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'Mission Impossible: III'

By Ben Spierenburg

Movie Trailer

Absolutely packed with pulse-pounding action and edge-of-your-seat excitement, "Mission: Impossible III" kicks off the summer season with a rollercoaster ride audiences are sure to love. For health concerns, small children, pregnant women and people with heart conditions should avoid excessive caffeine intake before viewing.

Largely due to the determined efforts of director J.J. Abrams, "MI:3" succeeds brilliantly. Abrams delivers the franchise's most intense installment to date. Having thoroughly conquered television with the hits "Alias" and "Lost," he continues his pattern of success with a masterful big-screen debut.

In fact, this picture is so marvelously engaging and fun, it makes you realize how comparatively flawed the previous two films were. Brian De Palma's 1996 original, while visually stimulating enough, featured a plot most people found excessively confusing. John Woo's 2000 film made the reverse mistake, still providing ample action but pairing it with an overly simplistic, hackneyed story. Abrams gets it just right, with a mix of action and story that has perfect pitch. Add a superb performance by Best Actor Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as a delightfully malicious villain, and you've got easily one of the best-action movies of the year.

Even so, what about all those distracting off-screen concerns with the film's star? While it's true that Tom Cruise may have earned himself a lot of flak as of late, he's a skilled enough performer to make you swiftly forgive him. From crazily bouncing around on Oprah's couch, to needlessly attacking Brooke Shields, to vigorously espousing the evils of psychiatry, there's no doubt the past year has been the worst of his storied career. However, Cruise once again proves his worth as these PR gaffes are immediately forgotten within the first few nerve-racking moments of the film.

The opening teaser shows us sinister arms-dealer Owen Davian (Hoffman) threatening to blow a pretty young woman's head off while interrogating a captive Ethan Hunt (Cruise) about the location of the "rabbit's foot." This is some kind of new doomsday device (the filmmakers cleverly avoid cliché by never explaining exactly what it is) that Hunt and his MIF team will have to frantically search the world for.

This startling scene snaps us to attention, the stirring TV theme music kicks in, and the narrative jumps back to Virginia, where Ethan is thoroughly enjoying himself at an engagement party with his fiancèe Julia (Michelle Monaghan), who has not been told about his secret life as a spy. She thinks her beau is a boring bureaucrat with the Department of Transportation. It seems Ethan has decided to settle down and is now only training operatives.

Of course, this plan can't last, as he is called away during the party and implored to go on a mission to Berlin to rescue abducted agent Lindsey Ferris (Keri Russell), one of his finest trainees. Joining him in his quest is veteran agent Luther (the outstanding Ving Rhames), and fresh recruits Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Zhen (Maggie Q).

After this first mission goes awry, the real fun begins, as Ethan and his team learn they must break into the Vatican for the chance to nab Davian. As always, the MIF team does its duty with expert precision, stealing the rabbit's foot and kidnapping the criminal while simultaneously faking his death. However, Davian soon regains the upper hand as his posse uses an attack drone, a helicopter and a platoon of high-tech commandos to stage a daring rescue.

Julia is quickly seized, and Ethan is informed he must find the rabbit's foot within 48 hours or else. He reunites with his team in Shanghai to make an impressive last-minute raid on a heavily guarded skyscraper, followed by a high-speed car chase/gun battle through the city's congested streets, before we reach the relatively calm (but no less dramatic) finale. Naturally, production values are superlative throughout. CV

'Don't Come Knocking'

By Bethany Kohoutek

Movie Trailer

Wim Wenders' films have this way of making you homesick for the American West. Even if you haven't actually been to the particular object of his affection - here, it's Butte, Montana - you leave the theater with a heavy, melancholic nostalgia for the brand of Americana that Wenders, who is German, captures with a touch that is at once stark and tender.

Everything else in "Don't Come Knocking," Wenders' latest effort, seems predictable, secondary and even contrived. It's not that the script or the actors are particularly bad; they're just as good as what we've come to expect from Wenders - the sort of standard-bearing filmmaking he offers in true beauties like "Paris, Texas" and "Wings of Desire."

Sam Shepard plays Howard Spence, an actor whose Hollywood relevance has long since faded. After 30 years of boozing, wrecking cars, snorting lines and screwing random female fans, the aging Spence has been relegated to the role of cowboy-for-hire in cheapo Westerns. Within this context, Spence is one day struck by a sudden attack of the "what does it all mean?"s. He ditches the set of his latest film and decides to look up his mother (Eva Marie Saint), whom he hasn't seen in three decades.

