If you're going to submit yourself to a dazzling example of mainstream action, this thriller is as good a choice as any. Eraser is a live-action cartoon, the kind of movie in which Arnold Schwarzenegger can survive nail bombs, hails of bullets, an attack by voracious alligators ("You're luggage," he says, after killing one of the beasts), and still emerge from the mayhem relatively intact. Arnold plays an "eraser" from the Federal Witness Protection Program, so named because he can virtually erase the existence of anyone he's been assigned to protect. His latest beneficiary is an FBI employee (Vanessa Williams) who stumbled across a secret government group involved in the sale and export of an advanced weapon capable of shooting rounds at nearly the speed of light. Fantastic action sequences are handled with flair by director Charles Russell (The Mask), so it's easy to forgive the fact that this movie is almost completely ridiculous. --Jeff Shannon

After a group of hapless National Guard troops fails a training exercise, their commanding officer (Flex Alexander, SNAKES ON A PLANE) orders them to deliver supplies to some scientists in Yuma Flats, New Mexico. The mutants from the first film (the unfortunate victims who live on nuclear testing ground) have returned to terrorise a group of Department of Defence researchers. The unlucky soldiers happen upon the remains of their camp (and its denizens), and the horrors begin. The inbred family of cannibals stalks the soldiers and picks them off, one by one, in gruesome fashion. Alejandre Aja (HIGH TENSION) directed the 2006 remake, but this sequel replaces Aja with Martin Weisz, whose first feature, ROHTENBERG, was banned in his native Germany. Written by genre master Wes Craven and his son Jonathan, THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 is a sequel to the remake of Craven?s original 1977 film. It?s no coincidence that Craven changed this sequel?s victims from a band of motorcyclists to a group of unlucky soldiers, giving the film political undertones. For a brief moment, this film addresses the idea that war may be the worst kind of horror, even when it?s judged against mutant cannibals.