Wedding Crashers

Sense a theme?

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (2008) (A) - Anne Hathaway explodes all over the screen and graduates from her earlier girly roles in Jonathan Demme's searing portrait of a family ravaged by grief. Hathaway stars as Kym, the recovering drug addict big-footing her sister's wedding, and struggling to come to grips with a family tragedy that haunts her.

Orbiting around her is an impressive ensemble cast, some of whom are musicians, not actors, led by Tunde Adebimpe ("7 Chinese Brothers") from TV on the Radio as the groom, betrothed to Rachel (the winning Rosemarie Dewitt), whose patience for sister Kym long ago wore thin. Bill Irwin is perfect as the agreeable dad, who tries too hard to appease Rachel on her wedding weekend and enable Kym. Debra Winger shows up as Rachel and Kym's icy estranged mother.

Demme has mostly focused on documentaries over the past 20 years, and this was sort of his narrative comeback (and it certainly has a documentary feel, with hand-held cameras and improvisation filmed in real time). The music of the band (endlessly rehearsing) is organic. The dialogue singes. (Kym asks at one critical point, "Who is it I'm supposed to be now?") The drama builds impeccably, and it feels like real life could just implode at any moment.

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING (2007) (A) - Again with the Noah Baumbach. Here is another searing family drama, this one pitting Nicole Kidman in the title role, crashing the impending marital bliss of her sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and the loser fiance, Malcolm (Jack Black). Kidman does her typical cold-hearted slow burn as the arrogant writer with a compromised moral compass. Pauline is a bag of insecurities, and Margot loves to throw verbal punches that land below the belt.

Black is a joy as the emotionally unstable man-child. Zane Pais is surprisingly assured as Margot's adolescent son, Claude, a stand-in for Baumbach as a youth (like Jesse Eisenberg in "The Squid and the Whale").

Baumbach's ancestral turmoil is leavened with his trademark dry wit and dark sense of humor. He uses a giant ailing tree as an obvious symbol for the family history, but places it at the center of a feud with the creepy New England neighbors next door. Baumbach unpeels an onion here, exposing secrets, big and small. And his ending for Margot (and her hurting inner child) is an exquisite take on the best of American New Wave cinema of the early '70s.