E-Mail This Article to a Friend The terror, the terror (continued)

February

It seems that home no longer is where the heart is, but where the terror abides. In Boogeyman (February 4), a young man (Barry Watson) returns to the old homestead to discover that the title entity is not just a figment of his imagination. Stephen T. Kay (Static) directs.

For many filmmakers, though, real terror is a release scheduled in the desolate month of February. Undaunted by this is Gurinda Chadha’s (Bend It Like Beckham) Bride and Prejudice (February 11), an update of the Jane Austen novel as a contemporary Bollywood musical.

Like Bollywood, Keanu Reeves guides us from the everyday to the nightmarish realm that underlies it. In Constantine (February 18), he plays a supernatural detective who serves as a bridge between the banal and the beyond. Rachel Weisz, his cop sidekick, rolls her eyes. Making his feature debut, music-video director Francis Lawrence adapts the DC/Vertigo comic book Hellblazer, and the film, in true Matrix-like fashion, will simultaneously be issued as a computer game.

Back on planet Earth again, Imaginary Heroes (February 18) features a bunch of folks just like your family and mine, yelling and screaming at each other and spilling secrets. Emile Hersh, Sigourney Weaver, and Jeff Daniels round out the cast for this first film from director Dan Harris. Daniels returns with another set of family problems in Because of Winn-Dixie (February 18), playing a preacher dad whose wife left him with their little girl. They head south and meet a town full of heartwarming eccentrics in Wayne Wang’s adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery Honor–winning novel.

March

March comes in more like a lamb than a lion. Compassion and forgiveness eclipse vengeance and fear in In My Country (March 4), as Samuel L. Jackson plays an American journalist covering the South African Truth and Reconciliation Hearings. Juliette Binoche and Brendan Gleeson also star as John Boorman adapts the novel by Antjie Krog.

Some evil, though, never goes away, especially if there is money to be made in a sequel. Naomi Watts answers the call of The Ring Two (March 11), once again seeking the truth behind the mysterious videotape that kills people. (She should check out the DVD of Gigli.) Hideo Nakata, who started this whole thing with the original Japanese film, directs.

Equally mysterious and terrifying and perhaps prime for a sequel is The Jacket (March 11), from enigmatic director John Maybury (Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon). Adrien Brody plays a vet treated for amnesia who’s placed in the sensory-depriving overcoat of the title and travels to the future, where he foresees his death and has to solve it. Good luck, Adrien. Keira Knightley and Jennifer Jason Leigh offer advice.

I’d say the next film offers comic relief, but is the pairing of Woody Allen and Will Ferrell a dream or a nightmare? Allen further investigates the comedy/tragedy, bend/break dichotomy in Melinda and Melinda (March 18). Radha Mitchell plays the title heroine whose tale has two versions. Ferrell presumably is in the one that makes you laugh.

Can comedy undo the tragedy of racial prejudice? Four decades ago, white parents feared their daughter coming home with a black beau. Now, according to Guess Who (March 25), the roles have been reversed. Bernie Mac plays the discomfited dad, Zoe Saldana the rebellious daughter, and Ashton Kutcher the one who comes to dinner. Kevin Rodney (Barbershop 2) directs.

So what’s the deal with father/daughter movies this year? Some shrink should figure out what’s really going on. Take The Ballad of Jack and Rose (March 25), in which Daniel Day-Lewis plays a single dad with a troublesome relationship with his 16-year-old daughter. No boss’s come-ons, interracial relationships, or imaginary playmates that I know of — just the murky stuff of life, apparently. Catherine Keener co-stars and Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity, not mention Arthur’s daughter and Daniel’s wife) directs.

But enough of this reality crap. Back to the pulp-thriller realm, with Sahara (March 25). In Breck Eisner’s adaptation of Clive Cussler’s novel, Matthew McConaughey plays an investigator who must stop an African plague from destroying the world. That’s the ticket: keep it terrifying, but simple. And unreal.