You really are an excellent movie critic, and Salon is lucky to have you. I always enjoy reading your work. Off to the midnight showing of this film!

I just wanted to thank you for giving away EVERY MAJOR PLOT POINT OF THE MOVIE.

Would have been nice for crying out loud!

Isn't your target audience people who haven't seen the movie yet? If you want to discuss the symbolism of specific plot points perhaps you could write another article to be published a week from now. But for a review on the day of release, a little bit of decorum is appropriate.

Why don't you see the NY Times review of this movie to see how the pros do it?

...and underwater cities. :) The trick to attaining real adulthood is to never get jaded. ;)

"Now that we live in the future, there's nothing to look forward to -- even rocket ships have become passé."

If you're really worried about finding out plot points, why read the article in the first place? You can tell from the headline and article summary she likes the movie, so if you want to see it, go see it and read the article later.

Sheesh.

There is a difference between wanting a detailed review of the movie and wanting to have a detailed plot summary of the movie. In fact, I've read many reviews of this movie and only this one revealed anything but the basics in terms of plot.

A good reviewer can talk about the acting, the directing, the cinematography, etc and provide an opinion about which elements worked and whether the end result was enjoyable. And they don't need to reveal spoilers to do it.

Saw the thing last night. Now I don't want to give anything away here... the movie for me lost it's way in the last 15 minutes or so. It was a rather nice ride up until that point... and some of the self referenced jokes... Like John Hurt doing Lear's fool... were quite fun... but the audience was clearly disappointed in the ending... and ILM really fell down in some of the final special effects... one that looked like something out of an old TV episode of the original Battlestar Galactica. Maybe some of the loose ends wouldn't have mattered as much if the team had really wowed us at the end... but they just didn't.

Some major plot points simply didn't tie together... or make any sense at all... for a primer in how to make form and motivation seem really organic and still be referencing lots of other things see 'In Bruges'. For a lesson in how to let actors loose and have fun in a summer blockbuster see 'Iron Man'. Sadly... George and Steve did neither.

Altho I've pretty much given up on any expectations of originality or clever resurrections from the silver screen in the Indiana Jones series, and Lucasfilm has replaced cohesive writing with FX out the ying yang, there's a certain comfort in Ford's cocked grin and average joe looks. Personally, I'd rather have Harry Steele, the ur-Indy, and the more cynical, adult antics from "Secret of the Incas" - now there's a tough soldier of fortune that could really whack any jamoke who gets in the way of buried treasure, AND bang a coupla bimbos in a tidy 100 minutes - but the basic premise of the guy in the fedora and a lost artifact that everyone else wants is still pretty well represented by Indiana Jones and Co. It's not high art or great literature, but I don't go to see these movies to be enlightened, I go to see people jumping, fighting, joking, and saving the world in the most implausible ways imaginable. Spoilers don't faze me, what's to give away? I'm glad the series didn't end with the last offering, but this'll do, this'll do - nostalgic gadgets and an obsessive reliance on military vehicle details always make up for weak acting, don't it?.

Well, Stephen and the rest of the Raiders family had me from the second the Paramount mountain turned into that… okay, no spoilers here. But I am not tough to sell, being a big fan since 1981. In that era, when I decided to become a globe travelling photojournalist, two people inspired me, Indy and Robert Capa. (Mac, underdeveloped or not, Stephanie, strangely reminded me of Ernest Hemingway)

I really liked all the references the movie dropped about what happened to the Joneses since "Last Crusade", Flensburg and Berlin and the OSS? It is full of little hints next to the action driven parts of the storyline that appeal to a generation of moviegoers who were teached by Damon Lindelof in Lost that anything can be significant. As the final scene of the movie shows, Indy is not retired yet…

The Indiana Jones Flick just opened in France last night. Stephanie was right on in her review. I had fairly low expectations about what this picture would deliver, but left the screening feeling very satisfied. I think it delivered at the same level of the original Raiders of the Lost Ark: very entertaining and well-crafted. Parisian audiences can be brutal, but there were not the usual criticisms that I usually overhear as the credits rolled. Oddly enough, the one complaint I did overhear was some thirty-something guy in a suit saying that he expected there would be more CGI. His date/GF/wife thought that Harrison Ford was 'tres sexieeeee'

Regarding this review: It's very well-written, and the opening graphs convinced me I should see this film. Actually I was always going to see it anyway, even if it was said to suck. Even bad Spielberg movies are still loaded with good sequences and ideas. I would consider "Jurassic Park: Lost World" a bad Spielberg movie, but there are at least a half-dozen great, memorable scenes in that film. Anyway, nice job overall, Stephanie Zacharek.

