Question: Q: 1. It's an appalling indictment of family dysfunction but there are shards of optimism, particularly the noble actions of the self-sacrificing couple who acted as foster parents for the adolescent Lorraine.
2. It's a powerful story, but muddled by the nagging distraction of having these voices lip-synched by actors.
3. Barnard has created a modernist, compassionate biopic: a tribute to her memory and her embattled community.
4. Original mixture of techniques makes this documentary provocative yet moving.
5. Brings the Dunbar story to life through a technique known as "verbatim theater," in which actors lip-synch testimony from the real people they're portraying.
6. Moving, bold, unconventional and impeccably staged, The Arbor is a worthy tribute to a powerfully artistic voice.
7. Barnard's boldest move is to unveil the irresponsible chaos of the playwright's private life, and to make us wonder if the art was worth the suffering, after all.
8. Intense, startlingly creative. . .bio-doc. . .and searing portrait of destructive inheritance of addiction and domestic violence within . . .one family. . .and neighborhood.
9. From the sublimely ridiculous to the simply sublime, The Arbor exists at the intersection of life and art, reality and performance, documentary and fiction, and it explores that terrain in a way no other movie quite has before.
10. An epic piece of theatrical detachment
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: Smart and inventive, The Arbor offers some intensely memorable twists on tired documentary tropes.


Q: 1. Quite possibly the funniest spoof of all time.
2. One of the funniest films of the 1980's.
3. Duas décadas depois de seu lançamento, o filme continua a funcionar maravilhosamente bem em seu humor inteligente e sua crítica ácida sobre os bastidores do rock'n'roll.
4. Simultaneously created the genre and broke the mold
5. A towering achievement in cinema, music, and life art. Funnier and more prescient every time I see it. Any time they tour I will be there.
6. A mediocre satire of heavy rock bands.
7. Mock "rockumentary" is wildly funny and deeply influential.
8. The film is a composite of classic moments, all of which we sense could have happened to any of the classic heavy metal bands -- or at least to those whose members combined delusions of greatness with low I.Q.s.
9. It stays so wickedly close to the subject that it is very nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
10. A hilariously scathing indictment of the rock and roll lifestyle, and all the egoism and shallow philosophising that goes along with it.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: Smartly directed, brilliantly acted, and packed with endlessly quotable moments, This Is Spinal Tap is an all-time comedy classic.


Q: 1. A truly amazing performance by Javier Bardem.
2. Bardem's performance is simply shattering.
3. The film's ephemeral, semi-evasive lyricism ultimately works as a modest frame for Bardem's tender, deft portrait, which is in turn suitably expansive and rooted in the most concrete details.
4. A beautifully photographed movie.
5. Absolutely one of the best made this year. Don't let it pass you by.
6. Redolent of atmosphere and rapturously cinematic, Before Night Falls has a gift for creating visual mood that's so strong you'd swear it couldn't last -- but you'd be wrong.
7. Anyone expecting a hard-hitting biography will be disappointed by Julian Schnabel's soft-edged, dreamy and relatively nonpolitical film.
8. Spain's Javier Bardem gives an undeniably dynamic lead performance that lifts this labor of love over its incessant downer premise.
9. A spellbinding treatment of the life of the late Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas that also confirms painter Julian Schnabel as a director of the first rank.
10. Before Night Falls is successful because of their skill at composing and portraying the film's primary focus. It's just a shame that Schnabel neglects to fill in the rest of the portrait.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: An impressionistic, fragmented look at Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls' imagery manages to evoke a sense of the writer's artistry, and Bardem's strong performance holds the film together. Finally, a biopic done well.


Q: 1. A tough and rather merciless film that makes no bones about the horrors of war. It is also a strong and strident story of how three very different women unite as they defend their home and each other.
2. A handsomely mounted but frustratingly mannered period drama that, in addition to its many other problems, ends just when things appear to be getting really interesting.
3. As gorgeous and well acted as the film is, "The Keeping Room" can never manage to add up its disparate parts. Barber's attempt to reach for big ideas is admirable, but the movie always feels just beyond his grasp.
4. What might have looked intriguing on paper appears to have been largely pared away in the artsy mannerisms and loaded silences of Brit director Daniel Barber's self-consciously elliptical treatment.
5. It's an exceedingly difficult movie to sit through, and offers little reward for doing so.
6. It's a political film without making a meal of it, and without needing to explain itself in words.
7. An ambitious if overreaching home-invasion thriller.
8. Not only does The Keeping Room provide a different perspective than what people typically see in a western, but it also sheds light on the impact that the Civil War made on those who weren't stationed on the battlefields.
9. Barber keeps the atmospherics at full pitch, which tends to draw out the action but undermine the tension. The violence can be brutal at times, but it's seldom dramatic.
10. The film's frustrating, fascinating, at times too eager to shock. But it's also daring and eccentric.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A:
Answer: Consensus: Aided by its spare setting and committed performances, The Keeping Room is just fascinatingly off-kilter enough to overcome its frustrating stumbles.