Malcolm Petal Movies

Feast producer Chris Moore makes his feature directorial debut with this shocker concerning a group of vacationing college graduates who become the unwilling participants in a sadistic game of kill or be killed. Having just completed their finals and received their diplomas, a small group of recent college graduates decide to celebrate their accomplishment by taking a trip to a secluded cabin in the woods. Just as they're settling in for the time of their lives, however, a violent psychopath arrives to inform them that they are now all contestants on a vicious game of survival. The rules are simple: kill all of your friends, and the last person left standing is the winner. As the reality of their grim situation slowly sinks in, the tensions ramps up and relationships between old friends start to buckle under the weight of fear. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A popular high school girl wrestles with the possibility she may be HIV-positive after learning that her recently deceased boyfriend was an IV drug user who was apparently infected with the virus. Rachel Sandler (Andrea Bowen) is a 17-year-old girl living an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Her late boyfriend Jason was a respected athlete with a dark secret: he was a heroin addict who preferred to take the drug intravenously. But that's not the worst of it -- according to an anonymous source, Jason was also HIV-positive. Jason and Rachel had been intimate, and now Rachel is terrified that he may have transmitted the virus to her. Implored by her substitute teacher Sarah (Jennie Garth) to get tested, Rachel remains paralyzed with fear until she discovers that Sarah has been living with HIV for nearly a decade. When rumors about Rachel begin spreading like wildfire, she realizes her best bet is to summon her courage and take the test. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A hardened detective enters into a tenuous symbiotic relationship with the vicious serial killer she is tracking after earning the respect of the murderous madman in this vicious psychological thriller starring Demi Moore, Kevin Costner, and William Hurt. Earl Brooks (Costner) is a successful businessman, noted philanthropist, and loving father. He's the kind of man whom no one would ever suspect of being a notorious serial killer, but then again history's most dubious psychopaths are often the quiet neighbor whom no one would ever suspect was capable of committing such unspeakable atrocities. Until now, no one has had any reason to link Earl Brooks with the heinous crimes of the dreaded Thumbprint Killer. Even his beautiful wife (Marg Helgenbeger) and teenage daughter (Danielle Panabaker) could never conceive of such an awful truth. But when Mr. Brooks's dark side begins to outshine his sane exterior, an amateur photographer (Dane Cook) captures the killer succumbing to his murderous instinct on film. Now, as Mr. Brooks is pursued by tenacious detective Tracy Atwood (Moore) and forced to bend to the will of an opportunistic bystander, the killer who was once able to keep his murderous alter ego (Hurt) in check finds his control steadily slipping. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The true story of one woman's brief and ultimately tragic flirtation with fame in the 1960s provides the basis for this biographical drama. In 1943, Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) was born to a wealthy and socially prominent family, and she grew up with beauty and money, but also a history of mental illness; she was hospitalized with an eating disorder in her late teens, and by the time she was 21, two of her seven siblings had died before their time. In 1964, Edie moved to New York City, and quickly made a splash on the Manhattan social scene; she became friendly with the famous pop artist Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce), who was fascinated by her gamine loveliness and her quirky personality. Warhol wasted no time in casting her in one of his underground movies, and she quickly became a crucial part of his retinue of "superstars." Fashion icon Diana Vreeland (Illeana Douglas) was convinced Edie had the looks and charm to also become a successful model, and soon she was gracing the pages of Life, Vogue, and Glamour. But Edie's instability was hardly helped by her new fast-lane lifestyle, and when she met Billy Quinn (Hayden Christensen), a folk rock singer-songwriter often cited as "the voice of a generation," he persuaded her that Warhol and his associates were simply using her fame and beauty for their own gain, and she found herself torn between two powerful mentors, one of whom had become her lover as well. Factory Girl also co-stars Jimmy Fallon, Mena Suvari, and Tara Summers as regulars at the Warhol "Factory." The character of Musician was inspired in part by Bob Dylan, who was romantically involved with Edie Sedgwick for a brief time. