> To the contrary -- in between each sprint, there's a review, a retrospective

"in between" is overstating things a bit. The current norm seems to be two week sprints and all these things are done at the beginning and end of them. To be honest, I personally do feel like this gives the feeling of 'sprinting' because it usually means at least 2-3 days of the sprint are 'wasted' on meetings and that counts for a lot when it's 2/10 or 3/10.

And a lot of the terminology around this kind of process are geared to give you a sense of urgency. Right back to "Extreme Programming".