Fresh off batting away scathing reviews for Sex and the City 2, the erstwhile Miranda will play the best friend to Laura Linney's cancer stricken lead in a recurring guest star role, which will mark the first time since Sex and the City that Nixon has appeared on cable television. Her casting also makes The Big C even more of a must-see. Besides Linney and Nixon, the new series also features Idris Elba, Oliver Platt, Gabourey Sidibe and Brian Cox.

Between The Big C, Weeds (which added Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alanis Morrisette to the cast once again this season) and Nurse Jackie, you have to wonder why Showtime seems to have cornered the market on strong, female roles, while other cable channels (think: HBO) have not. Whatever the reason, it'll probably be a good idea to re-subscribe to Showtime before too long. The Big C premieres August 16.

The City of Your Final Destination, based on the novel by Peter Cameron, assembles many of the cherished Merchant Ivory values: meticulous writing by the Oscar-winning Ruth Prawer Jhabvala; an expertly drawn cast headed by Merchant Ivory favorite Anthony Hopkins; a languid and literary pace that elevates viewers without ever compromising their intelligence; gorgeous cinematography and art direction; and a cinematic elegance as rare in contemporary films as genuine wit. This is a typical James Ivory work, but more deeply wounding and emotionally involving than most. I was transfixed from beginning to end.

Mr. Ivory might work less than he did back in the day, when he was turning out masterpieces like A Room With a View and Howards End, but he has lost none of his style. You watch hypnotically as he unravels the gentle story of a handsome young Kansas University professor of Iranian descent named Omar Razaghi (Omar Metwally, who played the innocent Egyptian-born American engineer falsely accused of terrorism and tortured by the C.I.A. in the excellent Rendition), who is desperately seeking permission to write an authorized biography of an eccentric Uruguayan novelist named Jules Gund. After his request for permission is denied by the family of the deceased writer, Omar is urged on by his strong-willed, ambitious girlfriend, Deirdre (Alexandra Maria Lara), a fellow academic with a domineering personality, to travel to South America in person and hopefully convince the Gund heirs to change their minds. After an arduous and expensive journey across the pampas of Argentina, Omar arrives in Uruguay uninvited at Ocho Rios, the rambling, run-down Gund family estate, where he is met with suspicion and hostility by Gund’s embittered widow, Caroline (an unusually cold and caustic Laura Linney). She reluctantly allows him to stay as a house guest because there is no inn within miles to lodge him, but remains unyielding in her opposition to a book. The rest of the family consists of an odd group of characters more strange and exotic than the dead author himself.

His mistress, Arden (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a former hippie missionary, agrees with Caroline and resents the intrusion until she falls for Omar’s charms. The dead man’s homosexual brother, Adam (Anthony Hopkins), believing the royalties from a biography would pay off property taxes and fearing the damage a nasty book written in retaliation could cause to his brother’s place in the world of letters, becomes Omar’s sole ally, later joined by Arden’s 10-year-old daughter and Adam’s Japanese lover, Pete (Hiroyuki Sanada, the puzzling spy in Ivory’s last film, The White Countess), who entered their lives at age 15 and stayed on as a retainer in the land-rich, cash-poor family for 25 years. Watching home movies of the divided and generally unfriendly family’s history—fleeing the Nazis, carving success in Uruguay as rich foreigners and foolishly squandering its fortune—Omar promises discretion, even as he uncovers enough family skeletons to fill several volumes, aided by a local gossipy dragon surrounded by beautiful boys who knows where the secrets are buried (played with bitchy Tabasco by the great Argentine actress Norma Aleandro). The shy, childlike Arden finds love. Always in need of money, wily Adam convinces Omar to smuggle his mother’s priceless jewels out of the country. Caroline reveals the lost manuscript she’s been hiding of Jules’ final unpublished book. After Omar nearly dies from a bee sting, the film sags slightly with the unexpected arrival of the irritating Deirdre, but her presence is important in explaining the film’s coda, when she meets Caroline years later at the opera and we learn what happened to everyone in the movie and discover the different directions where destiny took them.

