FILM: Three Short Takes

Walk the Line (2005): Love the use of Johnny Cash's music, love the cute Reese Witherspoon in a Southern accent. It also warms the heart when Johnny and June finally consummate their decades-long romance and spend the rest of their lives making music together, but the narrative on the way there is rather too plodding.

Zodiac (2007): Cipher-breaking onscreen tends to amp up a movie's coolness level, as it did with The Da Vinci Code and A Beautiful Mind. Combine it with an unexpectedly luscious soundtrack, and this murder mystery and '70s period piece becomes exquisitely enjoyable.

300 (2007): Go in expecting nothing more than a stylized, comic-book-violent tableau of classical history and scantily dressed man candy, and you won't be disappointed. You may even be caught off guard, as I was, by the fact that there is actually a spectacular moment during the civilian scenes that is worth cheering aloud for.