Kitsch, Lively and Johnson in Savages.

What I know about the internecine workings of Mexican drug cartels you could fill in an egg cup—and still have enough space left over for the egg. But this I know: It’s a subject and a subculture that has got to be more fascinating than anything in gonzo director Oliver Stone’s deadly, hateful, preposterous and cliché-riddled movie Savages. He even makes the violence look dull.

Based on one of those Don Winslow carnage epics that appeal to grown men who still read comic books, Savages boogies to the beat of an assault weapon, cutting back and forth between the cold-blooded drug lords in Tijuana and the stoner gringos of Southern California, fighting it out for billions in the Baja Peninsula. The convoluted plot, which would be difficult to decipher with the aid of a microscope, is as familiar as any one of a thousand cable network television series—and Mr. Stone’s dialogue is as wooden as a rocking chair, possibly because his script was co-written by the dubious Shane Salerno (Alien vs. Predator) and novelist Don Winslow, whose grasp of the way real people talk is as phony as reality TV. The American potheads, unconvincingly depicted as tattooed hunks with romantic notions of Butch and Sundance on reefer, are Chon (camera-ready Taylor Kitsch, who keeps stalling his PR-funneled elevator to pop stardom by pushing the down button) and Ben (Aaron Johnson, the British star of such monumental motion picture milestones as Kick-Ass). Best friends since high school, Chon is a combat veteran who worked as a Navy seal in Iraq, starting the business by smuggling cannabis seeds from Afghanistan, and Ben is a soulful Berkeley graduate who invests his share of lucrative profits from the weed trade in noble world causes. Together, in Laguna Beach, they share tattooed washboard abs and cuddle up in the same bed with a bottle blonde named O (Blake Lively). It’s a perfect soft-core porn arrangement (lots of nipples, but no real nudity) until their wacked out ménage a trois is rudely interrupted by greedy and villainous drug lords from  south of the border ruled by Goth queen Elena (Salma Hayek in a tossable wig of lacquered bangs, looking like a cross between Louise Brooks and Cleopatra) and her depraved henchman, the psychopath Lado (Benicio Del Toro, who has traveled down this homicidal highway before, in better films than this). The best smoke in the world, apparently, is not from Thailand, Jamaica or Saigon, but mass produced in Chon and Ben’s pot factory, a foundation with branches in Africa, Asia and West Hollywood. Elena and her ruthless gang want a piece of the boys’ 15 million satisfied customers by forcibly encouraging them to join the Mexican work force, but when they resist (opting to retire and—are you ready?—invest their illegal fortune in solar energy), she kidnaps O and threatens to cut off her fingers, one by one. In retaliation, the boys kidnap Elena’s beloved daughter and war erupts. Stirring the pozole is Dennis, a creep from the Drug Enforcement Agency who plays both sides against each other, rejoicing in the ensuing brutality and torture. Dennis is played with demented glee by John Travolta, who looks like a Pleistocene Era warthog.

They are all savages, and when Mr. Stone runs out of ideas about what to do with them, he borrows every crime-thriller cliché, from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction to Tony Scott’s Man on Fire, bathes the bloody decapitations and rapes in the glow of lush cinematography, then distracts the viewer with camera tricks, black-and-white conversions, cell-phone images, classical music and, finally, a maddening finale, narrated by O. Then the movie backs up like a VHS tape on rewind, and there’s an alternate cop-out ending, even more infuriating than the first.

