a) Knowing
This may not be quite as infamous as his Wicker Man, but this will go down as a key film for Nic Cage's growing library of insanity. Not only does the big third act revelation kind of negate all the tension that had been built up by the rest of the film, but his character even pretty much points that out, and this is maybe a half hour before the end, the remainder of which contains no surprises or twists except in just how bizarre and over-the-top the final scene is. People spent years developing this and 50 million dollars making it, and apparently never thought twice about that. That is amazing to me.

b) I Love You, Man
I've written before about how I think Jason Segel has carved out an interesting, unique niche of lovelorn by lovable dorks, and I think this movie is probably the first time he's broken that streak with a straight up asshole character, which the movie tried unsuccessfully to make seem kind of whimsically eccentric. All in all not a terribly funny movie but in some ways more resonant than most flicks like this because I kinda do identify with the Paul Rudd character, even if the extreme version of his problem and the ways he dealt with it inevitably got pretty stupid and unrealistic.

c) War, Inc.
I wasn't really sure what to expect from this but it wasn't quite such a broad goofy satire. And even though I like Cusack and he was decent in this, I feel like he wasn't quite the right star for something this over the top, even though in many ways it was like a rehash of Grosse Point Blank (right down to the character dynamics between him, Joan Cusack and Dan Aykroyd), including a similarly climactic scene of the love interest catching him killing a guy.

d) "Slings & Arrows," Season 1
I would say Mark McKinney is my favorite Kid In The Hall, but he's definitely the one I've always thought had the most potential to actually thrive in a dramatic or less overtly comic context. I thought maybe "Studio 60" would be his opportunity for that, but it wasn't. Turns out he co-starred in and wrote for a pretty good Canadian series a few years back, though. I liked the twist of the pilot and it's interesting to see what direction they're taking it in, although some of the cheesy crazy-person-keeps-seeing-dead-friend stuff is kind of annoying and I hope they tone it down and just let the humor be more character-driven.

e) "The Dana Carvey Show"
Since I actually watched this show when it was originally on the air, and it was extremely short-lived and never rerun anywhere, it was fun to compare rewatching it with my memories of seeing those episodes once 13 years ago. Even though Carvey's really a pretty hit-and-miss talent and there were a lot of reasons making him the star of a sketch show instead of just an SNL cog in the machine was problematic, this was still pretty funny and had some great Carrell/Colbert/Smigel stuff. I've been quoting the the "Germans saying nice things" sketch for almost half my life now.

f) Mr. Mom
Since I watched She's Having A Baby recently, I thought I'd go to the other John Hughes movie that most resembles the vision of parenthood that's been flashing before my eyes recently. There's things about this that are pretty cheeseball '80s comedy, but also a few great parts and really Michael Keaton was the man back then.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 at 10:33 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.