I loved the trailer and video clips from “Saw,” so my expectations were relatively high going into the screening. Prepared for a gory good time, I wanted to like “Saw.” I wanted it to make me squirm, make me hide my eyes, and just get lost in a gross-out horror/thriller. But what I couldn’t have prepared myself for was just how horrific “Saw” turned out to be. And that’s not a compliment.

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When a small town is invaded by aliens from outer space who are capturing and killing the townspeople, no one takes them seriously. Why? The aliens all look like circus clowns, use weapons that look clown like, and all have painted on smiles. Only a few of the young people in the town realize the danger and of course no one believes them. Armed with an ice cream truck they try and rescue their friends. Written by John Vogel {jlvogel@comcast.net}

John Singleton said he wanted to make a movie with a distinctly Western tone and with “Four Brothers,” Singleton’s accomplished just that. The movie’s contemporary urban setting could easily be encased in a time capsule and sent back to the days of the Wild West and it would seem right at home.

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David and Amy Fox find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere when their car breaks down. Luckily, they come across a motel with a TV to entertain them during their overnight stay. However, there’s something very strange and familiar about the Grade-Z slasher movies that the motel broadcasts for its guests’ enjoyment. They all appear to be filmed in the very same room they occupy! Realizing that they are trapped in their room with hidden cameras now aimed at them filming their every move, David and Amy desperately find a means of escape through locked doors, crawlspaces and underground tunnels before they too become the newest stars of the mystery filmmaker’s next cult classic! Written by alfiehitchie

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oseph Gordon-Levitt gives the best performance of his career and Jeff Daniels is equally outstanding in writer/director Scott Frank’s The Lookout, an immensely entertaining and mesmerizing story about a guy with brain damage who becomes involved in a bank robbery. Frank’s rookie directorial effort (he wrote the screenplays for Out of Sight, Get Shorty, and The Interpreter) is an amazingly genuine and absorbing film that pulls you in from the get-go and doesn’t let up until the ending credits scroll by.

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January releases usually fall into two categories: the Oscar contenders who are getting their wide release after playing in a handful of LA and New York theaters, or movies the studios don’t have much faith in and want to quietly push out early in the year just to get it over with. Guess which category “Hide and Seek” belongs to? No one will be mentioning this movie and ‘award’ in the same sentence unless it earns the dubious distinction of being included in the 2005 Razzies celebrating the worst movies of the year.

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If asked to sum up “The Ice Harvest” in just one word it would have to be ‘pointless’. Of course if all I was asked to give was a simple one-word summary, there would be no reason to write a full-length review. So to pad out the ‘pointless’ description, I’m adding mean-spirited, nonsensical, and a waste of time and talent.

There’s absolutely nothing appealing about “The Ice Harvest.” I realize this is a movie about a couple of bad apples surrounded by a basket-load of rotten fruit, however at the core of “The Ice Harvest” is a blackened pit that’s sure to leave an ugly aftertaste in your mouth. (Sometimes these descriptions just pop into my head and they won’t leaf…er, leave.)

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The teenager Loomis Crowley is testing the underground game Stay Alive with his friends Sarah and Rex. When the game is over, the impressed Loomis finds in the middle of the night Rex and Sarah dead in their room, and his is pushed by a shadow from the staircase, breaking the banister and hanging the same way he died in the game. Loomis’s sister Emma gives his games to his best friend, Hutch, and he joins his friends Miller, Phineus and his sister October, Swink and Abigail to play the unknown game together. When Miller and Phineus die the same way they died in the game, the survivors disclose that the game is based on the life of the evil Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who was buried alive in the tower of her real state in the Geronge Plantation. With the police chasing them, and after the death of October, the survivors reach the house and try to find the corpse of the Countess to destroy her fiend. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Mathilda, a twelve-year old New York girl, is living an undesirable life among her half-family. Her father stores drugs for two-faced cop Norman Stansfield. Only her little brother keeps Mathilda from breaking apart. One day, Stansfield and his team take cruel revenge on her father for stretching the drugs a little, thus killing the whole family. Only Mathilda, who was out shopping, survives by finding shelter in Léon’s apartment in the moment of highest need. Soon, she finds out about the strange neighbour’s unusual profession - killing - and desperately seeks his help in taking revenge for her little brother. Léon, who is completely unexperienced in fatherly tasks, and in friendships, does his best to keep Mathilda out of trouble - unsuccessfully. Now, the conflict between a killer, who slowly discovers his abilities to live, to feel, to love and a corrupt police officer, who does anything in his might to get rid of an eye witness, arises to unmeasurable proportions - all for the sake of a little twelve-year old girl, who has nearly nothing to lose. Written by Julian Reischl {julianreischl@mac.com}

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Based on a true story, this twisting psychological thriller focuses on a serial arsonist whose terrifying six-year crime spree is juxtaposed with the increasingly desperate efforts of investigators to bring him to justice. Charged with investigating many of these fires is Captain John Orr (Ray Liotta), a legendary figure in the Glendale Fire Department, possessed with an uncanny ability to pinpoint the origins of a fire, as well as the devices by which an arsonist may have carried out the crime. Through a fingerprint left at the scene of one crime and a series of surprise revelations focusing on arsons set in several towns, the task force is able to close in on an unlikely suspect. . . and ultimately crack the case. Written by Schleppy