Photo: Slobodan Pikula/Summit Entertainment
The Guys Have It
Of course you love the actual men in your life: the husband, the boyfriend, Mr. UPS. But you'll be thrilled to learn that some generally less accessible fellows have quality time to offer you this season. You'll get two hours or so. Alone in the dark. All you need is a movie ticket. Enjoy.
What Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo (above) have in common is a droll charm that barely conceals a reservoir of sadness; playing con-men siblings who enmesh dizzy heiress Rachel Weisz in one last job, the actors bring melancholy depth to the light-fingered caper comedy The Brothers Bloom.
Photo: Macall Polay/2929 Entertainment/Dimension Films
Viggo Mortensen in The Road
We know Viggo Mortensen best as the noble dreamboat Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, but he brought a fascinating moral ambiguity to his split-selved roles in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Those shades of gray also color the film adaptation of Oprah's Book Club pick The Road, in which he plays the devoted father who stops at nothing to protect his son from a savage postapocalyptic world.
Photo: James Fisher/Twentieth Century Fox Films Corporation
Hugh Jackman in Australia
Having played Wolverine in the X-Men movies and the elegant magician in The Prestige, Hugh Jackman adds "frontier cowboy" to his résumé in the World War II–era epic Australia, where he portrays the cattle driver who romances English rose Nicole Kidman (reunited with her splashy Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann).
Photo: Karen Ballard/United Artists Corp/Columbia Pictures
Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace
In the 22nd installment of the 007 saga, James Bond returns bruised and hardened by the tragic finale of 2006's Casino Royale to square off against a new archvillain (Mathieu Amalric of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). We have two questions: What's a Quantum of Solace? And does it involve Daniel Craig in swim trunks?
— By Jessica Winter
