Margot at the Wedding

Margot at the Wedding is a film at odds with itself. You can't have it both ways, you can't have narcissistic siblings and their families working out their various dysfunctions and still have a warm comedy. But that's the mood on display in the latest film from Noah Baumbach (Squid and the Whale).
Single mom Nicole Kidman finds ways to sabotage her sister's (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in real life married to the director) marriage to Jack Black, himself a repressed enigma of a person. Toss in some weird neighbors, and Leigh's daughter and Kidman's son who trade family secrets like other kids trade cards. "I left a piece of skin in a movie theater once so it could watch movies for the rest of its life." So goes the whimsical conversation of the cousins. As for the adults the words they trade back and forth are a bit more hash and meant to hurt.
Margot at the Wedding is always interesting but the characters are badly in need of some kind of therapy. In a movie season dominated by cruel lead performers - Sweeney Todd, Anton Chigurh, Daniel Plainview - the characters in Margot aren't really mean spirited so much as lost in their own misguided trips.