35 from previous page BB1⁄2 DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS
This comedy of humiliation, starring Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, isn’t nearly as off- putting as it might have been. Rudd plays Tim, an ambitious young executive des- perate to impress his art-dealer girlfriend (the fetching Stephanie Szostak), who is invited by his icy boss (Bruce Greenwood) to attend one of his regular “dinners for idiots.” Each guest is supposed to bring the most pathetic idiot he can find. When Tim literally collides with Barry (Carell), the game is afoot. Buck-toothed and gog- gle-eyed, Barry makes neurotically de- tailed tableaux with stuffed dead mice. When he meets the blandly affable Tim, he becomes as creepily, bromantically in- clined as Jim Carrey in “The Cable Guy.” But the film keeps it breezy, with Barry embroiling Tim in a series of ever-more- mortifying mishaps, including a debilitat- ed back, a sundered romance, a reunion with a stalker and an IRS audit. (PG-13, 109 minutes) Contains sequences of crude and sexual content, partial nudity and profani- ty. Area theaters.
BB1⁄2 EAT PRAY LOVE
Julia Roberts portrays author Elizabeth Gilbert as she recovers from a disastrous divorce, painful rebound relationship and general spiritual ennui on a year-long trip through Italy, India and Bali. The book’s rabid fans are likely to feel well served by Ryan Murphy’s adaptation, which hews pretty faithfully to Gilbert’s memoir. And even newcomers, men included, can en- joy being swept up in the film’s lavish third chapter, where Gilbert meets a se- ductive Brazilian named Felipe (Javier Bardem) and embarks on a luscious love affair. Her supporting characters get more time in India, where Gilbert meets “Richard from Texas,” played here by Richard Jenkins as a broken man healing his scars through bravado and spiritual seeking. It’s in India that Gilbert makes peace with her ex-husband, played by Bil- ly Crudup in a thankless but accom- plished performance. (PG-13, 133 minutes) Contains brief strong profanity, some sex- ual references and male read nudity. Area theaters.
BBTHE EXPENDABLES
This action thriller written and directed by Sylvester Stallone is designed to leave filmgoers feeling pummeled into submis- sion. Just when the film threatens to sink under its own weight, Terry Crews blows a guy’s brains out, silhouetted through a backlit doorway, and the entire groaning enterprise levitates on a ludicrous plume of pure camp. Stallone plays Barney Ross, leader of the titular gang of mercenaries with names like Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) and Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren); Crews himself plays Hale Cae- sar. Hired by a man named Mr. Church to unseat a despot in South America, Ross and the boys lay waste to everything they see: At one point Ross, after catching a seaplane, strafes and sets fire to a pier. Later, bullets, knives and bare hands fly as arms and body parts get thrown into the melee. Primarily, this movie is about bros and the bros who love them. (R, 103 minutes) Contains strong action and bloody violence throughout, and some profanity. Area theaters.
BBTHE EXTRA MAN
The titular man “Man” is Henry Harrison, played by Kevin Kline, though it’s Paul Da- no’s character, Louis, who acts as our portal into directors Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman’s antiquated world. A sexually confused young English professor, Louis, is banished from Prince- ton to Manhattan after colleagues catch him trying on women’s undergarments in the teacher’s lounge. Louis’s hasty search for a proper apartment leads him to Hen- ry’s door, and the two eccentrics form a fast, if unlikely, friendship. Louis and Hen- ry, we learn, are products of a bygone era. The former envisions his life as an un- written F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Henry, meanwhile, is a failed playwright who survives by offering his services as an ex- tra man. In time, Henry is teaching Louis the ropes. Louis, however, would rather spend his days getting to know Mary (Ka- tie Holmes), the perky graphic designer at his new magazine job. (R, 105 minutes) Contains some sexual content. At Cinema Arts Theatre and Landmark’s E Street Cin- ema.