Mr. Kitsch is pretty, despite the unnecessary battle scars on his face designed to illustrate character but signifying nothing more than the hours he spent in the makeup chair. Mr. Johnson’s changing moral compass, from pacifist to killing machine, is as contrived as Mr. Travolta’s epiphany from invulnerable monster to sympathetic family man. Ms. Hayek, as the Mother Goddam of the Mexican drug cartel, is the best thing in the movie. To be fair, the actors all work hard to keep the audience awake, but the sloppy direction and drugged-out script make Savages hard to rise above. Continuity and logic have never been Oliver Stone’s strengths, but this movie is barely credible. What makes drug lords hard to arrest is their unexceptional ordinariness. In real life, they all look like plumbers and accountants. The predators here are so beautiful and exotic and camera-ready that any law enforcement officer with half a brain would have no trouble spotting them a block away. Worse still, they’re boring. They blow off their victims’ kneecaps, and you don’t even notice. These are neither good people nor interesting savages, and they’re not worth caring about. Neither is the movie.

rreed@observer.com

SAVAGES

Running Time 130 minutes

Written by Shane Salerno, Don Winslow and Oliver Stone

Directed by Oliver Stone

Starring Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively

1/4

1. Valentine's Day: $52.4 million ($52.4 million total)

If a movie called Valentine's Day didn't open at number one on Valentine's Day weekend, we're pretty sure the world would have stopped spinning on its axis. The definition of critic-proof—seriously, the Garry Marshall film had some of the worst reviews of the year, and that's saying something—Valentine's Day bowed to the third biggest February opening on record and just missed passing Sex and the City's romantic comedy opening benchmark of $57 million. Any bets on how much Valentine's Day crumbles next weekend? Throw us down for a 75 percent drop. 

2. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief: $31.1 million ($31.1 million total)

And if a movie with Olympians didn't open at number two on the first weekend of the Winter Olympics... well, you get the idea. Not a juggernaut like Harry Potter or even The Chronicles of Narnia, the Chris Columbus-directed fantasy adaptation still performed quite well and should be a decent money returner for 20th Century Fox (The Lightning Thief was reportedly budgeted at $95 million). The film to keep in mind here is Bridge to Terabithia, which opened on this weekend three years ago with $22.5 million and wound up with $82 million. Should The Lightning Thief follow a similar path, it could wind up with somewhere around $120 million in total grosses.

3. The Wolfman: $30.6 million ($30.6 million total)

About the best thing we could say about the opening for The Wolfman was that it wasn't nearly the disaster many had anticipated. After nearly 18 months of delays, scoring an opening weekend north of $30 million feels like a major victory for the sputtering Universal. Of course, considering The Wolfman reportedly cost $150 million (and that doesn't include the massive marketing campaign), champagne corks probably aren't being popped on the studio lot today.

4. Avatar: $22 million ($659.6 million total)

Yawn. If we were to tell you that Avatar broke the record for the biggest ninth weekend on record (surpassing Titanic once again), would you even bat an eyelash? We didn't think so. That said: as boring as Avatar's runaway success has become, that it only dropped 4 percent this weekend is worth mentioning. People are clearly still rabid to see Pandora in all its 3-D glory over two months after the initial release.

5. Dear John: $15.3 million ($53.1 million total)

With the whirlwind that was Valentine's Day sucking up all the romantic comedy dollars a big drop from Dear John was certainly expected. The tear jerking weepy dipped 49 percent but still had no problem holding off The Tooth Fairy ($5.6 million/$41.5 million total) for fifth place and should end its run with $75 million. Considering other high profile films like The Lovely Bones and Nine couldn't even come close to a gross that large, this certainly qualifies as good news.

Valentine's Day

What's the story: How bad must the actors and actresses who didn't get the call from Garry Marshall to appear in Valentine's Day feel? Everyone—and we mean everyone—from Julia Roberts to Taylor Swift to Taylor Lautner to McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) to even McSteamy (Eric Dane) co-star in this panoply of love lost and gained on one Valentine's Day in Los Angeles. Think of it as Love Actually but without charming British accents. The reviews have been scathing  (Rex Reed called Valentine's Day "lame," "contrived" and "boring"), but they won't matter. This thing is going to make bank on top of bank.

Who should see it: People who wore out their copies of He's Just Not That Into You.

