Little Miss Sunshine / Thank You For Smoking / Sideways (Gi...

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE: Olive is a little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them. Olive's father Richard is a flop as a motivational speaker, and is barely on speaking terms with her mother. Her uncle Frank, a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. Her brother Dwayne, a fanatical follower of Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence, which allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. And Olives grandfather is a ne'er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. Circumstances conspire to put the entire family on the road together with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California.
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING: The hero of the satirical comedy, Thank You For Smoking is Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), chief spokesman for Big Tobacco, who makes his living defending the rights of smokers and cigarette makers in todays neo puritanical culture. Confronted by health zealots out to ban tobacco and an opportunistic senator (William H Macy) who wants to put poison labels on cigarette packs, Nick goes on a PR offensive, spinning away the dangers of cigarettes on TV talk shows and enlisting a Hollywood super agent (Rob Lowe) to promote smoking in movies. Nicks newfound notoriety attracts the attention of both tobaccos head honcho (Robert Duvall) and an investigative reporter for an influential Washington daily (Katie Holmes). Nick says he is just doing what it takes to pay the mortgage, but he begins to think about how his work makes him look in the eyes of his young son, Joey (Cameron Bright).
SIDEWAYS: Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church make an odd couple of long time friends who spend a funny, revealing and sometimes touching time together during a tour of Californias wine country in Sideways, a film from the director of About Schmidt.