patriarch, Edoardo (Gabriele Ferzetti). At a dinner overseen with prim propriety by his daughter-in-law Emma (Tilda Swin- ton), the old man tells the assembled guests that he is handing over the family textile business to his son Tancredi (Pippo Delbono) and Emma and Tancredi’s eldest son, Edo (Flavio Parenti). Is that a look of alarm that passes across Emma’s face when Edo’s grandfather makes his an- nouncement? And just what events are set in motion when an acquaintance of her son stops by with an impromptu gift? Promising director Luca Guadagnino makes the most of a medium too often straitjacketed into shots of people talking to one another, using it to lead viewers to an entirely new realm of the senses, with unsettling, intoxicating results. (R, 120 minutes) Contains sexuality and nudity. At Landmark’s Bethesda Row.
BBB1⁄2 INCEPTION — A.H.
This highly anticipated science-fiction thriller by writer-director Christopher No- lan opens with a dramatic shot of huge waves breaking on a nameless shore. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio)makes his living navigating the minds of other peo- ple, sharing their dreams and stealing ideas in an elaborate psychological gam- bit known as “extraction.” Cobb has worked mostly with businesses engaged in super-complicated corporate espio- nage. But rather than steal an idea, a cli- ent named Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires Cobb to plant one in the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the would-be heir to an energy conglomerate, in a proc- ess called “inception.” It’s a tough job, and Cobb proceeds to assemble a crack team of dream-weavers to help him pull it off, including a wily forger named Eames (Tom Hardy), a chemist named Yusuf (Di- leep Rao) and a young architect named Ariadne (Ellen Page). (PG-13, 148 minutes) Contains sequences of violence and action. Area theaters.
NEW MARKET FILMS
Rachel Weisz, with Max Minghella, plays an astronomer and philosopher at odds with fourth-century zealotry in “Agora.”
— A.H. BFAREWELL
Director Christian Carionwisely tried to make this story about the 1983 bust of Soviet spies with the code name “Fare- well” accessible by centering it on an or- dinary man-turned-spy, but the intricate historical events still suffocate the film. The film begins in 1981 Moscow. U.S. and Soviet relations are ugly. A French family man named Pierre (Guillaume Ca- net) is spying on the Soviets for the French and U.S. governments. Pierre starts getting hotter information about what the Soviets know, such as codes to get into the White House, the layout of Air Force One and a list of Soviet spies working in the West. Pierre receives the intel from Sergei Grigoriev (Emir Kusturi- ca), a KGB colonel who has become dis- enchanted with communism under Leo- nid Brezhnev. Pierre and Sergei have to play hide-and-seek from the KGB: a good, old-fashioned case of bad guys chasing good guys. (NR, 113 minutes) Contains vio- lence (including torture), swearing and sex. In French and Russian with English subti- tles. At the Avalon.
— A.H. BBB1 ⁄2 GET LOW
A recluse living in the woods outside a small Southern town during the Depres- sion, Robert Duvall’s character, Felix Bush, has the long gray beard of someone plucked straight from the pages of the Old Testament; a man of mystery and menace, he’s something of a local legend in town, where people whisper about Fe- lix’s past sins, which may or may not in- clude murder. Fed up with the gossip, Fe- lix decides to throw his own funeral, just to hear what people say about him. He enlists the help of the local undertakers, one a sober, sincere apprentice named Buddy (Lucas Black) and Buddy’s boss, a sardonic sharpie named Frank Quinn (Bill Murray). Burnished with the amber glow of nostalgia and period detail, the movie offers welcome respite from the shiny, cacophonous fare usually offered during the summer. (PG-13, 102 minutes) Contains thematic material and brief violent content. Area theaters.
BBTHE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE — Sean O’Connell
In the second in a series of films based on Stieg Larsson’s best-selling mysteries, we learn a bit more about Lisbeth Salander
(Noomi Rapace), the computer hacker and avenging angel introduced in the first film. “Fire” manages to reveal more of the old hurts that drive her. Having used her high-tech skills in to help her sometime lover, investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), solve an old murder, she has now fled Sweden, only to find that she has been implicated in a tri- ple homicide, in which one of the victims is her parole officer. (The others are a journalist and his girlfriend, both of whom were working with Mikael on an exposé) This pulls Lisbeth back into Mikael’s orbit. But for much of the film, the two remain apart, communicating only via e-mail while Mikael tries to clear Lisbeth’s name, and while Lisbeth tries to stay one step ahead of the law. (R, 129 minutes) Contains strong, violent imagery, sex, nudity, obscen- ity and smoking. In Swedish with English subtitles. Area theaters.
