Hancock

Wanted

The Love Guru

Get Smart

The Incredible Hulk

You Don't Mess with the Zohan

Sex and the City

Savage Grace

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Surfwise

What Happens in Vegas

Iron Man

Son of Rambow

Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her fiancé (Jack Black) steel themselves for Margot's arrival.

Pained sisters Margot (Nicole Kidman) and Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) reminisce.

The movie gets off to a terrific start with its jabs of smart, razory deadpan funny dialogue that marked Baumbach's earlier movie; delivered by a terrific Leigh and Kidman as the estranged sisters, it's a case of so-far-so-very-good. But too soon the movie devolves into a collection of disconnected, meandering scenes and half-dramatized incidents leading to trumped-up melodrama set in and around a great old seaside house. Baumbach tries for, and sometimes achieves, a tone that suggests an American cousin of Ingmar Bergman or Eric Rohmer. But as great as the dialogue is, as strong as the performances are by the manipulative, acid-tongued Kidman and mood-swinging Leigh as the battling sisters -- let alone by Zane Pais as Kidman's son, John Turturro as Kidman's estranged husband and Ciarán Hinds as Kidman's local lover -- the damn thing feels more like the tryout of a play by a hugely talented writer rather than a finished film. Still, the next time Baumbach is up to bat with another film, it will definitely be worth rooting for him.

by Stephen Rebello

photo credit: Ken Regan/©2007 by Paramount Vantage, a division of Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.