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'Thank You for Smoking'

By Bethany Kohoutek

Movie Trailer

For decades, cigarettes have been used merely as props in movies - to seduce, to villianize, to insert dramatic pause, to nonchalantly flick into a stream of gasoline that ends at the feet of one's enemy. "Thank You for Smoking" thrusts the embattled, yet venerable, cigarette into the lead role.

And why not? All of the drama, controversy and emotion necessary to make a film really pop come conveniently prepackaged with every carton. Smoking has landed itself on the A-list of America's political hot buttons in terms of time and money spent both for and against it. Cities and states everywhere are installing smoking bans; government-issued cigarette taxes are pushing pack prices to the near-ridiculous in some areas. Almost every state legislature has considered some type of prohibitive measure concerning smoking this year.

In the public sector, too, everyone has an opinion they are more than happy to dispense, from the stroller-pushers who dispense dirty looks to anyone who lights up within a square block of Baby, to bar owners who watch business go flaccid once the cigs get kicked out, to those kids at the State Capitol who just won't leave Rep. Chris Rants alone, to those of us with a perpetual eye on the clock, waiting for the 9:30 a.m. smoke break to roll around.

Into this ripe fray comes "Thank You for Smoking," from director Jason Reitman. Based on the book by Christopher Buckley, it is, without a doubt, a diatribe against smoking and, to some extent, smokers. It contains a host of facts and statistics about lung cancer, smoking deaths and the landmark court settlements against the tobacco industry, and yet it doesn't feel like a lecture. The storyline and characters are intentionally absurdist, giving the actors plenty of room to dive into the witty and acerbic dialog. And the filmmaking style is the sort that makes Sundance judges swoon.

However, for all it's advertised as, "Thank You for Not Smoking" is less about the dangers of smoking as it is a lampoon of corporate culture, spin and greed. And no one is spared, regardless of which side of the smoking debate they happen to be on.

The movie follows Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a grinning, Ken-doll-haired lobbyist for the tobacco industry, whose "gift" is the ability to talk anyone into anything. He convinces a bald, teenaged patient that it's his own fault he got cancer, not big tobacco's; he persuades the original Marlboro Man, who is dying of emphysema at his California ranch, to stop disparaging the tobacco industry in the press; and during Career Day at his son's elementary school, he advises the class to "question authority" when grown-ups tell you something (i.e. cigarettes) is bad for you.

Throughout the film, it becomes clear Nick's downfall isn't necessarily the industry for which he works, but rather his moral-numbing pursuit of money. This is evidenced by the filmmaker's equal-opportunity criticism of anyone willing to talk out of both sides of their mouth in the presence of enough cash.

Take, for example, Nick's number one detractor, Senator Ortolan K. Finistirre (William H. Macy), who is heading up a cigarette-pack-labeling campaign that would put Tipper Gore to shame. He and Nick go head to head on "Dennis Miller Live" and later during a Congressional hearing, and in each round, Nick emerges as the protagonist for revealing the senator's own monetary motivations and grandstanding publicity grabs.

"Thank You for Smoking" is reminiscent of the modern classic "Wag the Dog" in its condemnation of spin doctoring and big-money bullying - and, most notably, it's ability to make such ideals appeal to a mainstream audience while eliciting laughs.

However, the film's ability to instill any lasting change in its audience remains questionable. The first comments this reviewer overheard from fellow moviegoers exiting the theater were: "Can we go back to the mall?" and "I need a cigarette." CV

'Scary Movie 4'

By Ben Spierenburg

Movie Trailer

'Scary Movie 4," the latest work of rubbish in a franchise known for mediocre silliness, is so horrifically bad it makes the original "Scary Movie" look like "Citizen Kane." The film (if you want to call it that, it's more a loosely connected string of brainless sketches and parodies) opens with Shaquille O'Neal trapped in a grimy room in a lampoon of "Saw." Shaq wakes up and thumps his head as he stands up, first on a beam and then on the ceiling. These two events set the tone, as the movie is filled to the brim with as much thoughtless slapstick as humanly possible. People running into walls, hitting their heads on tables, getting whacked in the face with footballs, being kicked in the pelvis - these things can all be amusing when done in good measure. But "Scary Movie 4" brazenly abuses these cheap gags over and over again till any semblance of comic surprise is lost on the viewer. Unless of course, said viewer has the attention span and intelligence level of a kitten high on catnip.

