Directed by Paul Provenza

Starring: 99 comedians and Tim Conway

89 min.

Try analyzing comedy. The only thing more exasperating is sitting stone-faced through one. Discussing drama consumes a long car ride home, but ask someone why a gag made them howl and all you get before the radio goes on is, “I thought it was funny.” Laughter is subjective, and all too frequently people gauge a comedy’s success on the quantity of yuks rather than the quality of the execution. The Aristocrats is as visually compelling as “Larry King Live,” but with laughs like these, why quibble over formal finesse?

The Aristocrats goes where no film ever has: It dissects funny. Along with producer Penn (of Penn & Teller) Jillette, comic Paul Provenza documented 100 jokesters from every conceivable school (and generation) of comedy. They are all asked to tell and/or comment on the same dirty joke which is as legendary as some of the names who deliver it. There are two constants: the set up (“A guy walks into a talent agent claiming to have the greatest act in showbiz…”) and the punch line (The Aristocrats). Everything sandwiched in between, including galestorms of defecation, rampant incest and infectious violence, is left to each comic’s lack of discretion.

The old guard (none of whom wallow in the fecal fun) is represented by Pat Cooper, Shelly Berman, Rip Taylor, Don Rickles (who never worked blue a day in his life) and Chuck McCann, who comes closest to crossing the good taste barrier with an “ass-over-tea-kettle” aside. The only female dinosaur is Phyllis Diller. For a woman so concerned with physical appearance, Ms. Diller’s sleeveless dress maximizes the comic potential of her condoms-filled-with-rice-pudding upper arms.

The film painstakingly scrutinizes timing. Sharper minds realize that the success of the joke depends on a matter-of-fact delivery. There is a chance that if you didn’t like a comic coming in, The Aristocrats may change your mind. Never high on my Laff-O-Meter, both Bob Saget and Howie Mandel repeatedly brought palm to knee. Running true to form, Taylor Negron, Rita Rudner and everyone related to “South Park” fail to amuse. When Larry Storch and Hank Azaria adopt cute accents, the sound of crickets moving to the next theater drowns out the chuckles. And given the pervasive mood of mean-spiritedness, why assign the curtain laugh to that terminally unfunny softball lobber Tim Conway?

A third of the screening audience bolted a scant 15 minutes in. After an initial commitment, AMC Theaters broke character and suddenly professed respect for their ticket buyers and canceled all bookings. This rare display of phony concern seems especially hypocritical in light of the chain’s willingness to exhibit Mel Gibson’s ultra-violent The Passion or Sin City’s portrayal of women as vaginas with bodies attached. Maybe they think there’s more money to be made in movies that graphically depict brutality rather than just verbally goof on it.

People are afraid of The Aristocrats, and the fact that popular art still retains an ability to piss audiences off should thrill and delight.

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Directed by Phil Morrison

Written by Angus Maclachlan

Starring: Embeth Davidtz, Allessandro Nivola, Amy Adams and Ben McKenzie

107 min.

Junebug starts on stock footage of North Carolinians yelling in the mountains. Screaming is the ideal prelude to a film that examines both the abyss between North and South and the inner-workings of an incommunicative family that reunites for one week.

Estranged son and brother George (Allessandro Nivola) is persuaded by Madeleine (the wonderful Embeth Davidtz), his older, British-born wife of six months, to make a side trip so that she may meet her in-laws. They’ll be in the Carolinas anyway while Madeleine courts backwoods painter David Wark (Frank Hoyt Taylor). She believes Wark’s “outsider” art will lure wealthy collectors to her Chicago gallery.

Their arrival finds a sulking mother (Celia Weston), reticent father (Scott Wilson) and Johnny (Ben McKenzie), George’s brooding, underachieving younger brother. Their floating-on-eggshells reserve prompts cauterized silence during several early scenes. Not since Ingmar Bergman in the ’60s has a movie theater been so quiet.

