Dexter Filkins takes a look at George Packer’s play Betrayed: “Mr. Packer doesn’t spare the American government, but it’s not really the focus of ‘Betrayed.’ The light, instead, is on the Iraqis: their dreams, their strivings, the collapse of their faith. It was the struggles of the Iraqis that stayed with Mr. Packer after the journalism was done, and what prompted him to bring ‘Betrayed’ to the stage.”

Also in the Times, natch, A.O. Scott muses about the state of romantic comedies, but, unlike David Denby in his July 23rd essay on the subject, finds the typical modern leading man “the kind of nice guy — the Ralph Bellamy type — whom these earlier heroines would have triumphed by rejecting.” Seth Rogen, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Owen Wilson, Adam Sandler, Keanu Reeves, Vince Vaughn, Matthew McConaughey as Ralph Bellamy? We wish.