Like most James Ivory films, The City of Your Final Destination moves in small, self-contained vignettes, like paragraphs in a novel, taking its time but covering a lot in each scene. As Omar becomes more familiar with the internecine strife between the various couples, the nature and content of his proposed book changes. Every complex member of the writer’s legacy has an agenda, with varying gains and losses, and the power of the film rests in the way it captures so many tangled lives as they cross and intersect at curious angles. The camera is literal, so the film sometimes fails to escape its roots of literary inspiration. This did not bother me. How many times do you get the chance to curl up with a good movie?

rreed@observer.com

Running time: 114 minutes
Written by: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Directed by: James Ivory
Starring: Laura Linney, Anthony Hopkins, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Omar Metwally, Alexandra Maria Lara

3.5 Eyeballs Out of 4

The Human Spark

Oh, Alan Alda, what can’t you do? Mr. Alda (a man that, through an entirely un-scientifically conducted poll, we’ve concluded reminds most people of their dad) hosts the three-part PBS series devoted to what makes humans unique. Tonight’s installment, “So Human, So Chimp,” is devoted to—you guessed it!—chimpanzees! But don’t get your hopes up for giant diapers, bicycles and funny hats: This is PBS, and Mr. Alda will examine just how closely chimps resemble we the people, through concepts of empathy, tools and language. This involves a field trip to a small Caribbean island, where Yale University’s Laurie Santos is “studying rhesus monkeys’ ability to steal grapes … and read minds.” Um, say what, now?  Monkeys … just a little less scary than robots. [PBS, 8 p.m.]

Thursday, Jan. 14:

Grey’s Anatomy/Private Practice 

Hey, remember when Grey’s Anatomy was airing new episodes? Us neither! But tonight, the soapy favorite one can’t help but still watch returns for a big ol’ crossover “special event” with spin-off Private Practice. What does this mean? Addison is back in Seattle! And, judging by the previews, people are running around the halls while doctors yell things like “shut it down!” Exciting! It’s also nice to see that McSteamy (Eric Dane) is going to get a little extra screen time (two whole hours’ worth), even it means
he has to hook up with the female staffs of both shows (read: McSlut). [ABC, 8 p.m.]

Friday, Jan. 15:

The Squid and the Whale

Beware to all of you who have parental divorce in your background: This 2006 film from writer-director Noah Baumbach is as heartbreaking as it is (painfully) funny. Set in ’80s era Park Slope (no Food Co-op or Bugaboos!), The Squid and the Whale follows Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels as they try to navigate their separation and the raising of their two sons, played by Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline (fun fact: son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates). Mr. Daniels seems to get the choicest of lines, including our favorite, the oft-repeated “filet of the neighborhood.” But trust us, everyone is good in this, including William Baldwin and Anna Paquin. [Sundance, 3 a.m.]

Saturday, Jan. 16:

The Abyss

Already seen Avatar at least twice? Take a look at James Cameron’s earlier foray into the great unknown with the underappreciated The Abyss from 1989. With Avatar-hindsight, you can totally see what was starting to brew in and occupy Mr. Cameron’s brain for the next 20 years! Instead of Pandora, we get the ocean. (Which is really just outer space with water. Think about it.) And instead of Sigourney smoking a cigarette, we get Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who is excellent, plus, do we even need to mention that Ed Harris also stars? Oh, and weird, watery aliens? The best thing about this movie is to remember that, reportedly, the crew liked to wear T-shirts that read, “Life’s Abyss, Then You Dive.” [HBO, 10 a.m.]

