David O. Russell has a knack for sending the characters in his films to hellish, but often somehow hilarious places. In the shamefully overlooked Three Kings, a group of soldiers journey into an Iraqi village on a dangerous mission to pillage gold. Flirting With Disaster sends Ben Stiller to find his birth parents, who turn out to be hippy acid dealers; and Spanking the Monkey involves a boy’s realization that he’s attracted to his mother. Always dark, always smart and funny, and always addressing big emotional truths, Russell looks to have topped himself here. Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), an environmentalist battling a Wal-Mart-like discount store, hires a team of “Existential Detectives” (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) to get to the bottom of some puzzling coincidences. A deadpan Tomlin asks: “Have you ever transcended space and time?” Responds Schwartzman, only slightly puzzled: “Uh, time, not space.” Jude Law, Naomi Watts, and Mark Wahlberg round out the cast.
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