Wow, That is Scathing...

David Denby, a film critic for The New Yorker magazine, on the following movies:

"Brothers": The script feels mechanical and obvious, and, except for Gyllenhaal, the movie is disastrously miscast. Maguire's Sam is humorless and odd-looking in his high-and-tight military haircut even before he goes away, and Portman, an elfin, improbably pretty thing, is unconvincing as a former cheerleader and young mother of two; they don't set off the dimmest of sparks in each other.

"It's Complicated": Is Nancy Meyers ("Something's Gotta Give") the squarest person ever to make a movie? This new embarrassment helps make the case. Meryl Streep, reduced to giggling, fumbling, gossipy ordinariness for the first time in her career... She has an affair with her husband who left her ten years earlier, played by Alec Baldwin, who comes off as hyperaggressive, dull, wet, and fat. At the same time, Streep flirts with her architect, played all milquetoasty by Steve Martin. The characters are upper-middle-class people who act like TV's lower-middle-class people.