Carey Mulligan

NICOLAS WINDING REFN won the best-director award at Cannes for his new movie, "Drive," and should probably win another award for not saying "I told you so. " Although the movie was a big hit at the festival, it wasn't a hit among everybody at the studio that bankrolled it. "I was told, after this movie was completed, by certain people, 'Great, you made this little singular movie, as they would say, but just so you know, this will not make...

Do not mistake The Greatest for a movie about Muhammad Ali. And do not think its ambitious title indicates its overall quality. Distinguished by a gripping pre-titles sequence and a remarkably nuanced performance by Pierce Brosnan (who executive-produced), The Greatest is a group portrait in grief, inconsistently told. The tone of writer/director Shana Feste wavers wildly from deeply felt empathy with the mourners to melodramatic exploitation of them. Not only are the plot holes so big you can drive a truck through them, Feste literally drives a truck through them.

No one does disappointment, aimlessness, sorrow and despair like Chekhov. And hardly anyone does Chekhov convincingly on stage - making us recognize ourselves in those impossible tragicomic characters. This magnificent production of The Seagull, transferred from London to Broadway, gets it absolutely and thrillingly right. Early in Act 1, young actress to young playwright: "But there's not much action, is there? It's just a lot of speeches. And I think you always have to have love in a play . . .. " Chekhov's actress has just about defined Chekhovian drama.

Disarming and unexpectedly poignant, An Education contrasts the knowledge learned inx school with that learned from life. The pupil in question is Jenny, a 16-year-old honors student circa 1961 at a girls' prep school in Twickenham, a middle-class London suburb, who is destined for Oxford. One rainy afternoon, a stranger named David offers to give her a ride home in his shiny sports car. After Jenny is introduced to material pleasures, Oxford looks less like a destination than a dead end. As played by the criminally adorable Carey Mulligan - a winsome actress with Audrey Hepburn eyes, Jean Simmons dimples, an Ellen Page mouth, and her own unforced mirth - Jenny is a book-smart girl hungering for life lessons.

Easy A High schooler Emma Stone pretends to lose her virginity - and helps other teens do the same. (Friday) Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps A stockbroker (Shia LaBeouf) gets embroiled with disgraced financier Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) and engaged to his daughter (Carey Mulligan). (Sept. 24) It's Kind of a Funny Story The team behind Sugar and Half Nelson adapts Ned Vizzini's novel about a teenager struggling with depression - and love. (Oct. 8)

The Ellen DeGeneres Show (3 p.m., NBC10) - Katie Couric; Kate Gosselin; Gabourey Sidibe. 19 Kids and Counting (9 p.m., TLC) - The Duggars struggles to get used to living with the needs of a preemie. White Collar (9 p.m., USA) - Neal coordinates a very elaborate con to bring himself face-to-face with the murderer of his ex-lover. Warehouse 13 (9 p.m., SYFY) - Pete and Myka use H.G. Wells' time machine to travel back to 1961, where they hope to alter history and keep an unknown killer from turning a group of innocent women to glass.

Jim Sheridan's "Brothers" opens with a shot of a trouble-plagued young man walking out of prison on the day of his release. His name's Tommy, he's played by Jake Gyllenhaal, and not since Tim Robbins in "The Shawshank Redemption" has a guy looked so out of place and vulnerable behind bars. It's a relief when "Brothers" yanks him out of there, even if the sequence only lasts a minute. As his backstory is filled in, we learn that Tommy in his youth frequently drunk and was angry, perhaps at the love that his father (Sam Shepard)

The Earth is about to be knocked off its axis: Kate Gosselin and Sarah Palin , the two most powerful cultural forces in America, are about to meet. In Touch Weekly says Kate and her brood of eight will go camping in the Alaskan wilds with Sarah for an episode of TLC's Kate Plus 8 . Palin's retired science-teacher dad, Chuck Heath , will give the kids a hands-on nature lesson. Of love, art, 'n' music vids We already know him as a talented soft-core porn model. Now, high school dropout Levi Johnston , who is about to marry into America's most elevated family, will star in singer Brittani Senser 's music vid, "After Love.

If you take "Ordinary People," add "Juno," and subtract most of the laughs, you'll be conceptually close to "The Greatest. " Carey Mulligan stars as a pregnant teen who ingratiates herself with the teen father's wealthy family after he's killed in an auto accident. The family, in the hands of writer-director Shana Feste, becomes a suspiciously tidy study in various methods of grieving. The head of the household (Pierce Brosnan) keeps his feelings at bay, while his wife (Susan Sarandon)

Oliver Stone's bookend to Wall Street , his brazenly entertaining 1987 melodrama that seemed to explain the stock market crash two months prior, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps glistens and bursts like the 2008 banking bubble it chronicles. It boasts sharp performances from Michael Douglas reprising his role as slimy financier Gordon Gekko and Shia LaBeouf as stock analyst Jake Moore, engaged to Gekko's estranged daughter. The film whipsaws between hyperbolic character study and preachy account of the recent financial meltdown.

