THE ARISTOCRATS
Not surprisingly for a profession where minor variations spell the difference between exhilaration and humiliation, comedians are a scientific lot. In Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette's gleefully scatological doc, an infamous after-hours joke becomes the control for an experiment in comedy. The structure of The Aristocrats is minimal, its punchline invariable (and not particularly funny); the trick is all in the telling, which generally involves conceiving the most depraved, disgusting and otherwise offensive things a family of four (and sometimes their dog) could do to impress a talent agent. As Jake Johansen says approvingly, "You could probably put people to death for what happens in the best versions." The film intersperses dozens of variations on the joke, some clumsily intercut, with disquisitions on its enduring popularity as a comics-only challenge; Paul Krassner compares it to the music jazz musicians would make after the nightclub audience went home. Not surprisingly, the South Park kids wipe the floor with their competitors (a bit of a cheat, since it's not improvised), and Bob Saget's rumored but purposefully undocumented tendency to work blue is at last enshrined for posterity, sending Full House fans scurrying up the aisles. Although the movie rarely reveals anything so crass as an agenda, it's in line with Jillette's avowed libertarianism, an implicit but forceful argument that profanity and thoughtlessness don't go hand in hand. --Sam Adams (Ritz East)

DEUCE BIGALOW: EUROPEAN GIGOLO
I walked out of the unwarranted Deuce Bigalow sequel all set to excoriate it for its oppressive homophobia, but upon further reflection the movie is not so much hateful as simply infantile. Rob Schneider and his writing partners (yes, it took three presumably grown men to craft this thing) share a third-grade sense of humor, where the mere fact of gay men is funny, so constantly reminding the audience of their existence — and it is a rare 30 seconds that goes by where it isn't mentioned — suffices in lieu of actual jokes. The same goes for body parts and their various functions, all of which are covered in excruciating detail. By the closing moments, even the seemingly sympathetic teenage crowd at the screening was groaning more than laughing. The coarse ugliness of tourists relieving themselves in the streets of Amsterdam; of Eddie Griffin eating french fries out of a toilet; or of a Chernobyl-born woman with a penis for a nose sneezing ejaculate onto the faces of restaurant patrons, becomes so oppressive that it goes beyond unfunny to outright unpleasant. --Shaun Brady (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

FOUR BROTHERS
John Singleton has said more than once that he makes one film for the studios and one for himself. Consider this "one for them." Even more over-the-top than Shaft, this revenge fantasy is noisy, nutty and proudly excessive. Four adopted brothers come together in Detroit to play some pickup hockey and punish the murderers of their sainted mother (Fionnula Flanagan). Helpfully, the local know-it-all cops (Terrence Howard and Josh Charles) anticipate trouble, so they list each brother's identifying trait: "number one heavyweight champion fuck-up" Mark Wahlberg, loverman Tyrese Gibson, responsible family man André Benjamin and sensitive, guitar-strumming Garrett Hedlund. Together they form a brute force, killing suspects with impunity ("I call it self-defense!") and facing down Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the most degenerate and depraved gangster this side of Kiss of Death's Tommy Udo. The shoot-outs are gargantuan, the car chases outrageous and the snow storms arty. If you're looking for a macho melodrama (reportedly inspired by John Wayne western Three Godfathers), this one provides all the desired silliness: wholly implausible, big-ride mayhem, encouraging visits from ghost-mom for the good guys and designer fur parkas for the bad guys. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

THE GREAT RAID
Released three years after completion, just in time for the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima, John Dahl's Jap-baiting WWII movie is as out of place in August as a space heater, Miramax Oscar bait that obviously didn't make the cut. Beginning with U.S. P.O.W.s burned to death by Japanese soldiers, Raid recounts the daring rescue of hundreds more from a Japanese camp in the Philippines, a true story turned rancid by its undiluted racism and jingoistic short-sightedness. (Japanese-American internees never rate a mention, and prisoner abuse is something only other countries engage in.) The worst that can be said of the Americans is that they're slightly territorial: Captain James Franco and his commander Benjamin Bratt feud over who gets to lead the raid, while wasting-away prisoner Joseph Fiennes tries to keep his fellows from staging escape attempts that might provoke executions (a threat made good on, just in case the Japanese don't seem evil enough by that point). At least The Great Raid's odious politics are smothered by a colorless presentation that should rebuff all but the die-hardest History Channel watchers. --S.A. (Ritz 16; UA Riverview)

THE SKELETON KEY
Ehren Kruger, screenwriter of the American Ring remakes, has built a tidy career for himself out of Hollywood's lust for turning B-movie hokum into A-list features. Feeling like the bottom half of a particularly dreary American Independent Productions double bill, The Skeleton Key assembles impressive talent to no better result. John Hurt moans and glares, Gena Rowlands becomes a lurching monster and even the typically scene-salvaging Peter Sarsgaard does a Nawlins accent and not much else. As much as you might expect the auteur of Hackers and K-PAX to be a master of gothic horror, Iain Softley is unable to generate the least bit of suspense, and he doesn't even bother to throw in the occasional cheap scare. (Would it have killed 'em to give these people a cat?) What should be an imposing haunted southern mansion comes off as a slightly shabby B&B, wherein resides a twist ending in search of a movie. Besides, how can anyone get creeped out by a film so P.C. as to go out of its way to separate the evil "magic" of hoodoo from the A-OK "religion" of voodoo? --S.B. (AMC Orleans; Ritz 16; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

NOVEMBER
Sophie (Courteney Cox) takes pictures. After her boyfriend Hugh (James Le Gros) is shot during a convenience store robbery, she has increasing difficulty differentiating between what she sees, what she frames and what she thinks she sees in a frame. Her bumpy transitions from denial to grief to self-understanding are divided into three titled sections and punctuated by interactions with her professional assistant and lover (Michael Ealy), shrink (Nora Dunn), mom (Anne Archer) and a detective (Nick Offerman). Each section comes at the night of the murder from a different angle, Sophie and Hugh's burdens of guilt and resentment shifting with each telling. While Greg Harrison's film suffers from these and other plot tricks (photographs of the store that might reveal what happened, clues that may not exist), Nancy Schreiber's DV cinematography is consistently simple and smart, deftly mobile but composed to seem messy, as if something's left out or excessive. It's hard to miss that Sophie's caught — the elevator to the doctor's office is broken every time she visits — but this basic idea, that (visual or evidentiary) precision only leads to ambiguity is more inspired than the detecting story. --C.F. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)