Chris O'Dowd Movies

Director Paul Feig and producer Judd Apatow team up again for this comedy that stars Kristen Wiig as Annie, a romantically unattached failed bakery owner who fears she's losing her BFF, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), the best thing in her life, when Lillian announces she's gotten engaged. Annie's anxieties deepen as Lillian grows close to Helen (Rose Byrne), a wealthy and beautiful new friend who quickly assumes control of planning all the pre-wedding festivities. On top of the main storyline of a female friendship being torn apart, the movie adds a romantic storyline for Annie, who starts the film answering a booty call from the casually cruel yet undeniably handsome Ted (Jon Hamm), but develops a lovely flirtation with an Irish cop named Rhodes (Chris O'Dowd) after he pulls Annie over one night thinking she's driving drunk. As the low-self-esteem Annie sabotages this new possibility for love, she also feels the most important friendship in her life slipping away. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Jack Black stars in the 20th Century Fox adaptation of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels with this fantasy-filled comedic production. This take on the timeless tale revolves around a shipwrecked mailroom clerk (Black) who discovers an island in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle where he is the biggest occupant in comparison to its tiny inhabitants. Shark Tale's Rob Letterman directs from a script by Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Nick Stoller and Joe Stillman (Shrek). ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

In mid- to late-'60s Britain, an unusual yet colorful subculture sprang up and thrived as a product of the upswing in British pop music, only to meet its doom within a few short years. Though the BBC functioned as the country's main source of news and music, its programmers offered very little airtime to rock & roll -- which left an overwhelming need unfulfilled. In response, small bands of "pirate" radio enthusiasts set up broadcasting towers on boats just outside of English boundary waters, and transmitted signals to an estimated 25 million listeners, 24 hours a day and seven days per week. Unsurprisingly, the DJs who took charge of these broadcasts could rival just about anyone in terms of flamboyance and outsized personalities. With Pirate Radio (released as The Boat That Rocked in the U.K.), writer-director Richard Curtis (Love Actually) travels back to the Swinging Sixties and takes a headfirst plunge into this colorful realm.

The story opens in 1966, aboard a rusty fishing trawler christened Radio Rock and equipped with pirate broadcasting equipment. Here, the slightly daft elitist Quentin (Bill Nighy) presides over a motley crew of joint-toking, sex-hungry disc jockeys including Dave (Nick Frost), a heavyset boob who nevertheless considers himself a hot property with women and loves to chase skirts; "The Count" (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an American DJ who aspires to be the first person to drop an F-bomb over the British airwaves; the gloom-laden Irishman Simon (Chris O'Dowd); bonked-out hipster Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke); womanizer Mark (Tom Wisdom); Angus (Rhys Darby), a New Zealander whom nobody likes; and the only female member of the group, lesbian cook Felicity (Katherine Parkinson). These misfits pull off quite a show -- enough of one that they attain the status of national idols for the youth culture -- but the super-conservative government minister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh) detests the whole business and will do almost anything in his power to shut them down. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

The debut feature from director Sonja Heiss, Hotel Very Welcome tells a story different characters spread over two different continents who experience unusual adventures in Asia. The characters include Svenja (Svenja Steinfelder), who ends up stuck in Bangkok after travel plans fall through. Soon Svenja strikes up a friendship with an inept travel agent. Adam (Gareth Llewelyn) and Josh (Ricky Champ) are also in Thailand attempting to live a life full of women and alcohol, but money problems lead to some ruptures between the friends. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Take a trip backstage at the renowned Edinburgh Festival to explore the curious egos of three emerging talents in the feature debut from director Annie Griffin. A stage-trained theater purist eager to share her talent and enthusiasm with the outside world, Faith (Lyndsey Marshall) has been honing her one-woman show about Dorothy Wordsworth to perfection. Laid-back Irish comic Tommy O'Dwyer (Chris O'Dowd) is not so purely driven. A veteran of the club circuit desperate to break big, Tommy takes to seduction as a means of securing a vote. Though the presence of established television comic Sean Sullivan (Stephen Mangan) at the festival indeed shakes the confidence of his less famous competitors, the resentment he shows to those who haven't yet become a household name leads to a bitter cycle of resentment that could quickly sink his reputation among his peers. It's not all about the laughs at Edinburgh though, and as Faith, Tommy, and Sean play cut-throat on the comedy scene an experimental Canadian theater troupe prepares an elaborate act that's sure to stun the crowd. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi