DVD Review: Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms’ leading-man debut is a funnier movie than The Hangover Part 2. It’s smarter, too.

Dying is easy and comedy is hard, as the famous adage goes, and by extension of that same logic it’s virtually impossible to get dark comedy right. The wreckage of failed attempts includes the best and the brightest artists of every comedy era, and not a few dramatic creators as well. Dark comedy – black comedy, gallows humor, cringe humor – carries its own additional pitfalls besides the usual minefield of problems awaiting its gentler cousin. And when dark comedy fails, too often the results land with a resounding thud, victims of creative overreach or slipshod understandings of tone.

Cedar Rapids, the often pitch-dark new effort from indie mainstay Miguel Arteta, walks its dark comedy tightrope constantly in danger of falling one way or the other. Though ultimately it succeeds, the suspense of waiting for it to collapse under its own ambitious weight suffuses virtually every scene. You almost come to care about the movie itself as much as its conventional story or oddball characters, wondering when at any second its whole artifice will come crashing down. It never does, thanks largely to its cast.

A star is brown: Helms

Small-town man-child Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent by his boss (Stephen Root) at Brownstar Insurance to a regional convention after the agency’s alpha dog (Tom Lennon) dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Lippe isn’t ready for the responsibility, let alone the pressure of bringing home the convention’s “Two Diamond” award that the agency has secured several years in a row. But he goes anyway, propelled by his boss’ bullying. His wide-eyed, gawky enthusiasm, mixed with rustic suspicion for the dangers and promises of the titular “big city,” provide some of the film’s most unguarded moments.

The convention’s hotel (as uniformly cheerless, and cheerlessly uniform, as any of a million such places in America) and the people Lippe encounters there of course compel him to grow up emotionally and sexually. In particular, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of hard-partying, foul-mouthed policy “poacher” Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), comparatively straight-laced Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and the sultry, melancholy Joan (Anne Heche.) The quartet goof their way through the three-day conference while Tim readies his presentation to convention patriarch Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith). Moral fortitude and honesty count for a lot in winning the “prestigious” Two Diamond trophy, and in assenting to his new friends’ temptations – including a fling with Joan – Lippe risks costing his company the award.

Artete works well within the small confines of the hotel, showing the confines of each blandly friendly space and how, especially given the inhospitable winter outside, even such slim diversions as hotel bar margaritas and overheated pools can offer a welcome distraction. It helps a lot that Phil Johnston’s script does right by its main character, shrewdly demonstrating Lippe’s fish out of water ups and downs: his new friends are a welcoming, non-judgmental bunch, a distant cry from the McJesus snobbery of his home town co-workers and neighbors – the same people, Lippe is decent enough to remember, that depend on him. Of course everything works out in the end, but not before plenty of debauchery and clean, if slightly mean-spirited, fun.

As a comic leading man, Helms’ strengths center on the same aw, shucks likability that’s served him more or less unwaveringly since his tenure on The Daily Show. Lippe is similar to The Office‘s Andy Bernard, more naive but less obtuse, with a greater vulnerability as a result. It’s tempting to thumbnail Lippe as Bernard freed of The Office‘s self-conscious repetition of character and story beats, but there’s more – a little more – to him than that. Helms makes him sympathetic but stops short of making him pitiable or charismatic.

He’s backed by, well, a dream supporting cast for this type of project. Reilly is a leading man trapped in the body of a character actor, and every one of his scenes tends to upset the tenuous balance Artete strikes between Lippe and his surroundings. In fact for much of the film’s first hour, the energy level rises palpably whenever Reilly’s motor- and foul-mouthed party animal comes onscreen. Comedies often rise or fall on the quotability of their dialogue; Reilly has most of the lines you’ll want to repeat to your friends.

The surprise performance, however, belongs to Heche as the otherwise content soccer mom who uses insurance conventions as a vacation from the staid security of her normal life. Heche is sexy, sad, and smart all at the same time, without resorting to vamping or overheated line readings to achieve said results. Her confession to Lippe about the normalcy of her life and the release of Cedar Rapids carries some of the film’s best writing, and her well-modulated delivery of the scene works as an oasis to the dark shenanigans displayed almost everywhere else. Heche’s career was swallowed years ago by the media’s provincial fascination with her sexuality; this performance earns her a shot at a larger comeback vehicle.

Making the most of smaller roles, Whitlock makes a charming straight man for the others, especially in a late scene in which he gets to spoof his role on The Wire. The prolific Root is hilarious as Lippe’s boss, and Smith brings the same imperial menace to Helgesson that he brought to all those years as That 70s Show‘s Red Foreman. Arrested Development fans may find themselves a little shocked to see Alia Shawkat, Maeby Funke herself, playing the hotel’s prostitute; the role allows her to say filthy things and look sultry, which for a career transition vehicle is possibly as good as it gets right now.

Cedar Rapids shouldn’t be confused for a great film, but it achieves its difficult ambitions while remaining entertaining, and it has the rare gift of growing in your memory after you leave the theatre. If its raunchy gags and sometimes awkward staging keep it from really developing into something approaching a classic modern dark comedy – Rushmore, to make a contemporary example, or Ruthless People - it’s trying for something riskier than the pot and potty humor that dominates too many modern “comedies” (Not least of which, obviously, The Hangover Part II.) It’s also, admittedly, refreshing to encounter a comedy that doesn’t bear Judd Apatow’s factory-pressed mixture of bittersweet nostalgia and stunted male growth.

Dying is easy, dark comedy is hardest, and ultimately Cedar Rapids is a damned funny movie with a cast full of people who should appear more than they do. Given a small release in the theatres last winter, it’s unmissable home video entertainment.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms strikes off on his own, into darker territory than you might expect.

Dying is easy and comedy is hard, as the famous adage goes, and by extension of that same logic it’s virtually impossible to get dark comedy right. The wreckage of failed attempts includes the best and the brightest artists of every comedy era, and not a few dramatic creators as well. Dark comedy – black comedy, gallows humor, cringe humor – carries its own additional pitfalls besides the usual minefield of problems awaiting its gentler cousin. And when dark comedy fails, too often the results land with a resounding thud, victims of creative overreach or slipshod understandings of tone.

Cedar Rapids, the at-times pitch-dark new effort from indie mainstay Miguel Arteta, walks its dark comedy tightrope constantly in danger of falling one way or the other. Though ultimately it succeeds, the suspense of waiting for it to collapse under its own ambitious weight suffuses almost every scene. You almost come to care about the movie itself as much as its conventional story or oddball characters, wondering when at any second its whole artifice will come crashing down. It never does, thanks largely to its cast.

A star is brown: Helms

Small-town man-child Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent by his boss (Stephen Root) at Brownstar Insurance to a regional convention after the agency’s alpha dog (Tom Lennon) dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Lippe isn’t ready for the responsibility, let alone the pressure of bringing home the convention’s “Two Diamond” award that the agency has secured several years in a row. But he goes anyway, propelled by his boss’ bullying. His wide-eyed, gawky enthusiasm, mixed with rustic suspicion, for the dangers and promises of the titular “big city” provide some of the film’s most unguarded moments.

The convention’s hotel (as uniformly cheerless, and cheerlessly uniform, as any of a million such places in America) and the people Lippe encounters there of course compel him to grow up emotionally and sexually. In particular, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of  hard-partying, foul-mouthed policy “poacher” Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), comparatively straight-laced Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and the sultry, melancholy Joan (Anne Heche.) The quartet goof their way through the three-day conference while Tim readies his presentation to convention patriarch Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith). Moral fortitude and honesty count for a lot in winning the “prestigious” Two Diamond trophy, and in assenting to the group’s temptations – including a fling with Joan – Lippe risks costing his company the award.

Artete works well within the small confines of the hotel, showing the confines of each blandly friendly space and how, especially given the inhospitable winter outside, even such slim diversions as hotel bar margaritas and overheated pools can offer a welcome distraction. It helps a lot that Phil Johnston’s script does right by its main character, shrewdly demonstrating Lippe’s fish out of water ups and downs: his new friends are a welcoming, non-judgmental bunch, a distant cry from the McJesus snobbery of his home town co-workers and neighbors – the same people, Lippe is decent enough to remember, that depend on him. Of course everything works out in the end, but not before plenty of debauchery and clean, if slightly mean-spirited, fun.

As a comic leading man, Helms’ strengths center on the same aw, shucks likability that’s served him more or less unwaveringly since his tenure on The Daily Show.  Lippe is similar to The Office‘s Andy Bernard, more naive but less obtuse, with a greater vulnerability as a result. It’s tempting to thumbnail Lippe as Bernard freed of The Office‘s self-conscious repetition of character and story beats, but there’s more – a little more – to him than that. Helms makes him sympathetic but stops short of making him pitiable or charismatic.

He’s backed by, well, a dream supporting cast for this type of project. Reilly is a leading man trapped in the body of a character actor, and every one of his scenes tends to upset the tenuous balance Artete strikes between Lippe and his surroundings. In fact for much of the film’s first hour, the energy level rises palpably whenever Reilly’s motor- and foul-mouthed party animal comes onscreen. Comedies often rise or fall on the quotability of their dialogue; Reilly has most of the lines you’ll want to repeat to your friends.

