CABIN FEVER If Rob Zombie's recent House of 1000 Corpses and the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake are supposed to be throwbacks to the gritty horror yarns of the late 60s and early 70s, then writer-director Eli Roth's Cabin Fever (largely filmed in North Carolina) seeks to revive the tradition of gore-soaked 80s extravaganzas like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead flicks. But Roth isn't a gonzo-genius like Raimi; consequently, Cabin Fever is no Evil Dead, though on its own terms it somewhat gets the job done. You know the routine: Five idiotic kids with sex and drugs on the brain hole up in a shack in the middle of nowhere; after spending some time making fun of the inbred locals (Charlotte actor Tim Parati appears as one of these shotgun-toting rednecks) and telling scary stories around the campfire, they're suddenly confronted with a terror that ends up picking them off one by one. In this case, it's not evil spirits summoned by a Book of the Dead or even some lug in a hockey mask; instead, it's a disease (spread through water) that causes the victim's flesh to peel off, eventually leaving only bones, blood and very toothy grimaces. Like the recent zombie flick 28 Days Later, the film's power derives not from its scare angle (which, let's face it, isn't too fantastical in this era of SARS and AIDS) but from its depiction of the manner in which humans will turn on each other when their own survival is at stake. 1/2

THE FIGHTING TEMPTATIONS Cuba Gooding Jr., so animated a performer that he even appears to be overacting on this movie's poster, plays a city slicker who must travel to a remote area to collect an inheritance left by a deceased relative. Yes, the basic outline is the same as in Gooding's insufferable family film Snow Dogs, but that clunker had no soul -- this movie, by contrast, has soul in the form of gospel, r&b and even a dash of religious rap. Gooding stars as Darren Hill, a crafty New York ad executive who returns to his hometown of Montecarlo, GA, to attend the funeral of his beloved aunt. Before he can collect his inheritance, though, he must fulfill his aunt's wish of steering the church choir to success in the prestigious Gospel Explosion; the local pickings appear slim, but Darren eventually brings together enough top talent to have a crack at winning the contest. Comedians Mike Epps (as the town's self-proclaimed player) and Steve Harvey (as the radio station's tipsy DJ) are on hand to provide the occasional nyuk, but for the most part, the movie's non-musical segments are painfully formulaic bits centering around Gooding's wholly uninspired character. Yet when the gospel tunes take center stage (which thankfully is often), the movie transcends its trite surroundings and emerges as a theater-shaking crowd-pleaser. Among those lending their formidable pipes to the cause are Beyonce Knowles, Reverend Shirley Caesar, Melba Moore and The O'Jays. 1/2

SECONDHAND LIONS After a performance in the recent Open Range that reminds us of his standing as one of the world's greatest contemporary actors, Robert Duvall returns for this slight but affectionate yarn that pairs him with another acting legend. Duvall and Michael Caine (struggling with his accent, but never mind) co-star as brothers Hub and Garth, two old coots who spend most of their time chasing away salesmen and relatives who turn up at their rickety Texas home looking for the small fortune they have hidden somewhere on the property. One such opportunist is their nitwit niece (Kyra Sedgwick), who dumps her sensitive young son Walter (Haley Joel Osment) into their care with instructions to charm the old men into willing him their entire estate. But lonely Walter seeks company, not cash, and after some initial resistance, the siblings warm up to their young charge, eventually regaling him with tales about their swashbuckling exploits from bygone years. A curious concoction that throws together Grumpy Old Men, Unstrung Heroes and The Man Who Would Be King (to name but three), this film may be all over the map, but at least it takes viewers to some interesting places. For that, credit writer-director Tim McCanlies, who knows which situations will allow his stars to shine the brightest. Reserve the highest praise, however, for Duvall and Caine, who effectively sell this iffy material.