Sunday, Jan. 17:

The Golden Globes

Yes, we know there are some very important football games on today (go Jets!), but let’s get our priorities in order: Awards show fever officially kicks off tonight with the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards. Sure, people can say that these Hollywood Foreign Press Awards don’t matter, but you know what? They do! The stars come out in all their feathery frocked finery (and seem to drink rather freely, judging from shows past), and one gets to watch the weird, awkward high-school hierarchy of television actors mixing it up with big movie stars. Still not convinced? Ricky Gervais is hosting, which we’re pretty sure means good times indeed. [NBC, 8 p.m.]

Monday, Jan. 18:

Life Unexpected

New show alert! And this one looks fine-tuned to entice all those Gilmore Girls/Felicity/My So-Called-Life fans to the CW. The premise: A 15-year-old who has spent most of her time in foster care decides to become an emancipated minor, which leads her to her biological parents—a “30-something” (shriek!) aging frat boy and a local radio celebrity (snicker), played by Rosewell’s Shiri Appleby. And then a judge awards joint custody! And get this—the biological mother’s boyfriend, her on-air partner, is played by Dawson’s Creek vet Kerr Smith. Which means, truly, that we are old. Prepare for a lot of Juno–meets–something-else talk, pretty Portland, Ore., scenery and, natch, tears. [CW, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday, Jan. 19:

The Biggest Loser

For those unsure of whether they want to get with the whole Biggest Loser machine, might we suggest that this is the time to check in? It’s only the third episode in this cycle, which is usually when these very hungry and stressed-out people start becoming unglued (plus, they’ll still outweigh you by at least 100 pounds, which is reassuring). Tonight’s drama-fest will include one player threatening to leave after some sort of disagreement with one of the trainers (we’re guessing it’s tough-love Jillian), and accusations fly at the weigh-in. Oh boy. We can’t wait until the Olympics makes weight loss an official event. [NBC, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday: Doubt
We've gotten to the point with Meryl Streep that whenever she appears on screen, Oscar nominations follow. In fact, expect her to garner number 16 for either Julie & Julia or It's Complicated early next year. Obviously, she was tabbed for Doubt, since her showy role as Sister Aloysius Beauvier was practically tailor-made for awards-consideration. But, would it be blasphemy to say she delivers the fourth best performance here? Her scenery chewing is no-match for the nuanced work of Amy Adams, Viola Davis and, of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman. And, frankly, whenever we get to the point that Mr. Hoffman starts getting Oscar nominations for simply appearing on the call sheet, we'll be happy campers. [Starz, 2:05 p.m.]

Wednesday: Notorious
And you wonder why theaters owners are angry with movie studios. Notorious (not the Alfred Hitchcock classic) was released back on January 16 and it's already airing on cable. We remember when it was two years before we could watch new movies on our couch, now it happens in a matter of months! Regardless, the surprise of Notorious—a boilerplate biopic about the life and death of Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace—is that despite many flaws and utter predictability, it's a blast to watch. Of course the performances are, en masse, ridiculous (kudos to Derek Luke for keeping a straight face while reading his lines as Puff Daddy), but director George Tillman Jr. more than makes up for that fact by keeping the soundtrack humming and the nostalgia pitched just right. Dare we say: this was one of the more satisfying movies we've seen this year. [Cinemax, 10 p.m.]

Thursday: The Squid and The Whale
After spending Thanksgiving with your crazy family, don't you want to indulge in some schadenfreude for dessert? Noah Baumbach's semi-autobiographical indie features such maddening family drama (mostly courtesy of Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney as the most passive aggressive parents this side of Williamsburg) that you'll forget any cutting remarks from your own parents by the time the credits roll. Of course, The Squid and The Whale works as more than just a therapy session; Mr. Daniels and Ms. Linney are fantastic and Jesse Eisenberg's performance proves that he was doing Michael Cera's shtick before Michael Cera became Michael Cera. [Sundance, 10 p.m.]

