There wasn’t much going on this Saturday, so I figured I might as well take the Brown Line up to the Western stop, then catch the 1:10 viewing at the Davis Theatre. I wasn’t much in the mood to head downtown to one of the AMCs, so I decided to venture uptown.

The Davis is one of those theaters that looks like it’s been around for years. It has the old-style theater sign with the letters descending in vertical order. I’d been there once before to see The King’s Speech with a friend who lives around the area, but I didn’t remember the distinct smell of urine that pervaded everywhere, from the box-office to the screening room itself.

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Okay, okay, there aren’t many summer movies that you’re willing to take the younger kids to, and something has to fill that void, so Mr. Popper’s Penguins is pretty much your only non-animated choice.

It’s odd, because I don’t think of Jim Carrey as being much of an attraction for kids, but it’s likely intended as a draw for the 30-something parents looking for a non-panda-centric film to placate their brood. Or for those who loved the 1938 book as kids themselves, though I never read it, and, from what I gather, it’s vastly different.

Carrey plays Popper, a semi-weasel (would that make him a ferret?) of a real estate agent with a golden tongue and flair for convincing hard cases to sell their property to his high-risin’ New York firm. In this, he’s ably aided by his alliterative assistant Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond), an adorably saucy little Brit with an impediment that causes her to pepper her speech with a proliferation of p’s. One day Popper receives a crate from his recently deceased father, a world-renowned explorer who never had time for his son, and in it is a penguin, which proceeds to destroy Popper’s apartment and provide the first in a series of unnervingly graphic defecations.

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The first Paul Thomas Anderson’s film I saw was his take on addiction and gambling called Hard Eight. It featured John C. rilley, Gwyneth Paltrow and the awesome Philip Baker Hall. It was filled with despicable characters who were selfish and hurt others to get what they wanted. I liked it very much and thought Anderson was definitely a filmmaker to watch.

His next piece of work was Boogie Nights, which further solidified his status as one of the best directors working today. Then, he released another seminal work of great distinction in Magnolia. This film, yet another pian to selfishness and the darker aspects of humanity, takes place in a single day in Los Angeles, focusing on a number of interconnected people whose lives are forever changed as they search for love and meaning in a chaotic world.

The film chronicles such diverse occurrences as a suicide turned homicide by a quirk of timing; a motivational speaker motivated by rage; and a quiz kid rendered stupid by a lightning strike and features Tom Cruise in what could arguably be called his best performance to date. Besides Cruise, look for more great acting from Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Jason Robards, Philip Baker Hall and Julianne Moore.

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