Leading Ladies: January 7, 2005

Heading to the movies this weekend? Find out what's worth your time according to the top women film critics at the nation's best publications. Every Friday morning we'll give you the female perspective on what to expect when the curtain rises.

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White Noise
Stars: Michael Keaton, Deborah Kara Unger, Chandra West
Director: Geoffrey Sax
Rating: PG-13

The good news: Michael Keaton is back, after a dearth of big-screen action in recent years, and our critics are happy to see him. The bad news: he should have chosen a better comeback vehicle that this creepy thriller about an architect who communicates with his dead wife via household appliances. For one thing, says the Los Angeles Time's Carina Chocano, the movie focuses way too much on said appliances. "Perhaps the scariest things about it are how hard it tries to be cool and how fundamentally it equates cool with possessing the right stuff," Chocano writes. USA Today's Claudia Puig is also disturbed by the "lackluster, scary-free" story's reliance on gadgetry, which she says, throws "a lot of unimpressive, not exactly cutting-edge technology in our faces."

And what about the performance of the likable Mr. Keaton? The New York Times's Manohla Dargis says the movie is worthy "neither of Mr. Keaton's talents nor even a desperate horror fan's attention."

Female consensus: They'd prefer sweet silence.