The surprise performance, however, belongs to Heche as the otherwise happy soccer mom who uses insurance conventions as a vacation from the staid security of her normal life. Heche is sexy, sad, and smart all at the same time, without resorting to vamping or overheated line readings to achieve said results. Her confession to Lippe about the normalcy of her life and the release of Cedar Rapids carries some of the film’s best writing, and her well-modulated delivery of the scene works as an oasis to the dark shenanigans displayed almost everywhere else. Heche’s career was swallowed years ago by the media’s provincial fascination with her sexuality; this performance earns her a shot at a larger comeback vehicle.

Making the most of smaller roles, Whitlock makes a charming straight man for the others, especially in a late scene in which he gets to spoof his role on The Wire. The prolific Root is hilarious as Lippe’s boss, and Kurtwood Smith brings the same imperial menace to Helgesson that he brought to all those years as That 70s Show‘s Red Foreman. Arrested Development fans may find themselves a little shocked to see Alia Shawkat, Maeby Funke herself, playing the hotel’s prostitute; the role allows her to say filthy things and look sultry, which for a career transition vehicle is possibly as good as it gets right now.

Cedar Rapids shouldn’t be confused for a great film, but it achieves its difficult ambitions while remaining entertaining, and it has the rare gift of growing in your memory after you leave the theatre. If its raunchy gags and sometimes awkward staging keep it from really developing into something approaching a classic modern dark comedy – Rushmore, to make a contemporary example, or Ruthless People – it’s trying for something riskier than the pot and potty humor that dominates too many modern “comedies.” It’s also, admittedly, refreshing to encounter a comedy that doesn’t bear Judd Apatow’s factory-pressed mixture of bittersweet nostalgia and stunted male growth.

Dying is easy, dark comedy is hardest, and ultimately Cedar Rapids is a damned funny movie with a cast full of people who should appear more than they do.  See it  in the theatre if you can, but don’t miss it on home video.

- Michael Kabel

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Sour Christmas, Part One

Not feeling the holiday spirit? Here’s the first of a dozen movies and TV shows to help you avoid the season.

Spend the holidays with friends.

Bah, humbug. With Christmas finally arriving this weekend, some of us aren’t feeling the holiday spirit, despite all the efforts of the media and our economy to get us in line. Still, the cold weather and ready supply of DVD’s and Blu-Rays, combined with some long, bleak days off from work, make the next week or so a perfect time to catch up on some movie watching.

This week we’ll profile ten great movies and two superb television series, none of which have a damn thing to do with Christmas, New Year’s, or any of the other reasons to “celebrate.” As always, they’re ranked in no order or importance or quality. Where possible we’ve included trailers or other video clips that were available on YouTube when we looked for them.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) – Say what you will about his later films, Guy Ritchie’s debut feature about bratty gangster wannabes hustling the London underworld remains an irresistible whirlwind of style, violence, and swaggering retro cool. The shaggy plot, about a crooked poker game, two vintage musket rifles and a strain of greenhouse grown super-pot, is almost incidental to the brazen energy and gritty atmosphere. The film’s ugly, smart, witty, and honest – all the things Christmas ain’t.

The great cast of (then-) up and coming actors includes Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Nick Moran and Vinnie Jones, but it’s Lenny McLean who frequently steals the show as mob enforcer Barry the Baptist.

The New World (2005) – Terrence Malick’s fourth feature follows the romance between 17th Century lovers John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) as the Virginia colony of Jamestown gets off to a shaky start. Sent on a reconnaissance mission by colony chief Christopher Newport (Christopher Plummer) to look for trade partners among the area’s “naturals,” Smith is capture by a local tribe and sentenced to death until the chief’s daughter saves him. The two fall in deep – if star-crossed – love.  

Malick uses the setting and time to explore some of his favorite themes – the moral capacities of the human spirit, mankind’s relation and place within nature, individual will against tightening social norms – and creates a tighter story than 1998′s more expansive (and less cohesive) The Thin Red Line. Farrell is somewhat miscast as the fundamentally restless Smith, but Kilcher, Plummer, and Christian Bale are all just about flawless.

Magnolia (1999) – Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling, overreaching saga about interconnected Los Angeles lives at the end of the millennium remains amazing a decade later if only for its sheer audacity and scope. Long, complicated, and at times self-indulgent (the film concludes with a biblical “plague”), Anderson nevertheless keeps things moving by keeping small-scale but taut suspense brewing for all his many characters; some storylines resolve tidily and some don’t, but you have to think a while to determine which ones do which.

The ace cast – the names of which read like a Who’s Who of late-90s talent – keep the events from getting too cumbersome or letting Anderson’s reach exceed his grasp (as it has in both of his films since.) All of that and a career-best performance by Tom Cruise, too.

