W.
Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Dreyfuss

And who might that “W.” be, given that the director is Oliver Stone? History’s not even dry on the page, but Stone is going great guns ablazin’ with his irreverent biopic about our president’s unlikely rise to power: the drinking, drugs, gentleman’s C’s at Yale, and accidental political aspirations that landed Dubya, much like Peter Sellers in Being There, as leader of the free world. Honestly, we’d love to watch the crazy Stone of Nixon make a comeback after such timid mis fires as World Trade Center. His cast is especially promising: Expect Dreyfuss to be unhinged playing Darth Cheney, while Wright quietly holds down the film’s besieged moral center as Colin Powell. Tragedy or black comedy? If Stone is true to his subject—as well as to his own past as one of America’s boldest filmmakers—W. will have healthy doses of both.

As of press time, there was a serious chance the Hollywood writers’ strike would jeopardize this year’s Academy Awards. No need to worry, though —there’s always the Penthouse Double D’s!

Best Sex Scene: 300
Gerard Butler and Lena Headey get it sweatily on in a rough tumble that’s equal parts tassled-boot-knocking and battle-readiness drill.

Best Pubic Hair Bleaching: Black Book
If there’s a higher power, Holland’s Carice van Houten will make her way Stateside. Who directed the film with its strangely hot scene of van Houten dying her nether region to evade the Nazis? None other than Showgirls’ perv sexpert Paul Verhoeven.

Best Use of Computer Animation: Angelina Jolie in Beowulf
Yes, we are honoring Jolie again—you have a problem with that? Grendel’s mom, emerging from the water in the buff, had us thumbing through the classic again. Funny, we don’t remember that part.

Best Reason to Promote the Wardrobe Department: Marisa Tomei in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Scene after scene, the (extremely fit) Oscar winner seemed determined to show us that serious acting was not about fancy period clothing—or any clothing, really.

Hottest One-Legged Stripper: Rose McGowan in Grindhouse
It wasn’t simply one leg and a stump, but a machine-gun prosthetic! The NRA missed out by not making McGowan its poster girl. And we’re still trying to figure out how she cocked the damn thing.

Best Nymphomaniac Slut: Christina Ricci in Black Snake Moan
Playing a Tennessee skank desperate for sex and, ultimately, salvation, Ricci
was close to unrecognizable. We salute her work.

Sexiest Chick Who Knew a Little Something About (Robot) Cars: Megan Fox in Transformers
Megan is way too hot for PG-13 entertainment. Not that we’re complaining. (When’s that sequel due again?)

Best Naked Manfight: Eastern Promises
Throwing the ladies a bone here, so to speak. Might this be a new trend started in Borat? Viggo Mortensen’s Nikolai, a Russian gangster, laid everything on the line in a violent steam-room tussle.

Most Hilarious Cartoon-Penis Montage: Superbad
You McLoved McLovin and the raunch factor, but how weird was this scene? Weird enough to make our list!

Best Literal “Shooting of One’s Load”: Shoot ‘Em Up
Gunplay and sex—is there a better movie combo? Add Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci and, well, you could say they banged, but then we’d have to give you a verbal titty twister for such a bad pun.

Most Telling Glimpse Into the Future: Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me
Lindsay’s twirl around the stripper pole was obscured by her own public notoriety. Then there was the small matter of the film itself.

Best Film Titles That Could Pass for Porn:
Mr. Woodcock, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, Balls of Fury, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, No Country for Old Men

As seen in Penthouse Magazine March 2008
By Joshua Rothkopf

The essential truth (sort of) about the mercurial director of Rescue Dawn

1 HE SUFFERS FOR IS ART.
While filming 1970’s Even Dwarfs Started Small, one member of the all–little person cast caught on fire and was run over by a car, but emerged unharmed. Herzog vowed to dive into a cactus patch if the rest of them survived filming without injury. When they did, he did, going in headfirst.

2 YOU JUST CAN’T QUIT HIM.
According to legend, Herzog threatened to shoot Klaus Kinski when the actor tried to leave the snake-infested South American jungle where they were filming 1972’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Kinski later wrote of Herzog, “Huge red ants should piss into his lying eyes, gobble up his balls, penetrate his asshole, and heat his guts!� The two made four more films together.

3 HE’S NOT ABOVE BENDING THE LAW.
As a fledgling filmmaker in the 1960s, Herzog stole a 35-mm camera from the Munich Film School and used it to make his first seven films.

4HE’S A LIFESAVER.
Last year he helped Joaquin Phoenix escape from his overturned car. When Phoenix turned to thank him, Herzog had vanished.

5 HE’S WAS SANDBAGGED BY KUWAIT.
In 1992, Herzog told the Kuwaiti government he wanted to shoot a film extolling the heroism of the country’s oil-well firefighters. When authorities discovered his real motive— a “documentary� with a sci-fi twist that showed real acts of torture—Herzog was expelled from the emirate.

6BULLETS APPARENTLY CAN’T KILL HIM.
Last year Herzog was shot in the abdomen by a sniper during an interview in L.A. He shrugged it off, claiming a catalog in his pocket kept him from being seriously injured.

7 HE’S DOESN’T WELSH ON A BET.
He told his onetime assistant, Errol Morris, that if Morris ever made a movie he’d eat his shoe. After Morris finished Gates of Heaven, he did just that.