And its not that stupid humor can't be funny. Director David Zucker has proven as much in the past, with "Airplane!" (1980) and his work in the "Naked Gun" series. More recently however, as director of the last two "Scary Movie" installments, his work has been horrendous at best. Zucker hasn't taken to the franchise well, seemingly confused with how to balance parodies of horror films with a plot. Then again, a director is only as good as the script he has to work with, so perhaps the blame for this frighteningly unfunny film should be laid on screenwriters Craig Mazin and Jim Abrahams. This pair delivered a singularly uninspired and broken script that no director could have fixed. As in "Scary Movie 3," the writers err on the side of spoof rather than satire, parodying other films but refusing to skewer them in the process. They faithfully reenact the movies they caricature - "War of the Worlds," "The Grudge," "The Village," and the "Saw" movies - except they insert "comedy" by adding a dick joke here, or somebody getting smacked in the head there.

The main characters are the standard group of affable morons: Anna Faris' splendidly dim-witted Cindy; Regina Hall, who despite a grisly death in the last film resumes her role as the ever-horny Brenda; and newcomer Craig Bierko, as the Tom Cruise character from "War of the Worlds." While the impersonation is spot-on as far as appearance goes, the filmmakers again reject the notion of satire, making the character just another irrepressibly daft buffoon who regularly gets hit in the head before shitting his pants. Bierko, who has done far better work ("Cinderella Man"), is one of several celebrities (Dr. Phil, Shaq, Bill Pullman) who demonstrate that they will involve themselves in any manner of worthless tripe as long as they get a paycheck. On the other end of the spectrum, several rappers make cameos: Lil'Jon, Chingy, Fabolous, and YoungbloodZ. You get the feeling these guys paid good money for their unnecessary appearances.

Leslie Nielson is perhaps the only actor present who truly seems to know what he's doing. A master of the genre, Nielson returns to portray the inept president, doing what he can to inject of bit of professionalism into an otherwise tiresome film. A scene where he inappropriately addresses the United Nations is certainly comical, but it's short-lived and is quickly tempered by a swift return to juvenile idiocy.

So while there are a few moments of mild mirth, all the stupidity is too much to handle. On opening night, in a theater full of 13-year-olds and franchise fans, there was a paucity of laughter throughout most of the film's 83 minutes. Hopefully, word of mouth will spread, the picture will do poorly, and we will be saved from the most terrifying thing of all - the possibility of a "Scary Movie 5." CV

'Lucky Number Slevin'

by Bethany Kohoutek

Movie Trailer

Just once, could some shrewd filmmaker manage to direct a script that doesn't culminate with the killer pacing in front of his prey, regurgitating his long-winded motive and revealing his accomplices right before he intends to off the would-be victim? Everyone knows the therapeutic little dish sesh will come back to bite the assassin in the ass, when the victim invariably escapes to pave the way for a requisite eleventh-hour plot twist.

Or how about making the sexy female doctor, a ubiquitous role in B-grade thrillers, smart enough to actually get herself out of harm's way, rather than requiring the perennial aid of a chisel-jawed hunk who busts through a doorway to save her? The woman made it through med school, for chrissakes; you'd think she'd be able to navigate a cheesy plotline.

If Hollywood had a community college, there's a good chance that Paul McGuigan and Jason Smilovic, the director and writer, respectively, of Lucky Number Slevin would be enrolled. Because their latest endeavor is an incongruous paste-job of regurgitated stereotypes and films that were way better the first time around (see: Snatch, Memento, Resevoir Dogs).

Slevin, played by Josh Hartnett, who is about half an IQ point above Ashton Kutcher on the fratty-actor evolutionary chart, is an unlucky pretty boy who gets tangled in the fray between two New York City crime lords, absolutely ingeniously monikered "The Boss" and "The Rabbi." Lucy Liu plays Lindsey, the said hot doctor who seems to be cast more so the filmmakers can see her in a plaid schoolgirl skirt and thigh-high stockings than for any real story advancement. Throw in master toolshed Bruce Willis as Goodkat, the ruthless assassin-for-hire, and Acme Screenwriting 101 ensues.

One of the film's laundry list of shortcomings is that chemistry between any of the characters is as elusive as Willis' ever-receding hairline. The crime bosses, played by the usually stellar Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley, don't seem to care enough to muster the abhorrence they're supposed to harbor toward one another. The cheeky flirtation between Slevin and Lindsey is cloying, and it culminates in a sex scene that is as vanilla as a Dairy Queen sundae.