Ruthless People (1986) – For those who want a snarky holiday, this pitch-dark comedy from the creators of Airplane! showcases both Danny DeVito and Bette Midler’s scene-chewing gusto while still remaining a clever comic thriller.

Fashion marketer Sam Stone (DeVito) plans to murder his wife Barbara (Midler) until she’s kidnapped by a hapless couple (Judge Rheinhold and Helen Slater) that Stone cheated out of millions. But Barbara’s an impossible hostage, and Stone’s attempts to negotiate the ransom demands – the better to provoke the kidnappers into killing her – cause a storm of comic mishaps. Ugly, misanthropic, and shrill but quotably funny, it’s the right movie for the day after Christmas.

Night and the City (1950) American grifter Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) moves through the post-war London underworld scheming to get out from beneath his employer’s (Francis L. Sullivan) iron grip. Pulled into his tragic plans are his kind girlfriend (Gene Tierney), an ageing champion wrestler (Stanislaus Zbyszko) and his employer’s wife (Googie Withers).

Noir auteur Jules Dassin (Brute Force) adapts Gerald Kersh’s novel by making London’s underbelly both the film’s antagonist and its explanation for the desperation of its inhabitants. Widmark is criminally underrated as a leading man, and he’s at his best here. The downbeat ending remains as haunting as any story put to film.

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (2006) – dismissed as an epic white elephant by critics and media virtually upon its debut, Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to The West Wing easily holds its own against contemporary Emmy-bait fare like Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

When the veteran showrunner (Judd Hirsch) of a Saturday Night Live-like variety show has an on-air meltdown, a newly hired network executive (Amanda Peet) replaces him with the writer-director team (Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford) fired from the show’s staff several years before. Complicating the teams’ return are the writer’s pious, gorgeous ex-lover (Sarah Paulson) and the wrath of the network chief (Steven Weber) who canned them.

NBC cancelled the big-budget affair after 22 episodes, though lately the DVD box set has reached clearance sale prices. The first half-dozen episodes especially are simply unmissable, as this clip from the pilot illustrates.

We’ll be back later this week with five more films and another late, lamented television series that was long before its time. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Our June 2010 Movie Guide

Some of the biggest releases of the year’s biggest movie month, and our over/under analysis about them. 

The month of June, maybe more than any other, represents excitement for the future. It’s the first month of summer vacation, the first true month of the summer season, and the favorite time to get married. It’s also, of course, the biggest month of the movie year, in which the studios roll out some of their biggest releases, the better to take advantage of the seasonal movie crowd. Actually going to the movies in the summertime is as much of an American tradition as habit; we look forward to going to the movies in June because that’s when the biggest movies come out. 

June 2010 promises some truly big films, even though each comes with its own problems and reasons for skepticism. The following seven are a random sampling, not meant to show the entirety of any release schedule so much as what’s already got our attention. 

We say that about some of our ex-girlfriends.

Splice (June 4) – The creepy, slick advertisements for this genetic engineering-gone-wrong thriller show us just enough of the lab-created hybrid creature to get our attention, even if the poster gives its apparance pretty much completely away. More enticing for us is the casting of Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley (our college crush after her surly turn in Go, way back when) as the scientists bringing the monstrously exotic Dren to life. Ramping up the chic horror factor, the film’s directed by Vincenzo Natali, who made a stir sometime back with his low-budget mindfuck Cube, while Guillermo Del Toro serves as executive producer. 

We hope the film will be: exactly what Natali has claimed, an intelligent look at the consequences of a rapidly emerging science. We’re afraid it will be: Vacuous, over-stylized fluff, much like Del Toro’s own Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Watch the embedding-proof trailer on YouTube here. 

Get Him To The Greek (June 4) – A record company intern (Jonah Hill) struggles to get a washed-up, debauched rock star (Russell Brand) from London to Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre in seventy-two hours. Awkward, but hilarious, hijinks presumably ensue. Brand reprises the role he played in 2008′s Forgetting Sarah Marshall; Hill, who also appeared in that film, does not; Nicholas Stoller directed both. 

We hope the film will be: A pleasantly surprising, deft satire of the music industry that’s more about character than vulgar gaggery; a modern-day My Favorite Year, though that seems like a long shot.  We’re afraid it will be:  Shrill mugging from two actors too quick to fall back on familiar shtick. Overall, we’re expecting this summer’s Year One.  Watch the embedding-proof trailer on YouTube here. 

