A boy declares his love for his girlfriend, only to die the same night. He is brought back to life by his mother as a flesh-craving zombie, who sires more teen undead while trying to control his, er, appetite for his beloved.

A masochistic cop (Maura Tierney), who hides her predilection from her cop husband (Terry Kinney), gets involved in pursuing a kidnapper nicknamed Harry for Harry Houdini (Adrien Brody), who has kidnapped a rich woman (Laila Robins) and has buried her somewhere in Manhattan while demanding a ransom from her tycoon husband (James Naughton). Failure to pay the ransom within 24 hours will lead the kidnapper to abandoning the woman. Dylan Baker also appears as the fed that is assigned to the case. Written by John Sacksteder {jsackste@bellsouth.net}

Kevin McAllister, 8 years old is accidentally left behind while his family rushes to the Airport to go to France for their Christmas vacation. Kevin learns that he made his family is gone. He spends his first day having fun in his house. Kevin learns that Mav and Harry (The Wet Bandits), two crooks are trying to rob his house. Kevin fends for himself and protects his house from the thieves, by setting traps everywhere. Meanwhile, Kevin’s mother discovers that they left Kevin in Chicago and tries to go back to Chicago while the other members of the family stay in Fance. Written by Inhotenjoys

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This film tells the real-life story of U.S. fighter pilot Dieter Dengler, a German-American shot down and captured in Laos during the Vietnam War. Dengler organized a death-defying escape for a small band of POWs, including Duane Martin. Written by Ryan

A young man (Lerman) moves from Montana to Florida with his family, where he’s compelled to engage in a fight to protect a population of endangered owls.

I walked out of “House of Sand and Fog” with two distinct thoughts pinging around in my brain. One, the acting in “House of Sand and Fog” was some of the best of the year. And two, I was thinking in amazement about the way director/screenwriter Vadim Perelman was able to make me alternately despise and cheer for each of the central characters in a balanced fashion over the entire course of the movie. Normally you get to pick one bad guy and wish evil thoughts on him or her over the course of the film. That’s not so easy with “House of Sand and Fog.” The characters were so well developed and human, with all the foibles that implies, it was difficult to find a hero or a villain and label them with that designation for longer than a scene or two.

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Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They’re all rather tight, or so they claim. But they spend precious little time together and none of them seems to know much about one another’s family lives. This bizarre dichotomy underscores their alienation # the result of suburban ennui, a teenager’s inherent sense of melodrama, and the disturbing nature of their home environments. Written by Bubba

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Jake Green is a hotshot gambler, long on audacity and short on common sense. He’s rarely allowed to play in any casino because he is a winner. Jake has taken in so much money over the years, he is the only client of his accountant and older brother Billy. One night, Jake, Billy and their other brother Joe are invited to sit in on a private game, where Jake is expected to lose to Dorothy Macha, a crime boss and local casino owner who can’t play for squat, but always wins because people are too scared to beat him. Jake isn’t afraid of Macha, and not only beats Dorothy in a quick game of chance, but takes every possible opportunity to insult the man. Jake and his brothers leave the game, and Macha puts out the order for a hit on Jake, who ends up working for and being protected by a pair of brothers, Avi and Zack, who are out to take Macha down. Written by Edward Havens {edward@filmjerk.com}