Helen FitzGerald Movies

Four women reflect on their lowly place in the corporate caste system in this dryly satiric comedy. Iris (Toni Collette) is a college graduate who hasn't decided what she wants to do with her life, except that she doesn't want the job her father has lined up for her at a frozen food company. While pretending to look for other work, she signs on with a temp agency, which sends her out to do office work for Global Credit, a particularly faceless corporation where the permanent employees go out of their way to avoid the temps. Iris is very much aware that she's at the bottom rung at Global, and she bonds with three other women in the temp pool. Paula (Lisa Kudrow) talks about her career as an actress and insists that she will only temp until one of her auditions pans out. Jane (Alanna Ubach) prattles on about her wealthy fiancé, although her friends are convinced that he's cheating on her. And Margaret (Parker Posey) is at once the rebel of the group, regarding her job and general office procedure with a barely disguised contempt, and the one who most desperately wants a "real" job with Global. When office supplies and various personal items start to disappear, all signs point to one of the temp workers (most likely Margaret), though none will own up to any wrongdoing. Clockwatchers was the directorial debut for filmmaker Jill Sprecher, who co-wrote the screenplay with her sister Karen Sprecher. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane team up for this bad boy comic burlesque, directed by Jonathan Lynn. Idle and Coltrane play Brian Hope and Charlie McManus, a pair of two-bit hoods who want to go straight, repulsed by the increasing reliance on guns and violence in their line of work. In thrall to vicious gangster Case Casey (Robert Patterson), the duo determine that their next job will be their last. When a large amount of money is extracted from a gang of Hong Kong drug dealers and it falls into the laps of Brian and Charlie, the two take off with the loot, with the Chinese Triad and Casey in relentless pursuit. When their car runs out of gas in front of a convent, Brian and Charlie run inside and disguise themselves as two of the ugliest nuns imaginable. Inside the convent, Brian and Charlie pass themselves off as nuns from a different order, assigned to the convent before leaving the country on missionary work. As the two men enjoy their undercover work with a collection of nubile nuns and coeds, the bad guys close in on their trail. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi