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CINEMA

DEFENDING YOUR LIFE Directed and Written by Albert Brooks

Albert Brooks seems to be a very rational fellow. His screen character is typically a man who listens attentively to other people, does not demand too much of them (or of life) and is always amenable to compromise should a conflict arise.

No wonder a faint air of depression surrounds his movies. Reasonable behavior is not a quality likely to get you very far at this late date in this unreasonable century. Or, as he demonstrates in his soft-spoken but boldly imagined new comedy, Defending Your Life, very far in the afterlife.

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Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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