Party Like It's 1982

If it's playing in the city where you are, you should go see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a documentary about the world champion of Donkey Kong. That's a fellow named Steve Wiebe, who (unsurprisingly) beat the record after losing his job and moving an arcade console into his garage and (rather surprisingly) ran up into a difficult controversy cooked up by the defending champion, who holds significant power in the arcade-championship officiating circle.

The movie keeps a respectful distance from the severe nerds whose lives it chronicles -- it has a lot in common with the tone of the film Trekkies, another really fun one to watch -- and there's a pleasantly surprising amount of emotional resonance in the story too. Wiebe's wife and two kids seem to deal with their somewhat tragic situation with a combination of bafflement, support, and occasional desperation. (The most poignant scene has Wiebe's young daughter asking her dad why the Guinness Book of Records is so important, and noting innocently after his reply that "yeah, but a lot of people seem to ruin their lives getting in there.")

The plot, when it gets going, is almost too good to be true; it feels like something that might have been cooked up for a Will Ferrell movie. The ultimate high score potential of Donkey Kong, meanwhile, turns out to be clearing 255 levels with a maximum of a bit over 1,000,000 points.

I also strongly recommend Superbad, which supplies a bunch of laughs and, more importantly, gets Michael Cera a role almost identical to the one he played as George Michael in Arrested Development.