Friday: Bored to Death
Because it wouldn't be a holiday without a marathon, we'll happily plop down in front of the television for four hours on Black Friday to watch the first season of Bored to Death. We've highlighted this show before, but if you gave up on the comedy series—ostensibly about a hipster-turned-private detective (Jason Schwartzman, perfection) and his wacky adventures—you missed its transformation into one of the funniest shows on television. The later episodes of season one, free from the gimmicky premise, are quite hilarious; an amalgam of fantastic guest appearances (kudos to John Hodgman and Jenny Slate) and riveting supporting turns from Ted Danson and Zack Galifianakis. In a just world, the Emmy race for Best Supporting Actor in 2010 will come down to one of these two, and by a nose, we'd take Mr. Galifianakis. Between Bored to Death, The Hangover, his upcoming appearance in Up in the Air, and, yeah, even G-Force (that thing made bank), did anyone have a better 2009 than the hirsute funnyman? We don't think so. [HBO2, starting at 9 p.m.]

Despite the gimlet eye of Richard Eyre, former director of England’s Royal National Theatre, and the top-echelon talents of an impressive cast, a dreary, disabled disaster called The Other Man drops dead at the starting gate. It’s been around for a few years, and the dust shows. Dissecting a case of unhealthy obsession with the same carefully wielded scalpel he used on Judi Dench as the predatory teacher in the far superior Notes on a Scandal, Mr. Eyre now tells the tale of Peter (Liam Neeson), the CEO of a successful software company, and his beautiful wife, Lisa (Laura Linney), a famous shoe designer, who mysteriously disappears after 25 years of marriage. Driven mad with jealousy and suspicion, Peter rummages through the personal files in his wife’s laptop and traces love letters from a man named Ralph (Antonio Banderas) to an email address in Italy. Peter tracks Ralph to Milan with the intent to kill, but instead engages the slick charmer in a series of metaphysical chess games, sending him false emails from Lisa’s computer, then ends up lending Ralph the money to fly to the glamorous Villa d’Este on Lake Como for a romantic weekend that proves to be anything but. In the ponderous events that follow, everyone hides a terrible secret, and with a stylized combination of Alfred Hitchcock and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Mr. Eyre piles on the twists and turns of dark obsession with an emotional intensity that seems deliberate and phony. The wild goose chase before we find out what really happened to Lisa just ain’t worth the effort. [Ed. note: Spoiler Alert!] Wouldn’t you know Ms. Linney is secretly dying of cancer? The embellishments and falsehoods of her illness, Peter’s unspoken love and Ralph’s pretense of being a rich international playboy (he is really only a janitor) add up to a movie that looks like a disarmingly simple love triangle, but gets bogged down in close-ups, dream sequences, snapshot montages of the past and confusing transitions that leave the viewer feeling manipulated for no reason.

Mr. Neeson and Ms. Linney rarely make a false move; Mr. Banderas gives a surprising performance as a bogus Latin Lothario who lives by his wits, recalling a young Marcello Mastroianni in his salad days; and once again, I have been electrified by Romola Garai, as Peter’s estranged but concerned daughter and the voice of reason, fearing for her father’s sanity. What a beautiful and accomplished actress, and what a range! You might remember her as the younger sister who wrecked so many lives in Atonement; she stole every scene. She does the same thing here, leaving everyone around her without a compass. Under the strain, the actors work up a sweat to sustain interest, but their involvement in their roles is only skin deep. The themes of desire, loss, forgiveness and adultery, both real and imagined, are framed without tension, leaving a fine cast to play cardboard figures in a board game. If they don’t care how it all comes out, why should we?

