This film "Phantom" takes everything that's wrong with Broadway and puts it on the big screen in a gaudy splat.

I can't remember ever feeling so glad that a movie was finally over. [Director George] Lucas may have held my imagination hostage for two hours, but reclaiming it afterward wasn't hard at all.

There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama.

It's guilty of the very thing that makes kids hate history as a subject when it's taught badly: The Da Vinci Code makes the past feel like a dull, grainy, faraway thing, instead of something vibrant and alive.

Oldboy makes us feel a part of something bigger than ourselves. It's a grand, gritty, indelible experience, the sort of picture that mimics great literature in the way it envelops you in a well-told story while also evoking subtle but strong gradations of emotion.

The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Now that's horror.

The bigger question to ask about 300 is why, for a supposedly rousing tale of heroism, it's so curiously unaffecting.