C.S.A.: THE confederate states of america

Confederate flags
Flying over the White House.
This is satire, right?

(Not reviewed) (Bala)

duck season

See Cindy Fuchs' review.

(Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

inside man

Spike Lee's sharp new movie begins with a close-up on Clive Owen as he describes "the perfect bank robbery" that forms the bulk of the action. While this heisty plot (script by Russell Gewirtz) includes the sorts of cunning turns familiar since Die Hard, the more compelling aspect is the film's New Yorkness, achieved with Matthew Libatique's sweeping camerawork and a complex network of characters, including a charismatic hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) and his partner (Chiwetel Ejoifor), a turf-protecting Emergency Services Unit captain (Willem Dafoe), a bank board chairman (Christopher Plummer), and a shady, well-paid fixer (Jodie Foster, introduced as she's arranging for Bin Laden's nephew to purchase a condo). The film cites '70s crime movies (Dog Day Afternoon, by name), and incorporates current anxieties (terrorism, corruption) as well as Lee's signature concerns (a gangsta video game) and techniques (the blasted white-light interview scenes of Clockers; the moving sidewalk of nearly every Lee movie, deployed brilliantly here). Tense, showy and shrewd, the movie is Lee's most generic (i.e., "accessible"), though its cleverest moments involve odd and telling details (the credits sequence use of A.R. Rahman's "Chaiyya Chaiyya"; the city worker who recognizes Albanian; the Sikh who resents being profiled as "Arab").

--Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

Inside Man

Joyeux Noël

See Cindy Fuchs' review. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

larry the cable guy: health inspector

And on the eighth day,
God said, "Let there be rednecks,
to annoy us all."

(Not reviewed) (UA Grant; UA Riverview)

stay alve

Teens' deaths mimic their
favorite video game.
Hope it's not Frogger.

(Not reviewed)

(AMC Orleans; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

thank you for smoking

A satire so incompetent it only wings its barn-door target, Jason Reitman's glib gloss on Christopher Buckley's novel hauls out the heavy artillery but loads it with spitwads. Aaron Eckhart, essentially downloading his performance from In the Company of Men, plays Nick Naylor, a tobacco flack whose slick cig-talk undermines his attempts to play sporadic dad to his 12-year-old son (Cameron Bright). Trafficking in stereotypes broad enough for puppet theater (William H. Macy's Birkenstock-sporting Vermont senator, Adam Brody's obsequious H'wd assistant), Thank You flings mud in all directions, as if blanket ridicule were the same as equal time. At least the typecasting protects Reitman from repeating the movie's most glaring malfunction: putting Katie Holmes in the role of a take-no-prisoners journalist (which means, of course, that she's a slut). Too bad Holmes' post-TomKat prudery renders the script's references to her amply displayed rack nonfunctional. Not only is she unfailingly buttoned up to the neck, but the look on her face in the movie's ultra-tame sex scenes suggests Golgotha rather than gratification.

--Sam Adams (Ritz 5; Ritz 16)