THIRTEEN Just as Secondhand Lions turns to two elderly veterans to make the material look better than it really is, Thirteen goes in the opposite direction by tapping the immense talents of a teenage vet to punch across what veers perilously close to shrill overkill. Raleigh native Evan Rachel Wood, with over a dozen film and TV credits to her name, delivers a standout performance as Tracy, a smart, studious girl whose only desire is to hang out with the popular kids. She gets her wish once she hooks up with Evie (Nikki Reed, who co-wrote the script with director Catherine Hardwicke), but it's not long before her new friend is introducing her to booze, drugs, shoplifting, tongue-piercing and sex. More competently made than Larry Clark's similar Kids, this explores the seamiest side of teenage life in grim, frightful detail, though Hardwicke doesn't seem able to apply the brakes on any narrative situation: The manner in which Tracy goes from loving to despising her struggling single mom (Holly Hunter) occurs in the blink of an eye, and the movie piles on the tragedies so relentlessly that you half-expect the movie to climax with either a tornado or an earthquake (or both). Still, Wood's performance is revelatory, and she's matched by the always-terrific Hunter as her suffering mom.

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AMERICAN SPLENDOR Like Adaptation, this misfit movie about a misfit man draws its strength from its ability to play around with the very structure of the motion picture form. In relating the true-life tale of underground cartoonist Harvey Pekar (aptly played by Paul Giamatti), this piece cleverly whiplashes between using movie actors and using the real-life personalities; the inventiveness even extends to the visuals, as parts are animated and framed like comic strips. For all its audacity around the edges, though, the movie rarely offers anything more than Teflon pleasures; unlike the magnificent documentary Crumb, it's content to stay on the surface, never digging deep in an attempt to examine the demons that drove Pekar's life.

COLD CREEK MANOR This weak thriller is like a dead-end street in a swanky neighborhood, offering some interesting glimpses along the way but ultimately leading nowhere. Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone play an NYC couple who, tired of the big-city bustle, purchase a mansion out in the sticks. Once the previous owner (Stephen Dorff), a rube just released from prison, shows up, bad things start happening, and the family soon suspects that their new home may have once been host to tragic events. What Richard Jefferies' script lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in gaping plotholes -- hardly a fair trade-off. Director Mike Figgis also composed the score, which during the tense scenes sounds like a two-year-old incessantly banging on random piano keys.

FREDDY VS. JASON Qualifying as both the 11th picture in the Friday the 13th series and the eighth entry in the Nightmare On Elm Street saga, this combines the two franchises in a manner that's sure to make mutual devotees of the Police Academy and Rambo series green with envy. By virtue of its plot, which brings Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) and Jason (Ken Kirzinger) together, this is a cut above most of the previous yarns, though there's still plenty of time for routine kid-gutting before the climactic showdown. This final battle will probably satisfy gorehounds, though anybody who thinks the outcome will rule out any possibilities of yet another sequel has probably been living in their mom's basement for too long. 1/2

JET LAG In this delightful French import, a chatty beautician (Juliette Binoche) and a curt fussbudget (Jean Reno) are forced by an airport strike to pass the time together in a hotel room, where they quickly become hostile toward each other's philosophies before finding common ground that allows them to blossom together. In a formulaic Hollywood comedy, this set-up would have resulted in wall-to-wall slapstick shenanigans, but here the emphasis is on talk, talk, talk -- and most of it is absorbing, intelligent, and often very funny. It's just too bad the filmmakers didn't let the story run its natural course rather than tacking on a phony ending.

LE DIVORCE The Howards End team of James Ivory, Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala attempt to recapture their former glory with this adaptation of Diane Johnson's 1997 bestseller about Americans in Paris, yet what they whip up isn't a spry look at the clashing of two cultures as much as a clumsy series of missteps -- a movie that never finds the right tone to punch across what could have been a perceptive and poignant tale. Naomi Watts works hard to create a character from among the wafts of vague characterizations that flood the film, but for the most part, the high-caliber cast finds itself adrift in a weightless confection that won't exactly add further strain to Yankee-Franco tensions but won't help build a bridge of understanding, either.