Mom, who seems unperturbed by the fact that she hasn't seen her kid for his entire adult life, informs Spence that he has a son of his own, apparently conceived 20-odd years ago while he was working on a film set in Butte. Armed with only a photo and a vague recollection of who he could have knocked up, Spence sets off for Montana to peer into the windows of the life he could have - and, he's convinced himself, should have - lived.

But things don't work out as tidily as they do in the movies Spence is cast in. When he wanders into the M & M Cafè (an actual Butte landmark), he finds Doreen (Jessica Lange), the mother of his child, waitressing at the same place she did when they hooked up. Lange, perhaps the strongest role in the film, is the embodiment of the sensible Western ethos. There are no stars in her eyes when the father of her only child meanders back into town, and, realizing Spence is in the throes of a full-blown three-quarters-life crisis, Doreen regards him with a sort of vaguely condescending amusement.

Spence then meets his son, Earl (Gabriel Mann), in a bar where Earl's band is playing. Their first encounter is a trainwreck; Earl is so rattled by his father's sudden entrance into his life that he tries to kick the shit out of Spence, who leaves, dejected. At the same time, Spence is being tailed by a mysterious girl, Sky (Sarah Polley), who's lugging around an urn full of her mother's ashes. Spence tries to shoo her away, figuring she's a straggling groupie, until he realizes she, too, is the result of another indiscriminate affair. All the while, an investigator hired by the film company that Spence abandoned is trying to track him down and deliver him back to the set.

The fleeting moments of wit and quirk that ensue seem forced. Rather than weaving these Wender trademarks seamlessly into the plot line, he deposits them into the script at inopportune times, rendering the film incongruous. As a result, the actors seem unsure how to evoke the emotions expected of them and overact to compensate. Mann's Earl, for example, is amateurish and obnoxious; his overwrought freak-outs at his father grow dull quickly. There are times where you almost care about what happens to the pitiful Spence, but his character never scratches deep enough to garner any sympathy - and perhaps that's the point. If so, this serves only to strip Spence's awkward attempts at reconciliation with his family of any true impact.

T-Bone Burnett provides the standout soundtrack, an aching and forlorn score that, more than the actors, sustains the film's oddball, Americana backbone. It makes you wish you could mute the dialog and appreciate, through Wenders' adoring lens, the beauty of the Western landscape, without a halfhearted script muddying the view. CV

'United 93'

By Bethany Kohoutek

Movie Trailer

Afew years ago, I met a Vietnam veteran at a VFW bar in Colorado. He was in his mid-60s, and only recently had he begun to deal with the severe post-traumatic stress and emotional issues stemming from his experience. He'd been declared 100 percent disabled by the government after the military truck he was riding in tripped a crude explosive device buried in the road. It detonated and shot the truck into the sky. The truck landed on his legs.

On one particular day, we got to talking about Vietnam War movies. As a rule, he detested them. "The Deer Hunter." "Platoon." And, especially, "Apocalypse Now." He classified them either as films which drew upon war as an excuse to portray guts and gore, or movies that sacrificed facts as a means toward political ends. Both types, he said, did a disservice to history, and to the people - the soldiers and the civilians - actually involved.

I think my friend would appreciate "United 93."

It would have been easy for writer/ director Paul Greengrass to attempt to attach some sort of lofty moral statement or overarching political agenda, but he didn't have to, and his offering is better for it; the facts speak for themselves.

The film is comprised mainly of two parts: The most immediately gripping is Greengrass' portrayal of what could have happened aboard United Flight 93 on the morning of September 11, 2001. Like Greengrass' 2002 film, "Bloody Sunday," which chronicles the 1972 murders of 14 Irish civil rights protesters by the British military, you know how it's going to end for the passengers of Flight 93. And, for the majority of the film, you're locked into cringe mode. Never have I heard a theater so pin-droppingly silent, or heard people openly sob during closing credits.

In reality, however, no one knows exactly what happened on that plane. We've gleaned bits from cockpit recordings and final phone calls to loved ones, but all of the other harrowingly human details Greengrass shows - the stewardesses chatting amongst themselves, the two passengers planning a hiking trip, the old woman asking for water with breakfast so she can swallow her pills - are speculation.

It's the film's depiction of the utter chaos among - and ultimate failure of - government agencies and the military that strike a deeper chord of fear. For those who didn't read the "9/11 Commission Report," "United 93" presents what are likely new and startling facts: that the fighter jets deployed by the military in response to the hijackings actually took off in the wrong direction; that the military could not locate the president to get his approval to engage the planes; that some government officials first learned of a plane crashing into the Trade Center because it was on CNN.