—By Daniel Nemet-Nejat

Talk to Me
Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor

This simply shot biopic begins with the original shock jock, Petey Greene (Cheadle), honing his deejay skills while serving time for armed robbery. After his release, Greene fast-talks his way onto morning radio and quickly makes a name for himself by unwittingly personifying the free-speech movement. Following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Greene becomes one of the black community’s leading voices of reason, helping to calm the city during D.C.’s race riots. Cheadle is stellar, as always, and each word he speaks is tinged with sadness and hilarity; Taraji P. Henson (Hustle & Flow) is jaw-droppingly delicious as Greene’s voluptuous girlfriend; and Ejiofor, as producer Dewey Hughes, builds off Cheadle’s delicate performance to capture a man who struggled before winning two Emmys. Those Oscar dudes love a good biopic, and we’re sure they won’t miss this low-profile masterpiece.

-Jonathan Ages

Though it’s packed with quirky details and film-school tricks, King of California is an emotionally tepid, bland film. Mike Cahill loses his directorial virginity with a story about 16-year-old Miranda (Wood), who must work at McDonald’s to support herself and her father Charlie (Douglas), freshly released from a mental institution. Clearly not cured and convinced that the lost treasure of Father Juan Florismarte Garces is buried under Costco, Charlie drags his daughter on his quixotic search. Douglas nearly saves the film with his wild-eyed eccentricity. The acting volleys between Douglas and Wood, however, bring to mind what it must be like watching someone serve a tennis ball into mud. Cahill shows potential as a writer/director, but King of California’s hackneyed storytelling and ten-years-too-late “indie style� just come off as an exercise in quirkiness for quirk’s sake.-By Michael Immerman

If you’re looking for a movie to see with your girl that won’t have you checking your watch, cringing uncontrollably, or hurling into your Milk Duds, this meditation on love and mortality could be the one. Although there are a couple of corn ball moments, you’ll overlook them, because while your date can ponder the film’s central spiritual question—“Is love a trick that nature pulls on us so we’ll keep reproducing, or is it the only meaning in this crazy dream?�—you can focus on more tangible issues, like Alexa Davolos, or the sultriest lesbian love scenes this side of Mulholland Drive, or Radha Mitchell’s naughty bits. (Four words: Full. Frontal. Nudity. Awesome.) The story chronicles the love lives of Kinnear, Blair, Mitchell, Toby Hemingway, and Davolos, with Freeman in the … Morgan Freeman role, as sage counsel to them all. When a cash-strapped Davolos asks Freeman if she and her boyfriend should make a sex tape for money, wondering who will buy it, he tells her, “Oh, they’ll buy it. Blind people would buy it.� The same could be said of this frank depiction of sexuality.-By J.B.

It takes a while to crank up its various moving parts, but once this corporate-litigation thriller (not a contradiction in terms, as it turns out) gets going, it generates real, thrumming tension and builds to an edgeof-your-seat climax.First-time director Tony Gilroy (screenwriter of the Bourne trilogy and The Devil’s Advocate) examines themes of corporate irresponsibility and personal integrity in this tale of Clayton (Clooney), an inhouse “fixer� for a monolithic Manhattan law firm. When the firm’s top litigator, Arthur Edens (Wilkinson), suffers a crisis of conscience while settling a class-action suit for an agrochemical company accused of poisoning families with weed killer, Clayton is sent to smooth him over, and gradually becomes enmeshed in more sinister doings.

The cast—especially Clooney, Terry Serpico and Robert Prescott (as two ice-cold baddies), and Swinton—is top-notch. But keep in mind this is a thinking man’s thriller—barely anything gets blown up.

-By John Bolster

The Kingdom is a political thriller dressed up as a buddy-cop flick. Or, in two words: Syriana light. Producer Michael Mann’s (Miami Vice) latest offering follows four elite FBI agents who travel to Saudi Arabia to bring a terrorist cell to justice. Agent Ronald Fleury (Foxx) is the fearless leader who pulls political strings while kicking much terrorist ass; Janet Mayes (Garner) is the hot chick who thwarts local customs and looks sexy doing it; Adam Leavitt (Bateman) adds, uh, levity as the bumbling wisecracker; Grant Sykes (Cooper) adds cred as the only person who actually looks like a federal agent. Director Peter Berg somehow charges through the big-studio gauntlet and successfully emerges with a gripping popcorn movie that artfully explores the powder keg that is Middle East politics. Universal Pictures seems to like it, too, since the studio is rumored to have delayed a summer release (until serious movie season) to position it for the Oscars. No matter what happens when they hand out the hardware, audiences will appreciate that the gently subversive Kingdom obeys the Tao of Don—for as Miami Vice’s Sonny Crockett once said, “You’ve got to know the rules before you can break ’em. Otherwise, it’s no fun.�-By Jonathan Ages

1408
John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson

In this adaptation of the Stephen King story, Cusack is a supernatural debunker who, after his daughter’s death, hopes to find something to give him peace. In his experience, it’s all fakery and lies—until he explores room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel.

-Harry Knowles

Hot Rod
Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, Ian McShane

Saturday Night Live’s Digital Shorts, those YouTube hits about cupcakes and dicks in boxes, put Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone on the nation’s radar. Their feature, Hot Rod, follows a lackluster daredevil (Samberg) on his mission to save his ailing stepfather (McShane). Thing is, Dad’s kind of a dick, so Rod has to pull off a stunt that will both save and shut up Dad. The DS guys can usually make us laugh for 90 seconds, but can they sustain it for 90 minutes?

—J.S.

This is England
Thomas Turgoose, Stephen GrahamA boy (Turgoose) falls in with skinheads after his father’s death—based on the experiences of director/writer Shane
Meadows—then witnesses the breakup of his “family� when an older member (Graham) is released from prison.

-B.R.T.