The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson, 2009)

brothers_bloomIt probably owes too great a debt to Wes Anderson’s increasingly oppressive quirkiness, but Johnson’s sophomore effort is still a gem of auspicious confidence and genre-twisting cleverness. Not everything works quite as well as it should, but the strung-out story of con-men brothers and the zany heiress they target has solid laughs and a genuine underbelly of familial tenderness that doesn’t fully cohere until the final scene. (Magnolia Theatre, Dallas, TX)