“The Brothers Bloom”
***
Writer-director Rian Johnson returns with a film nearly as idiosyncratic as “Brick,” his heralded neo-noir debut set in a high-school atmosphere. Part con-man romp, part screwball comedy, this adventure follows brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody) as they reel in their last mark, Penelope (Rachel Weisz). The rub? Bloom is falling for the eccentric Penelope. The story is as willfully wrought as Stephen’s cons without becoming precious. Weisz is warm and disarmingly vivacious as the mark who thinks being a con artist would be a lark. Rinko Kukuchi, Maximilian Schell and Robbie Coltrane also star. PG-13. 1 hour, 49 minutes. Lisa Kennedy
“The Invention of Lying”
*** 1/2
“The Invention of Lying” is a remarkably radical comedy. It opens with a series of funny, relentlessly logical episodes in a world where everyone always tells the truth, and then slips in the implication that religion is possible only in a world that has the ability to lie. Then it wraps all of this into a sweet love story. Ricky Gervais plays a pudgy everyman named Mark, whose secretary, Tina Fey, tells him she has loathed every day she worked for him. PG-13. 1 hour, 39 minutes. Roger Ebert
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