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For the third year in a row, the top film at the box office on Super Bowl weekend was a low-budget horror movie.

This time, the film in question was The Messengers, which marks the American debut of Hong Kong filmmakers (and twin brothers) Oxide and Danny Pang. The movie concerns a family that moves from its Chicago home to a haunted farmhouse in North Dakota—and only the children can see the ghosts that lurk there and threaten to do them all harm.

Bob Hoose (Plugged In) is impressed by the movie's technique—however "cloned" it may be from the works of other filmmakers—and he likes some of its redemptive themes: "It takes the time to show us a family looking for healing and seeking a new start. And in the end, the horror they're put through helps them do just that. When the going gets ghastly, they figure out how to hold fast to each other and find the strength to make it through. If only there could have been something other than all-powerful, revenge-starved corpses and deranged psychopaths to get them there." He concludes, "there's just something wrong with indulging a narrative that's all about the peace ghosts find when they exact fatal revenge on their oppressors."

Christian Hamaker (Crosswalk) says the film "doesn't muster much in the way of atmosphere or scares." He finds it more silly than suspenseful, and concludes: "A sense of irony can add a lively dimension to films in the weary horror genre, but The Messengers barely nods in that direction. In taking itself so seriously, it bogs down. Neither scary nor interesting, The Messengers adds nothing to the genre but a pale imitation of what's come before."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says he appreciates how the directors "bring their less-is-more Asian horror sensibilities to the standard haunted-house genre, showing far more restraint in depicting the murderous mayhem than is generally the case. Still, while adroit at creating eerie visuals, the brothers fail to generate much sustained suspense, mustering only modest chills as they navigate a predictable plot capped by a ludicrous climax."

For the most part, mainstream critics are sending this message back to sender.

for over 30 years, Diane Keaton has captured the spirit of her times like few other actresses. After winning an Oscar for navigating the neurotic ups and downs of urban romance in the 1970s film Annie Hall, she went on to chart the complications of motherhood for yuppie business women in the 1980s film Baby Boom, the effects of divorce on middle-aged women in the 1990s film The First Wives Club, and the question of whether women of a certain age can still attract the opposite sex in this decade's Something's Gotta Give.

Her newest film, however, doesn't seem likely to join those ranks. In Because I Said So—directed by Michael Lehmann, whose last feature film, 40 Days and 40 Nights, was predicated on the notion that no healthy single man could willingly abstain from sex for a few weeks—Keaton plays a mother who has three daughters, one of whom (played by Mandy Moore) is unmarried, a status that the overbearing mother is determined to "fix."

Lisa Ann Cockrel (Christianity Today Movies) is one of several critics who are frustrated by the film's regressive, "muddled" thinking: "I don't necessarily demand a lot of intellectual rigor from my romantic comedies, but the conflation of progressive and arguably conservative values throughout the movie (not just as it relates to marriage, but also to minorities) makes for an inconsistent and frustrating narrative. … I do think that Because I Said So is an interesting example of how older women are increasingly depicted as being sexy in film. … But upon initial reflection I'm tempted to say that the broad effect of this treatment is a sort of continued dismissal of womanhood by continuing to frame its concerns within the context of a woman's attractiveness to men for longer and longer stretches of her life."

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February (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51