The A-Team (June 11) – An elite group of soldiers looks to clear their name with the U.S. military after getting framed for a crime they didn’t commit. This adaptation of the beloved 80s television series, co-written and directed by budding action auteur Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces), updates the group’s tour of duty from Vietnam to the Iraq War. Liam Neeson plays team leader Hannibal Smith, with Bradley Cooper as Face, Rampage Jackson as B.A. Baracus and Sharlto Copley as Howling Mad Murdock. Jessica Biel and Patrick Wilson co-star. 

We hope the film will be: A throwback to the action films of the TV series’ decade, which relied on elaborate stuntwork and a blistering pace to wow audiences. Its inspiration was big, dumb, well-executed fun; the movie should live up to that unpretentious tradition. We’re afraid it will be: something that doesn’t. 

 

Toy Story 3 (June 18) – When their owner leaves home for college, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the gang are shipped off to a daycare center, where they must survive a whole roomful of rambunctious kids. Pixar mainstay Lee Unkrich returns to direct, with a screenplay by Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine). 

We hope the film will be: Even half as entertaining as the first two installments of the franchise. Still, we’re skeptical. Pixar hit their first true misfire with last year’s Up, and if the trailer below is any indication this time around the emphasis is on sentimentality and slapstick noise over true whimsy and smarts. We’re afraid it will be: an indication that Up‘s mawkishness and mean-spirited violence were only the beginning of a trend for the formerly infallible studio. 

 

That the poster takes pains to hide Hex's scars is a bad sign.

Jonah Hex (June 18) – Wild West drifter and sometime bounty hunter Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is offered a deal that he can’t refuse: in exchange for clemency from the multiple warrants on his head, the U.S. Army wants him to kill the terrorist (John Malkovich) planning to unleash an army of undead upon the Earth. Megan Fox co-stars as Hex’s prostitute love interest and sidekick. Warner Bros has the same sequel hopes that have become standard operating procedure for comic book movies. 

We hope the film will be: At least somewhat faithful to Hex’s DC Comics adventures in the 70s, but we doubt it: the original Hex was a pretty transparent Man With No Name/Outlaw Josie Wales… ahem, “homage” who proudly wore his Confederate Army uniform and killed without hesitation. The zombie aspect to the plot is also pretty disappointing. We’re afraid it will be: Another misbegotten comic-to-screen-adaptation that went off the rails when they changed too much about the subject matter. Judging by the trailer, they changed everything that wasn’t nailed to the ground. 

 

Cyrus (June 25, limited) – A recently divorced man (John C. Reilly) romances a lovely, lonely single mother (Marisa Tomei), only to encounter resistance from her teenaged son. Mumblecore auteurs Jay and Mark Duplass make their (by and large) mainstream crossover, including their trademark frenetic camerawork and reliance on improvised dialogue. Catherine Keener co-stars. 

We hope the film will be: another smart character showcase for Reilly and Tomei, who besides their higher-profile roles have been creating quieter but much more substantial work in smaller pictures for going on two decades. We’re afraid it will be: yet more hipster piffle along the lines of Greenberg.  The trailer alone reminds us of any number of other works, ranging from films including Punch-Drunk Love, Step-Brothers and The 40 Year Old Virgin to at leat one plot thread from probably every family melodrama ever put on television. Still, a film like this is all about performance, and we can see the chemistry between the two stars already. 

 

Knight and Day (June 25) – When a secret agent (Cruise) crosses paths with a hapless civilian (Diaz), he’s forced to drag her into the hunt for a battery that may contain the source of unlimited energy. An international chase ensues, putting them at odds and in alliances with any number of competing groups. 

We hope the film will be: another throwback. These kinds of big-star, big-stunt spectacles used to be the norm for summer movie seasons, back in the 90s heyday of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mel Gibson. Nothing wrong with that; after all, you shouldn’t need a comic book collection to want to go to the movies. 

We’re afraid it will be: an effort by two fading stars to shore up their careers with a proven formula (see also Killers, the Heigl-Kutcher variation on this same theme arriving June 4.) Director James Mangold’s last effort, the Russell Crowe vehicle 3:10 To Yuma, was deplorable largely because of its dependence on threadbare plot tropes. 

We’ll be back later this week. Thank you for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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The Life of Reilly

Chronicling the screen career of the ever-versatile John C. Reilly.

For most people, John C. Reilly broke through as Reed Rothchild, the dim, affable sidekick to Mark Wahlberg’s Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. Yet the versatile character actor, with his bartender’s face and imposing but not especially frightening physique, had by that point been working in mainstream and independent film for close to a decade. Working steadily, at that, flying below the radar in films with flashier performances by Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and many others.

Revisiting those early films today - including State of Grace (1990), Hoffa (1992), and Georgia (1995) – it’s hard to miss Reilly honing his screen presence while going through the motions of playing the second or third supporting role. He was typically the sad sack friend or dim loser in those early films, but managed to give his parts unexpected depth, fleshing them out as distinct personalities that buzzed in the viewer’s mind even as the camera focused on the films’ glamorous stars.

