MovieReviews RATINGS GUIDE
BBBB Masterpiece BBB Very good BB Okay B Poor
No stars: Waste of time EXPENDABLES
Manly mayhem starring the manliest Sylvester Stallone. 24
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD
This Michael Cera flick is a grind. 24
FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL
OPENING NEXT WEEK
Vampires Suck is a spoof of vampirethemed movies. . . . A fashion magazine editor travels to Cairo to meet her husband but has an affair in Cairo Time. . . . Kevin Kline is a gigolo who takes an aspiring playwright under his wing in The Extra Man. ... A young man from the projects wins a lottery and must survive his greedy neighbors’ actions in Lottery Ticket. ...Mao’s Last Dancer is the true story of Li Cunxin and his journey to international stardom. ... Nanny McPhee Returns, this time to help a mother whose husband is at war. . . . A couple trying to adopt is offered Patrik, Age 1.5, who arrives as a juvenile delinquent. . . . A prehistoric man-eating fish is on the hunt in Piranha 3D. ... The Switch is a comedy about a middle-aged woman (Jennifer Aniston) who takes conceiving a child into her own hands.
Javier Bardem’s Felipe is among the pleasures that Julia Roberts’s Liz finds in Indonesia at the end of a trip that also took her to Italy and India. EAT PRAY LOVE
For Julia, a New Age journey by Ann Hornaday
Anyone bringing Elizabeth Gilbert’s block- buster memoir of self-discovery, “Eat Pray Love,” to the screen has a huge challenge before him: How to overcome the book’s episodic, an- ecdotal structure and penchant for aphorism, to create a dynamic narrative? Even more daunting, how does one dramatize what is es- sentially an interior journey? The answer, at least according to director
Ryan Murphy (“Glee”), is to photograph Julia Roberts looking by turns beatific, pained and
IN TODAY’S STYLE SECTION Ann Hornaday considers whether “The Expendables,” “Eat Pray Love” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” can find audiences outside their niches — or whether they even want to. C1
just slightly self-pitying against as many fabulous backdrops as possible. That strategy pays off with uneven success in “Eat Pray Love,” in which Rob- erts portrays the author as she recovers from a dis- astrous divorce, painful rebound relationship and general spiritual ennui on a year-long trip through Italy, India and Bali.
The film’s most crucial constituency — the
book’s rabid fans — are likely to feel well served by Murphy’s adaptation, which hews pretty faithfully to Gilbert’s story. (He veers off the path most wildly in India, where he was stuck filming Roberts meditating, or trying to medi- tate, for hours on end, full stop.) And even new- comers, men included, can enjoy being swept up in the film’s lavish third chapter, where Gil- bert meets a seductive Brazilian named Felipe (Javier Bardem) and embarks on a luscious love affair amid the verdant terraces and soft
eat continued on 25 GET LOW
Duvall gets down to the business of stellar acting
by Ann Hornaday “Get Low” may be opening in Washington
K View movie trailers K Read reviews of all movies in area theaters K Buy tickets
SAM EMERSON/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
In “Get Low,” Robert Duvall, left, is a recluse who stages his own funeral with help from an undertaker, played by Bill Murray.
on Friday the 13th, but that should prove to be a lucky date for Robert Duvall, because his performance in this quiet, affecting dra- ma is a veritable shoo-in for an Oscar nomi- nation — his seventh, that lucky number ef- fectively canceling out the day’s supersti- tious karma.
Duvall’s character, Felix Bush, probably
wouldn’t abide by all this mumbo jumbo. A rec- luse living in the woods outside a small South- ern town during the Depression, Felix 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 Felix’s past sins, which may or may not include murder. Fed up with the gossip, Felix decides to throw his own funeral, just to hear what people say about him. He enlists the help of the local undertakers, a sober, sincere apprentice named Buddy (Lucas Black) and Buddy’s boss, a sar- donic sharpie named Frank Quinn (Bill Mur- ray). “Is it just me, or is he extremely articulate when he wants to be?” Frank quips at one point, his Murrayesque deadpan providing the subtle comic thread that lifts and animates this
get low continued on 25
23
THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010
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