A fondness for inept criminals

Each week on the Filmspotting podcast, the hosts (Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen) end the show with a top five in some category -- top five movies about redemption, top five movies set in Los Angeles, even top five movie scenes involving bicycles. The top five is usually a tie-in to the new movie they're reviewing that week.

I'm always excited for the top five, but rarely satisfied once I've listened to it. The movies I would choose rarely seem to show up on their lists. Which I don't think is any reflection of my taste in movies vs. theirs. It's just an indication of how many movies there are out there to choose from.

This past week was an exception.

I first heard about it from my friend Don, who texted me on Saturday "Listening to this week's Filmspotting as I tend to laundry, and now I know that you like movies with well-done inept criminals."

The tie-in this week was Killing Them Softly, which I was a mere half hour away from seeing at the time I received the text. As soon as I saw the movie, I'd be free to listen to the podcast, which would reveal to me Adam and Josh's top five inept movie criminals.

And Don sure was right.

For starters, they called this alternately the "H.I. McDunnough Memorial List" and the "I'll Be Taking Those Huggies and Whatever Cash You've Got Memorial List." The purpose of "naming" the list is to acknowledge the one choice they consider most obvious, which they would theoretically both pick as their #1 if they didn't exclude it from consideration. Past examples include "The Overlook Hotel Memorial List" for the top five movies about hotels.

Right off the bat I knew they had "gotten" me, since Raising Arizona is currently listed as my #3 movie on Flickchart. Even though I secretly think it may be my favorite movie of all time.

And then:

Josh's top 5:

5. Jasper and Horace, 101 Dalmatians
4. Jacob, A Simple Plan
3. Professor Marcus, The Ladykillers
2. Jerry Lundegaard, Fargo
1. Dignan, Bottle Rocket

Adam's top 5:

5. Sam and Eddie, Safe Men
4. Holland and Pendlebury, The Lavender Hill Mob
3. Virgil Starkwell, Take the Money and Run
2. Ken Pile, A Fish Called Wanda
1. Jerry Lundegaard, Fargo

Of the nine different movies mentioned here (Fargo was mentioned by both), I've seen six. Of those six, four are among my top 300 movies of all time (A Fish Called Wanda, Fargo, A Simple Plan and Bottle Rocket), three in my top 100 (Plan, Fargo and Wanda) and two (Fargo and Wanda) in my top ten.

So yeah, I'd say I was pretty satisfied by this week's top five.

But as these things do, it also got me thinking: Am I drawn to movies about inept criminals?

If you had asked me that question without providing any of the evidence why you were asking, I'd have said "No, I don't think so. No more than anyone else, that's for sure."

But I wonder. Because those aren't the only favorites of mine that feature hapless hoods.

(And watch out for spoilers. If you see a name of a movie you haven't seen in bold, skip on to the next -- I may be spoiling something about it.)

Looking only at my current Flickchart top 20, you could make arguments for the following:

Pulp Fiction (#4). The guys eating their Big Kahuna burgers are pretty inept, considering that they got caught with their pants down, gunned down while eating burgers for breakfast. But then there's also the ineptitude of Vincent Vega blowing off Marvin's head because of a pothole -- this after he and his friend Jules forgot to check the back room for a gunman who should have killed them. And never mind the singular bone-headedness of Butch, whose unusual plan to screw over and subsequently escape the mob involves returning to his house when they're looking for him.

Glengarry Glen Ross (#11). When their priggish boss denies them the new Glengarry leads, Dave and Shelly decide to knock over their own office to steal them, planning to sell them to the competition. That plan is destined to fail in numerous ways, even if you remove the last part about selling the spoils of your theft in the same small industry where you already work -- where the police are most likely to look for it. 

Goodfellas (#12). Although you can't be inept and last in the mafia very long, in the end, everyone has a slip-up that results in their eventual whacking. Particular to this movie, however, most of the crew that pulled off the Lufthansa robbery gets whacked because they can't follow the simple instruction not to spend their newfound wealthy in showy ways that will attract attention.

Run Lola Run (#16). Mani blows an otherwise smooth and simple job to transport a bag of money when he leaves it on the subway, obeying an instinctive reaction to elude a pair of cops who aren't even looking for him. Later he walks into a grocery store to rob it without wearing anything that would conceal his identity. Meanwhile, Lola tries to rob a bank by holding her own father at gunpoint.

