Albert leads an environmental group called Open Spaces, and is trying to protect a marsh which is being hungrily eyed by Huckabees, a Wal-Mart clone which employs both up-and-coming sales executive Brad Stand (Jude Law) and his girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts), a/k/a Miss Huckabee from the store’s ads. This makes Brad the natural enemy of an already fairly confused Albert, who is now being trailed 24-7 by the not-very-clandestine detectives, who run around planting bugs the size of Ding Dongs everywhere he goes. Mark Wahlberg plays another one of the pair’s clients, and is teamed up with Albert as his "other." Isabelle Huppert is a mysterious investigator who shows up and starts following everyone around, which seems to greatly upset the original investigators. Did I mention they were married, and that Hoffman’s hair looks like he just stepped off the stage at Beatlemania?

Russell’s work here takes him back to the fertile comedic grounds he plowed in the hysterical Flirting With Disaster (a/k/a The Last Ben Stiller Movie That Didn’t Suck Ass). He throws a lot of gags at the screen. Most of them hit and hit hard. He also managed to take two actors who I don’t particularly think are very good (Schwartzman and Wahlberg) and got really nice performances out of them. Less impressive was the usually reliable Law, whose accent creeps through a little too much. Very funny stuff.

The Anatomy of Hell – I think I get what Catherine Breillat was going for in Hell, but then again, I’m just a stupid guy who doesn’t know anything about women or their anatomy. That’s her point with this film, which was based on one of her own novels. It’s about a suicidal woman (Amira Casar) who meets a guy (Rocco Siffredi) who despises women whenever they aren’t letting him drop his DNA down their throats. She offers to pay him to learn what women and their bodies are all about. Graphic sex ensues over four consecutive nights. Also, lots of blood. Oh, and the opening credits told us it was a stunt pussy, so don’t go start feeling bad for Casar.

A Hole In My Heart – Conversely, I have absolutely no idea what Lukas Moodysson was after with Heart, a nihilistic barrage of sound and image that belongs somewhere between a Lars Von Trier Dogme film and the early work of Gregg Araki. Aside from five or six minutes, the entire film takes place within the cramped, claustrophobic confines of an apartment that serves as the home to Rikard (Thorsten Flinck) and his shy, goth, flipper-armed son Eric (Björn Almroth). It’s also home to Rikard’s amateur porn business, where films are made with friend Geko (Goran Marjanovic) and a young, naïve girl named Tess (Sanna Bråding), whose labia reconstruction surgery is shown in short bursts throughout the film. It drove a lot of folks away, it did.

There is lots of sex and various deviations of sex, though nothing as graphic as The Anatomy of Hell. That, however, doesn’t lessen the impact at all, especially the close-ups of various things being shoved in what (thankfully) turns out to be a replica of a vagina and anus. Rikard and Geko also play with action figures a lot. And you wonder why poor Eric stays in his room all day. Actually, I was wondering why he, like most of the audience at my screening, didn’t bolt for the door like his pants were on fire. Not what I was expecting from Moodysson (Lilya 4-Ever), but the prospect of being the second film of the day to have "heart" in the title and ge(c)kos in the movie itself was both comforting and frightening.

Childstar – I walked out of Don McKellar’s 1998 festival debut Last Night after about 15 minutes. Couldn’t get into it. Since then, I’ve acquired a taste for McKellar, via Bravo! reruns of Twitch City and his performance in Gary Burns’s waydowntown. Sadly, I must only like McKellar as a comedic actor because his latest – Childstar – is another dud.

The premise is rife with potential: McKellar plays Rick, an ex-university professor with a failing marriage and a dream to be an indie filmmaker, is hired as a driver for the new movie from a spoiled adolescent American television star named Tyler Brandon Burns. Rick hits it off with Tyler’s atypical stage mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and ends up being both the kid’s tutor and confidant. Before he gets in way over his head, anyway. Then Rick starts acting like a tough-as-nails gumshoe when Tyler goes missing from the set of The First Son, which is as bad as it sounds.

The ball is dropped constantly throughout Childstar. It could have been a great comedy, but McKellar turned it into a Canadian version of Dutch.

Tarnation – I didn’t know much about Tarnation before I saw it. I knew it got strong reviews, and was a documentary comprised mostly of around 20 years of home videos from the young director, Jonathan Caouette. Kinda wish I was more prepared for the emotional ride those personal clips took me on.

Caouette spends about 15-20 minutes setting up the story, giving us a history of his family through his childhood. His mother, a teenage model, has a long history of mental problems, which landed Caouette in a string of abusive foster homes before being taken in by his grandparents. Tarnation shows how his mom’s instability effected Caouette’s life, and it’s half self-indulgent and half excruciatingly self-aware (it reminded me a lot of Just Melvin). Even more impressive than the emotional roller coaster ride was the fact that Caouette edited and provided the sound for Tarnation, which has more cuts in it than all of Michael Bay’s pictures put together. And I mean that in a good way. This thing is edited like a incredibly, glorious bastard.