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Academy Award-winning Exorcist director William Friedkin scuttles deep into the darkest recesses of the traumatized human psyche with this tale of a lonely bartender haunted by the long-ago disappearance of her young son, and the paranoia that emerges when she enters into a tentative relationship with a deeply disturbed drifter. Adapted from the off-Broadway play by Tracy Letts, Bug centers on Agnes (Ashley Judd), who tends bar alongside pal R.C. (Lynn Collins), and has recently moved into a shoddy roadside motel in hopes of avoiding her menacing and recently paroled ex-husband, Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.). Upon making the acquaintance of subdued former soldier Peter (Michael Shannon, repeating his stage role), a veteran of the first Gulf War, Agnes finally senses that things are looking up. Quietly charming despite his melancholy aura, Peter soon reveals to Agnes that he contracted a "bug" while serving in the Middle East, and that it may have been deliberately administered as part of a secret military medical experiment. Convinced that the microscopic insects are quickly multiplying just under the surface of his skin and that they have now infected Agnes as well, Peter soon descends into a psychotic rage as he resorts to increasingly desperate measures to purge himself of the offending subdermal arthropods. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Faith of My Fathers tells the story of the young John McCain (Shawn Hatosy). The film charts McCain's early home life with his father, Admiral Jack McCain (Scott Glenn), follows him through his years of training in the Navy, and focuses on his harrowing years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. The film is based on the memoir of the same title that was written by McCain himself. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Learn why you should never send your food back and other valuable lessons in this over-the-top comedy set in the food service industry. Dean (Justin Long) and Monty (Ryan Reynolds) are two longtime friends who work as waiters as Shenanigan's, a self-consciously "fun" chain restaurant. Both have been working at the restaurant since they graduated from high school; it's only recently occurred to Dean that he has nothing to show for the last four years of his life but a community college diploma and his name tag from work, and he's developed a sudden urgency to make something of himself. Monty, on the other hand, is more interested in making time with the women on the wait staff at work than accomplishing anything, though his recent relationship with fellow employee Serena (Anna Faris) has rather dramatically crashed and burned. Over the course of an evening at Shenanigan's, Dean and Monty confront obnoxious customers and train timid new employee Mitch (John Francis Daley) while dealing with wildly eccentric chef Raddimus (Luis Guzman), control-freak manager Dan (David Koechner), and a kitchen full of crazed cooks, prep workers, and dish-washers. Waiting was the first feature film from writer and director Rob McKittrick. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This made-for-cable Frankenstein was originally intended as the pilot for a weekly series based on Frankenstein: The Prodigal Son, a novel by Dean Koontz and Kevin J. Anderson. The story is set in modern-day New Orleans, the home of demented scientist Dr. Victor Helios (Thomas Kretschmann). Helios is in fact the original Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who has kept himself alive these past 200 years by a series of diabolical genetic experiments. During the same two centuries, Frankenstein has managed to keep alive the original Frankenstein's monster, and has also created dozens of other synthetic humans capable of reinvigorating themselves whenever they are "killed." Of course, the doctor's experiments require that a number of innocent people unwillingly give up their own lives -- and when the bodies start piling up in the Big Easy, detective Carson O'Connor (Parker Posey) and Michael Sloane (Adam Goldberg) start putting the clues together. Ironically, in this story it is Frankenstein who is the villain (in standard serial-killer fashion he tantalizes the cops by planting cryptic clues), while the doctor's main monster is the nominal hero, and a good-looking one at that. Dissatisfied with the finished product, Koontz and Anderson took their names off Frankenstein, as did the project's original executive producer, Martin Scorsese. The unsold pilot film made its USA network bow on October 10, 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the years following a gruesome murder at a sprawling Louisiana plantation, local legend states that anyone who sets foot on the cursed property will suffer an excruciating and agonizing death. Compelled by the horrific tales and determined to prove the stories to be nothing more than urban legend, a local student convinces four friends to accompany him on an excursion into the unwelcoming backwoods property. As the group begins to learn more about the blood-soaked history surrounding the property, they are forced to confront their worst fears in a terrifying explosion of unimaginable horror. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi