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RUNAWAY JURY The latest adaptation of a John Grisham bestseller, this one posits that there's hope for ordinary citizens to take on the powerful gun lobby -- and possibly win. It's a fantastical concept -- more far-fetched than anything in Star Wars or The Wizard of Oz -- but that doesn't make it any less savory a dream. And the flames of that dream are stoked to an inferno in this slick drama in which a jury member (John Cusack) has his own reasons for wanting to sway the vote in a civil suit involving a major gun manufacturer. Gene Hackman, who has the distinction of appearing in both the best Grisham adaptation (The Firm) and the worst (The Chamber), is all coiled menace as the consultant who's never met a jury he can't manipulate. 
SCARY MOVIE 3 Scary Movie 3 features the likes of Charlie Sheen, Pamela Anderson, Simon Cowell and a Michael Jackson clone -- certainly some folks' idea of a good time, but little more than an act of sheer desperation as far as I'm concerned. Then again, this series has always been about low-brow entertainment, but at least the original picture delivered plenty of laughs. Operating like an inferior issue of Mad magazine with all the pages mixed up, this randomly ping-pongs between tepid take-offs of The Ring, Signs, The Matrix Reloaded and 8 Mile. The notion of Leslie Nielsen playing the US President is funny in theory, but this film even blows the comic potential of that situation. 1/2
SYLVIA Failing to convey the imagination of Frida, the poignancy of Iris, or the profundity of Virginia Woolf's plight in The Hours, Sylvia brings up the rear when it comes to films about tortured women trying to create art while contending with mental and/or physical anguish. Known in shorthand as the suicidal author of The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath won't see that description expanded by this dreary effort that's more interested in documenting a tragic love affair than getting inside this woman's head. Whether Plath's art and death were fueled by much beyond romance gone awry seems almost beside the point in this picture, which focuses almost exclusively on the soap opera angle and in effect paints largely unsympathetic portrayals of both Sylvia (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her husband, poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig).
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE Loosely based on the exploits of serial killer Ed Gein, both film versions (1974 and 2003) deal with five college-age kids whose ill-advised road trip through a desolate part of Texas puts them in contact with a murderous, cannibalistic clan whose most terrifying member (Leatherface) is a hulking psychopath who wears his victims' faces as masks. The bottom line? The original picture is a genuine classic of the genre, a punishing, unrelenting nightmare that never allows viewers even a moment of sanity or security. This doltish new version, on the other hand, is nothing more than business as usual, a feeble retelling that guts the integrity of the original and wears its own cynicism like a ragged mask. 1/2
WONDERLAND "John Holmes" and "Rashomon" aren't two cinematic staples that normally turn up in the same sentence, yet that film's m.o. of using varying viewpoints to relate the same event is employed in this muddy dramatization of the Wonderland killings of 1981. The involvement of a porn star in this sordid affair is doubtless what inspired director James Cox to tackle this material in the first place, yet Holmes (Val Kilmer) is such a featureless character that he comes across no more defined than any generic Tom, Big Dick or Harry. A few actors make momentary impressions -- Lisa Kudrow as Holmes' estranged wife, Kate Bosworth as his teen girlfriend -- yet most are kept in the shadows, as hard to make out as this film's ultimate intentions.