The Wolfman

What's the story: This remake of 1941's The Wolf Man has been on the shelf for such a long time that we're surprised it didn't get remade as well. Originally scheduled for release in November of 2008, The Wolfman—no time for spaces here in the 21st century—finally gets to see the light of the full moon this weekend, almost 15 months after it was first scheduled to open. Benicio Del Toro stars as the titular lycan and Anthony Hopkins does his best "Anthony Hopkins in Legends of the Fall" impression as his nefarious—and possibly wolfy—father. The reviews have been predictably ugly, but since there is supposedly plenty of gore, expect the horror buffs to show up in droves.

Who should see it: Frankenstein.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

What's the story: Say hello to the most under-the-radar possible franchise blockbuster ever. We had never even heard of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series of books—maybe because we graduated high school in the early '90s—but we kinda wish we did. Combining parts of Harry Potter, Greek mythology and C.S. Lewis, The Lightning Thief stars newcomer—and possible Tobey Maguire replacement in the Spider-Man reboot—Logan Lerman as he attempts to solve the mystery of who stole Zeus' lightning bolt while also searching for his missing mother (Catherine Keener). Parents take note: Ms. Keener isn't the only appealing adult in the cast. Be on the lookout for Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Rosario Dawson, Steve Coogan and Grey's Anatomy doc Kevin McKidd.

Who should see it: Harry Potter.

Running time 125 minutes
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self
Directed by Joe Johnston
Starring  Benicio Del Toro,
Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt

Rating: Two and a Half Eyeballs out of Four

Old monsters never die. They just keep coming back, in an endless series of unnecessary remakes. So get ready to hear once again legendary screenwriter Curt Siodmak’s famous line: “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and the autumn moon is bright.” The Wolf Man is back—and he’s not just another pretty face.

Based on the classic 1941 horror film The Wolf Man, with Lon Chaney Jr. as Lawrence (Larry) Talbot, a soft-spoken British-born nobleman who returns from America to run the country manor of his father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains), and has the rotten luck to get bitten by a werewolf (Bela Lugosi), the 2010 retelling, for no logical reason, changes the spelling to The Wolfman. A lot of other things change, too, and not always in ways you could call improvements. The tense prewar setting is now an ornate and overproduced Victorian England in 1891. Larry, now a hopelessly adrift Benicio Del Toro, is no longer a California astronomy student but a New York actor playing Hamlet in London. (Don’t ask.) Sir John, his father, is now a weird, disappointing Anthony Hopkins. Chaney was a soft, fleshy actor with a wimpy voice and clammy skin, but he brought a sympathetic sweetness to the role of the ill-fated Lawrence Talbot. Mr. Del Toro may be a stronger screen presence than Chaney, but he mumbles and scratches so much that nobody in his right mind would ever believe him as Hamlet, and he looks so baggy-eyed and ravaged before the wolf ever appears that there’s nothing to build his character on. Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt) no longer runs the village antique shop, but is a mixed-up girl who was betrothed to Larry’s dead brother, and who has a sick penchant for wandering around in the fog, and makes the dumb mistake of thinking she can cure lycanthropy. As the titular head of one of England’s finest families, Mr. Hopkins displays a spectrum of curious accents that wander from Southern trailer trash to Irish brogue to Hannibal Lecter, sometimes all three in the same scene. With all due respect, he is no Claude Rains.

After the werewolf rampages through a gypsy campsite, attacking everyone who ignores the warnings of ancient fortune teller Geraldine Chaplin (where is Maria Ouspenskaya, now that we finally need her?), the movie makes a number of tactical errors from which it never recovers. The folks at the local tavern still wisely melt their silver into bullets and keep plenty of wolfbane handy, full moons still rise like white pumpkins and snarling creatures still pop out of the swamp with teeth that need a dentist, but any resemblance to Curt Siodmak’s 1941 script ends there. Siodmak was a Polish Jew who escaped the Nazis and retained a lifelong hatred of the Germans; many symbols of horror in The Wolf Man were references to Nazi persecution, and the pentagram that appeared in the palms of the werewolf’s next victims was an obvious substitute for the Star of David. This time, there are no pentagrams to make your blood run cold. Elegant Talbot Hall is no longer a safe refuge from a world gone mad but a mausoleum full of cobwebs, candlelight and underground crypts; it looks less like one of England’s fanciest estates and more like the House of Dracula.

