BY LEAH ROZEN
SUSPENSE
Anyone who has seen Anthony Hopkins play Hannibal Lecter knows that he excels at portraying brilliant and sophisticated psychos. In Fracture, Sir Anthony plays a similarly twisted smoothie to equally entertaining effect.
In this crafty thriller, wealthy Los Angeles businessman Ted Crawford (Hopkins) shoots his two-timing wife (Embeth Davidtz)—sending her into a coma—but pleads not guilty and chooses to defend himself. Out to nail him is Willy Beachum (Gosling), an ambitious young prosecutor from the wrong side of the tracks who fails to appreciate just how cunning and manipulative Crawford can be.
"I'm not gonna play games with you," Beachum smugly tells the older man.
"I'm afraid you have to, old sport," Crawford shoots back.
Other than a superfluous romantic subplot (with Beachum and a corporate lawyer played by the beauteous Pike), Fracture is a cleverly constructed pleasure. Director Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear) moves the action along deftly and gets—this can't be hard—keen performances from Hopkins and Gosling. (R)
Kate Beckinsale, Luke Wilson
HORROR
It's doubtful this exceedingly nasty chiller—about a couple (Beckinsale and Wilson) who check into an isolated motel where they become murder targets—will be offered as a pay-per-view option at many hotels. It'd scare the room service out of guests, as it will filmgoers. Vacancy, agilely directed by Nimród Antal, efficiently introduces the pair, puts them in peril and then keeps tightening the screws, all in a trim 80 minutes, just long enough for you to chew your nails to the quick. (R)
WORTH SEEKING OUT
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton
COMEDY
When his stellar job performance makes fellow officers look bad, a London cop (Pegg) is transferred to a tiny burg, where his biggest challenge seems to be capturing a local farmer's runaway swan—until the bloody corpses start turning up.
Fuzz reteams writer-star Pegg and writer-director Edgar Wright, the duo behind 2004's hilarious zombie parody Shaun of the Dead. Their new movie affectionately satirizes British films trafficking in small-town whimsy and oversize Hollywood action flicks, resulting in big laughs with guns ablazing. (R)
Adam Brody, Meg Ryan, Kristen Stewart, Olympia Dukakis
DRAMA
My father raised my five siblings and me with one maxim foremost: "Self-pity is the most ignoble of human emotions." Writer-director Jonathan Kasdan fails to heed this bit of wisdom in his debut film, In the Land of Women, a slight drama populated by characters awash in pouty navel-gazing. After he's dumped by his girlfriend, an aspiring writer (Brody) moves from L.A. to Michigan, where he befriends a neighbor sick with cancer (Ryan) and her angry teen daughter (Stewart). The cast tries hard to breathe life into a shallow construct. But overall, Land is one of those well-intentioned movies you just keep wishing you liked more than you do. (PG-13)
See video: Watch Adam talk about dating at PEOPLE.COM/BRODY
After playing geeky Seth Cohen on the 2003-07 FOX teen series, the comic book fanatic gets his first leading movie role: in In the Land of Women
ON LIFE AFTER THE O.C. I'm still adjusting! It was weird: It was absolutely fantastic for about three weeks, and then I started to get antsy and go, "What do I do with my time?" Now adjustment is taking hold, and I'm reverting back to the old 22-year-old unemployed me [before the show]. I'm just looking for a job—but as an actor, there's not exactly much you can do besides wait.
ON HIS DREAM SUPERHERO ROLE Jon [Kasdan, his Women director] and I would really like to do Green Arrow. We pitched that and I don't think they liked our take. Whateverâ their loss. All I can say is it would've been awesome.
ON HOW HIS DAD HAMPERS HIS LOVE LIFE Five years ago, my dad was in town and I had an audition. I was reading with this cute girl. We were leaving and I said, "I want to ask for her number, so could you get the car and I'll meet you?" She came out and started talking, and my dad pulls up, honks the horn and gives me the thumbs-up. I don't think she called me back.
ON WOMEN COSTAR MEG RYAN It was nice to do a classic romantic comedy walk-and-talk [a bantering scene] with Meg Ryan, because it's her staple. I felt like I was doing a piece of classic cinema: the Meg Ryan walk-and-talk. It's a big deal for me.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