Regarding spoilers: I sympathize with both sides on this issue. I purposely did not read the middle section of the review that discussed plot, because I would much rather not know anything walking into the theater. Different reviewers will have different approaches to plot. Roger Ebert is usually very good about dancing around the plot without stating key parts of it. Anthony Lane of the New Yorker usually riffs on the plot without exposing it. David Denby, however, has completely ruined surprises without warning. Sometimes a "Spoiler alert!" is in order, but putting multiple asterisks and the word "SPOILER ALERT!!!!" in a review is ugly text. Each reviewer is different: Some are consumer reporters (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere), others are analysts and essayists (sadly not enough professional publications delve into the deep end, but back in the day there was Cahiers du Cinema, Film Comment and other), and some are in-between. Now that you know Stephanie Zacharek discusses plot details, go find somebody you like better for upcoming movies, or read the Rotten Tomatoes blurbs.

On "War of the Worlds": Zacharek calls it a "delusional work of sci-fi craftsmanship" and "one of the ugliest, most mean-spirited pictures of the decade." Wow, Stephanie! You really hated it! Try watching it again. It's pretty good. I remember you were offended by the echoes of 9/11 with the "missing" photos people had pasted up. I think you missed seeing the many good things about this film, such as the equisite way the story is set up (the opening scenes are beautifully tense and gloomy) and the inventive way the aliens are slowly depicted. The movie was retro and modern at the same time, and the cinematography was excellent, worth the price of admission alone. The movie only went wrong for me when Tim Robbins showed up, giving a performance that was too true to the "retro" intentions of the film. He was miscast -- they should have gotten James Gandolfini or somebody for the part. I also don't think there was anything mean-spirited about the film....what are you talking about? Spielberg actually managed to wedge a sub-story about a father awakening to his responsibilities as a parent into a large-scale drama about worldwide attack. In spite of having Tom Cruise in the title role, I thought Spielberg (and the writer, whom I believe was again David Koepp) did this very well.

Regarding Zacharek's lack of nerdly accuracy: Zacharek writes, "I don't think of Spielberg as any sort of savior of contemporary cinema: He is, after all, an executive producer of the "Transformer" movies." Those are the "Transformers" movies, not "Transformer." But on another note, Zacharek, were you aware that Spielberg co-runs a large production company, and one of their specialties is big-budget, special-effects films? Were you also aware that "executive producer" is a somewhat meaningless title, indicating an authority role but often very little creative connection (as opposed to a "producer" role, which often is almost as important as the director)?

Anyway, I think the whole idea of Spielberg as a "savior" of contemporary cinema is a construct in your own mind rather than anything anybody has ever claimed. Spielberg is an inventive and thoughtful director, but a person would have to be thinking about cinema in a hopelessly wrongheaded way to expect any single artist to be a savior for the art form.

I don't quite understand your emphasis on "Transformers," since its only sin is being kind of dumb. That's what you get when you hire Michael Bay as a director.

I also don't understand your dismissal of "Munich." Its themes are not reducible to a simple one about revenge -- there is a lot more going on there, and you do the film a disservice by reducing it to signposts (and you make the common mistake of analyzing the film as if Spielberg wrote the screenplay). "Munich" touches on the nebulous nature of alliances, the way multiple countries all have hands stirring the pot of a regional conflict, the loss of morality while fighting for a cause, the distance that fighters end up having from knowledge about whom they're fighting (and the resulting need for faith in authority, which has inevitably failed us), a discovery of the humanity in the Other and confusion about how to deal with that, a reflection on the true meaning of Judaism in terms of its approach to conflict and morality, etc. I can understand people having gripes about "Munich" as entertainment, but it is inaccurate to reduce it to a single, simple message.

Anyway, back to the new "Raiders" movie.... I will see it just because it is shot by Janusz Kaminsky. That is enough reason to pay for this film on the big screen. If the movie holds together beyond that, I'll consider it a bonus.