Cecil B. Demented

Is the world ready for a John Waters movie with action sequences? The bad taste auteur's latest is simultaneously the slickest thing he's ever done — the action may not rival DIE HARD's, but it's executed with crackling precision — and his first film in years with the anarchic energy of his early Midnight Movies; think MULTIPLE MANIACS with machine guns. The film's semi-autobiographical conceit is genuinely inspired: a lunatic young director, the self-titled Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff, hilarious in a straitjacket) leads a devoted cult/gang of cinema terrorists called the Sprocket Holes, whose mission is to destroy mainstream movies. Shouting '60s-de...