300 is at its best when it settles for purely visceral thrills, such as Leonidas' battle against a hulking warrior twice the size of a normal man. The movie's broad strokes are all superlative: It's the details that keep 300 from being anything more than a striking curiosity.

In the House seems to be building toward a cathartic and unexpected finale. Instead, you get a baffling fizzle — an inexcusably limp and unimaginative conclusion that doesn’t bring a single plot strand to a satisfying end.

A pleasant if unremarkable romantic comedy that plays out like a sitcom with great scenery.

Explorers is good at probing the wrinkles of the 14-year-old heart and boys are always better than other-world beings.

Gerwig and Hawke are outstanding reasons to see this movie, but your patience — just like Maggie’s — will be tested before it’s over.

A lightweight, formulaic piece of fluff, but you wouldn't know that by Meryl Streep's performance.

For Americans, the film may be best taken as fodder for debate, especially for individuals interested in sociology. You wonder why those people stuck to the commitment. You may also wonder how different a parallel American film would've been.

Essentially an old-fashioned movie, nothing fancy, nothing new, just some jokes and some action and a crowd-pleasing finale.

Sweet and moving, and occasionally irritating, but it's never embarrassing.

The Reader doesn't do enough to explore the guilt and betrayal the adult Michael feels over the acts of his elders.

An hour after seeing it, you may not remember what The International was about. But you'll certainly remember that shootout. That is something to behold.

Has nothing new to say, but it has a lot of fun covering the same old territory.

It would have taken another director (the late David Lean, for instance) and a better script to make this movie into the serious, full-blooded epic it wants to be. But Power of One succeeds in entertaining and getting audiences to think about the tragedy of apartheid; flaws and all, it's still worth seeing. [31 March 1992, p.E6]

Gas, Food, Lodging should send plenty of movie offers in Balk's direction. She's a perceptive and subtle actress, comfortable at playing both adolescent giddiness and terror in the same unmannered style. It is her performance, and the touching character she creates, that ultimately makes this movie worth seeing. [9 Nov 1982, p.E3]

If anyone tries to tell you how this one ends, blast 'em with a phaser. Set on stun, of course.

If ever there was a textbook "feel good picture," this is it. It's not a bad film, either, but director Nick Castle is afraid to let anyone go home without a glazed respect for all living things, and the result is too much syrup. [26 Sept 1986, p.D11]

The Signal is too ambitious for its own good: The movie is built on shells of ideas and concepts that haven’t been fully thought out, and once it’s over, the movie collapses the more you think about it.

The dynamic between mother and son is fascinating, with Blethyn creating a character who is more antagonist than villain.

Suggests that Cruise the actor may have outgrown this kind of stuff.

This Israeli film gives us an honest look at situations we never see in the news. It may have too many flaws to be a good film, but for its content, it is a winner.

Eventually, though, the monsters come out -- blind, snarling cave-dwellers, looking much like Gollum's bigger kin -- and The Descent becomes a simple exercise in guessing who, if anyone, will survive.

Yes, Aloha is a mess. But messes can be fascinating, and there’s a lot of tenderness and beauty and heartbreak here, too.

Carpenter keeps it sweet. This means muting his fabled skills as an "action" director in favor of plumbing the cutes, and it means that Starman isn't the grown-up entertainment that it could have been. But it's not your everyday romance, either, and it's hard to hate. [14 Dec 1984, p.18]

There are several stretches when the movie is actually hilarious.

The director spends nearly two hours groping for a message, but never finds it, mostly because his conflicts rise and fall in 30-minute segments -- like a Family Ties episode. [27 Oct 1989, p.G5]

Too slight to bear up under the weight of the final melodrama, and the film ends too abruptly, as if MacLachlan just ran out of things to write. Still, this visit to the old homestead is worthwhile, if only to meet its unflappable, charismatic women.

It's full of lively and crude sexual banter, discussions of hookups and sex and Joel McHale's bare butt. Oddly, all this makes the film funnier and more accessible than you might imagine.

Depending on your personal tastes, Intacto will either be an ambitious concoction of cerebral science-fiction or a towering pile of nonsense. The truth lies somewhere in between.