The Artisocrats

The Aristocrats -- a documentary by Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette -- is a series of riffs on a joke passed down among comics from vaudeville to now. The set-up is simple: a man describes a family act, in graphic detail, to a talent agent. The punchline is always the name of the act, "The Aristocrats" (or a variation on it).

Doesn't sound like much for a film, does it? Plus the punchline is flat. Yet with a cast of comics that includes George Carlin, Robin Williams, Harry Shearer, and many more, the punchline is beside the point.

It's all about the journey.

And what a ride it is! The Aristocrats is the most vulgar, bracing, and downright funny film of the year. The "family act" of the joke changes by comic, each spinning it out of their own fertile, filthy imaginations. The joke itself is not the "holy grail" of comedy, though there's a grudging respect for it as it allows the comics the freedom to improvise. The Americans love its unbridled vulgarity. The Europeans -- from Billy Connolly to Eric Idle to Eddie Izzard -- enjoy the joke, but don't seem to get it. As Idle points out, there's nothing strange about aristocrats acting disgusting. It's part of growing up with royalty.

Among the comics themselves are legendary tellers of the joke. First among equals are Bob Saget, who sheds his Funniest Home Videos gentility here, and Gilbert Gottfried, whose rendition of the joke not long after 9/11 unites a skittish New York audience.

The content is infinitely malleable. (My own favorites are by a mime and the kids from South Park.) The joke is compared - more than once -- to the great John Coltrane. That may sound pompous, but it's apt. The Aristocrats is to comedy what Giant Steps is to music: a milestone, its own genre. Let's call it scatological jazz. -- Dan Loughry

9 Songs

Director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People) pushes buttons in his films for sure, but his latest, 9 Songs, has more controversy seeping from its celluloid than any film in recent memory. Told in flashback from the perspective of Matt (Kieran O'Brien), a young London glacioloist while he surveys the vast Antarctica ice-scape (using the exploration of the cold, vast-yet-empty space as a not-so-subtle metaphor for love and love lost), he recalls his romance with a free-spirited American named Lisa (newcomer Margo Stilley) with whom he quickly falls in lust.

As far as plot goes ... well, suffice it to say, there really isn't one. These two attractive people go to concerts and they have sex. Concert. Sex. Concert. Sex. That is the movie. Matt falls in love with this waif of a woman for reasons left to our imaginations apparently because her redeeming qualities appear few and far between. She likes indie rock. So does he. She likes sex. So does he. But we never get to know her beyond her bratty exterior and her exposed nakedness. O'Brien has better luck in the characterization department because he's a more skilled actor, but we still never get a real sense of what their relationship is beyond its sex and rock and roll.

Most people recall songs for significant moments in their own lives: one that reminds us of a first kiss, first love, first break-up, etc. and we're to assume the rock concerts in 9 Songs act as earmarks for moments in this relationship as well, but the audience really isn't privy to what those moments are unless we are to take each song's lyrics as word-for-word commentary. Beyond that, the nine songs as they're used in this film feel more like a surrounding soundtrack for Matt and Lisa's sex life and not much else. What the film is trying to explore is the intimacy of a relationship and indeed sex's role in intimacy. Be forewarned: very, very explicit intimacy. And while 9 Songs does succeed to some degree, more often than not, the graphic, in-your-face sex scenes (full-frontal -- full everything) really just feel like scenes from a triple-X rental from your local 20/20. -- Michael Wood

Night Watch

Russia's answer to both Lord of the Rings and The Matrix, Night Watch features slow-motion fight scenes, epic-style historic battles, a plethora of creatures ranging from vampires to owls that can morph into humans, blaring rock music, and lots and lots of digital crows. Sounds like the perfect summer flick, until you see the film -- a confused, erratic and often dull sci-fi/horror/action concoction that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.

Based on a series of novels by Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch revolves around a group of sunglass-wearing protectors called The Night Watch, inhuman beings who guard our world from evil-doers, included said vamp's and other ghoulish goings-on. The protagonist, Anton (Konstantin Khabens), one of the Night Watchers, is himself a vampire, yet he kills another vampire in the beginning of the film in a sequence of special effects and twisting camera angles that comes off as incoherent and bewildering. Is Anton a good vampire? Why is he killing other vampires? These questions are never resolved.

Night Watch is first in a planned trilogy, which will hopefully bring more answers than questions to the film's labyrinthine plot. Characters are introduced without reason and their actions are even more important to the story, but we are never given a clear indication of who the hell they are and why their identities are crucial. It feels like a secret you haven't been let in on.

The big ploy of Night Watch is obviously the hyper direction from Timur Bekmambetov and the film's over use of visual effects, many of which are surprisingly terrible. All this is not to say Night Watch is a bad film; actually, the movie offers some great imagery and interesting ideas. But is it so hard to bring these ideas and images to the screen without the silly and constantly frantic MTV-style editing and Matrix-ish atmosphere? Been there, done that, three times already. -- Matt Dalton