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This film is the story of John Wilmot, a.k.a. the Earl of Rochester, who was a top playwright at the time of Charles II, whose cynical view of the world lead to a life of debauchery and an early death.

As played by Johnny Depp, he introduces the film by stating bluntly that you will not like him nor doe he desire that you like him. Depp is again stupendous in the difficult role, which doesn’t sugar coat the character, but allows us to see the world from his point of view and understand a bit of his passion, which was what attracted people to him.

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I really liked Wes Craven’s gritty original THE HILLS HAVE EYES. It was scary and fascinating. Alexandre Aja, whose HIGH TENSION was a solid horror film until he ruined everything with an absolutely lame twist in the end, was assigned the duty of remaking Craven’s early horror classic. Funny that Aja, along with his co-writer Gregory Levasseur, would remove everything that made the original wonderful.

The general plot is the same. A family breaks down in the desert and are besieged by a family of mutant cannibals. The family dynamic is the same. Big Bob (Ted Levine, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) is a retired cop who likes to tote around his guns. His wife Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan, APOLLO 13) is a conservative, church-going woman. Their young son Bobby (Dan Byrd, FIRESTARTER 2: REKINDLED) is the first to discover that the hills have eyes and is petrified by the fact. The middle child is an attractive blonde named Brenda (Emilie de Ravin, TV’s LOST), who wishes she were not on this family vacation. The oldest sibling Lynn (Vinessa Shaw, EYES WIDE SHUT) has a young child and is married to the annoying, “non-violent” Doug (Aaron Stanford, X2: X-MEN UNITED).

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This independently produced murder mystery peaked my interest because it involved the sideshow and Mike Patton, the lead singer of Faith No More. I was hoping for a surreal thriller, but received a poorly acted, mess of a narrative.

The film tells two parallel stories of abuse with Patton playing two roles and Karen Black (FIVE EASY PIECES) playing two roles as well. Jimmy (Jak Kendall, film debut) and his mother Eleanor (Black) are tormented and tortured by their hard-drinking brother/son David (Patton). Sandra (Black) works for a traveling sideshow where her and her fellow performers are under the harsh rule of carnival owner Frank (Patton).

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Like many I was really looking forward to seeing the PIRATES sequel. So you can understand my disappointment when I went to see it and it turned out to be just a 2 1/2 hour trailer for PIRATES 3. Gone is the magic of the first film. Gone is the originality. You know a sequel is in danger when it has to recycle the jokes from its predecessor.

Like the MATRIX sequels, PIRATES seems to only have enough story for one new film, but not two. Only MATRIX blew all its new stuff in the second film where as (I hope) PIRATES is waiting to end strong. DEAD MAN’S CHEST opens with the interruption of the rain drenched wedding of Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley, PRIDE & PREJUDICE) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom, LORD OF THE RINGS). During the ceremony, they are arrested by Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander, THE LIBERTINE) for freeing known pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, FINDING NEVERLAND). However, Beckett is interested very little in justice and more in blackmail, sending Will out to retrieve Sparrow’s compass in an effort to save Elizabeth.

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August usually isn’t the month to find the best of the summer movies, but this year Hollywood has saved the best for last. This is the funniest film I’ve seen since THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN — the ending had me laughing so hard I was in tears. Fox Searchlight paid $10.5 million at the Sundance Film Festival for the rights to distribute this film, which was a huge amount for an indie production. They got their money’s worth.

Written by Michael Arndt and directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (all making their feature debuts), the film is a quirky, sometimes dark, comedic road picture, which skewers the notion of winners and losers. The family in the center of the story is headed to California in their VW bus after 7-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin, SIGNS) is accepted into the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant.

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Last year around Halloween the magazine Total Film released its list of the best horror films of all time. One on the list stuck out — THE DESCENT from 2005. I knew nothing about it, but being that it was new and made the list, I was totally intrigued.

I learned that I was a British film made by Neil Marshall, whose DOG SOLDIERS went direct to SCI FI Channel in the U.S. and was not very good. THE DESCENT is not only a huge improvement over Marshall’s first film, but stands as the best horror film released widely in U.S. theaters since SCREAM. This film knows what’s scary and why it’s scary.

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This character piece about an emotionally immature man who has only shallow, revengeful feelings is quieter and more contemplative than you may think.

Coles (Mark Ruffalo, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME) is an independent animator who meets college student Sam (Maya Stange, TV’s MCLEOD’S DAUGHTERS) at a party after watching her in the subway earlier that day. They hook up that night… but with a twist. Sam invites her friend Thea (Kathleen Robertson, TV’s BEVERLY HILLS 90210) to join them. It doesn’t end right, but Sam still wants to see Coles. That first encounter taints their relationship from there out.

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This British cult comedy finds two unemployed actors in 1969 leaving London to holiday in the country. Marwood (or I) (Paul McGann, 1996’s DOCTOR WHO) is a paranoid man who worries about everything. Withnail (Richard E. Grant, GOSFORD PARK) is a highly educated drunk, who stumbles through life thinking he’s better than everyone as a cover for his utter failure as an actor.

To get out of the city, Withnail cons his gay uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths, HARRY POTTER) into loaning them his rundown cabin in the country. Marwood’s on-edge personality mixed with Withnail’s snobby manic behavior makes for a lot of funny moments. When they arrive in the country, the film mines the contrast between the boozed out and drugged up Withnail and Marwood and the conservative locals.

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Director Kihachi Okamoto (KILL!, ZATOICHI MEETS YOJIMBO) creates a stylish samurai tale that stands out due to its central character who would be a villain in any other film. One could compare it to other samurai films, but better comparisons would be TAXI DRIVER, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER or DAHMER.

Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai, RAN) is a sociopath. Making things worse for everyone else is that he’s the best samurai around. Our introduction to him is him cold bloodily murdering an old man (Kamatari Fujiwara, KAGEMUSHA) as he prays. Subsequently the old man’s granddaughter Omatsu (Yoko Naito, RED BEARD) is adopted by the thief Shichibei (Ko Nishimura, LADY SNOWBLOOD), who has her stay with a mean flower arranger.

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Where is John Hughes when a generation of teens need someone to supply them with films that do not constitute mental abuse? This tween concoction is a collection of caricatures taped together with clichés.

It’s the summer before Julie Corky (Alexa Vega, SPY KIDS) begins her freshman year in high school. She wants nothing more than to sit at the fountain during lunch instead of the tables by the dumpsters and date the school’s skateboarding, prep hunk Steve Phillips (Sean Faris, who was 22 when he made this film and sure looks it, YOURS, MINE AND OURS).

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