rreed@observer.com

Monday: 24
Remember all that stuff you read about 24 taking it easy on the torture during its seventh season? Well, scratch that. Prolonged exposure to Jack Bauer could turn a nun into a Geneva Conventions violator. Just look at what happened to F.B.I. agent Renee Walker (played by Annie Wersching) during the season premiere: One minute, she's telling Jack to control himself; the next, she's at a hospital cutting off a suspect's oxygen supply in an attempt to get him to spill information. Thus far the new season of 24 seems like a rehash of all the previous ones, but stupider and more outlandish. However, thanks to the aforementioned Ms. Wersching (she'd fit in perfectly on Fringe as a replacement for the wooden Anna Torv), Cherry Jones, Carlos Bernard, Rhys Coiro ("Billy Walsh" from Entourage) and Mary Lynn Rajskub, there are still plenty of reasons to tune in, even if the mechanics of the show have atrophied. [Fox, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday: You Can Count on Me
Kenneth Lonergan's tale of an estranged brother and sister is one of our favorite movies from the last decade—a genuinely touching and simple look at familial strife. Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney star, and are predictably fantastic. Mr. Ruffalo was compared to a young Marlon Brando in the reviews for this film, and Ms. Linney nabbed herself an Oscar nomination for best actress. You Can Count on Me also features the best performance ever by a Culkin: Macaulay's little brother, Rory, plays Ms. Linney's curious son to impish and adorable perfection. [HDNet, 8 p.m.]

Wednesday: Lost
It's been nearly eight months since we last had new episodes of Lost to obsess over and, frankly, the show can't come back fast enough. But after catching the first 30 minutes of the two-hour season premiere at the Paley Center over the weekend, we're slightly concerned. Put it this way: If you like convoluted discussions about time travel and quantum physics, then this is the show for you! But, if your nose is bleeding from reading that last sentence, then you could be in for a long and arduous haul. [ABC, 9 p.m.]

Thursday: Hard Eight
Paul Thomas Anderson's first film is famous for the behind-the-scenes issues the wunderkind director had with the now-defunct Rysher Studios over the final cut. But beyond that, Hard Eight is an interesting watch simply because of what it points towards. Even if it's one of his lesser works, all of Mr. Anderson's gifts are on display here: the long, gliding shots; the Michael Penn and Jon Brion music; and the cast of repertory P. T. Anderson Players, including John C. Reilly, Phillip Baker Hall, Melora Walters and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Speaking of the cast, it's amazing to see Samuel L. Jackson in a role that doesn't require him to scream for the rafters. Hard Eight is a reminder that Mr. Jackson actually used to be a good actor. [Showtime Extreme, 2:45 p.m.]

Friday: The Heartbreak Kid
The much-maligned Farrelly Brothers remake of the Neil Simon classic wears thin at times and features one too many grossout jokes (mostly at the expense of a very game Malin Akerman, doing her best Cameron Diaz impression). But at the center of The Heartbreak Kid is one of Ben Stiller's best comedic performances, and a wonderfully charming Michelle Monaghan as the object of his affection. Plus, the brothers end their movie with the best final line of dialogue ("Fuck me") and music cue (David Bowie's "Suffragette City") this side of There Will Be Blood. Yeah, it's that good. [Woman Max, 4:40 p.m.]

It’s glib to think that this fine actress who’s known for her unshowy emotional honesty is unsuitable for the role of Merteuil, the “virtuoso in deceit.” Ms. Linney’s scrubbed sanctimony in The Crucible is untypical of the more intriguing range of her work in the theater (Sight Unseen) and on film (Mystic River, You Can Count on Me). There’s no reason I can imagine why she can’t be emotionally honest playing a cow.

Cow is the polite c-word for the Marquise de Merteuil. The problem is that practically all emotion has been drained out of Ms. Linney’s performance.

She hasn’t been miscast, she’s been misdirected.

Rufus Norris’ revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses lurches from the ostentatiously starchy to the stylishly good to the heavy-handed and coarse. The British director’s overintellectualized idea of Merteuil has neutralized Ms. Linney’s emotional power to such an extent that she scarcely connects with the other actors onstage. There are long stretches when she doesn’t even look at anyone.

We’re meant to perceive her Merteuil as though she were a figure frozen in a painting.

ALL VERY WELL (and arty). Scott Pask’s elegant, unsurprising set with drapes and mirrors encourages such painterly narcissism. (The less refined emblem of the original 1986 staging was an unruly defiled bed.) But portraiture isn’t theater. It’s a director’s concept, and it’s out of sync with the rest of the production.

