Friday movie roundup: 'The Heat' .. | The Salt Lake Tribune

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It's a weekend for comedies – one of them intentional.

"The Heat" is a profanely funny rejiggering of the buddy-cop formula, with two female law officers – an uptight FBI agent (Sandra Bullock) and a foul-tempered Boston police detective (Melissa McCarthy) – forced to work together to find a murderous drug kingpin. Director Paul Feig ("Bridesmaids") gets maximum laughs out of his hilariously mismatched stars.

The Cricket didn't see "White House Down" (because the movie screened while he was covering the Utah Arts Festival), but his colleague Scott D. Pierce reports that the story of a D.C. cop (Channing Tatum) saving the president (Jamie Foxx) is ridiculously over the top – and not in a good way.

Only one art-house entry this week: "Dirty Wars," an atmospheric documentary that follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill as he looks into deadly U.S. drone strikes in the Middle East. Scahill's discoveries are disquieting, but director Richard Rowley's moody cinematography sometimes gets in the way of his own story.

Friday movie roundup: 'The Heat' on a hot weekend