LOST IN LA MANCHA We've seen several documentaries about the making of a particular movie, but here's one that examines the "unmaking" of a movie. Directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe were allowed to film the behind-the-scenes happenings regarding Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, an ambitious screen epic starring Johnny Depp and (as the windmill-fighting eccentric) Jean Rochefort. Instead, Fulton and Pepe ended up with reams of footage depicting an unbelievable string of calamitous events that ended up destroying the project after only a few days of shooting. Gilliam simply couldn't catch a break, and this movie, like a sadistic voyeur, peeps around every corner to view how Gilliam's dream project never stood a chance.

THE MAGDALENE SISTERS This powerful work is writer-director Peter Mullan's unflinching account of Ireland's Magdalene laundries, church-sanctioned establishments in which young women accused of "sex sins" (even flirting with boys was cause for incarceration) were sent to spend time (many of them for the remainder of their lives) working as slaves under the auspices of money-grubbing nuns who humiliated their prisoners at every turn. What sticks the most, even past the surface dramatics and superlative performances, is the film's clarion call to action, its outrage at the immoral activities that are allowed to run unchecked -- and are often even encouraged by governing bodies -- throughout what we keep telling ourselves is a civilized western world order. 1/2

MATCHSTICK MEN Nicolas Cage, in full "Look at me, I'm acting!" mode, gets more endearing as the film progresses, playing a con artist whose medical malfunctions (he's an obsessive-compulsive) threaten to get in the way of his chosen crime field. And matters become even more complicated once he discovers he has a teenage daughter (Alison Lohman) just as he and his partner (Sam Rockwell) are about to embark on a major swindle. This is the sort of film in which once the climactic twists are revealed (or guessed), viewers will play the film backward to see if all the puzzle pieces fit snugly. For the record, they don't, but audiences will be reasonably entertained anyway. Lohman, so memorable in White Oleander, is equally impressive here. 1/2

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO A crushing disappointment, this final chapter in the "Mariachi" trilogy (after El Mariachi and Desperado) finds our guitar-swinging, gun-slinging hero (Antonio Banderas) crossing paths with a duplicitous CIA agent (Johnny Depp). So many storylines, so little time to get involved with any of them; the biggest casualty is Banderas, who seems like an extra in his own movie. And while Desperado may have been both bloody and cold-blooded, it contained enough pluses to allow us to turn a blind eye to its less savory elements. This time, there are no smoke screens -- only bullets and bloodletting, uniting to provide a dour conclusion to a series that once upon a time offered something more than just gratuitous violence.

OPEN RANGE Decidedly "old school" in both content and intent, this doesn't expand the parameters of the Western but instead feels like a throwback to the types of genre flicks that populated moviehouses until their fizzle in the late 70s. Kevin Costner (who also directed) and especially Robert Duvall deliver strong performances as two cattlemen forced to defend themselves against a vicious rancher (Michael Gambon) and his hired guns. The shootouts are presented as clumsy and chaotic -- gritty dances of death that aren't commented upon (as in Unforgiven) but that aren't glamorized, either.

THE ORDER Weary travelers who need a place to stop for the night now have a choice: They can spend about $65 to stay in a decent motel or they can shell out eight bucks and crash in an auditorium playing The Order. Either way, their slumber won't be interrupted. To be fair, this long-on-the-shelf release has an interesting premise, but the film burying it beneath layers of cobwebs is unremittingly dull. Heath Ledger plays a priest who comes into contact with The Sin Eater, an ancient being who absorbs the misdeeds of sinners so that they may enter the kingdom of God. The script posits that there's only one Sin Eater left on the planet, but we all know that's bull: Anybody who devours a Whopper or a Big Mac basically falls under this heading as well. 1/2

STEP INTO LIQUID Bruce Brown's 1966 surfing documentary The Endless Summer has long been considered a classic in its field, and now here's Bruce's son Dana Brown following in his old man's footsteps. The film opens with the words, "No special effects. No stuntmen. No stereotypes," and it's soon apparent that it will go 3-for-3 on that claim. That third point might come as a surprise to viewers who buy into the image of the stoner-surfer, yet what this picture makes clear is that the lure of the perfect wave attracts all types. Even with a running time of 88 minutes that necessitates cramming a lot of material between its opening and closing credits, this is remarkably fluid (no pun intended) while painting its cheery portrait of the surf culture.