Given the courtly artifice and manners of the ancien régime in 18th-century France, doubtless Ms. Linney’s flawlessly mechanized stylization is historically correct. So, too, her studied, glacially slow walk or the unwaveringly precise manner in which she holds the fingers of her hands over her silk panier. But this is a Merteuil who has no fun with the games she plays.

In proto-feminist self-justification, she tells the Vicomte de Valmont—her sometime lover and unscrupulous partner in sexual conquest—“I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own.” Merteuil is a woman who can say that her favorite word isn’t betrayal, but cruelty. She’s undeniably heartless.

And mercilessly so in Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 epistolary novel. But Christopher Hampton’s renowned stage adaptation makes Merteuil more emotionally ambiguous, while his screen version for the Stephen Frears movie starring John Malkovich and Glenn Close had her crack up when Valmont betrays their libertine pact and falls in love with his biggest conquest—the pious, married Madame de Tourvel. The opportunity is there for Ms. Linney’s bloodless Merteuil to be human!

Ben Daniels’ Valmont, on the other hand, is having far too much fun. The British actor does a lot of Fragonard-ing about the joint, too. That perfect aristocratic posture—the stockinged, shapely leg slightly bent in front of the other, the insolently arched back to the manner born (and so on). Mr. Daniels’ cheerfully depraved Valmont—a man “who never opens his mouth without calculating the harm he can do”—is looser and warmer than his co-conspirator. His shade-too-likable performance lacks insinuating danger.

But the difference in acting styles between his confidently unrestrained Valmont and Ms. Linney’s archly suppressed Merteuil throws their unscrupulous partnership in de Sadean eroticism off balance. And with it, so goes the production.

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES is safe fare, as usual, for the Roundabout Theatre Company. You can’t go far wrong with a naughty period costume drama and a sword fight. (The lovely costumes are designed by Katrina Lindsay.) Frequently revived, there are at least six movie versions. But the famous play has always possessed intelligence and wit via Messrs. Hampton and Laclos, as well as the perverse erotic pull of the Valmont-Merteuil vortex.

Though set in the salons of the French aristocracy, the piece remains a little too upper-class British for the Roundabout Theatre to feel fully confident. Hence Mr. Norris, the British director imported to show us how to do it, and the casting of a British leading man, the award-winning Mr. Daniels, in his Broadway debut. The outcome is that no one is ever quite on the same embossed page.

Mr. Daniels’ accent, for example, is effortlessly, arrogantly upper-class; the American Ms. Linney is more reedily middle-class; and the accent of the great Welsh-born actress, Sian Phillips, playing the dowager Madame de Rosemonde, is, of course, exactly right (as is her perfect cameo).

The rest of the ensemble varies between American accents; or neutral (Jessica Collins giving a pleasing though somewhat vapid performance as the seduced and tragic Madame de Tourvel); or they’re what snooty Brits like to call common (Kristine Nielsen playing much too broadly as Madame de Volange).

Mamie Gummer’s 15-year-old convent girl, Cecile, is an American teen grown eagerly accustomed to getting laid. But Ms. Gummer is a smashing young actress whose performance is so alive and funny that her modern American-ness doesn’t matter in the least. She’s the embodiment of the play’s description of poor raped and wanton Cecile, “… no character and no morals, she’s altogether delicious.”

But there are other directorial lapses. Mr. Norris has straitjacketed Ms. Linney’s Merteuil, as I suggest. But, while making a meal out of courtly high style and outer decorum, he also makes Valmont look silly with a juvenile farting joke. The men strip naked gratuitously; the women don’t. To add “taste” to the proceedings, Handel is sung during the action (including the questionable choice of the haunting “Ombra mai fu” from Xerxes). But, alas, the Handel is sung badly.