The monster is now a computer-enhanced behemoth in Rick Baker makeup that drools noisily, severs heads with a single claw and makes an awful mess on the carpet. Larry is hounded by a Scotland Yard inspector played by Hugo Weaving, one of the three drag queens in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and dragged away in chains to a gothic madhouse where a primitive brain doctor (the great English stage actor Anthony Sher) tortures his patients with horrors of his own—dunking Larry screaming into vats of ice and jamming footlong hypodermic needles into his jugular vein. (Think Fogg’s Asylum in Sweeney Todd.) While these lunatics treat lycanthropy as a self-induced delusion, you can hardly wait for them to experience their first full moon. In the resulting carnage, the Wolf Man rips out human kidneys and spleens with bare teeth in a bloodbath that is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, followed by a leapfrog across the roofs of London that looks like outtakes from Godzilla, King Kong and Mighty Joe Young.

The film’s biggest departure from the 1941 classic—and its silliest mistake—is making Sir John a werewolf, too. Yes, for reasons that are not entirely clear, he killed his whole family and applied the fatal bite that turned his own son into a savage beast forever—a disease from poison fangs for which there is no cure. In an explosion of mayhem that leaves Talbot Hall looking like a slaughter house, everything leads up to the big showdown between father and son that gives you two wolf men for the price of one. There’s more, and some of it is effective enough to turn your hair gray overnight. But the direction by Joe Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) sacrifices originality for computer graphics and stop-motion camera tricks, and the script, by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, bulges with real howlers: “I didn’t know you hunted monsters.” “Sometimes monsters hunt you!”

In 1941, the Wolf Man was so popular he was revived in four more Universal horror classics, two with Abbott and Costello. He’s still entertaining enough to rise several notches above the dumb remakes of The Mummy and Dracula, but can history repeat itself? How scary is the Wolf Man in 2010, when half the people in the New York subway look like werewolves already?

rreed@observer.com

There is some wear on these treads—specifically with regards to Blair, who has been spinning her wheels in a swampy mess of weekly plotting and scheming for no real reason other than the script telling her to do so—but those breathlessly wailing about the demise of Gossip Girl couldn't have it more wrong. This is a teen show that sidestepped the pitfalls of sending its teens off to college by excising the one major problem with that situation: actually going to college! More adult than ever—must we direct you to Chuck Bass, who, as played by Ed Westwick, seems as weathered and worn as Don Draper after a two-day bender with hippie drifters—the "kids" on Gossip Girl have left high school behind to face some real world problems... like the ramifications of having a threesome! We won't spoil whom the three lovers in tonight's controversial ménage a trios are, but the episode title, "They Shoot Humphrey's, Don't They?," might give you a little hint at the identity of at least one participant. [The CW, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday: V
Say hello to Sean Hannity's favorite new show! We doubt the producers of V intended their silly science-fiction remake of the overly praised 1983 mini-series to be some bastion of right-wing ideology—at its heart, V is likely supposed to be play on post-9/11 fears and terrorism—but that's just what happened after the unintentionally hilarious pilot featured a charismatic alien leader talking about universal health care and preaching a message of hope. (No truth to the rumor that the V's, as they're called, come to earth by way of Kenya.) Politics aside, V is already much more entertaining than ABC's other "we wish this was actually Lost" series (that would be FlashForward which gets dumber by the week), simply because of Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell. As the F.B.I. agent trying to stop the alien takeover, Ms. Mitchell displays the same combination of chilled intelligence and beguiling warmth that she did as Juliet Burke. She's such a strong presence, that we actually worry what Lost will be like without her. [ABC, 8 p.m.]