Unforgiven (#20). An old gunslinger goes on a mission to claim a bounty on a pair of thugs who beat and cut up a couple of prostitutes, but nearly dies from the flu because he got wet in the rain (and then beaten by the sheriff, but you kind of feel like the rain is what did him in). One of the two thugs is then shot to death on the toilet, a pathetic way to go even if it might not have been helped.

You could even argue that #19 The Shawshank Redemption contains a hapless criminal, because the actual killer of Andy Dufresne's wife boastfully confesses to the crime while in prison.

I guess you could say that almost any movie that has an element of crime in it has someone who isn't that good at it. So I don't want to stretch this too far.

But I can't help but notice all the titles of movies featuring hapless criminals as you continue down my list. Time Bandits (#21) might qualify. The Bicycle Thief (#26) definitely does. Though it does drop off after that. Maybe that's because #27 is Bound, and Bound contains a group of the smartest criminal types you've ever seen in a movie.

What to make of this concentration near the top of my list of movies about backfired criminal exploits?

I don't really know. Though it could mean I have a fascination with the best laid plans gone awry. Or maybe I just like watching people who have truly made a mess, comical or otherwise, of their lives, to remind myself that I needn't get too down on myself just because I don't know where I want to be in my career in ten years.

I'll have to think on it some more.

But this realization does partly explain why I'm so in love with Killing Them Softly, a film I seem to like more than anyone else on the planet other than Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman (who also rhapsodized over it). More than the criminal ineptitude that inspired this week's top five, though, Softly really demonstrates how all crime is destined to have consequences, even if the criminals carry it off with a decent amount of panache.

That and a bunch of stuff about Obama and the financial crisis, but we won't get into that right now.

The next Casey Affleck

When I saw the name Scoot McNairy in the closing credits for Killing Them Softly on Saturday, I thought "Okay, maybe I did know that actor who played Frankie." Except just because I could identify the name (it's a pretty unforgettable one) didn't mean I could identify the face. I still didn't remember how I knew him, only that I remembered reading his name recently.

It was only on the drive home that I realized that Scoot McNairy was also in Argo, in quite a different role. No wonder I wouldn't have recognized him, beyond a vague sense that he looked familiar.

In Softly, McNairy plays a lowest-guy-on-the-totem-pole hood who is hired to rob an illegal card game. The Dallas-born actor gives us one of those Boston accents that's authentic enough that only people from Boston (see: Affleck family) can usually produce them. In Argo, however, he's one of the state department employees stranded in the Canadian ambassador's Tehran home, a bit of a pipsqueak actually, though he ultimately asserts his will more than any of the other characters in his position. Still, it's a huge difference in overall physicality between the two roles.

But it's not just his physical appearance and range that cause me to compare him to Casey Affleck. In fact, these two roles suggest McNairy may exceed Affleck in terms of range.

What causes me to compare him to Affleck is that it's kind of a surprise Affleck himself was not cast in these two roles.

Killing Them Softly was directed by Australian director Andrew Dominik (hence the casting of the terrific Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn, whom you may remember from his unforgettable role in Animal Kingdom). Dominik also directed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which starred his Softly leading man Brad Pitt ... and Casey Affleck.

Argo was directed by Ben Affleck ... Casey's brother.

The fact that McNairy was cast in films directed by two people who have a history with Casey seems to suggest that both directors were going for "a Casey Affleck type" in those roles, since for one reason or another they were not able to hire the genuine article. Or perhaps both directors didn't want to be so predictable or on-the-nose, Dominik feeling like he didn't want to return both leads from his previous film, and Affleck feeling he'd already made too many movies featuring his brother (though older brother only directed younger in Gone Baby Gone).

And though I once thought otherwise, being "a Casey Affleck type" is most certainly a good thing.

When Casey first emerged as a person I was aware of, a couple years after Ben became famous, I thought he seemed like a bit of a piss ant, a smirking, substance-free beneficiary of all that nepotism has to offer.

This was not based on any of his film work, mind you. It was an impression born almost entirely of my limited perception of his public persona, and I must assume it was based on something very irrational. I still didn't particularly like him in the small roles in which I saw him, but that's probably because they didn't provide him enough screen time to overcome my petty impression of what he brought to the table. Sometimes you just have an instinctive negative response to someone, you know?