For the umpteenth time, we have a set that collapses portentously for the final scene. (It’s a British thing. It must be a symbol.) Mr. Norris is obviously underlining the imminent overthrow of the ancien régime, while the carefully staged patterns formed by the dangling ropes in Merteuil’s now conveniently destroyed salon are clearly meant to evoke a spider’s web.

In the script, Christopher Hampton doesn’t mess about with such directorial froufrou. He notes that just before the lights fade on the final card-playing scene, there appears on the salon’s back wall, “fleeting, but sharp, a silhouette of a guillotine.”

With only one wide release—MGM’s Awake (No. 6)—the box office had a slow weekend, with few, if any, changes either here or nationally in the top five. But that didn’t keep The Savages (No. 8) from making an impression. On two screens in the city, the Tamara Jenkins family drama starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney averaged close to $40,000—a stellar opening for such a slow time.

In the wake of so many dysfunctional Thanksgiving dinners, perhaps receipts were buoyed by people’s desire to see a family more messed up than their own. The film has also certainly been helped by the skillful word-of-mouth and marketing campaign launched by Fox Searchlight—they of Sideways and Little Miss Sunshine fame. Don’t be surprised if this one meets the same Oscar fate—both good and bad.

The horror film Awake failed to scare up any business, barely breaking the all-important $10,000 waterline. The film had to rely on the star-power—and I use that loosely!—of Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen alone, as it was largely panned and director Joby Harold's imdb resume is shorter than Harvey Weinstein’s temper. Was somebody asleep when they greenlit this one? Hoo-ah!

Enchanted (No. 1) and No Country for Old Men (No. 2) both managed to avoid steep declines—roughly 36 percent—with the former in its second week and the latter in its fourth. (Hitman (No. 7), with a 54.5 percent slide, had the greatest drop.) Beowulf (No. 3), in its third week, was able to leap-frog over This Christmas (No. 4), in its fourth week, largely because it was playing on three more screens. And American Gangster (No. 5) held strong in its fifth week, which a decent enough segue to a small point: Denzel is getting a lot of attention for this film, and rightly so, but Russell Crowe, a 5’11” Australian, was able to transform himself into a New Jersey jew from the ’70’s without any shtick. Remarkably, it’s one of the great unsung performances of this award’s season.

Julian Schnabel’s critical darling The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—a.k.a. The Devil Wears Prada meets My Left Foot—debuted this week on three screens, one of which belonged to the Angelika, but failed to break into the top ten. With all of the buzz surrounding this one, don’t expect it to go away silently. Not-so-bold prediction: it’ll crack the top ten.

List of theaters: Paris, Zeigfeld, Oprheum, East 85th St., 86th St. East, 84th St., Lincoln Plaza, 62nd and Broadway, Lincoln Square, Magic Johnson, 72nd St East, Cinemas 1, 2 &3rd Ave, 64th and 2nd , Imaginasian, Manhattan Twin, First and 62nd St., Angelika Film Center, Quad, IFC Center, Film Forum, Village East, Village Seven, Cinema Village, Union Square, Essex, Battery Park 11, Sunshine, 34th Street, Empire, E-Walk, Chelsea, 19th Street East, and Kips Bay.

Manhattan Weekend Box Office: How moviegoers in the multiplexes of middle America choose to spend their ten-spot is probably a big deal in Hollywood. But here in Manhattan, the hottest movies aren't always the ones making the big bucks nationwide. Using Nielsen numbers for Manhattan theaters alone and comparing them to the performance of the national weekend box office can tell you a lot about our Blue State sensibilities. Or nothing at all! Each Monday afternoon, we will bring you the results.