Lucky Number Slevin wouldn't even be worth dissecting here, if it weren't for two disturbing elements that no film should be able to get away with scot-free. The first is a reliance upon offensive stereotypes that this script isn't nearly intelligent enough to tackle. The Jewish rabbi, for example, is a Torah-reading, money-hungry snob; the sole gay character is nicknamed "The Fairy," and picks up guys in bar bathrooms; the two black thugs are portrayed as verbally incompetent idiots. Meanwhile, the pair of Wonderbread-white guys (Hartnett and Willis) emerge unscathed as benevolent heroes.

Most movies that dare to tread such touchy territory at least make an effort to challenge or even dismantle these tired and racist social constructs, and recent mainstream films like Crash and Brokeback Mountain have actually forwarded the discussion. Lazy drivel like Lucky Number Slevin sets it back.

The second recurring trend is the filmmakers' almost godlike obsession with, and equation of, guns and phalluses. In one scene, shortly after Slevin and Lindsey meet, she accidentally walks in on him naked. The valuable time and immature dialog wasted on her adoration of his manhood is embarrassingly out-of-context, and would better serve the movie on the cutting-room floor.

The flick has almost as a big a hard-on for guns as it does for, well, hard-ons. Long, adoring camera lenses pan gun barrels, and the male characters whip out their equipment at every opportunity they get. Bloody and gratuitous violence becomes a substitute for substance. The only character who doesn't pack heat is, big surprise, the lone female among the cast.

Lucky Number Slevin wants badly to be a hip noir thriller, but instead it stumbles at nearly every turn. Here's hoping it stumbles all the way to the $5.99 bin at Wal-Mart, which still might afford it too generous a fate.

'The Benchwarmers'

By Ben Spierenburg

Movie Trailer

It's never a good sign when critics are not allowed to prescreen a movie, as was the case with the "The Benchwarmers," a film that should never have been allowed to enter the game. Formulaic and painfully dimwitted, the latest farce from Happy Madison productions provides heaps of booger, vomit, and fart jokes in a seemingly concerted effort to further lower the nation's intelligence level with Adam Sandler's trademark brand of stupid humor. And while being bombarded by waves of offensively idiotic jokes never fails to coerce a chuckle or two, to label this movie as anything short of atrocious would be a testament to how far our standards for funny films have fallen.

On paper the premise must have sounded somewhat promising: cross "Revenge of the Nerds" with "The Bad News Bears" and cast three comic actors who have previously succeeded in their own vehicles as the stars. Add director Dennis Dugan, who once directed a hit sports-themed comedy ("Happy Gilmore"), and what could go wrong? Well, apparently everything. Co-screenwriters Nick Swardson and Allen Covert do much of the damage in crafting an unbelievably uninspired script. This is the mediocre duo responsible for "Grandma's Boy," this year's other Happy Madison picture too awful to let critics see before release.

Terrible-as-always Rob Schneider plays geeky Gus, a landscaper who oddly has a hot model wife (Molly Sims). He's best friends with nerdy Clark, a 28-year-old paper boy, sloppily played by Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder, who seems unworried with being typecast. Heder basically reprises his breakout role, except without any of the charm or talent he's previously displayed. The pair are talking one day when they witness a little league team teasing a couple of nerdy kids for trying to improve their meager baseball skills. One of the children, Nelson (Max Prado), is even fart-tortured for this crime. Gus and Clark intervene to rescue them, and resolve to come back to play later with dorky friend Richie (David Spade). When they do, they are confronted by another little league team, and Gus boldly challenges them to play for the rights to the field, even though Clark and Richie have never played and they are outnumbered nine to three. Unsurprisingly, Gus turns out to be a ringer, and he single handedly beats the jocks, leading to Nelson getting fart-revenge on his bullies.

It turns out that Nelson's dad Mel (Jon Lovitz) is one of those nerds who grew up to become a billionaire. He praises the trio for rescuing his boy and offers to fund a tournament between the Benchwarmers and all the worst bullying baseball teams from neighboring towns for the grand prize - a brand new ultra-equipped ballpark.

As you might expect, from here on the movie is one agonizingly tedious game after another, with the adult nerds repeatedly triumphing over the child jocks. The screenwriters try to load up these games with as much 'humor' as they can, but fail miserably to achieve anything worthy of laughter. When in doubt, throw in a midget joke, or a 'titty-twister,' or suddenly make a character a flaming homosexual.

