Movie Cricket

Hollywood doesn't want to compete with "Michael Jackson's This Is It" (which opened Wednesday) or trick-or-treaters, so there are no new studio releases on today's schedule.

There are, however, three movies on the art-house slate — one of them an excellent Halloween treat for grown-ups.

The Korean thriller "Thirst" is a bloody and kinky tale of a depressed priest (Song Kang-ho) who becomes an even more depressed vampire — and falls for an abused wife (Kim Ok-vin). Director Park Chan-Wook ("Old Boy") combines gore, sex and dark humor for a smart, seductive thriller.

French director Cédric Klapisch likes comedy-dramas with many disparate characters coming together into a mosaic of life — movies like "L'auberge Espagnole" and its sequel, "Russian Dolls." In "Paris," Klapisch creates a love letter to the City of Light, starting with an ailing dancer (Romain Duris) who watches the many lives outside his balcony interact: Students and professors, fruit vendors and garbagemen, friends and lovers (one of them played by "Inglourious Basterds' " Melanie Laurent, pictured). Klapisch could have cut a few of his narrative threads, but he gets a charming performance from Juliette Binoche as Duris' love-scarred sister.

"The Other Man" boasts a strong roster of talent: Actors Liam Neeson, Antonio Banderas and Laura Linney, director Richard Eyre ("Iris," "Notes on a Scandal") and source material from author Bernhard Schlink (The Reader). But the glossy drama, about a husband (Neeson) who discovers his wife (Linney) was having an affair with the Banderas character, is ridiculously overwrought and takes some idiotic twists.