The seven films below don’t make a comprehensive list, but they show some main points on his career timeline. Each is available on DVD.

Casualties of War (1989): America was already at its tipping point with Vietnam remembrance and director Brian DePalma alike when this overcooked wartime rape/murder story hit theatres, obscuring Reilly’s big-screen debut. Penn leads a group of U.S. soldiers, including a lankier Reilly than usual, that kidnap a Vietnamese girl above the objections of their squadmate (Michael J. Fox). Reilly is essentially a speaking extra for much of the film, somewhat lost behind Penn’s hamming and Fox’s earnest attempts to keep up. He’d go unnoticed, a character actor in a character role, largely because the film met with thunderous indifference from audiences.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993): A film that couldn’t be farther from Casualties of War if it tried, Lasse Halstrom’s (The Cider House Rules) light melodrama cast Reilly as Tucker Van Dyke, the blue-collar buddy to titular suffering soul Grape (Depp). Reilly’s charm starts to bubble up through the stock role about halfway through the plot, when Van Dyke’s enthusiasm for the milkshake of a new-in-town fast food franchise – “That’s real milk!” – fills him with giddy hope for the future. A cult favorite, it’s a sweet movie full of well-pitched performances and slice-of-life grace, thanks to a supporting cast that also includes Mary Steenburgen and Crispin Glover.

Sydney/Hard Eight (1996): Reilly’s three films with Anderson began with the writer-director’s Sundance-fueled debut, a grim neo-noir about losers circling one another between drinking and gambling in Las Vegas and Reno. The film turns on Reilly’s performance as a sweet-natured journeyman gambler caught between loyalty to his mentor (Philip Baker Hall) and his love for a tinsel-like cocktail waitress (Gwyneth Paltrow) who’s not quite sure what to make of his sincerity or how to exploit it. All three stars are excellent, as is Samuel L. Jackson as a thug who sees opportunity in the safe haven the trio create for themselves. The ending is a rare Hollywood example of a finale that makes sense. Anderson would get better – and worse – as a director, but his debut let Reilly and the undervalued Hall do some of their finest work. 

Magnolia (1999) Depending on who you ask, Anderson’s third film was either a work of genius by a brilliant talent or the first warning flare that the young auteur doesn’t know his limitations. We say it’s kind of both, but amid a broad collection of career-best performances (including Tom Cruise and William H. Macy) Reilly stands out as a lovesick, lovestruck LAPD patrol officer not quite callous enough for his job. An early collection of moments showing Reilly’s Officer Jim Kurring greeting the day alone (his wife has left him, taking their child) are propelled by tiny gestures that speak volumes, as is a later scene in which he approaches the drug addict that might present a chance at happiness (Melora Walters).

The Perfect Storm (2000): Besides the ambitious Anderson films and a part in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, Reilly also spent the late 90s cashing in on his growing star power, appearing in high-profile but disposable studio fluff like Never Been Kissed and For Love of the Game (both 1999). The two extremes came together, in a sense, with Wolfgang Petersen’s The Perfect Storm, based on the true story of a fishing boat caught in the worst oceanic storm of the 20th Century. Reilly sinks into the role of fisherman Dale Murphy like putting on an old flannel shirt, all windblown squint and cheap cigar ameliorated only by love for his young son. A rivalry subplot with a crewmate (William Fichtner) becomes as interesting as the here-comes-the-storm main plotline (Reilly and Fichtner had recently completed The Settlement, a micro-budget indie about life insurance con men.) until it’s resolved with a too-familiar twist. Still, the film is entertaining while remaining just smart enough to avoid making mature audiences feel like they’re slumming.

Chicago (2002): Rob Marshall’s adaptation of the caustic Bob Fosse Broadway musical has its flaws, oft-debated and often valid as they are: it didn’t deserve the Best Picture Oscar, Richard Gere has a tin ear, Rene Zellweger was miscast, and so on. Yet, despite, and nevertheless, Reilly’s song and dance as Roxie Hart’s (Zellweger) cuckolded, cluess husband Amos showed his formidable music hall chops. The film had the same heart of chrome as the musical, but Reilly’s number is all emotion. That same year he appeared as another scorned spouse, this time opposite Jennifer Aniston, in the pseudo-indie The Good Girl. 