But by the time he commanded the screen in the aforementioned (Affleckmentioned?) Gone Baby Gone, I decided that Ben's little brother had some serious chops. And I decided that maybe the thing I hadn't liked about him was what made him so different from his brother, whom I did initially like and like again now (let's forget about those intervening "dark years"). While Ben had classic leading man good looks and was on the path toward becoming a genuine movie star, Casey had the squirrelly appearance you usually associate with a character actor.

Traditionally, which of these two archetypes is the better actor? You guessed it -- the character actor, who isn't handsome enough to skate by on his looks, and therefore has to bring it every time. Which Casey basically does.

There's a place in this world for both Bens and Caseys, but if you appreciate the craft of acting, you are usually better off with the Caseys. To take it out of the Affleck family -- George Clooney is incredibly fun to watch, but if you want an award-worthy performance, you're probably better off seeing a Paul Giamatti movie. (I say this, of course, knowing that the current Oscar tally for these two actors is Clooney 1, Giamatti 0. Clooney also has more nominations and has also been nominated as a director and screenwriter. Okay, maybe I picked bad examples here.)

If McNairy's 2012 work is any indication, he could easily become the next type of actor producers would die to have in their movie.

"Get me the next Scoot McNairy!"

Some pretty crap pairings

I like me a good puzzle.

Not necessarily those brain teasers that threaten to drive a person crazy. I'll try those from time to time, but I'm usually driven crazy before I solve them.

No, more than anything I mean I like fitting things together so they just plain work. And one "recent" (almost five years ago) example of that was the seating arrangements for our wedding.

That was my responsibility, and I attacked it with gusto. I loved the challenge of taking a group of disparate guests (nearly 100) and dividing them up so that each table included the perfect blend of similar personalities, and at least one really gregarious person who could help get everyone talking. The key was working out the whole table, not just eight of the ten seats. The final results of my mixing and matching left me with a much greater sense of accomplishment and satisfaction than such a task probably should have.

The Mission Tiki Drive-In needs someone like me.

With many fewer variables to consider, they've done an absolute shit job figuring out which movies should fit with which this week.

As I may have told you before, I get a weekly email from Mission Tiki telling me which movies are paired for double features on which screens. They've probably made some bad pairings before, but this week's pairings are particularly egregious.

The only prominent new movie opening today is Killing Them Softly, which joins a slate of seven returning movies: Skyfall, Wreck-It Ralph, Flight, Twilight: BDP2, Taken 2, Rise of the Guardians and Red Dawn.

Now, if you want a little challenge of your own, take a minute to pair off these eight movies in the ways you think would be smartest.

When you do so, keep in mind that this drive-in theater does not let you switch screens between the two features. I should know, as discussed here.

Therefore, also keep in mind that both movies should be appropriate for the same audiences to watch. I'm sure there are some people who come to watch only a single movie and then leave, but you're paying for two movies, so they should arrange it so you can see both of them. (Actually, you're paying only $7 for adults and $1 for kids from 5-9, with those under 5 free, so the price is justified for only watching a single movie. Still, that's no fun, and it's not how the movies are advertised.)

Have you made your selections?

I'll show you mine in a minute, but let me first show you theirs. The first movie listed below plays twice, both before and after the second movie, to accommodate the late-arriving crowd.

Killing Them Softly with Skyfall
Wreck-It Ralph with Twilight
Rise of the Guardians with Flight
Red Dawn with Taken 2

If the problem with this arrangement doesn't immediately jump out at you, let me give you a little assist.

Three of these pairings are basically fine. Not ideal, but fine.

The fourth is an outrage.

I'm talking about Rise of the Guardians and Flight.

(And very minor spoilers about Flight are about to follow.)

Guardians is rated PG. But since it's an animated movie, you wouldn't be surprised if some parents assumed it was rated G. Meaning it would be suitable for their youngest possible tots. And believe me, there are always plenty of young tots at this drive-in.

Flight? R. R for Restricted.

R for full frontal nudity and cocaine use in the first five minutes.

That's right, all you lovers of the female flesh -- in the first five minutes of Flight, you see Nadine Velazquez, erstwhile cast member on My Name is Earl and The League, boobs and bush front. (You see her butt, too, but that's comparatively quaint.)

Actually, forget what I said about five minutes. You see this in the first one minute of the movie.

Not long after that, major movie star Denzel Washington leans over a glass table and snorts a couple lines of cocaine.

So even if parents were savvy about the rating and prospective content of Flight, and even if they were hurrying to pack up their kids and leave before the next movie started, there's a decent chance those kids would be exposed to pubic hair and drugs before their parents even had a chance to do anything about it.