Johnny’s very pregnant wife Ashley (newcomer Amy Adams) is everything but mute: guileless, eager to please and, in spite of nonstop talking jags, unable to make a point. Perhaps this is why she is the only member of the family to embrace sophisticated, but shallow Madeleine. (Could she intuitively sense a fellow toenail biter?) Ms. Adams’ star-making performance brings life and dimension to a poster child for insignificancy.

Never having seen an episode of “The O. C.,” I can’t imagine it calls for much acting. Junebug does, and McKenzie’s transition from small screen stud to Indie ensemble player comes as a pleasant surprise. Unable to grasp the pulled-tab concept of a video cassette, Johnny fails to record a show he knows would thrill Ashley. This fleeting thought of his wife, the single moment in the story where he acts selflessly, shines through McKenzie’s depiction of Johnny’s inability to express his love via VHS.

Director Phil Morrison depicts Ashley’s sexual desperation in a manner I don’t recall ever seeing. Hopelessly in love with Johnny, yet terrified by his emotional retreat, she masturbates to a snapshot of the couple in happier times. Reality became Ashley’s fantasy soon after high school ended and married life began. This moment of painfully honest tenderness may cause even hardcore voyeurs to respectfully avert their gaze.

Madeleine’s relationship with Wark examines the age old question of separating the artist from their art. Wark is a mumbling crackpot well schooled in religious diatribes (with a minor in anti-Semitism) who finds his “voice” on canvas. His rustic battle collages are reminiscent of childhood; only these come equipped with anatomically incorrect renditions of General Lee and boast good ol’ boy titles like “Nigger Uprising.” With prosperity just out of reach, is Madeleine’s personal integrity worth compromising for gallery gold?

Between Madeleine’s professional conundrum and a familial snub she must reconcile dwells still another timeworn plot gap in a film that refuses to simply document or, even worse, shrug off clichés. Junebug confronts and disrupts. Sometimes there’s an art to re-filming the obvious.

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Directed by Wes Craven

Written by Carl Ellsworth

Starring: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox and Jayma Mays

85 min.

Urbandictionary.com lists three distinct entries under “red eye”:

1. A late-night airline flight.

2. A type of whiskey.

3. A rectum.

All three definitions apply in varying degree to Wes Craven’s Airport ‘05.

Rachel McAdams, looking barely old enough to get a room let alone manage a hotel, plays Lisa, an unduly efficient innkeeper returning to Miami on the red eye from her grandmother’s funeral. An unexpected layover gives her time to meet and greet Jackson “Don’t call me Jack D.” Rippner. (Do you smell that? It’s a first-time screenwriter inventing funny names!) Cillian Murphy’s Jackson is arrestingly charming, especially if you’re turned on by a guy who looks slightly less menacing than Peter Lorre (circa M) shooting morphine outside an elementary school.

The two have a drink in the airport lounge, a plot point that will come in handy by reel two. Just about everything that happens in reel one perfunctorily comes back into play; so much for the element of surprise. One can award only so much blame to duffer Carl Ellsworth’s script. Craven has signed over 20 features, most in the teen horror genre, and should have learned something about structure by now. But, with all his commercial success, why stop to contemplate nuance?

Once the captain turns off the seat-belt sign, Jackson gets down to business: Lisa’s dad (Brian Cox) will die unless she can instruct her assistant (comic relief Jayma Mays) to downgrade the lodgings of a high-profile politician (Jack Scalia) and his family from their customary rooms to the Certain Death Suite.

Craven consistently frames his stars in one choking anamorphic close-up after another. The production notes crow that the ersatz aircraft was built on hydraulics that shook it from side to side in order to simulate turbulence. Filmed at such close range, you can barely notice the seatbacks let alone the set. Why not save a few bucks and just jiggle the camera?

In the ’70s, horror was defined by David Cronenberg, George Romero, Larry Cohen, Dario Argento, Joe Dante and John Carpenter. Wes Craven’s witless, TV-paced track record became an assurance of pressurized dung. Twenty-five years later finds pale Asian girls with dirty black hair covering their faces and Rob Zombie leading the chills in horror movies. At least give him credit for one thing: Craven is still in there swinging. Now if only someone would point him in the general direction of the mound.

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