This week's premieres
photo: Saturn Entertainment
The Haunted Mansion (Strašidelný zámok) - Family comedy by Rob Minkoff. Following Pirates of the Caribbean, this is the second film in a year adapted from a Walt Disney theme park ride; unfortunately, Eddie Murphy proved long ago that he does not possess Johnny Depp's ability to lift a movie above questionable source material. But, who knows? Maybe it's good fun - the presence of Terence Stamp (The Limey) and Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride) certainly never hurt anybody.
photo: SPI International
The Four Feathers (V mene cti) - Adventure by Shekhar Kapur. The fifth cinematic adaptation of AEW Mason's novel about a young British officer who loses his best friend and fiancée after he resigns from the military on the eve of a war in the Sudan. Little do they know that he plans to go undercover in the highly volatile North African country. Australian heartthrob Heath Ledger (The Patriot) plays the military defector, Wes Bentley (American Beauty) plays his friend, and Kate Hudson (Almost Famous) plays his fiancée.
The Rules of Attraction (Pravidlá vášne) - Comedy/Drama by Roger Avary. After the film version of Bret Easton Ellis' extremely controversial novel American Psycho, about a homicidal Wall Street broker in the 1980s, became a cult hit, perhaps it seemed safer to adapt one of his earlier novels for the screen. And so comes The Rules of Attraction, which details the sexual exploits of a drug dealer and the young people of varying degrees of corruptness that surround him at a small, elite US college. James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek fame leads a cast of pretty young people.
Prepared by Jonathan Knapp