This is not an attempt by Greengrass to Michael Moore-ize the events of 9/11. Most of these facts, though not granted the wide berth they deserve in the mainstream news, were published in the "9/11 Commission Report" in July of 2004. In this Sunday's Washington Post, John Farmer, a senior counsel for the 9/11 commission, attested to the accuracy of the movie:

"The film is closer to the truth than every account the government put out before the 9/11 commission's investigation," he wrote. "Its release marks our passage through the post-9/11 looking glass, with our wildest fairy tales now spun not in Hollywood, but in Washington."

A recent poll found that half of Americans think it's too soon to release a 9/11 film. I'd urge them to give "United 93" a chance. It took decades for my friend in Colorado to face his personal horrors surrounding Vietnam; the human elements of "United 93" may actually provide catharsis for those emotionally involved in this ordeal (which is pretty much all of us, to one extent or another).

At the very least, the film highlights internal mistakes that were made. A mainstream awareness of those mistakes - more so than any war or any federal civil liberties legislation - is perhaps a step toward preventing similar tragedies in the future. CV

'RV'

By Ben Spierenburg

Movie Trailer

With carefree chuckles crammed into every storage bin and overhead compartment it can find, family-oriented funfest "RV" is an enjoyable romp across the U.S.A. What at first seems like merely a plagiarized 21st-century update of 1983's "National Lampoon's Vacation," ultimately proves itself to be entirely different and possibly even better than its predecessor - depending on where one's tastes lie. Where "NLV" was dark comedy (the family hauls their dead aunt around by strapping her to the top of the station wagon,) PG-rated "RV" provides a lighter touch with more life-affirming humor.

Somewhat subdued from his typically out-of-control-hyper-manic shtick, Robin Williams is nevertheless highly entertaining and credible in the role of Bob Munro, a prosperous L.A. soda company exec who suddenly realizes his technology-absorbed family is severely dysfunctional. It seems Bob's kids would rather surf the Internet and listen to their i-Pods than ever spend some time with good ol' dad - a particularly plausible and relatable premise for familial American audiences.

The family is scheduled for a vacation in Hawaii, but these plans are dashed when Bob's odious boss Todd (Will Arnett, convincing as always as a pompous prick) demands that he call off the trip to make an emergency presentation in Colorado or risk being fired. Wishing to save his lucrative job, as well as reconnect with his churlish children, Bob strikes upon the idea of renting an RV to accomplish both tasks at once. However, he inexplicably decides not to tell his disapproving wife Jamie (Cheryl Hines), his unpleasant daughter Cassie (Lindsay Lohan wannabe Joanna "JoJo" Levesque), or his undersized, overconfident son Carl (Josh Hutcherson) about the monetary importance of their new vacation plans. Although informing them of this crucial detail would certainly have made for a smoother ride, the resulting film would have been 60 percent less funny, so we gleefully let this plot hole slide.

And this film is consistently funny all the way through, with story-driven gags that build upon one another. The trouble begins as soon as they leave their driveway, with Bob clumsily crashing into assorted street objects. This damages the brakes, and from then on every time the family makes a pit-stop they must remember to put special brake-locks onto the tires or risk seeing the RV slowly roll away. As you might expect, the family forgets this simple task often. Adding to their difficulties, they find out the RV they have dubbed "The Rolling Turd" is, in fact, just that: The septic tank is full and must be drained. Perplexed on how to do so, Bob gets help from some grime-covered idiots, and a crowd of RV people watch in delight as he inevitably gets doused in shit.

Some might think the "dad is stupid and it's funny to watch him suffer" genre of comedy has been done to death, but that is not how "RV" presents the father figure. Yes, Bob makes mistakes, but they are always done out of a servile love and concern for his family. After driving all day, making breakfast/lunch/dinner and battling every manner of man and beast, he sneaks away and stays up all night to work on his business presentation. As soon as he's finished and ready to get some rest, it's time to wake up and start the battle for his family's love all over again. Eventually, after enough time, effort and shared experiences of calamity, his spoiled family starts to come around.

And while Williams could have carried this film entirely on his back, he doesn't have to. Jeff Daniels chips in a superlative comic performance as Travis Gornicke, the head of a clan of warmhearted hicks. The Gornickes serve to teach the Munros about how to be a loving family again, and also not to judge people based on their appearance and demeanor. Barry Sonnenfeld and screenwriter Geoff Rodkey serve up a first-rate comedy sure to go over well with families in both blue and red America. CV

'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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