Burn, baby, burn

When Joel and Ethan Coen decide to try to make us laugh, it can turn out like Intolerable Cruelty, a screwball comedy the 1950s coughed up and want back, or it can grow into a cult phenomenon like The Big Lebowski. Dude! Pulling a 180-degree turn from last year’s Oscar champ No Country for Old Men, the Coens offer us Burn After Reading, a dark spy comedy starring Brad Pitt as an aging, gym rat pretty boy who stumbles upon a disc of CIA secrets in the women’s locker room. Pitt and a plastic surgery-addicted Frances McDormand decide to make a quick buck off their find and are willing to sell it to the highest bidder if John Malkovich’s CIA agent doesn’t pony up some cash. This is Pitt like we’ve never seen him, a clueless, suburbanite version of his 12 Monkeys whacko. George Clooney, J.K. Simmons, and Tilda Swinton co-star. Burn After Reading debuts in theaters Sept. 12. Rated R.

ALSO IN SEPTEMBER: (9/5) Nicolas Cage in Bangkok Dangerous. Uma Thurman in The Accidental Husband. (9/12) Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Righteous Kill. Meg Ryan and Eva Mendes in The Women. (9/19) Kate Hudson and Dane Cook in My Best Friend’s Girl. Liam Neeson and Famke Janssen in Taken. (9/26) Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna. Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan in Eagle Eye.