Bee Gees brother Robin Gibb has shaken off his night fever and is stayin' alive. According to the BBC, Gibb's doctor at the London Clinic, Dr. Andrew Thillainayagam, said the longtime pop star was conscious, lucid and talking with his loved ones. Gibb, who is amazingly only 62 considering the Bee Gees had hits in the 1960s, had been in a coma for 12 days. Dr. T. said that Gibb was tired but that "it is testament to [his] extraordinary courage, iron will and deep reserves of physical strength that he has overcome quite incredible odds to get where he is now. " Gibb had been battling colon and liver cancer, which was thought to be in remission, when he got pneumonia because of his weakened immune system.

WITH "SHAME," Michael Fassbender continues to, uh, flesh out one of the great calender-year acting feats in recent history. When has an actor ever been so good in so many different roles? He was an impeccable Rochester in "Jane Eyre," and somehow managed to look respectable in "X-Men Origins" wearing his Magneto helmet, a piece of headgear that defeated even the great Ian McKellen. And we've yet to see him as Carl Jung in "A Dangerous Method. " Now comes "Shame," an NC-17 movie starring Fassbender as Brandon, a man with a compulsive need to consume pornography and pursue anonymous sexual encounters.

EVERY FEW years a young British actress works her way into "It Girl" territory. A few years ago it was Carey Mulligan after her star turn in "An Education," and now it's Felicity Jones, who's turning heads and winning awards for her lead role opposite Anton Yelchin as a lovestruck British exchange student in Drake Doremus' "Like Crazy," which wowed audiences at Sundance and Toronto and this weekend expands to a limited local run. Jones...

THE FALL Philadelphia Film Festival returns this weekend, kicking off a festival with more than 150 feature films over the next two weeks. While some of these movies are scheduled to come to a theater near you, others will only see the light of day in this city at the fest. Here's where we suggest you spend your time in the dark. For showtimes, locations and tickets, visit the PFF Main Box Office (2101 Chestnut St.) or filmadelphia.org.   The big tent "The Descendants" (Oct.

Newly minted royal Kate Middleton is on the hunt - for her own charity gig. St. James's Palace confirmed that Kate, now known as Catherine, duchess of Cambridge, is spending the next few months exploring the charitable sector as she mulls what to make of her position at the top of British society. She follows a family tradition championed by the late Princess Diana , her mother-in-law. The idea is "to get to know a number of charitable and other causes better, so she can make well-informed decisions about her future role," her spokesman said, declining to elaborate.

NICOLAS WINDING REFN won the best-director award at Cannes for his new movie, "Drive," and should probably win another award for not saying "I told you so. " Although the movie was a big hit at the festival, it wasn't a hit among everybody at the studio that bankrolled it. "I was told, after this movie was completed, by certain people, 'Great, you made this little singular movie, as they would say, but just so you know, this will not make...

If the lame retro romantic caper The Tourist is good for anything, it's for making Angelina Jolie's international glamourpuss seem utterly anachronistic in the context of all the blazingly great - and real, and honest - women's roles on screen this year. From the sharp-tongued cowgirl played by Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit to the lonely New York exec played by Patricia Clarkson in the beautifully rueful Cairo Time to the loving couple that Annette Bening and Julianne Moore bring to messy life in The Kids Are All Right , 2010 has been marked by a wealth of fully realized female characters.

Movies Opening This Week Douchebag A man on the verge of getting married takes his younger brother on a wild journey to find the latter's fifth-grade girlfriend. 4192: Crowning of the Hit King See Steven Rea's preview on H2. Inside Job See Steven Rea's preview on H2. Saw 3D A group of Jigsaw survivors embarks on a deadly battle over his legacy. Tamara Drewe See Steven Rea's preview on H2. Reviewed by critics Carrie Rickey (C.R.) and Steven Rea (S.R.

Oliver Stone's bookend to Wall Street , his brazenly entertaining 1987 melodrama that seemed to explain the stock market crash two months prior, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps glistens and bursts like the 2008 banking bubble it chronicles. It boasts sharp performances from Michael Douglas reprising his role as slimy financier Gordon Gekko and Shia LaBeouf as stock analyst Jake Moore, engaged to Gekko's estranged daughter. The film whipsaws between hyperbolic character study and preachy account of the recent financial meltdown.

Never Let Me Go is sci-fi for the Belle & Sebastian set. A beautifully mopey adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's much-praised novel, with Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, and Andrew Garfield as young Brits in dark mood and rumpled mode, the film offers a meditation on identity, repressed longing, existential dread, and organ farming - in a seemingly idyllic England of the late 1970s and then into the 1980s. Seemingly , of course, is the operative word. As children living at the cloistered Hailsham School (there are juvenile doppelgängers in the roles later assumed by the three stars)