Friday Flicks: Is Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol the Best Tom Cruise Film in Years?

Grab some popcorn! NewsFeed's Glen Levy brings you the movies you should check out (or avoid) this weekend.

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Carnage

[youtube=http://youtu.be/ZPX6-4Bo7XU]

Tagline: A New Comedy Of No Manners

It’s hard to believe that, at a brisk 79 minutes, Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s award-winning God of Carnage is any longer than the play that wowed Broadway. None of the original cast from the four-hander (Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden and James Gandolfini) have made it into the movie, replaced by the equally bankable Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly.

After the two sets of parents’ boys have a playground fight, the adults of the “victim” invite the parents of the “bully” over to work out the issues at stake. Before too long, a discussion of childrearing escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents revealing their true colors.

Polanski seems to be going through something of a purple patch, and Carnage is getting the same kind of raves as The Ghost Writer. “A pitch-black farce of the charmless bourgeoisie that is indulgent, actorly and so unbearably tense I found myself gulping for air and praying for release,” wrote the Guardian (with a sense of drama that Reza herself might have been proud to write). “Snappy, nasty, deftly acted and perhaps the fastest paced film ever directed by a 78-year-old,” said the Hollywood Reporter, while the Daily Telegraph called it “giddily enjoyable.” You get the impression that the East and West coasts will lap it up, but will middle America care?

MORE: TIME’s review of Carnage

NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: Both the blockbusters seem to have been well received so it’s hard to call between them. See whichever one takes your fancy, with Carnage as a quick appetizer beforehand if you’re feeling particularly ambitious.

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