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MARGOT AT THE WEDDING It's long been a pet peeve to hear when someone dismisses a movie simply because they found the central character to be unlikable. Unless the complainant was planning on inviting said character over for tea, it shouldn't matter if the person's unlikable so long as he or she is interesting. But Margot at the Wedding solves the problem: Here's a character both unlikable and uninteresting, meaning there's no room for debate. Writer-director Noah Baumbach's first film since The Squid and the Whale, this is the sort of talkfest that used to serve as bread and butter for European auteurs like Ingmar Bergman and Eric Rohmer back in the 1970s. Yet those masters used dialogue – always witty, often lacerating – as road maps into their characters' psyches, as a way for audiences to understand what made them tick. Here, Baumbach merely uses words as weapons, as a means for his people to tear each other down without ever letting us see beyond the surface cruelty and understand why these folks have a need to draw first (and second, and third) blood. As Margot, a miserable woman who hopes to talk her estranged sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh) out of marrying a layabout clod (Jack Black), Kidman delivers a fearless performance that asks for little mercy. But because she's not supported by Baumbach, her Margot remains a one-note cipher, a bullying beauty whose poor treatment of everyone around her is never delineated beyond some vague chitchat pertaining to daddy issues. For all its supposed dramatic heft, Margot at the Wedding ultimately proves to be as weighty as cake frosting. **
THE MIST The Mist marks writer-director Frank Darabont's third adaptation of a Stephen King property, and because he's not shooting for Oscar gold this time around (the previous titles were the reasonably enjoyable but grotesquely overrated pair, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile), he's able to ease up on the pedal of self-importance and deliver a "B"- style genre flick, albeit one offering some evaluations of human nature in between all the bloodletting. Owing a nod in the direction of John Carpenter's The Fog, this concerns itself with a group of people who are gathered at the local supermarket when a mist envelops the entire area. It soon becomes clear that something evil resides in the fog, and the shoppers decide that they should remain indoors rather than venture out into the parking lot. It's here that Darabont's script reveals its cynical roots, as a religious zealot named Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) converts many of the frightened survivors to her mode of thinking, a path that leads to a Jim Jones-like environment and at least one human sacrifice. Propelled by Harden's scary performance, Mrs. Carmody is a genuine threat, and she validates Darabont's contention that times of crisis are as likely to turn people against each other as they are to unite them against a common enemy. His pessimism extends to other areas of the script: It's not always easy to figure out who will survive, and the ending will keep viewers' tongues wagging as they exit into the parking lot – one hopefully not blanketed by a similarly impenetrable mist. ***
MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM If the Hasbro toy company elects to issue an updated version of its popular board game Clue, it can dispense with Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with the lead pipe as one of the murder scenarios. Readily available to replace it is Mr. Magorium in the wonder emporium with the gag reflex. Suffering from a fatal attack of the "cutes," this family-aimed fizzle marks the directorial debut of Zach Helm, who caught everyone's attention last year with his script for Stranger Than Fiction. Helm's screenplay here, though, is as lackadaisical as his previous one was inspired, with Dustin Hoffman cast as a kindly 243-year-old man who decides it's time for him to graciously depart from this earth. He hopes to leave his magical toy store in the care of his assistant Mahoney (Natalie Portman), but she doesn't think she can handle the responsibility, even with the shop's workaholic accountant (Jason Bateman) and a lonely boy (Zach Mills) around to assist her. The G-rated film combines Peter Pan's message – the "Clap your hands if you believe in magic" spiel – with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory's stuffed-to-the-gills set design, but with no dramatic tension (where's Kevin Spacey as an obvious villain when you really need him?) and a visually drab shop that remains cluttered rather than captivating, the end result is a bland confection that features an atypically bad Portman performance. And, perhaps most critically, with no playthings on the order of Buzz or Woody to enliven events, this proves to be one toy story that's easy to skip. *1/2
