SMOKE 'EM IF YOU GOT 'EM

 I am so busy bitching about the fact that I haven't seen any movies in a million years that I completely forgot that I saw THANK YOU FOR SMOKING last month.  Does that mean it wasn't very memorable?  Possibly.  It was filled with some great characters, and there were a few truly inspired sequences (the trip to L.A. where Aaron Eckhart meets Rob Lowe's Hollywood exec), but without a coherent story to hold all of those characters together, I thought it ultimately fell a bit flat as satire.

But it was great to see Aaron E. break out of Neil LaBute scary-land and deliver a monstrous performance.  I hope this film opens up a lot of opportunities for him, because he has "gravitas coming out the wazoo," plus one of the most fabulous chins in Hollywood.

As for the women, the always enchanting (and Philly girl) Maria Bello was shamefully underused, and Katie Holmes was pretty annoying/miscast.

Oh, and Robert Duvall turns in a spine-tingling performance as a dying Southern tobacco magnate.

Ultimately, I wouldn't sweat it if you missed in the theaters, but it'll be nice, light and concisely-told fare for the Netflix queue.  (Less is often more.)