James La Croix advises:

As a movie reviewer for a local weekly, I religiously avoid the following:

No comedy is ever “a non-stop laugh riot,” or “side-splitting.”

No thriller renders me “white knuckled,” puts me “on the edge of my seat,” is “spine-tingling,” or a “non-stop thrill ride.”

Even if it did, in print no melodrama “made me laugh and made me cry.”

And I never metaphorically use some meaningless verb to describe an actor’s performance (e.g. “Halle Berry soars…”).