APOCALYPTO

There was a lot that I hated about Mel Gibson's Mayan-language action epic Apocalypto.

I hated the obviousness of the opening 20 minutes, with the director crudely working overtime to make the Mayans "relatable." (Look! They played practical jokes! And teased their friends about their sex lives! And gave blow jobs! Just like us!) I hated the way Gibson was cranking up the audience's bloodlust via the sentimental idylls; our hero, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), is given not only a sage, loving father and a devoted, nine-months-pregnant wife, but perhaps the cutest toddler on God's green earth.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES

The setup for The Hills Have Eyes - Alexandre Aja's remake of Wes Craven's 1977 horror classic, with Craven himself on board as a producer - couldn't be simpler. A vacationing family, headed for California, stops for gas at a filling station near an abandoned nuclear-testing site in New Mexico. The station's gnarled and suspiciously friendly attendant guides them to a shortcut. The shortcut is a trap, set by the attendant and a family of horribly mutated, not-entirely-inhuman cannibals. And from there on, the plot boils down to three words: Us Against Them.

DERAILED

There's nothing all that wrong with director Mikael Hafstrom's thriller Derailed, until, that is, it turns into a thriller. Chicagoan Charles Schine (Clive Owen) is a harried family man with a wife (Melissa George) and a young, diabetic daughter. While commuting to work one morning, he meets a stranger on the train: the beguiling, flirtatious - and similarly married - Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston). Over the course of a few days, the two enjoy snappy conversation, meet for drinks, and eventually find themselves a hotel. But before their affair can be consummated, LaRoche (Vincent Cassel), a scruffy-looking nightmare with a gun and a thick French accent, breaks into their room, takes their wallets, beats Charles within an inch of his life, and rapes Lucinda. Then everything goes to hell, both for the characters and, unfortunately, for the movie.

FLIGHTPLAN

Movies such as Flightplan are hell to review. How do I explain, exactly, why the film doesn't work without giving away the plot secrets that prevent it from working? Like last fall's already-forgotten The Forgotten, director Robert Schwentke's airborne thriller involves a missing child. During a trans-Atlantic flight from Berlin to America, Jodie Foster's newly widowed Kyle lays her six-year-old daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) down for a nap, falls asleep herself, and wakes to find the girl missing. Obviously, escape from the plane is impossible, but Julia is nowhere to be found, and, more disturbingly, no one on the flight seems to remember her being aboard. Could Julia have merely been a figment of Kyle's imbalanced imagination?