Armed only with his mysterious mental connection to the feral minds of studio executives, the Movie Guru reveals just how good or bad this week's new releases will be:

Alex & Emma (PG-13)
Novelist Alex (Luke Wilson) is deeply in debt and has 30 days to finish his next novel—or else his publisher owns the rights to anything else Alex writes, for the rest of his life. Alex hires stenographer Emma (Kate Hudson) to help him get his romantic novel done quickly, but she offers writing critiques as well as typing skills. So he falls in love with her.
Prediction: Rob Reiner has perpetrated such romantic balderdash before (When Harry Met Sally). How many times can you go to the well before it dries up?

From Justin to Kelly (PG)
American Idol favorites Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini vault to the silver screen as college students Justin and Kelly, who meet in Miami on spring break. They then proceed to sing at each other a lot.
Prediction: No, please, don't make us do this.

The Hulk (PG-13)
A mild-mannered scientist's experiment goes wrong, and suddenly he gets all green and pectoral when angry.
Prediction: A pirate of director Ang Lee's big green gamble has already been released on the internet—and was greeted with howls of derision for its main character's too-obviously CGI appearance. Lee claims the internet version doesn't do the movie justice. Seeing it bigger will make it look better?

L'auberge Espagnole (R)
Seven university students from different European countries share an apartment in Barcelona. A kinder, gentler, fictionalized and European-ized version of MTV's Real World.
Prediction: See the movie review on page 29.

The Man without a Past (PG-13)
Second installment in Aki Kaurismäki's "Finland" trilogy. A man who arrives in Helsinki, only to be beaten so severely he develops amnesia. Without a memory, he cannot find a job or a place to live, so he begins living on the fringes of the city while trying to piece together a life.
Prediction: Although Kaurismäki is Finland's pre-eminent filmmaker, and this film has been called "a surprisingly quirky and touching romantic comedy," don't expect it to change the fact that he's almost unknown in the U.S.

Heaven and Hell

In 1740, Puritan evangelist Jonathan Edwards preached his infamous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." In it, Edwards presented a spiritually wayward New England congregation with a choice: repent from their sinful ways or reap fiery torment in hell for eternity.

Twelve years ago, an Assembly of God church just outside Dallas put a new twist on the theme. Instead of scaring the hell out of sinners with words, they used a melodramatic haunted house. In this Hell House, the sinner pays seven bucks to tour graphic scenes of school shootings, botched abortions, suicides and domestic assaults. Each scene results in bloody death. And each scene ends with angels saving the faithful and demons dragging the unrepentant to eternal torment. At the end of the horror, each tour member is given to the count of six to make his or her own decision for or against Christ.

Director George Ratliff captures all this on film. His Hell House is a documentary following the Trinity Church's youth group from planning meetings to set construction to the event itself.

The results are captivating. Instead of judging or taking sides in the matter, Ratliff simply lets his cameras roll. What they see is an honest, thought-provoking portrait of a branch of Christianity intent on saving the world from itself.

At times, it's a disturbing portrait. The guns the youth use as props are real ones, after all. And the church's legalistic codes of morality condemn sins like homosexuality and drug use to the pit, while more common sins like pride, jealousy, and greed are ignored.

But you'll also find sympathy for the "characters." There's Alex Cassar, a single father whose wife left him for an Internet relationship, and who patiently cares for his cerebral palsy-stricken son as the boy lapses into a seizure. Then there's the real-life rape victim acting in Hell House, who once spotted her attacker in the crowd.

Hell House is scary, though not always for the reasons the evangelists intend. But it's also an even-handed, intimate look at an oft-ridiculed segment of American culture. Let's see Michael Moore try that.

—Lloyd Babbit

June 19, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 25
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