Not helping matters is the exceedingly dreadful acting. David Spade, who mocks celebrities on his "Showbiz Show," will be in danger of losing all comic credibility this week should he not ridicule himself for his ludicrously awful performance in this film. And let's not forget Rob Schneider, who in the past has played an animal, a hot chick, and a gigolo. In "The Benchwarmers," Schneider attempts his most implausible transposition yet - a normal guy who people like. He fails.

The filmmakers do manage, however, to save some face during the last out-take, when they actually acknowledge that they have foisted garbage upon their audience. Lovitz says to Schneider, "This was a complete waste of time, wasn't it?" Schneider replies in the affirmative. Hey, at least they got one thing right. CV

'Basic Instinct 2'

By Ben Spierenburg

Movie Trailer

In 1992 the erotic thriller "Basic Instinct" briefly captured the nation's attention thanks to the first full-on "beaver shot" in a major motion picture, courtesy of then unknown actress Sharon Stone. Arriving 14 years late, the exceedingly belated sequel tries (and fails) to replicate the original's successful formula with large doses of senseless sex and violence. Preposterously puerile and deplorably dull, the debacle that is "Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction" will likely be referenced by future generations of filmmakers as one of the best examples of how not to make a sequel.

Stone foolishly reprises her role as psychotically seductive serial killer novelist Catherine Tramell, the sexy antagonist around which the "erotic thriller" rotates. The film fails so spectacularly because its premise relies on the idea that this character is sexy and intelligent enough to control anyone she likes. However, with Stone, 48, looking like she's spent all the money she made in the last decade on plastic surgery and Botox injections, this premise falls flat on her creased face. Picture Joan Rivers confidently flaunting herself around as an omnipotent sex god, and you will begin to grasp the comically ridiculous nature of "Basic Instinct 2." The movie is so repetitive, tedious and unbelievable that you just can't help but find ways to snicker.

The film opens with a (finger) bang, where we find Tramell speeding through the streets of an inexplicably empty London late at night in a Porsche, with a drugged soccer player (Stan Collymore) passed out in the passenger seat. She uses his hand for her own pleasure and crashes the car off a bridge into the Thames as she orgasms. The famous footballer drowns, and she makes front-page news.

Now under investigation for murder, Scotland Yard appoints a psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey) to evaluate her mental condition. While at first Morrissey seems a capable actor, looking and sounding a bit like Liam Neeson, by the film's end his pitifully flaccid performance strongly convinces you otherwise. Dr. Glass diagnoses Tramell as having a God complex and a risk addiction, and she is soon released on an unrelated technicality. Before long she requests daily therapy with him, enthused by his promise of complete confidentiality, and proceeds to bluntly seduce him with crude come-ons such as "I think about you when I masturbate." Even though he proves easily capable of getting the far younger and hotter Michelle Broadwin (Flora Montgomery), Dr. Glass is bizarrely drawn to the crinkly and criminally insane Tramell. Further adding to the confusion and mediocrity, Morrissey and Stone have absolutely zero chemistry together.

And although now a notorious, nationally recognized psychopath and murder suspect, Catherine Tramell somehow has no trouble infiltrating the doctor's circle of high-class friends to manipulate and murder them, thanks to her supposedly unstoppable sex appeal and intellect. Whether it be Glass's ex-wife Denise (Indira Varma), his colleague Milena Gardosh (Charlotte Rampling), or his superior Dr. Jakob Gerst (Heathcote Williams), not one of these intelligent people distrusts her even as dead bodies start showing up left and right. The only character onto the diabolical Tramell from the start is Detective Roy Washburn, ably portrayed by David Thewlis, who lends the movie its only decent performance.

Despite being an erotic thriller heavily laden with scene after scene of sex, violence, or some combination of the two, in the hands of director Michael Caton-Jones and screenwriters Leora Barish and Henry Bean, "Basic Instinct 2" ends up a monotonous two-hour snooze-fest.

Ultimately this ludicrously out-of-whack film leaves you feeling stupefied and stolen from, especially after the idiotic "big twist" at the end. As Stone's Catherine Tramell says in the film, in order to "remember her sexual experiences someone has to die in the process." Luckily viewers of this utterly forgettable film won't suffer from the same sort of problem. CV

'Cachè'

By Dan Vinson

Movie Trailer

The opening shot is trained on a particular doorway, though you don't know that yet. Cars and pedestrians move across the field of vision, and eventually someone comes out of the house. Then you hear voices and the screen begins rewinding. Cut to a living room where a couple is warily watching the first anonymous videotaped surveillance of their comings and goings. They don't know what's going on anymore than you do. Welcome to the cinematic shock therapy of Austrian director Michael Haneke.

