the washington post friday, december 17, 2010 l


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consultants for the very banks they write seemingly objective research papers about, are part of the revolving door betweenWall Street andWashington. Ferguson shows he is the real thing, as evidenced by “Inside Job’s” taut, laser-focused narrative, which manages to infuse real tension into a story most viewers know all too well. Shot by Svetlana Cvetko with crisp, bold digital imagery and set to Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” and other trenchant pop numbers, “Inside Job” isn’t a tutorial as much as a trip: swift, scary and at times as mind- bending as Alice’s sojourn behind the looking glass. Still, as brilliant as “Inside Job” is, it leaves the viewer with a pronounced feeling of helplessness. (PG-13, 108 minutes) Contains drug- and sex-related material. AtAMCLoews Shirlington and Landmark Bethesda Row. —A.H.


r½LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE “Through our gizzards, the voices of the ages whisper to us, and tell us what’s right,” intones a dignified owl in the sepulchral inflections of HugoWeaving. How you respond to this bit of feathery hokum will determine how you’ll feel about this film, which combines very old-fashioned storytelling with an of-the-moment 3-D ticket price. Does its majesty send a shiver up your spine? Or does the very idea of an animated owl delivering this line induce—pardon me —hoots of laughter? The animated film follows two owlet brothers whose destinies come into conflict. Owlnapped by a clan of evil owls, the brothers are pulled into a plot to enslave all of owlkind. Kludd (voiced by Ryan Kwanten) eagerly signs on as a soldier in the Pure Ones’ army, while Soren (Jim Sturgess) escapes to seek out a legendary


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flock of warrior owls who protect owlkind from owl evil. (PG, 90 minutes) Contains scenes of scary owl action. At University Mall Theatres.


—D.K. r½LOVE&OTHER DRUGS


Give Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway this much: They have the best eyes in the business. That’s the most cheering takeaway from “Love & Other Drugs,” a jagged little pill of a movie from Edward Zwick. Here, Zwick turns his attention to millennials riding the financial bubble at the turn of the 21st century. The film plays like a grotesque group portrait of pigs at the trough. And none of those pigs is feeding more blithely than Jamie Randall (Gyllenhaal), a charming rake and underachiever who becomes a pharmaceutical salesman for Pfizer; during his rounds he meets Maggie (Hathaway), a spiky bohemian whose elbows-out demeanor belies a meltingly soft center inside. As a couple with deep commitment issues, Gyllenhaal and Hathaway generate a simmering erotic heat, and when the story takes a serious turn, she especially keeps things tartly crisp and safely out of “Love Story” melodrama. (R, 113 minutes) Contains strong sexual content, nudity, pervasive profanity and drug material. Area theaters.


—A.H. rrr½MEGAMIND


In the eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil, good almost always triumphs — at least in Hollywood. In “Megamind,” an animated fable about a similar clash of moral titans, funny reigns victorious. At the center of this utterly delightful film is its eponymous hero — er, villain — a blue-skinned alien who was sent to Earth as a baby when his home planet exploded. Unlike his superhero


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nemesis, Metro Man (voice of Brad Pitt), another refugee from a dying world, Megamind (Will Ferrell) did not grow up with “the power of flight, invulnerability and great hair,” as he so bitterly puts it. Instead, Megamind has had to learn to get by on the powers that reside within his giant, bald cranium. That, and showmanship. Unfortunately, Megamind is less evil genius than evil underachiever. He’s not bad so much as bad-ish. Like other men of steel, Metro Man is a muscle-bound bore. Megamind, on the other hand, is brought to life with every ounce of Ferrell’s comic might in this sharply satiric, deftly written twist on the superhero trope. (PG, 90 minutes) Contains action sequences and mildly crude language. Area theaters.


—M.O. rrMORNING GLORY


Rachel McAdams labors mightily to be adorable in this fitfully funny romantic comedy set in the weary, bleary vineyards of morning TV. McAdams plays Becky Fuller, a hardworking producer at an obscure New Jersey show who’s unexpectedly canned as the film opens. Down but not out, Becky lands a gig executive-producing a bottom- rated network morning news show. Becky’s chief foil in “Morning Glory” is the curmudgeonly news veteran Michael Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), whom she dragoons into co-hosting the “Daybreak” program alongside aging diva Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton). Pomeroy has won countless awards and despises all the info-tainment that Becky’s generation represents. He barks and swats, hoping to scare the newbie away. But Becky keeps popping back with an encouraging word and ready smile. Despite an appealing premise and terrific stars, this film veers so wildly in tone that it never settles into a story worth believing. (PG-13, 102 minutes) Contains sexual


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content including dialogue, profanity and brief drug references. At University Mall Theatres.


—A.H. rrTHE NEXT THREE DAYS


Russell Crowe delivers a glum, recessive performance as a community college professor lured into a life on the lam in this film. It plods along dutifully, with the occasional zigzag into contrivance, tidy coincidence and outright preposterousness. When the film opens, Pittsburgh literature teacher John Brennan (Crowe) is meeting his wife, Lara (Elizabeth Banks), for dinner with John’s brother and his bombshell wife. Almost immediately, Lara and her sister-in- law begin arguing, the fight getting more heated; later, in the car, John and Lara enjoy an illicit moment of post-catfight sex. The scenes are clearly meant to bring Lara’s impulses and passions to the forefront of filmgoers’ minds when, the next day, she’s charged with having murdered a co-worker just moments before arriving at the restaurant. John goes to every legal length to prove his wife’s innocence, but when he exhausts those avenues and Lara is facing a lengthy prison term, he takes matters into his own hands. (PG-13, 122 minutes) Contains violence, drug material, profanity, sexuality and thematic elements. AtAMCHoffman Center.


—A.H. rr½RED


“Red” joins a long line of recentmovieswhose upper-middle-aged stars play AARPmembers who refuse to go gently into genteel cinematic dotage.But this adaptation of a graphic novel series gets into a cool, sophisticated swing. The one-liners zing right alongwith the bullets in a playful pas de deux ofmayhem.Bruce Willis plays Frank, a former black ops agent nowliving in quiet desperation inCleveland and enjoying a long-distance phone flirtation


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with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), thewoman whomails his retirement check.When Frank is unexpectedly visited by a lethal “wet team,” he realizes his life is in danger, and he seeks to reassemble his old cohort of covert assassins: Joe (Morgan Freeman),whomFrank busts out of a nursing home inNewOrleans;Marvin (JohnMalkovich),who’s living in flashback- induced paranoia somewhere in theGulf Coast swamplands; and Victoria (Helen Mirren),who arranges roses and bakes tea cakes but longs to get back into the life of ordnance and kill shots. (PG-13, 111 minutes) Contains intense sequences of action violence and brief strong profanity. AtAMCCourthouse Plaza.


—A.H.


rrrSECRETARIAT With this stirring movie, director Randall Wallace has achieved the next to impossible, injecting genuine suspense into a narrative we all know the ending to. Wallace’s secret is that he makes “Secretariat” about characters, not races, and he has found irresistible protagonists in both his equine and human subjects. Coming from behind with a heart as big as a house is Secretariat, known to his owners and intimates as Big Red, who at first is so slow “he couldn’t beat a fat man encased in cement being dragged backwards by a freight train,” according to his trainer (played with quirky, crusty gusto by John Malkovich). But his owner believes in him: Penny Chenery Tweedy, a Denver homemaker who inherits her father’s Virginia horse farm and battles the sexist forces of her own family and the horse racing establishment to champion Big Red and change the face of the sport. (PG, 116 minutes) Contains brief mild profanity. At AMCLoews Rio Cinemas and University Mall Theatres.


—A.H.


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