"Everything Must Go"

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"Everything Must Go" - Will Ferrell has deviated from his comic persona from time to time, giving more dramatic performances in movies such as ``Stranger Than Fiction.'' But no film has asked him to delve into the kinds of deep, dark places required of him here, and he more than rises to the challenge. Ferrell's stripped-down presence is a thing of elegant melancholy even when his character is at his ugliest and worst. He never seems to judge the man he's playing, Nick Halsey, who thinks he's hit bottom but then finds he can continue falling. He just becomes this person in small, quiet ways. And in the hands of first-time writer-director Dan Rush, based on a Raymond Carver short story, ``Everything Must Go'' is a small, quiet movie. It may feel a bit too languid at times, but the pacing also allows time for us to ruminate alongside Nick, to take it all in for better and for worse. When we first meet Nick, he's being fired from his job as a longtime salesman. When he arrives at his suburban Phoenix home, he finds his wife has left him, changed the locks and alarm codes, and scattered his belongings on the front lawn. Rather than panic, he proceeds to live in his yard and drink beer all day. Rebecca Hall and Christopher Jordan Wallace are lovely in different ways as the neighbors who help him slowly emerge from his fog. R for language and some sexual content. 96 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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