Wednesday: Frost/Nixon
The 2008 Best Picture nominee you probably forgot existed, Frost/Nixon is perfectly adequate mainstream Oscar bait, until the denouement—a last meeting between disgraced former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella, chewing scenery like a goat) and foppish television talking head David Frost (the sneaky amazing Michael Sheen) at Mr. Nixon's clandestine California home. It's in that quiet moment that Frost/Nixon transforms from a rote history lesson on the power of the media to full-fledged Greek tragedy. Say what you will about director Ron Howard, but sometimes he gets things exactly right. [Cinemax, 10 p.m.]

Thursday: Che
Cinemaphiles, take note! Che, Steven Soderbergh's four-hour biopic on the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, hits Sundance channel this week, meaning you can see the movie that nearly ended the acclaimed director's career; Mr. Soderbergh called it a "mistake from day one." As a film, Che isn't the home run you would hope for—the first half, entitled, The Argentine is infinitely stronger than the second, Guerilla-but as with all Soderbergh films, it is a work that becomes impossible to ignore. Benicio Del Toro does what you'd expect him to do as Che, but it's the wildly charismatic Demian Bichir (Weeds) who steals the show as Fidel Castro. The revolution never looked so good. [Sundance, 8 p.m.]

Friday: Smiley Face
A film starring Anna Faris and featuring appearances by John Krasinski (Jim Halpert!), Adam Brody (Seth Cohen!), John Cho (Harold!) and Jane Lynch (Sue Sylvester!) should be hilarious. Too bad Smiley Face, Greg Araki's stoner comedy misadventure, falls short for long stretches, especially if you aren't stoned yourself. Still, give Smiley Face credit for one thing: you rarely (if ever) see a movie like this lead by a woman. Ms. Faris, however, appears in almost every scene and is all kinds of funny. If she's actually the female version of Ryan Reynolds, here's hoping there's a Reynolds-like breakout in her future. [Showtime, 4:15 a.m.]

Monday: Boy Interrupted
As part of their summer-long documentary film series—which airs every Monday at 9—HBO is premiering Dana Perry’s Boy Interrupted, a harrowing look at the life and death of her 15-year-old son, Ryan, who committed suicide after a battle with bipolar disorder. We haven’t seen the 2009 Sundance Grand Jury prize nominee just yet, but considering we got choked up watching the 50-second trailer, it’s safe to say we're going to need an extra box of Kleenex before tonight. [HBO, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday: Step Brothers
Under no metric should Step Brothers actually work; on paper it’s more of the same arrested development from director Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and his partner-in-tighty-whiteys, star Will Ferrell, who spends the movie warring with his newly acquired stepbrother, played by John C. Reilly. (Remember when Mr. Reilly was an Oscar nominee?) But Step Brothers is deranged madness packed in the trappings of a rote studio comedy. Messrs. Ferrell and Reilly one up each other like rabid animals, and the supporting cast—a rogue's gallery of misfit toys from Richard Jenkins to Mary Steenburgen to Adam Scott—have a blast with the increasingly ridiculous material. This is pathological comedy at its finest. [Starz, 9 p.m.]

Wednesday: Dark Blue
And the winner for the most generically titled show of the summer is … TNT’s Dark Blue! Dylan McDermott trades his Practice-approved three-button suit for a badge and gun as the screenwritery named Carter Shaw, head of an undercover team of Los Angeles cops. It’s like The Shield, but with more good guys! This all sounds incredibly generic, but there is hope: Action producer extraordinaire Jerry Bruckheimer is involved, meaning, at the very least, expect a great many things to go boom. [TNT, 9 p.m.]

