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What got me into the theater for this one was seeing the trailer. I initially had no idea the lead character was played by Katie Holmes. I have not seen much of her and what I've seen I haven't much liked, including the ridiculous "Dawson's Creek," the success of which positively amazed me.

"Pieces of April" is a low budget indie shot on digital video. Part farce, part made-for-TV holiday movie on how a disfunctional family comes together, this picture works well, despite a rather unbelievable ending. But its success is that you want to believe in the ending, so you do. If only real life were so simple that people who have been at war for years could solve their problems with a good turkey stuffing.

Hats off to writer/director Peter Hedges who did very good job with an obviously limited budget. He also milked about all you can get from a very compact storyline which centers around a formerly drugged out punk girl who decides to cook a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged family because her mother is dying of cancer.

Full marks to Patricia Clarkson who is good as the mother and Oliver Platt, good, but a little miscast as the father. But this is Katie Holmes movie and she got the ball and ran with it.

While the whole premise might not hold up well under heavy scrutiny, Holmes turns in an excellent performance as the punk daughter facing the very middle class anxiety of having the whole family over for a holiday meal and not having a clue as to how to prepare it.

And while this picture may also be a little too much into "diversity" with good black people and good Asian people and not really many good white folk (all the real villains are white, from Katie's sister to her drug dealing ex-boyfriend), it does make a rather interesting statement. Maybe the people you gather around you should be the people who treat you well. Blood ties are not always the ones that bind.

Anyway, Holmes shines and I will now look forward to her next film with interest. Keep up playing in good indies, Katie, you have a real knack for it.

This is an idea whose time hadn't yet come and quite possibly, never will. It seems to be a sort of blending of "West Side Story," various Hong Kong kung fu movies and the old Universal horror classics of the thirties and forties. But it doesn't jell into anything at all.

The film is apparently set in modern times and centers around a blood feud between vampires and werewolves, or lychin as they are called here. Not much point in saying more, because there really isn't more, despite what could have been an interesting idea. Instead, the storyline just seems to be one endless set up for an endless string of chases through dark, narrow tunnels or dark narrow streets. But the odd thing is that both clans seem to rely on good old fashioned gunfire rather than sucking blood or ripping each others throats out, making the fact that they are supernatural beings almost irrelevant.

It's as if the filmmakers wanted to make a horror movie, but kind of wanted a martial arts movie, too, and yet, just to hedge their bets, decided to make it a gang movie from the hood. So they wound up with nothing, just a sort of low budget Matrix that neither frightens you nor makes you sit up in awe over the special effects.

If the special effects from martial arts films aren't there and the old fashion thrills and chills we expect from vampire movies aren't there, what is there? The characterizations you might think would spring from some writer's mind if he were going to turn vampires into a centuries old clan complete with mansions and intrigues and waring factions within factions? Nope. Again, they sort of tried, but not very hard and came away with next to nothing, no characterizations, no interesting sets or costumes or customs.

Lastly, one has to look at the acting. Scott Speedman, late of "Felicity," plays a human caught in the middle of this horror show ripped from Universal studios one sheets of the thirties. And since the movie is painfully underwritten, he is given almost nothing to do, something that only emphasizes his rather dower personality.

The real shame, though, is Kate Beckinsale. This was a vehicle for her and perhaps designed to make her into some kind of rival for Angelina Jolie, who rose above "Lara Croft" making it into at least a little something. But Beckinsale complete misfires here, just as she did in "Pearl Harbor." She's proved before she can handle dramatic material and recently was quite good in "Laurel Canyon." And perhaps her best performance to date in an American film was in "Last Days of Disco." But here she spends an entire movie wearing the exact same expression, something of a cross between annoyed and perplexed, as if she's trying to figure out how she got herself into such a stinker.

Not a good effort from Kate, or the people who put this one together.

Don't bother.