multiple lines together.
3. Wright and Pegg have clearly done their homework; their familiarity with action movie cliches is deep enough that they don't always have to go for the easy or obvious joke.
4. The characters are more fully rounded than the heroes of the Bruckheimer films being aped.
5. Hilarious and intelligent in every frame, the brilliance of "Hot Fuzz" is simply arresting.
6. Pegg in a stellar comic performance lifts the film from being a mere applaudable satire to a first-class entertainment. Imagine Jimmy Stewart in "Animal House" or Steve McQueen in "Road Trip."
7. Hot Fuzz n'a donc rien ŕ envier aux productions dont il soutire ses grandes lignes, lesquelles servent généralement un récit qui a le culot de se prendre au sérieux
8. The dialogue is packed with jokes and the script is packed with subtle sight gags and references to other cop movies.
9. After seeing Hot Fuzz I doubt it'll be possible to keep a straight face during a Michael Bay movie again --assuming one could ever do such a thing in the first place.
10. Hot Fuzz feels like the work of a bunch of friends who sat around overdosing on action movies before deciding that they should go and make their own. With some films, what I've just written would be an insult; with this one, it's a compliment.


question: Meshkini has made an excellent contribution to Iranian cinema with this poetic, emotionally poignant film.

numbered reviews: 1. Not wholly successful, but it does have enough intriguing elements to warrant a viewing.
2. Exhilarating.
3. Slight but affecting.
4. An episodic drama rich in sly humor and symbolic imagery.
5. A bold, vibrant piece of filmmaking that dares to not only question the justice of sexist orthodoxy, but to demonstrate the poignancy of lives trapped and twisted within its confines.
6. This film catapults Meshkini into the 'Someone to Watch' category.
7. Short on drama but long on poetry.
8. Each of [Meshkini's] stories has the timeless quality of a fable, and each has wisdom and a quiet, stoic sense of defiance in the face of patriarchal tradition.
9. Too flimsy and brief (at a scant 78 minutes) to really have an impact.
10. Through Meshkini's lens, their stories are sad, funny, cathartic and beautiful.


question: This Yard has some laughs but missing from this remake is the edginess of the original.

numbered reviews: 1. Viewers who come to see a football movie likely will leave satisfied. But those who want to see an Adam Sandler movie would do better to rent The Waterboy.
2. A quickly paced, slickly filmed entertainment that's also as crude and rude as the PG-13 rating will allow.
3. Sexist, homophobic, pointless and overloaded with brain-crushing bigotry...has an evil and putrid secret agenda that couldn't have less to do with football if it tried.
4. The Longest Yard scores big laughs.
5. Does Chris Rock even know what year it is? His tired-for-a-decade references bog down a remake that would be unwatchable were it not for a jazzed-up climactic game.
6. Plagued with product placement.
7. When Adam Sandler isn't interesting enough to hold your attention in an Adam Sandler movie, something is certainly amiss.
8. The product placement cluttering professional sports also taints ... an otherwise faithful remake.
9. What's missing is any real sense of drama.
10. If only the ethnic-reassigned Burt Reynolds had stayed naked on that bear rug.


question: Lacking a script funny enough to cover up for Jackie Chan's fading physical gifts, The Spy Next Door fails on every conceivable level.

numbered reviews:
1. Tongue-in-cheek entertainment...
2. [It] may be a sign that age has finally caught up with this once most agile of action heroes.
3. Definitely one for the kids to watch on their own when it comes out on DVD.
4. Chan has just enough friendly charm to transcend this rubbish.
5. The results are always less than hilarious.
6. Only Chan's charm saves it.
7. A movie that posits Billy Ray Cyrus as a techno-genius and allows the baddies to get away with Russian accents that would put most meerkats to shame.
8. It starts slowly and ends very predictably. In fact, the bloopers which come before the end credits are probably the best thing about it -- and that says a lot.
9. The closing credit outtakes are the best part of this feeble effort.
10. When people moan about the world's worst film-makers, the names Uwe Boll and Joel Schumacher invariably come up. If Brian Levant has escaped such infamy, it's only by sticking under the radar with kiddie-litter.