question: Roman Polanski's first English film follows a schizophrenic woman's descent into madness, and makes the audience feel as claustrophobic as the character.

numbered reviews: 1. If it's the sense of isolation that gives Repulsion its greatest resonance, it's Polanski's astonishing control of the medium of film that makes it all work.
2. Prepare yourself to be demolished when you go to see it -- and go you must, because it's one of those films everybody will soon be buzzing about.
3. Polanski's best by a wide margin. The walls! The walls!
4. Polanski displayed a much more troubling kind of thinking, forever banishing the possibility of safety for his characters.
5. Deneuve gives a scary and believable performance as a young woman who has never been completely integrated and who loses all sanity while we watch.
6. One of the most frightening and disturbing pictures ever made.
7. This is an austere, scary, and timeless Grand Guignol work -- one with little dialogue.
8. A fascinating if slow-moving study of the onset of madness.
9. Repulsion is perhaps Polanski's and Deneuve's finest hours.
10. Repulsion is a frightening, fiercely entertaining experience that holds up to time.


question: Tense, exciting, and often darkly comic, Argo recreates a historical event with vivid attention to detail and finely wrought characters.

numbered reviews: 1. Argo feels like a proper old-fashioned 70s thriller, the kind Alan J Pakula used to make: taut and lean, but with dialogue to die for, plus character and attitude to spare.
2. As the suspense intensifies, it becomes increasingly obvious that many of these suspense-laden plot points are simply made up. The story turns into a standard Hollywood formula and it loses credibility because of that.
3. For a story about out-of-the-box thinking and high-risk heroism, Argo plays it surprisingly safe.
4. Impeccably directed, superbly written and brilliantly acted, this is a terrifically entertaining thriller that gets everything right and confirms Ben Affleck as a major directing talent.
5. Combining laughs and thrills with plenty of verve, Ben Affleck continues his smart directorial career with a stylish, gripping hostage drama.
6. This is a film that runs the gamut from grim to absurd.
7. Ben Affleck continues his hot streak as a director.
8. Argo is tense, affective and not just Affleck's best film but one of the best films of the year.
9. ...the best kind of Hollywood movie, a gripping, suspenseful story leavened with dry grim humor and resolved in well-earned uplift.
10. Affirms Affleck's talents and, perhaps, his limitations. The period detail and overall technical credits impress, but Affleck relies too often on handheld camera to convey intensity, and on crosscutting to generate suspense or 'irony.'


question: Saw IV is more disturbing than compelling, with material already seen in the prior installments.

numbered reviews: 1. There's the obligatory twist at the end, which hardly makes up for the excruciating boredom viewers are forced to endure. But, hey, if you're paying for torture, expect to suffer.
2. The first thing you see in Saw IV is Jigsaw's balls. A sign of things to come? Most definitely.
3. Jigsaw is an interesting character with an interesting worldview and an interesting way of carrying out his will. It's too bad the movies themselves aren't worthy of him.
4. We now find ourselves in the downward slope of the Saw series as Saw IV stretches credibility to the breaking point.
5. I do wish that these movies were well made, because I actually think the premises are quite clever, but unless a veteran who is more confident in his abilities takes over, we are left with what could have been...
6. This gruesomely efficient horror sequel shows noticeable wear and tear.
7. ... any serious consideration of the killer's fascination with violence is superseded by the director's (and the returning viewers') own sadistic pleasures.
8. Poor Jigsaw. The architect of the most deadly traps ever committed to celluloid has endured inoperable cancer, a debilitating car crash and even the premature death of his son, but nothing as painful or degrading as 'Saw IV.'
9. Whereas the first Saw and the third met the right balance, the second film and now the fourth push things a little too far and end up being less effective as a result.
10. Outro típico exemplar da série: o final, como de hábito, é até engenhoso, mas a fórmula cada vez mais desgastada exige pacięncia até que cheguemos a ele.


question: Smart, fascinating, and funny, Best of Enemies takes a penetrating -- and wildly entertaining -- look back at the dawn of pundit politics.

numbered reviews:
1. New documentary explores the public intellectuals' televised spats.
2. "Best of Enemies" is one of the most interesting and revelatory documentaries in years. It blows last year's Oscar winner, "Citizenfour" out of the water.
3. There is something about the siren call of the TV camera that can turn even big thinkers into brawlers. It was true then and it's true now, and "Best of Enemies" serves as a thoroughly enjoyable reminder.
4. For better or for worse, we'll never again see television quite like that documented in the compelling "Best of Enemies" ...
5. "Best of Enemies" makes a strong case that the Vidal-Buckley debates were a sort of gateway drug that led to our insatiable craving for the sort of all-heat, no-light exchanges that form the backbone of today's 24-hour cable news universe.
6. Did anyone win? Most say Vidal, since Buckley descended to physical threats. But really, has anyone won in any of this endless bickering?
7. The high point of the debate was...never mind. See "Best of Enemies," and find out for yourself.
8. Spending 90 minutes with two insufferably arrogant men isn't an easy recommendation to make, but "Best of Enemies" is generally quite successful identifying the remarkable nature of the debates.
9. Like its two subjects, "Best of Enemies" is lively and smart. Unlike them, it's even-handed.
10. Best of Enemies offers a bracing view of a pivotal time in our recent history, as Vietnam and race riots scarred a nation's soul, and as the Establishment and the Counter Culture exchanged epithets and blows.