BB1⁄2 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
— R.S.
At its simplest, this Swedish thriller based on the first in a series of three popular Stieg Larsson novels is the story of a 40-year-old missing-person investi- gation. Wealthy businessman Henrik Van- ger (Sven-Bertil Taube) hires investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyq- vist) to find out what happened to Van- ger’s favorite niece, Harriet (Ewa Froel- ing), who is presumed to have been mur- dered. No sooner does Mikael start to poke around than he is joined by multiply- pierced computer hacker Lisbeth Salan- der (Noomi Rapace), the tattooed girl of the title. Much of the film’s most critical detective work involves high-tech twists to the shoe-leather approach to PI work, and for once it really works. So many movies today use computers as a modern deus ex machina; in this one, anyone with a laptop can believe it. For fans of the thriller genre, it’s also one heck of a lot of fun. (Unrated, 152 minutes) Contains ob- scenity, violence, grisly crime scene photos, nudity, sex, rape and smoking. In Swedish with English subtitles. At AMC Loews Shir- lington.
— A.H. BBBI AM LOVE
The film opens on a snowy evening in Mi- lan, where the wealthy Recchi family has gathered for the birthday of their elderly
BBBTHE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
This is the perfect midsummer movie, a comedy about a flawed-but-functional family that captures the drama of growth and separation in all its exhilaration and heartache. Eighteen-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and her little brother, Laser (Josh Hutcherson), are pretty typical teens growing up in Southern California today: They’re good kids, even if they roll their eyes at their overprotective mother. Actually, make that mothers: Joni and La- ser have two moms, one a doctor named Nic (Annette Bening), the other a dreamer named Jules (Julianne Moore). They’ve clearly formed a close, healthy family, which makes it all the more disruptive when Laser persuades Joni to find their biological father, Paul, a bedroom-eyed underachiever. Paul is the last guy anyone would consider a threat, but when Joni and Laser undertake to find out about him, his presence shakes the family. (R, 106 minutes) Contains strong sexual con- tent, nudity, profanity and teen drug and alcohol use. Area theaters.
— Michael O’Sullivan B1⁄2 LOTTERY TICKET
A long Fourth of July weekend is all that stands between recent high school gradu- ate Kevin (played by rapper Bow Wow) and a $370 million dollar jackpot. Owner of the winning ticket, Kevin can claim his prize once the next workday begins, but until then he has to contend with the oth- er inhabitants of his housing project, in- cluding a gold digger, a muscley ex-con and a wealth of questionably intentioned friends. Most people in such a quandary would, perhaps, hide in a closet at a friend’s house. But co-writers Erik White (who also directs) and Abdul Williams have the young man make decisions far beyond the potential for suspended dis- belief. Disclosing his new wealth to the whole neighborhood? Check. Taking mon- ey from a loan shark with a brigade of Bentleys in a dark warehouse? Check. Getting busy with an unabashed gold dig- ger who wants to be his “baby mama”? Yes, check. (PG-13, 95 minutes) Contains sexual content, language including a drug reference, violence and brief underage drinking. Area theaters.
BBBMAO’S LAST DANCER — M.O.
About 30 minutes into this film, an older teacher, suspected of anti-Communist sympathies, slips his student a wooden box and instructs him to conceal it. It’s a videocassette, and once the contraband film plays, the students are awed by a black-and-white clip of Mikhail Baryshni- kov. An unusual hybrid, the film is part
ballerina chick-flick and part post-Com- munist drama. It’s also a true story. In the early 1980s, a landmark cultural ex- change allowed Chinese dancer Li Cunxin to spend a year at the Houston Ballet. He fell in love with an 18-year-old student and secretly married her two nights be- fore his scheduled departure. Many films have portrayed the rigors of ballet train- ing, but none will make viewers wince quite like “Mao’s Last Dancer” as they witness Li’s history as flashbacks. (PG, 117 minutes) Contains nothing objection- able. Area theaters.
