SAW Dir. John Wan, with Cary Elwes, Monica Potter, Dina Meyer and Danny Glover

Predictably more horrifying than Blair Witch, The Sixth Sense and American Psycho put together (just check out the website www.sawmovie.com), this debut by writer-director Wan got rave reviews in the last Sundance Festival. Obsessed with teaching “the value of life” through death, a deranged serial killer, known as Jigsaw, forces his kidnapped victims to play horrific games for their own survival. Saw was even edited in the US to fit an R-rating instead of an NC-17 adults-only one.

JERSEY GIRL Dir. Kevin Smith, with Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Raquel Castro and Jennifer Lopez. Real-life friends Smith and Affleck team up again after Chasing Amy and Dogma in this warm tale about a single father finds love once more. Affleck plays a PR executive who loses his wife (Lopez) during childbirth. For seven years, he devotes his life to his daughter (Castro) until he meets a young college student played by Tyler. A box-office flop, but heads and shoulders above Gigli, the previous Affleck-Lopez outing.

AFTER THE SUNSET Dir. Brett Ratner, with Pierce Brosnan, Woody Harrelson, Salma Hayek and Don Cheadle. Filmed in the Bahamas, this new thriller begins where most caper films end with master thieves Max and Lola (Brosnan and Hayek) escaping to a tropical paradise. Unfortunately, their FBI nemesis (Harrelson) tracks them down, convinced that their apparent retirement is actually a cover for their upcoming heist.

BIRTH Dir. Jonathan Glazer, with Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Anne Heche and Lauren Bacall. Following his debut in the gangster drama Sexy Beast, British-born Glazer teams up with Oscar-winner Kidman for a modern metaphysical love story. She plays Anna, a young widow who encounters a little boy (Bright, from the equally hypnotic Godsend) claiming to be the reincarnation of her dead husband.

NATIONAL TREASURE Dir. Jon Turteltaub, with Nicholas Cage, Diane Kruger, Sean Bean and Jon Voight. Following two sizzling performances in Adaptation and Matchstick Men, Cage storms back into action as Benjamin Franklin, the young descendant of a family of treasure-seekers who’ve all been after the same thing: a war chest hidden by the Founding Fathers after the Revolutionary War. When he discovers that the clues are on the back of the original Declaration of Independence, FBI agents and competing master thieves are hot on his trail.

Lion’s Gate

BLADE: TRINITY Dir. David Goyer, with Wesley Snipes, Jessica Biel, Parker Posey and Kris Kristofferson. In the third and final of the Blade vampire series, Snipes returns as vampire hunter Blade, who joins forces with two other day-walking bloodsuckers, Abigail (Biel) and Hannibal (Reynolds), to follow a trail of blood to an ancient creature haunting themthe original vampire, Dracula.

THE NOTEBOOK Dir. Nick Cassavetes, with Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner and Gena Rowlands. Based on the bestseller by Nicholas Sparks, this new and acclaimed drama is an old-fashioned love story told in flashbacks through the eyes of an old man (1960s star Garner) reading from a faded notebook to an equally old woman (Rowlands, real-life mother of director Cassavetes). His words bring to life the story of a young couple (Gosling and McAdams) who were separated by their class differences and the turmoil of the Second World War.

RAISE YOUR VOICE Dir. Sean McNamara, with Hilary Duff, Oliver James, Rebecca De Mornay and David Keith. The fifth teen comedy headlined by a singer-actress this year, Raise Your Voice casts Hillary Duff as small-town girl Terri, who’s brokenhearted by her brother’s death in a car crash. She later discovers that he had secretly submitted her name for a summer session at a performing arts academy in Los Angeles.  et