This problem belongs to Georges and Anne Laurent (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) and their son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky), who reside in this unnamed French city where Georges hosts a weekly book analysis on TV and Juliette is a book editor. Being a pre-teen, Pierrot mostly sulks and hangs out with friends. Wrapped in (what looks like) a disturbed child's drawings, the tapes arrive with increasing frequency, but what do they mean? Neither Georges nor Anne knows anybody, save for Pierrot and buddies as a joke, who might do this. And the police are no help; much like here in America, until there's a very specific threat you just have to endure.

George and Anne, though unnerved, go about their lives and careers. They see each other only in the morning and evening, they go out of town when necessary for work, whoever discovers another tape calls the other. One night, with friends over for dinner, Georges answers the doorbell and finds yet another tape at his feet. Anne has already spilled to their friends so, thinking it will be more shots of their block, Georges pops it in. But this time, it's his childhood home.

So Georges now thinks he might know who the culprit is (though his intense dreams suggest he's known since the beginning), but he won't tell his wife until he's sure, which, of course, causes a major rift. It seems his parents hired an Algerian couple to help run the household, and they had a son about Georges' age. He figures quite shockingly into the present story, but to say much more would spoil this layered and disquieting film. Just when an answer seems to present itself, another shoves it aside. Just when you get used to the static, sometimes subjective shots of cinematographer Christian Berger, Haneke throws another curve. It's up to the audience - as it was in Haneke's 2000 film, the similarly themed "Code Unknown," also starring Binoche as a woman named Anne - to adjust and decipher what they're seeing. As their lives implode, Auteuil and Binoche effectively display outrage, fear, and sometimes, daring.

Shooting in 2004, Haneke (pronounced "Hannukah"), who won Best Director at Cannes last year, couldn't have known how prescient his story would be. Last November, protesting their virtually systematic marginalization from French society, Algerian Muslims rioted across the country, and now, as the film bows in the United States, there's an illegal government surveillance scandal, not to mention, lingering racial wounds.

Though it's clichè to reference Alfred Hitchcock, blending Hitch's masterful foreboding with the tendency of European filmmakers to recall French New Waver Jean-Luc Godard's famous axiom about films needing a beginning, middle and end, but "not necessarily in that order," approximates "Cachè's" unsettling mood. (And a complete absence of music also enhances this.) Generating as many questions as answers, it keeps you guessing until the fiendish final moments. Keep your eyes peeled. CV

'The Hills Have Eyes'

By Rafe Telsch

Movie Trailer

Aremake of the 1970s Wes Craven film, "The Hills Have Eyes" takes place in an abandoned desert area of New Mexico. The Carter family takes a wrong turn and discovers just why that area of New Mexico is abandoned. The government used it for nuclear testing decades before, causing mutant effects in the people who refused to evacuate the area. The mutants ambush the Carters' vehicle, leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere, and slowly assault them, dividing and conquering as the stupid family members dutifully play the part of typical horror movie victims, falling prey to each of the mutant's clever schemes.

Director Alexandre Aja brings the same passion and vision to "Hills" that he brought to his first horror film, "Haute Tension." "Hills" is incredibly gory, pushing its "R" rating as spikes are driven into the heads of mutants and family members, dogs are disemboweled, parakeets become tasty beverages, and actresses Emilie de Ravin ("Lost") and Vinessa Shaw ("Melinda and Melinda") are virtually raped on screen. The movie is a visual nightmare in a good way, likely to make even hardened horror fans turn squeamish as Aja tosses details in the audiences' faces. Aja extends this method of directing to non-gory parts as well, maintaining camera shots just long enough to be awkwardly uncomfortable, and then a little bit more, on oddball characters like the mutant-affiliated gas station owner responsible for sending the family down the wrong road.

As a second film, "The Hills Have Eyes" carries on the visual promise Aja showed in his first. This is a director who isn't afraid to push boundaries. As a scriptwriter, though, Aja still has some room for improvement. There are a few pacing issues with the film that move it from being a steady assault to mere gore and brutality. But pacing problems aside, this is a well-designed film with a level of intensity that could give gore-hounds and horror fans everywhere something to talk about for decades to come. CV

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