Laura Linney--whom we think of as a certain kind of actress--says she’s the happiest she’s ever been. (Definitely a good thing; see: The Nanny Diaries, The Squid and the Whale, The Truman Show, et cetera ad infinitum.) The 43-year-old actress' new movie The Savages, directed by Tamara Jenkins and costarring Philip Seymour Hoffman, opens tomorrow. In the film, the esteemed actors do turns playing siblings who are faced with putting their father, played by Philip Bosco, in a nursing home. Ms. Linney’s character, Wendy, a down-and-out playwright fast approaching her 40^th birthday, lives in the shadow of her more successful brother, a fellow writer. "For me, things are nothing but good," she said in an interview with Reuters. "For Wendy, she's living like she's 28 [years old] or even 11. She just hasn't had the opportunity to move forward."

Ms. Linney has heaped seven films on her professional plate over the last two years. "I just really enjoy it,” she said. “I find it constantly challenging. It's taken me to parts of the world I never thought I'd see and I've worked with people whom I admire and learned from. It's pretty damn good."

In The Savages, a perfectly modulated and devastatingly on-target film about the dreaded moment of truth when children are forced to face their parents’ mortality, sibling rivalry does not eventually graft into sibling revelry. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are Wendy and Jon Savage, an estranged sister and brother reluctantly strong-armed into an emotionally charged reunion when their cranky, independent father (Philip Bosco) suddenly becomes needy and homeless, suffering from what looks like early Alzheimer’s with nobody to look after him. It’s a crisis that opens old wounds and makes the grown siblings reexamine their own disappointing lives and personal failures. It is not a sitcom.

Wendy and Jon haven’t seen each other in years. It’s not that they hate each other; they just don’t care or think about each other at all. Wendy is a second-rate writer struggling to be a playwright in Greenwich Village who steals office supplies from dead-end temporary jobs; her life is a series of rejection slips and broken love affairs. Jon is a shaggy, neurotic theatre professor in Buffalo whose academic career is going nowhere—he’s slogging through an overdue book about Bertolt Brecht—and whose personal life is an uncontrollable mess. These two can’t take care of themselves, much less the eccentric, domineering father they spent their lives escaping and avoiding. They don’t even know where he is. When Wendy calls and tells Jon they have to rescue the old man from eviction in an Arizona retirement home, he says, “We’re not flying out there, this is not a Sam Shepard play.”

They’re forced to live together and share the burden as caregivers, and the fabric of their lives disintegrates in the tangle of family baggage they unload. Writer-director Tamara Jenkins takes the audience on a harrowing, heartbreaking and often unexpectedly funny tour of the things you have to endure when hit between the eyes with responsibility and obligation: cleaning out the closets, researching nursing facilities, poring through financial options, filling out endless Medicare forms, writing living wills, investigating burial plans and visiting support groups for “people with confused elders.” This is something that happens to everyone after a certain age. It’s a rite of passage. The wise way it has been depicted here is not maudlin; given the film’s serious undertones, it leaves no stone unturned about the inevitability of life, illness and death.

The two stars are so truthful and believable that they leave no doubt that they are authentic siblings. Laura Linney, one of the most radiant and versatile actors since Meryl Streep, masks her dark side with a ratty hairdo and a sunny smile that diffuses false confidence. Philip Seymour Hoffman has identity issues; he’s childish and narcissistic, and he displays a strange sense of false entitlement. Mostly he just wants to be in someone else’s skin. Their alternating expressions of trepidation, fear, exasperation, confusion and panic are thrilling to watch. Every significant sigh, shrug and petty outburst hits home hard. Wendy and Jon have to get over long-standing tensions—with each other, with their father and with the world at large that has left them bruised and unfulfilled. The stars are brilliantly matched in both their sharp comic talents and their ability to reveal the throbbing pathos at the core of their characters’ lonely lives.

The Savages is a film about growing up late, growing old early and facing the anxiety of death—intimidating subjects that are usually treated with sentimentality. To everyone’s credit, this film faces these issues bravely and humorously, eschewing any hint of emotional manipulation. No Hollywood ending here. These siblings will always live in different worlds. But in the end I got the feeling they had learned, from an uncomfortable experience, something perceptive and affirmative. I left The Savages feeling I had a moving, masterful and memorable experience of my own.