Thursday: 10 Things I Hate About You
Now that 10 years has passed, can we all officially declare 10 Things I Hate About You as the best of the ’90s boon on teen movies? The high school take on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (shockingly written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, the two women responsible for the much less savvy The Ugly Truth) is smart, touching, funny and incredibly rewatchable. Of course the late Heath Ledger receives most of the memories from this one (we still love his rendition of “Can't Take My Eyes Off You”), but we actually prefer Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Krumholtz as the two nerds. All those people shocked at Mr. Levitt’s grace and likability as a romantic lead in (500) Days of Summer must not have seen this. [Starz Comedy, 8:30 a.m.]

Friday: The Way of the Gun
You can do a lot worse for a Friday night movie than The Way of the Gun, which plays like the demon child of Pulp Fiction and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie—after the former screenwriter-of-the-moment won his Oscar for The Usual Suspects—the gritty and bloody film finds Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro playing a couple of criminals who get in way over their heads after a kidnapping goes awry. There is plenty of post-’90s nihilistic fun to be had here, but be forewarned: This thing is so hella violent that it might make even Quentin Tarantino wince. [TMCx, 8 p.m.]

Reviews for Steven Soderbergh's two-part biopic of Latin American revolutionary and T-shirt model Ernesto "Che" Guevara (played by co-producer Benicio Del Toro) had been split—The Los Angeles Times' Sheri Linden called it "extraordinary and challenging"; The New York Times' A.O. Scott called it "epic hagiography" and dinged Mr. Soderbergh's politics as "naïve and fuzzy"—but the crowd seemed fully ready to sit through the complete movie—4 hours and 23 minutes, with a half-hour intermission in between. IFC Films, which is distributing the movies, called this the Special Roadshow Edition—the company handed out lush, heavy-stock programs that looked like aged copies of Paris Match with documentary-style black-and-white photos of Mr. Del Toro and other cast members by Mary Ellen Mark—and would be showing it to audiences in New York and Los Angeles before bifurcating it and making the two sections available in slightly less gluttonous forms at theaters and on digital cable On-Demand service.

One Web site had already offered advice to viewers about when to take bathroom breaks, and judging by the snaking line at the concession stand, rations were being prepared on the fly.

The first image on the screen was a silhouette of Cuba, which was met by the crowd with a raucous cry of "¡Viva, Cuba!" and cheers all around. Throughout the next two hours and six minutes of part one (dubbed The Argentine), the crowd sat in mostly rapt, respectful silence as Che, Fidel Castro (Demián Bichir), Camilo Cienfuegos (Santiago Cabrera), and their scrappy guerrillas took down the Cuban army, intercut with an impassioned speech by Che on the floor of the United Nations and scenes of the fatigues-clad warrior as the awkward guest of honor at a pre-Radical Chic party in Manhattan in 1964, where, in one of the few jokes he makes, he thanks one U.S. official for the Bay of Pigs.

As the first film ended (Spoiler Alert: Castro, Guevara, et al. win), one attendee was overheard saying that it would've been a perfect biopic. But that was just the beginning.

As the lights came up and people bolted for the Ziegfeld's modest-size bathrooms or much-deserved cigarettes outside, the question of how people were holding up—and if they were prepared for the second siege in a long slog—seemed not unreasonable.

"We figured we'd eat first," said David Winn, 47, as he stood with his wife, Kim Campi, 50, by their seats in the upper section of the theater. "'Cause there wouldn't be much chance to eat during or later."

"Unfortunately, I'm being affected by the heat in here," Ms. Campi said. "It's stuffy."

Mr. Winn, who appeared to be sweating, agreed, but said, "It is nice to go to a four-hour movie that delves into a lot of detail about military strategy, political strategy, with a crowd that seems to be really pumped up for it."

Nearby, an older man was passing out flyers for a New Year's Eve celebration of the Cuban Revolution's 50th Anniversary, a party endorsed by dozens of groups including the Communist Party USA.

Outside, Francisco Taveras, Marmol Ejos, and Ivan Nuñez were grabbing a cigarette and talking about how accurate Mr. Del Toro's portrayal of Che was. "To me, it was like, 'Wow,'" said Mr. Taveras, 34, who also noted that Mr. Del Toro's Argentine accent was perfect.

