Cinephile.

An entire class of people, but as a former TV writer I can't help myself: Television executives are by and large a deeply dunderheaded lot. There are things I've heard them say that are almost too unbelievably dim to be true--for example, the exec who sat in on one of our writers' meetings, gave a set of notes that seemed to be for a different show altogether, then admitted, "Sorry, I read everything in the scripts but the dialogue." Naturally, this executive was running the entire network several months later.

Which brings me to Jake Kasdan's The TV Set, an informed bit of pilot-season satire. The film follows Mike Klein (David Duchovny), a mid-level television writer whose pilot, The Wexler Chronicles, is in danger of imploding thanks to some very handson input from network president Lenny (Sigourney Weaver). Lenny is the sort of executive who runs every decision past her 14-year-old daughter. She earnestly dismisses an actress with, "I believe that Jessie has fake breasts, and that over the life of a series the audience can feel it," and is determined to cut a central Wexler plot point because "suicide is depressing to, like, 82% of everybody." In short, she's able to justify her creative myopia at every turn because she thinks she's actually looking out for people--except, of course, for the writer whose personal story is being systematically watered down.

Unfortunately, what we see of Mike Klein's story isn't all that interesting to begin with. The precious lines he's forced to rewrite are awfully vapid, and the title he fights to preserve--The Wexler Chronicles--is already bland enough to be the product of studio groupthink. Without the sense, then, of something brilliant being bowdlerized, this already slight film runs out of fumes early. It's hard to criticize The TV Set without coming off like Lenny, but good intentions don't make up for the verve it lacks. Kasdan draws a constant comparison between Mike's pilot and the network's successful reality competition Slut Wars, but sue me: I'd rather watch the latter.

One TV show that Lenny certainly wouldn't get (though she'd love its college-aged demographic) is the Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which is making its leap to the big screen under the impressive title Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.

It's no Wexler Chronicles, but it'll do. The film follows three anthropomorphized fast-food items (Meatwad, Master Shake, and Frylock) and their free-associative adventures involving intergalactic space aliens and New Jersey.

Aqua Teen works in its television form because its utterly random nature is interrupted by commercials that essentially reset the show, dividing it into easily digested chunks. Here, though, you're going to have sit through 80 minutes of stoner non sequiturs that stubbornly refuse to build to anything at all. I admit that I laughed a lot during the first 10 minutes of the film, but without any commercial breaks, things got tiresome really fast. If this is a franchise that interests you, wait for the way the film is meant to be seen: on DVD, where you can take the occasionally bong break.

Now that Pan's Labyrinth and The Lives of Others have finished reaping critical praise, two other hits from abroad are making their way stateside. The first is Denmark's After the Wedding, which competed for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars this year (where it lost to Germany's The Lives of Others). Directed by Susanne Bier, the film is something of a gender-flipped Stepmom, where a good-hearted ne'er-do-well (Casino Royale villain Mads Mikkelsen) is drafted by an ailing mogul who wants to ensure companionship for his wife and daughter. Things turn awfully conventional after an intriguing first act, but Mikkelsen, with his cheekbones like swollen bruises, has charisma to burn.

Never conventional in the least is director Paul Verhoeven, who gave us gonzo films like Basic Instinct and Showgirls and has now returned to his native Netherlands to make Black Book, the World War II--era story of a Dutch Jew who infiltrates the Nazi party on behalf of a betrayed group of freedom fighters. It sounds typical on paper, but Verhoeven tends to the subversive, and thus our heroine falls for the Gestapo officer she's investigating. This allows the director to explore some of his favorite themes: the human face of fascism and toplessness. Each is satisfyingly essayed.