Lakeview Terrace
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson Review: The main problem with this treatise on racial politics undercover as an exercise in suspense is that the director, Neil LaBute, didn't write the script. LaBute is an incendiary playwright (Bash, The Mercy Seat, Fat Pig) who puts us in the company of misogynist men who slowly reveal their base instincts. Lakeview Terrace, written by David Loughery and Howard Korder, is obvious when you most want it to be stealth. Samuel L. Jackson stars as LAPD veteran Abel Turner, a widower who's hard on his two kids (Regine Nehy, Jaishon Fisher) and harder on his new neighbors. They would be Chris (Patrick Wilson), a white man, and Lisa (Kerry Washington), his black wife. Interracial coupling doesn't sit well with Abel. Not that you see much coupling, even during a strip party. Lakeview Terrace... Rating: 2 Stars

Ghost Town
Starring: Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni Review: The fall movie season achieves comic liftoff thanks to Ricky Gervais, a master of deadpan hilarity playing a dentist who sees dead people. If you don't know Gervais from the original Brit TV version of The Office or HBO's Extras, then you are an idiot and deserve root-canal surgery without Novocain. Wait, I'm starting to sound like Bertram Pincus, the Scrooge in a dental smock for whom hell is other people. (Listen, he does live in Manhattan.) When a colonoscopy gone wrong gives Bertram a taste of death, he wakes up with ghosts popping up every which way demanding things from him. It's Sartre's No Exit played for laughs. Cheers to David Koepp, who writes blockbusters (Indy 4, Spider-Man), directs occultish thrillers (Secret Window, Stir of Echoes) and finds a beguiling comfort zone... Rating: 3 Stars

The Duchess
Starring: Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes Review: The trailer makes this costume drama look like a dude's nightmare, all hotness buried in yards of lace and crinoline. But in telling the true (enough) 18th-century story of young Georgiana, the handful who got stuck marrying the haughty, unfaithful Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes), the filmmakers plugged in a live wire. That would be Keira Knightley, an actress with a gift for bringing humor and heat to period pieces (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice). Based on Amanda Foreman's biography of the Duchess, the film, directed perfunctorily by Saul Dibb, underlines every parallel it can find between Georgiana and Princess Diana, starting with the Duke's affair with Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell). Knightley meets every challenge of the role as the Duchess becomes a devoted mother, an infamous... Rating: 3 Stars

The Women
Starring: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing, Eva Mendes Review: Updating a comedy classic is not a good idea. Case in point: this misbegotten redo of Clare Booth Luce's 1936 play (and 1939 movie) about pampered Manhattan women who gossip about men who are never seen. Think Sex and the City without the sex. Murphy Brown creator Diane English has been trying to do this movie since her sitcom went off the air in 1998. It's finally here, and it's a major dud. A big-name cast of actresses gives it a go, but everyone from Meg Ryan as the cheated-on wife to Eva Mendes as the home-wrecking perfume girl struggles with a script that resists being crowbarred into the 21st century. OK, the ladies do more bonding than belittling each other, but the jokes barely escape their lips before they wither and die. Ironically, it's Murphy herself, Candice Bergen, in a cameo... Rating: 1 Star

Towelhead
Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Summer Bishil Review: Yes, that Alan Ball, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of American Beauty, the creator of HBO's Six Feet Under and now True Blood, a sizzling new series about contemporary vampires getting by on synthetic red stuff. Ball, bless him, goes for the real jugular. Towelhead, adapted from Alicia Erian's novel, is Ball's debut as a feature director. And once again he's out there stirring things up. Set at the time of the Gulf War, the movie feeds on shocks, often just for the sake of dropping jaws. Mission accomplished. Jasira (Summer Bishil), a 13-year-old Arab girl, is a child of divorce. Her American mother (Maria Bello) has a lover who shaves Jasira's pubic hair, prompting mom to send daughter off to Houston to live with her strict Lebanese dad, Rifat (Peter Macdissi). Though Rifat is a citizen... Rating: 2.5 Stars