question: This intelligent horror film is subtle in its thrills and chills, with an ending that is both shocking and truly memorable.

numbered reviews: 1. The ultimate British cult classic -- a unique film that straddles genres, features Christopher Lee in a dress and builds toward one of cinema's most memorable climaxes.
2. Devised by its star Christopher Lee, director Robin Hardy and writer Anthony Shaffer as a meditation on the rise of New Age spiritualism, the movie is now, of course, gleefully camp and a tad reactionary.
3. A British golden-oldie worthy to be placed alongside classics such as Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives or Rosemary's Baby.
4. Part folk musical, part occult chiller, and quite mad.
5. The premise is quite intriguing and is certainly sinister, but it's undermined by a too-leisurely pace and musical numbers that are straight out of an x-rated fetish-fantasy as imagined by Walt Disney.
6. It envelops you in a time and space that is unfamiliar, fascinating, exotic, and frightening all at once.
7. The Wicker Man is, more than anything else, a film about what people can do in the name of religion or, more generally, belief. Its power comes not from appeals to the supernatural but from a deep understanding of our own undeniable nature.
8. It's a heady brew, but Hardy keep the mystery simmering, while his staging of several merrie pagan songs -- and of course the chilling climax -- is truly memorable.
9. They deliberately cast horror icons to help them break the mold... if you keep in mind its original context, it can be a very interesting film.
10. One of best horror films ever made.


question: If it doesn't reach the heights of director James Cameron's and star Arnold Schwarzenegger's previous collaborations, True Lies still packs enough action and humor into its sometimes absurd plot to entertain.

numbered reviews: 1. This mixture of comedy and super-agent spectacle works well at first. But when Schwarzenegger's family and working worlds link up -- an inevitable development -- the plot becomes increasingly ridiculous and overwrought.
2. [A] film that definitely doesn't deserve its bad reputation.
3. Despite some frustrating flaws, the thrills, spills and laughs are there.
4. This is an excellent picture.
5. However high your ranking on the culture scale, I defy you to watch this and leave the theatre without a whistled 'Wow' followed by a grudging 'That's entertainment.'
6. On the basis of stunts, special effects and pure action, it delivers sensationally.
7. This is a mindless situation comedy crossed with an even more mindless action film aimed at an undemanding audience.
8. Its long detour into an unnecessary and unpleasant sub-plot left me with a very bad taste in my mouth.
9. Once you get past the stunning special effects and the mind-numbing stuntwork, there's not all that much there.
10. This movie symbolises everything that is wrong with the film industry.


question: Nearly a decade after The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint Eastwood returns as a director to the genre that made his name with this elegant, spiritual Western that riffs on the classic Shane.

numbered reviews: 1. A lesser Western by Eastwood's standards, but many a filmmaker would consider this a career high point.
2. Clint Eastwood stars as the mysterious stranger who arrives in a town and challenges the citizens to fight evil.
3. See it if you haven't.
4. I'm just now beginning to realize that, though Mr. Eastwood may have been improving over the years, it's also taken all these years for most of us to recognize his very consistent grace and wit as a filmmaker.
5. Clint's return to westerns is just ok.
6. A severely underrated western, one of Eastwood's most stylish.
7. [Eastwood] understands so well how he works on the screen that the movie has a resonance that probably was not even there in the screenplay.
8. One of Eastwood's best oaters
9. The cowboys of the Old West ride again in this tried and proven Western from Clint Eastwood.
10. Eastwood in fine form.


question: The Wind Rises is a fittingly bittersweet swan song for director Hayao Miyazaki.

numbered reviews:
1. The Wind Rises is a frequently remarkable film -- easily the best animated film of 2013 and fully of deserving its Oscar Nomination.
2. While critics and historians can debate the narrative's moral ambiguity, or lack thereof, the film's magic derives from an old director's memories of younger, more hopeful days.
3. There are more boring movies than this one. There aren't many more disingenuous.
4. [W]hile the subject is admittedly darker, the whimsically drawn animation is a typically beautiful delight full of swirling rhapsodies of colour and eye-popping action sequences.
5. The Wind Rises becomes all the more engrossing in its final act, where the refined beauty of Horikoshi's designs is exploited by a Japanese military at the start of World War II.
6. The film doesn't take the obvious moralistic steps that could avert backlash - it's pure Miyazaki, a perspective influenced by history and reflective of a 50-year career.
7. Clearly, The Wind Rises isn't a film about war but a valentine to the creative spirit.
8. An engineer pursues his dreams in Miyazaki's latest (and hopefully not last)
9. Impossibly gorgeous, with especially painterly backgrounds and detailed attention to not only everyday sounds but the alien noises during and after a temblor.
10. "The Wind Rises," nominated for an Academy Award as best animated feature, is a visual delight, with bright pastoral colors, clouds that float like ballerinas and clear, blue skies that envelop you.