BB1⁄2 NANNY MCPHEE RETURNS — A.H.
Emma Thompson reprises her 2005 role as the title character, a strict old bag, who looks more Roald Dahl than Mary Poppins. Her appearance is startling: Along with some spectacularly hairy moles, Nanny McPhee touts a bulbous nose, a unibrow and one colossal front tooth. But her physical disarray is bal- anced by her supernatural ability to clean up a chaotic scene. Such is the plight of Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a quirky, loving mother who tries to protect her children from the horrors of World War II. To complicate matters, her schem- ing brother-in-law wants her to sell her half of the family farm so he can pay off gambling debts, and her hoity-toity niece and nephew are visiting from London. As expected, the Green children are at odds with their spoiled big-city counterparts. One slam of Nanny McPhee’s cane and the kids are abusing themselves instead of one another. (PG, 108 minutes) Contains rude humor, some language and mild the- matic elements. Area theaters.
BB1⁄2 THE OTHER GUYS — A.H.
Steve Coogan brings a squirrelly charm to the role of David Ershon, a Bernie Madoff- style bad guy whose financial chicanery is the focus of the investigation in this com- edy about a pair of wildly mismatched cops, played by Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell. As Allen Gamble, an embarrass- ingly nebbishy police accountant, Ferrell is the geeky yin to Wahlberg’s hyper-ma- cho yang, represented by Terry Hoitz, a disgraced former hot shot who has been exiled to desk duty after an accidental shooting. Gamble is Hoitz’s punishment. And we’re the ones who reap the re- wards. The title itself presents Gamble and Hoitz as alternatives to even bigger jerks, played by Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson. As supercops Danson and Highsmith, they’re what Gamble and Hoitz aspire to become, even after the film dispenses with the flashy, high-wire duo in a gloriously ignominious — and hi- larious — end. (PG-13, 107 minutes) Con- tains pervasive crude language, sexual hu- mor, brief sensuality, gunplay, vehicular mayhem and assorted comedic violence. Area theaters.
BBPATRIK, AGE 1.5 — A.H.
The Swedish comedy “Patrik, Age 1.5” continues this summer’s trend of baby- lust, unconventional families and parental angst on screen. The ticking biological clock in this case belongs to Goran (Gus- taf Skarsgard), who just moved to the suburbs with his husband, Sven (Torkel Petersson), in order to start a family. The couple has been cleared to adopt a child, and when they receive news that a tod- dler named Patrik, 11
they’re overjoyed. Imagine their surprise when a blond, blue-eyed 15-year-old shows up at their door, full of abandon- ment issues and homophobic rage. The serious, sometimes heartbreaking impli- cations of attachment barely make a rip- ple in a film that chooses optimism and wishful thinking over realism. The result is a movie of surprisingly low stakes, but soothing emotional tones and consistent- ly lovely performances. (NR, 103 minutes) Contains profanity and sexual situations. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema.
BBBRAMONA AND BEEZUS — Stephanie Merry
Ramona Quimby (Joey King) is nine and has a real knack for getting into trouble. She’s not trying to; it’s just that she’s brave and imaginative and sometimes things get a little out of hand and the next thing you know, she’s cracked a raw egg on her head on Picture Day. Her sister, Beezus (Selena Gomez, sharing the spot- light well), is in high school, and is there- fore exasperated by Ramona’s antics, es- pecially when the pest starts a kitchen fire just as a boy calls on the telephone. “Ramona and Beezus,” of course, is about
continued on next page ⁄2 , needs a family,
— Rebecca J. Ritzel
— S.M.
— M.O.
— A.H.
THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010
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