Film Openings

Bride & Prejudice. (PG-13) Reviewed in this issue.

Cursed. (PG-13) In Kevin (Scream) Williamson's latest horrorfest, a brother and sister must fight against a werewolf loose on the streets of LA. We'd tell you more, but we fear the werewolf's curse (and this one didn't screen for the press). Starring Christina Ricci, James Brolin and Portia di Rossi. (NR)

Diary of a Mad Black Woman. (PG-13) Part female revenge flick, part Saturday Night Live skit, part courtroom drama, and part religious tent revival, this movie never congeals into anything worth watching. Seemingly successful couple Helen (Kimberly Elise) and Charles (Steve Harris) are revealed to be anything but, and he kicks her out of the house on their anniversary, to take up with a spoiled white woman (Lisa Marcos). Mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore, Helen moves in with her sassy, gun-toting grandmother Madea. And this is where the first warning bell goes off: While everything thus far has played like a passable drama, Madea is ludicrously played by screenwriter/playwright Tyler Perry in drag. Perry, apparently under the impression that he has the skills of Eddie Murphy, also plays Madea's brother Joe, a pot-smoking dirty old man who makes wisecracks about handjobs and incest. The humor is so cartoonish that it's impossible to take the "serious" content -- which includes lots of blatant Christian evangelizing -- as being representative of anything remotely real. (Luke Y. Thompson)

Man of the House. (PG-13) A Texas Ranger (Tommy Lee Jones, natch) goes undercover to protect...um...University of Texas cheerleaders, who are the only witnesses to a violent crime against a drug kingpin. He becomes their coach and moves in with them. I! C! K! Y! (NR)