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A good drama can take a trivial discrepancy and let it organically explode like a grenade of resentments.

A couple in an atrophied marriage host an impromptu dinner for neighbors resulting in hysterical authenticity.

Sometimes a marriage has to get worse before it gets better, before it gets reborn.

When I go to the movies, the first things that I notice are the pacing, the movement of the plot, and the plot twists. Happily, I was not disappointed by Olivia Wilde's film "The Invite" and its masterful screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones based on the Spanish film "The People Upstairs" by Cesc Gay.

I lived in France for many years and fell in love with the contained dramas of Yasmina Reza, who often takes a somewhat trivial discrepancy and lets it organically explode like a grenade of authenticity, spewing hitherto unspoken resentments in all directions. In "Art," a friend's mild objection to a buddy's art purchase functions like a petri dish that releases into the ether decades of envy, aesthetic condescension, and status anxiety. "God of Carnage" runs a similar experiment at a higher temperature: a playground scuffle between two boys, sprinkled by an afternoon of rum, acts like a Bunsen burner slowly distilling the seething anger within two........

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