 

The Promotion (2008): After years spent as a foil to Will Ferrell and starring in Judd Apatow’s unfairly ignored Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), Reilly returned to familiar ground with writer director Steve Conrad’s (The Weather Man) indie dramedy about two assistant grocery store managers vying for the promotion that could bring either of them financial security. Reilly plays Richard Wehlner, a recovering drug addict and family man still rattled enough by a misspent youth to rely on cheap motivational tapes and the occasional joint to get himself through the work day. The script is derivative of any number of earlier films, including Tin Men (1987), Changing Lanes (2002) and Office Space (1999) but gets carried along by Reilly, Lili Taylor as his wife and an unusually strong performance by Seann William Scott as his rival.

- Michael Kabel

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I Used To Think You Were Cool, Man!

Seven actors who’ve lost their edge over the years – and how they might get it back.

There’s an old saying that when your time comes to sell out, you don’t call it “selling out,” but rather ”cashing in” instead. For many modern film actors (and probably actors of previous eras, though it’s hard to say without proper context) careers begin with sharp and well-crafted projects but atrophy over time into box office schlock. This is especially obvious, and perhaps the career changes seem more disingenuous, for actors of Generation X, who had early opportunities to star in quality independent films but sought more public appeal – and bigger paychecks – as they matured.

We like to think the seven actors and actresses below saw their slow decline into lesser films as merely seizing their chance to cash in. They may very well have had better reasons than money or fame to embrace more commercially viable projects when they did. We should also mention those listed below are not necessarily the actors we feel most egregious in selling out or even the greediest. These are the ones we miss liking, however, or respecting for their choices of roles. They’re in no particular heirarchy, either.

1. Ben Stiller Audiences know him now as: the relentlessly smug star of such romantic and family “comedies” as The Heartbreak Kid and Night At the Museum. But once not long ago he was: an intelligent leading and character actor unafraid to embrace offbeat work in films such as Zero Effect, Permananent Midnight, and Flirting With Disaster. For a little while in the late 90s, Stiller seemed poised to become the Charles Grodin of his generation – and we mean that in a good way. Where it started to go wrong: one could argue as early as 1994, with the meticulously cynical target-demographic marketing of Reality Bites. Realistically, with the juggernaut success of There’s Something About Mary. How to get back: Tropic Thunder won’t be enough. Return to something edgy and smart, and go three movies without sucking in the cheeks and looking painfully startled. And no more romantic comedies. At all.

2. John C. Reilly Audience know him now as: Will Ferrell’s wingman. But once not long ago he was: one of the most promising actors of his generation, stealing films like Magnolia and The Perfect Storm out from under his better-looking co-stars. His pre-Boogie Nights work is especially memorable, including supporting roles in Georgia, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, and State of Grace. If you don’t remember him in those films, that’s what we’re talking about when we say the guy could play anybody. Where It Started To Go Wrong: throwing in with Ferrell for Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby. To be fair, though, Walk Hard was pretty funny. How to get back: the comeback may have already started, thanks to this summer’s The Promotion. Failing that, call his frequent costar Philip Seymour Hoffman for comeback advice. That guy apparently holds the Philosopher’s Stone for career renovation.

3. Natalie Portman Audience know her now as: part of any movie based on something with a special display at Barnes & Noble: The Other Boleyn Girl, Goya’s Ghosts, Cold Mountain. But once not long ago she was: the face of future Hollywood, after appealing performances in Beautiful Girls, Leon, and Heat. Where It Started To Go Wrong: the Star Wars prequels; alternately, the lousy Closer. How to get back: eschew all the faux highbrow roles for something with depth and topical resonance. No more period costume pieces.

4. John Cusack Audience know him now as: the astonishingly likeable leading man whose recent films have gone all over the damn place yet somehow remain equally unmemorable. But once not long ago he was: Lloyd Dobler, the one guy that raised the bar for anybody trying to date any woman under 30 throughout the 1990s. Where It Started To Go Wrong: he seems to have perfected his lovesick ex-boyfriend persona with 2000′s High Fidelity. It’s been mostly mediocre romcoms and plodding melodramas ever since. You often get the sense he’s not even trying anymore. How to get back: accept that he’s growing older and take intelligent parts in smart films that don’t cost a pile of money. Of everyone on this list, Cusack likely has the most forgiving fans, and they deserve to see him in a film as good as he can be himself.