And any parents know that you can't pack up your kids to leave somewhere in only a minute or two. Especially if you've got coolers out and a half-dozen kids running around like maniacs, you're looking at ten or 15 minutes.

What's more, it's one thing to know that an R-rated movie is coming on, and what it may contain. It's another thing to be assaulted by the movie's kid-unfriendly elements while the opening credits are still rolling.

And then of course there are all those parents who don't know what Flight's about, and will be just sitting there, blissfully watching the second movie, until all the sudden, a 40-foot vagina is staring them in the face.

Someone needs to put a stop to this before the first show tonight, methinks. At least it's raining in Los Angeles, so perhaps Mother Nature will step in where stupid human beings either can't or won't.

The thing is, this should be easy enough to fix.

And now we've come to the part of our program where you and I compare notes on our own pairings for these eight movies. This is what I came up with:

Flight of the Guardians with Wreck-It Ralph
Red Dawn with Twilight
Killing Them Softly with Flight
Skyfall with Taken 2

The first pairing is so obvious, it should have hit them over the head with something heavy. You have two animated movies with very little scandalous content. Put them together on the same bill.

The second seems pretty obvious as well. These are the two movies featuring primarily casts of late teenagers/early twentysomethings. I'm sure there's a fair amount of angst in both. Not to mention that both of the damn movies have the word "dawn" in their titles. (A little on-the-nose? I don't care, I like it.)

The remaining four movies could probably be divided up in almost any fashion. In fact, I was tempted to pair Skyfall and Flight, just because of their similar titles.

But when you look a little closer, a more logical configuration does present itself. There are two PG-13 movies here, and two R movies. Just match up the two R movies, you idiots.

Last week they weren't smoking this much crack. Killing Them Softly replaced Hotel Transylvania, which finally finished an improbably long run that would have started in late September. Transylvania had been matched up with Guardians. Ralph was with Twilight -- not perfect, but at least the younger audiences probably aren't going to be scarred for life by anything that happens in Twilight. Flight was with Taken 2 (that's fine) and Red Dawn was with Skyfall (that's also fine). There are some Rs mixed in with some PG-13s, but I don't really think that line of demarcation means what it used to mean.

Who knows why they got soft in the head this week.

Now, I don't want to rule out the possibility that there's some kind of profit algorithm they use to determine what goes with what. Maybe strong performers only go with strong performers, or maybe just the opposite -- maybe strong performers need to prop up weak performers. (Though I don't know how you can accurately determine which movie is responsible for a double feature performing well.) Or maybe there's a newness variable, or maybe there's some kind of variable to determine which movie needs to be shown first. After all, if you match the two animated movies, you are pushing the start time of Wreck-It Ralph back to 9:30. Maybe they've witnessed the exodus of cars from the lot after the first movie ends, and they know that most of the tykes clear out after the first movie anyway.

But even just the risk of incurring the anger of dozens of parents, for whom Nadine's "special area" was never part of their evening plans, seems like a good reason to throw that algorithm out the window. At least for one week.

At this point I should admit that protecting kids at the drive-in from things they shouldn't see is an imperfect science to begin with. All you have to do is rotate your head to watch any one of the other three movies. You can see all four screens from almost any vantage point (though the other three would be farther away and therefore harder to make out clearly). The drive-in logistics department just assumes you're going to want to keep your eyes trained on the screen of the movie whose sound is also playing on your FM dial. But if you're talking about a young kid, that's not a safe assumption. If you're a young kid whose attention easily wanders, his/her eyes might easily and unwittingly wander to Nadine Velazquez' crotch. 

At least in that case it would be a random occurrence, not part of our regularly scheduled program.

Of course, they could solve some of these problems by just allowing people to switch theaters between movies. I've never quite understood why they're so strict about that. Except that it probably does have something to do with judging which movies are performing and which are starting to stink like old fish.

Besides, power-hungry assholes get off on being power-hungry assholes, and no, I'm not talking about those guys who drove up to us in their golf cart to prevent us from switching screens to see Hall Pass after we'd finished Battle: Los Angeles in March of last year.

And no, I'm not still bitter.

Though they could go a long way toward mending fences with me if they hired me as a "pairings consultant." I would do it for a very modest fee: $25 a week.

If they're looking for referrals, I offer for their consideration the hundred happy guests at my wedding.