DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Two weeks left in the year, and the studios are cramming the theaters with both their finest Oscar bait — with visions of golden statues dancing in their heads — as well as some big-budget crowd pleasers in an attempt to rake in the holiday season cash. This first title falls into that latter camp, and judging from early reviews, James L. Brooks hasn’t really saved what looks like a standard issue rom-com from being just that.
I’m including it in this week’s column, however, because this is a movie that we’ve been talking about for quite some time, as much of the production took place in D.C., and one of the characters, played by Owen Wilson, plays a Nationals pitcher. (At 42, Wilson is getting a little long in the tooth to play a pro athlete — but then again, would we really put it past the Nats to shell out millions for an ancient hurler?) The plot has Reese Witherspoon, a pro softball player about to hit her sports retirement age herself (the movie casts the 33-year-old Witherspoon in her late-20s), torn between two lovers: Wilson, and a government worker played by Paul Rudd. Jack Nicholson is also in the mix as Rudd’s father. So, wary as I am about the overall quality of the movie, I’m still a little curious to see if this movie — one of the rare films set in the District that isn’t a political thriller or an apocalyptic action flick — manages to get the city right.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at theaters all over the area.
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On the Oscar bait side of things is this period drama about England’s King George VI, who came to the throne in 1936 after the death of his father and abdication of his older brother. Only problem was that George, known to most folks as Bertie, didn’t really have a particularly royal presence when speaking due to a lifelong problem with stammering — not the best quality for a ruler at a time when broadcasts of speeches were becoming a regular part of leadership. The King enlists the help of an oddball speech therapist, played by Geoffrey Rush, who works to get the monarch over his impediment.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street and Bethesda Row.
