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Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>Horrible Bosses</em> Vs. A Tribe Called Quest

Say what you will about the whole auteur theoryâfilm in general is a communal art. Bad directors can ruin a great script, great performances can save an awful one, and sometimes the cast and crew are toiling away brilliantly on a piece of shit screenplay that'll never work. When a movie like Horrible Bosses comes out, we approach it with caution. Directed by Seth Gordon, who made the excellent King of Kong, and starring Arrested Development's Jason Bateman, and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Charlie Day, the movie on paper sounds great, but we're not holding our breath. The film follows three friends who get drunk and decide, with some help from an ex-con, to kill off their bosses. Basically your last Friday night carried out to what you said you had wanted to do.Reviews have been pretty good, with A.O. Scott from The Times saying: "Horrible Bosses is also frequently very funny. One reason is that it does not bother to cut its coarseness with a hypocritical dose of sweetness or respectability. Nor, however, does it make a big show of being provocative, of pretending that its forays into offensiveness are acts of bravery. It takes the ordinary human traits of stupidity, selfishness, lust and greed (and also stupidity), embeds them in a human condition that is confusing, unfair and also stupid, and turns the whole sorry spectacle into a carnival. The laughter is mean but also oddly pure: it expels shame and leaves you feeling dizzy, a little embarrassed and also exhilarated, kind of like the cocaine that two of the main characters consume by accident." — Gothamist

Published Jul 8, 2011

Modified Jul 8, 2011

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Click on the film stills for details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include: Horrible Bosses, Beats, Rhymes, & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, Project Nim, Rapt, The Films of Nicolas Pereda, Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish, Septien, The Sleeping Beauty, Farmageddon, Mortal Kombat, and Planet of the Apes.