They all agreed that they were ready for the second half. Was it too long? "I was so into the movie, I wasn't noticing," said Mr. Ejos, 35. "Everybody's into it."

"I wish I had better seats, though," Mr. Nuñez said.

Down toward the front of the theater, a 26-year-old culinary student, who like many in attendance, was in a Che T-shirt, was passing the time reading a Bible.

The man, who gave only his first name, Melvin, said he was from the Dominican Republic, and explained his shirt. "I bought it in Mexico," he said. "I don't like the ones they make here. This one, it's really nice and comfy."

A reporter wondered if it was strange to read a Bible during the intermission of a movie that valorizes the life of a godless communist like Che. "I don't see him as a Communist, I just look at him like a person. Even Jesus Christ was a revolutionary, you know?"

There's a scene in the second half of the film (dubbed The Guerrilla) in which Che—now leading a doomed insurgency in Bolivia—warns his troops that the campaign is going to be difficult, food will be scarce, and that at the end, they will feel like "human waste." By that time, hungry from ill-planned dinners, risking deep vein thrombosis or chair sores, and wishing they'd listened to that bathroom-break advice, viewers would be forgiven for feeling like Che was speaking to them as well.

If The Argentine, with its emphasis on plans, work-arounds, and scrappy determination, was about the making of itself (as Mr. Scott suggested in The Times), then The Guerilla, with its slow, occasionally interminable stretches and unflinching studies of Che's asthma attacks and various pustulating wounds of his men, seemed to also be about the challenge of watching both films together. Despite the hours crawling by, the heat, and any feelings of restlessness on the part of the audience, there didn't appear to be any walkouts and when the film ended, the audience rose in a standing ovation.

Afterwards, Mr. Soderbergh and the film critic Glenn Kenny stood at the front of the auditorium and took questions from the crowd as hundreds of camera phones clicked. Showing the sort of self-deprecating humor he exhibited as he accepted the Palme d'Or for sex, lies, and videotape as a 26-year-old wunderkind in 1989 by saying, "Well, it's all downhill from here," Mr. Soderbergh thanked the crowd at the Ziegfeld for coming and added, "And thank you for staying. … Your commitment to sitting is extraordinary." ("Sequel!" someone shouted from the back of the theater.)

During a sometimes contentious exchange with the crowd—one audience member screamed that Che was a murderer while others shouted him down, calling him a revolutionary (yet another shouted "Go to Miami!")—Mr. Soderbergh alternated between defensiveness and modesty. At times, the director seemed to quake a bit as he stood there, the single spotlight holding him against the mustard-colored velvet curtains like a bug caught by a magnifying glass in the sun. Update, 12:23 p.m.: Video of the exchange can be found here.

When pressed for his own stance on Che—murderer? revolutionary?—the director called himself agnostic. "It doesn't matter whether I agree with that or not," he said of Che's politics. He just had to be loyal to the facts, which he insisted was all rigorously sourced. "I can't be half in and half out."

But if the crowd seemed at times hostile, it was apparently nothing compared to a screening Mr. Soderbergh hosted in Miami earlier in the week: "You can imagine what the response was there," he deadpanned. (Mr. Soderbergh must've gone into that particular event with some trepidation; in an interview with Salon's Andrew O'Hehir that went online Friday, he joked "You know, this could be one of the last interviews I ever give, because I'm going to Miami this week. It was great talking to you!")

The director seemed most at ease—and most animated—when talking about the camera he used to shoot Che, a newer, cheaper high-definition digital camera that he promised would (with practically no pun intended) revolutionize filmmaking. The camera, it's almost too perfect not to mention, is called the Red.

