E1 Entertainment and Sony Classics are giving Atom Egoyan’s latest a more robust release, playing up the star power of Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson, and of hot up-and-comer Amanda Seyfried, in the artsy thriller Chloe.

Contrary to Egoyan’s Adoration, which bowed on only four screens last spring, the decidedly more commercial Chloe arrives Friday on 44 screens in all major Canuck markets, while it gets a 300-screen push in the U.S. (Adoration earned a disappointing $120,000 at the Canadian box office for E1.)

In Chloe, Moore plays a suspicious wife who hires a classy prostitute (Seyfried) to test her husband’s fidelity. Production on the film was briefly halted last year when Neeson’s wife Natasha Richardson died after a tragic ski accident in Quebec.

The thriller, which premiered at the Toronto Film International Festival, is getting satisfactory reviews from critics: the Chicago Tribune says the texture of the film is ‘so seductive it is almost enough to forgive the flaws.’ A review on cbc.ca notes that Moore ‘gives great melodrama,’ a point echoed by Ohio’s State Journal Register, which calls Chloe ‘Moore’s movie, as [her character] Catherine staggers from in control to out of it.’

Chloe will counter Paramount’s animated How to Train Your Dragon — featuring the voices of Montreal’s Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler and America Ferrera — out on 3,000 North American screens Friday. MGM’s comedy Hot Tub Time Machine will play on a reported 2,750 screens.

Also opening Friday:

• KinoSmith is trying the dysfunctional family comedy City Island, starring Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies, at Toronto’s Cumberland theater, with plans to expand to Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa on April 9.

• Greenberg, the latest from U.S. writer/director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale), opens in cities including Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary. The quirky dramedy stars Ben Stiller as a neurotic fortysomething who returns to Los Angeles to housesit for his brother.

• The Korean film Mother, about a mom who sets out to prove her son’s innocence after he is charged with murder, bows at Toronto’s Cumberland and Vancouver’s Tinseltown theaters via Mongrel Media.

• The Argus Films and National Film Board doc The Coca-Cola Case, about the beverage company’s dealings in Colombia, screens exclusively at Toronto’s Royal theater.