By Gregg Shapiro

Contributing writer

In theaters:

“Margot at the Wedding” (Paramount Vantage)—The bleakest of black comedies, Noah Bumbach’s “Margot at the Wedding” is reminiscent of Woody Allen family dramas such as “Interiors” and “September,” especially in the way families and relationships are depicted in the dimmest and most unflattering light.

Estranged sisters Margot (Nicole Kidman) and Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) attempt to patch up their tattered relationship when the titular character arrives at the family home inhabited by Pauline and her fiancée Malcolm (a somewhat restrained Jack Black) just days before the big event. With son Claude (Zane Pais) in tow, Margot arrives via Amtrak, ferry and Volvo at the homestead Pauline also shares with Ingrid (Flora Cross), her daughter from a previous marriage. And before you can say awkward-and-tense-reunion-fraught-with-high-drama, the sisters are caught up in a whirlwind of emotion, laughing hysterically one minute and swiping at each other the next.

As you might have guessed, with her name in the title, Margot is the focus and the source of most irritations and irregularities. Whether she’s making book on the possible autism of the son of her gay friends Toby (Seth Barrish) and Alan (Matthew Arkin), being a poor sport at croquet, confronting and spying on the bizarre neighbors, pulling away from husband Jim (John Turturro), carrying on an affair with writer Dick (Ciarán Hinds), offending Malcolm, repeatedly disappointing Pauline or alternately praising and then tearing down vulnerable teenaged son Claude, Margot is the kind of person for whom hurricanes are named. Unable to consistently maintain any healthy relationships, whether they be mother and son, husband and wife, or sisterly, Margot, who has no qualms about writing about others’ most personal issues in her short stories in Harpers and The New Yorker, eventually gets her comeuppance in the most shocking and brutal of ways, leading her to discover a most unexpected side to herself. If you don’t mind spending 90 minutes with some seriously unlikable people, with an occasionally well-earned chuckle thrown in to break up the downhill slide, then consider yourself invited to this wedding.

“The Savages” (Fox Searchlight)—Wendy (Laura Linney) is a struggling New York playwright involved with Larry (Peter Friedman), a married man. Wendy’s brother Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a college professor in Buffalo. Their father, Lenny (Philip Bosco), lives in Sun City, Arizona, with his girlfriend Doris (Rosemary Murphy) in her house.

After Doris dies while having a manicure, her daughter Nancy (Debra Monk) informs Wendy and Jon, who have come to town for the funeral, that Lenny is going to have to find another place to live, as Doris’ house is going to be put up for sale. What starts out as a dark comedy soon descends into a relentlessly depressing story about what is becoming a common issue facing the children of elderly and infirm parents—how to plan a life for the people who gave you life. From hospitals to nursing homes and back again, “The Savages” presents a dreary, if honest and dramatic, portrait of a dilemma facing many people throughout our society. Be prepared, “The Savages” is not the comedy that it is marketed as being. It is instead a very dark and terribly sad story of the toll taken on many families in similar situations.

Limited runs:

Alfred Hitchcock’s homoerotically charged 1948 film “Rope,” starring gay actor Farley Granger, is screened at 8 p.m. Nov. 28 in the Block Cinema in the Pick-Laudati Auditorium at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, on Northwestern’s Evanston campus.

Block Cinema in the Pick-Laudati Auditorium at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, on Northwestern’s Evanston campus presents a screening of “Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock’s slightly campy 1958 identity thriller starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, at 8 p.m. on Nov. 29.

Cinema Lesbiana, the women's film screening group, meets Nov. 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Gerber/Hart Library, 1127 W. Granville. Call (773) 381-8030.

“The Man Who Knew Too Much,” starring Doris Day and featuring her rendition of “Que Sera Sera,” is shown at the Block Cinema in the Pick-Laudati Auditorium at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, on Northwestern’s Evanston campus, at 8 p.m. Nov. 30.

The Chicago premiere of Martin (“Bonhoffer”) Doblmeier’s “The Power Of Forgiveness,” described as a “powerful examination of faith and conscience, is screened Nov. 30-Dec.  6 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State.

The Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, presents Sing-Along “Xanadu” Dec. 1 at midnight. Call (773) 871-6604.