Of the film's epic length, he said it was the shortest cut he could possibly have created, but lamented that he hadn't gone to HBO "and done 10 hours." He also talked about an earlier take on the the same material—Richard Fleischer's 1969 movie Che! starring Omar Sharif—paying particular attention to Jack Palance's take on Fidel Castro, "a combination of Groucho Marx and Tony Soprano." (Mr. Soderbergh said that 40 minutes into watching that film, he was forced to turn it off and watch Woody Allen's Bananas to cleanse his palette.)

At the end, Mr. Soderbergh offered to autograph programs. A crush of people moved towards him, booklets in hand.

An even bigger group made their way towards the exits. They'd all been in the Ziegfeld since before 7 p.m. They were tired and they were hungry. Some legs had fallen asleep and not a few necks were cricked. It had been a long and at times painful campaign, but they were all in one piece and together as a group. It was well after midnight and they were finally free.

Irina Aleksander sweet-talked her way into Liam McMullan's 21st birthday party and discovered that the sons of society photographers like a good pair of Brooks Brothers pants just as much as the next guy.

Ms. Aleksander also got on the horn with socialite-slash-actress (aren't we all!) Annie Churchill to gab about her new online venture: a fashion retail website and online fashion-lifestyle TV show (ooh!) hosted by (you guessed it!) Ms. Churchill herself.

And wide-eyed Caroline Bankoff fell under the spell of Benicio Del Toro at a screening of his new movie, Che. Mmmm, more, por favor!

Fortunately, by the time he turned his attention back to us, we had regained our composure. What had the person who had approached him wanted to know? "He wanted to know how I lost weight for the movie."

How had he?

"That's a secret, it's a mystery!"

Well, then how had he gained it back?

"That's a secret."

What he could tell us that was not a secret, then?

"What do you got?"

Well, we wondered--perhaps still a bit distracted--what were his methods for wining and dining?

"That's a secret. C'mon! I don't want competition." (Competition hardly seems likely.)

Fine! How had he enjoyed his first turn as a producer? "I liked it. You get to know what's happening behind the curtain a little more. You get to know more of the mysteries." He also told us about the trip he had taken to Cuba to in preparation for playing the South American revolutionary. "It was great. I loved everyone that I met... You know, I grew up in Puerto Rico and the people are similar--the spirit of the people, the climate."

We wondered what it had been like winning the award for Best Actor when the film premiered at Cannes. "It was like winning a medal at the Olympics," said Mr. Del Toro. "I mean, I've never won a medal at the Olympics, but I think that's what it would be like."

Mr. Del Toro has starred in a number of small budget films, and we asked whether he thought the current economic climate would make it even more difficult to produce interesting projects. "I'm sure it will, but art will always find its way," he said, rather seriously. "It doesn't matter--art will always find its way. And I'm pretty sure about that."

Finally, as we tend to these days, we shifted the conversation toward the election. Mr. Del Toro told us he planned to watch tonight's presidential debate. Who would he be gunning for? "Who do you think?" he asked. Not wanting to reinforce any stereotypes about Hollywood liberals, we wondered if he was perhaps a Republican. "What? Because I wear cowboy boots?" 

We also spoke with co-star Demian Bichir. The actor had just been chatting with the playwright Neil Simon, who was in attendance, and he seemed a little starstruck himself. "Neil Simon!" he exclaimed by means of introduction.

Mr. Bichir plays Fidel Castro in the film. How had he prepared for that role?

"It's difficult, everyone knows him so well--there's so much footage...It was Fidel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five months." And where did he think the film industry is headed? "I think times of crisis are the best time for art, because there are stories to tell, and we're here to tell them." 

Maybe the major studios (and by extension, their boutique wings) were sacred off by the prospect of having to market a potentially four-hour long film with subtitles? Or maybe Mr. Soderbergh's epic is actually pretty lousy? If you believe the reports from Cannes, the movie was met with only slightly less bile than Medellin.

Still, we know one thing is certain. Come January we'll stumble out of the IFC Center on a cold winter evening, most likely blown away by what we just saw and simultaneously wondering why everyone was hating on Che in the first place. Viva la Soderbergh!