5. Steve Martin Audience know him now as: the formerly great actor-comedian-writer taken to slumming in the Pink Panther movies or bullshit like Bringing Down The House. But once not long ago he was: at first, a wild and crazy guy; The Jerk is arguably the funniest movie ever made. Then, mid-career, as the elegant intellectual wit behind Roxanne, L.A. Story, and The Man With Two Brains. Where It Started To Go Wrong: the decline began with 1996′s Sgt. Bilko but got worse with the aforementioned Bringing Down the House in 2003. And of course, the notorious Pink Panther and its sequel(!). How to get back: Start writing more personal and articulate movies, as he did with Shopgirl, but cast bigger stars in them. Speaking of Shopgirl…

6. Claire Danes Audience know her now as: the lovely star of My So-Called Life and Romeo + Juliet who’s had trouble transitioning into adult roles. But once not long ago she was: Angela Chase, a female counterpart to Lloyd Dobler if ever such a thing existed. Where It Started To Go Wrong: Danes’ early film work showed promise, if the movies themselves were often too precious by half (To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday, Polish Wedding). Back-to-back flops in The Mod Squad and Brokedown Palace, followed by a hiatus for college, didn’t help. How to get back: head up an edgy cable drama or learn to pick better scripts from among both the mainstream and indie offerings. Also, acting as spokesmodel for Gucci won’t exactly endear her to the general public.

7. William H. Macy Audience know him now as: the fey wimp from 2007′s execrable Wild Hogs. But once not long ago he was: an actor’s actor working with established storytellers (David Mamet) and upstart talent (P.T. Anderson) with equal focus and craftsmanlike technique. Immediately endearing even when playing pathetic losers (as in The Cooler and Fargo) Macy seemed guaranteed to build a long, rich career. Where It Started To Go Wrong: hard to say; his projects have remained diverse for much of the last decade, though in smaller and less distinguished projects. How to get back: IMDB lists no less than five films currently in post-production, though most seem to be weird indie efforts. Maybe see what David Mamet is currently up to, or find the right cable project.

- Michael Kabel

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A Field Guide to the Thinking Woman’s Sex Symbol

No pretty boys here – how to spot the modern sex symbol for today’s educated woman.

There are obvious Hollywood hunks, and then there are those that stray from the typical tall, dark (or blonde), and handsome stereotype. While the list that follows is by no means exhaustive, it attempts to shed a little light on some of the types favored by the “Thinking Woman,” one who is generally college-educated, in her thirties or beyond, and who likes her men with a little edge. 

The (Gracefully) Aging Intellectual: A man “of a certain age,” known for his razor wit and social savvy. Generally plays authority figures or characters much like himself – critics of the social and political scenes. Often sighted signing copies of his latest book or playing with his jazz ensemble between seasons of filming his basic cable television show. Why he’s so appealing: There’s something incredibly sexy about a smart man. And it doesn’t hurt that men of this type have some of the best voices in the industry. Classical Exemplar: Peter Lawford Modern Exemplars: Eric Bogosian, Anthony Bourdain, Peter Weller

The Human Teddy Bear: A man with a few extra pounds and a congenially self-deprecating attitude. Routinely plays the underdog whose dedication to his family or team carries him through intense trials. Sometimes sighted answering questions about his struggles with weight. Why he’s so appealing: The Human Teddy Bear is the Average Joe, but what makes these actors (via their characters) appealing is that they show such devotion, either to their loved ones or to an idealistic cause. Classical Exemplar: It’s a recent phenomenon; no example available. Modern Exemplars: Greg Grunberg, Aaron Douglas, John C. Reilly

The Lovable Dork: A man with perpetually odd haircuts, whose combination of doe-eyed innocence and awkward charm tempers his obvious genius. Generally plays the geek, who saves the day with his intelligence or dogged determination, or the goofball who harbors a crush on the girl next door. Often sighted wearing much nicer outfits in real life than he’s allowed to wear on television. Why he’s so appealing: Every Thinking Woman that grew up on “Pretty In Pink” wants her own Duckie. Classical Exemplar: John Cryer Modern Exemplars: Masi Oka, John Krasinski, Kadeem Hardison, Eric Szmanda

The Method Man: A man devoted to his craft, inhabiting his characters with a palpable intensity. Generally plays characters who are battling demons (literally as well as figuratively). Often sighted engaging in one of his many other artistic pursuits – photography, music, poetry… Why he’s so appealing: Artists are sexy. And these men see their acting craft as art. Plus, many of them are just downright good looking. Classical Exemplar: Marlon Brando Modern Exemplars: Viggo Mortensen, Don Cheadle, Gary Sinise, Paul Giamatti

The Badass with a Heart of Gold: A man, often foreign, whose ability to beat the living crap out of someone is matched only by the tenderness he can display with a single look. Generally plays hit men, kung-fu masters, and guys who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Often sighted wearing black suits and looking debonair. Why he’s so appealing: In addition to the sheer thrill of watching their combat prowess, these men have more charisma than most actors. Put one of these men in a room with a chair, and there will be chemistry. Classical Exemplar: Robert Mitchum Modern Exemplars: Chow Yun Fat, Jean Reno, Jason Statham

- Jennifer Vasil

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