Toe trauma follows me

I wrote a week ago about how I was about to lose the nail on my left big toe. You can read here if you want to discover all the gruesome details. I paired it with having watched the movie Fingernails, because, obviously.

Later that same day, the nail came off. It was a real relief. No more gingerly putting on socks to prevent tearing it out prematurely.

Who could have guessed that wouldn't even be the worst thing to happen to that toe in that seven-day period. 

On Sunday, while building a fence between our yard and sidewalk, I dropped a heavy fence panel on the same foot. In fact, it was only half of a heavy fence panel since we needed to halve it to fit the spot where we wanted it. Imagine what it might have done if it had been the whole thing.

It wasn't just clumsiness. I had the panel resting on a wall about three feet off the ground, where I had intended to remove some screws from some strips running along the height of the panel. It got too close to the edge, where there was nothing to stop it from slipping off and landing on my foot. 

And because I was wearing these old, thin running shoes -- which I've taken to wearing because of the days we've been painting -- I got basically no protection from my shoe, to say nothing of the exposure caused by the missing toenail.

I could tell I'd gotten myself good and let out a string of PG-13 expletives, my son playing basketball nearby and all. 

He rushed over -- for about the third time that day, since I'd had other minor mishaps that caused me to shout out -- and asked if I was okay. This time I knew I wasn't. When I took the shoe off, the end of my sock was soaked with blood.

It turns out the laceration was the worst part, and the bleeding was pretty continuous for several hours, despite my wife's attempts to wrap it and stop the bleeding. Long story short, we finally went to the ER about five hours later, where they couldn't do anything for us since it was a Sunday night and the radiology department only works until 6. We did get the wound properly dressed but left after nearly two ineffectual hours of seeing a couple different people who couldn't really progress the care. The next morning, I returned to discover I did have a small break at the end of the toe, the kind that would heal on its own as long as I took care of it properly. So now I'm wearing a big bandage that covers that toe and the next one, wrapping them in a bag when I go in the shower, and loath to put on a sock or a shoe.

The connection to movies? Why of course there is one. 

After I'd hopped into the garage and crashed onto a bean bag -- and been attended to by everyone in my family, the children hovering without being able to do much -- it seemed obvious that I'd stay there and watch movies on the projector. Of course I would. 

Wouldn't you know it, in the first 15 minutes of the first movie -- Lean on Pete, watched on Kanopy -- there is a reference to the lead character being given the right boots to work with the titular horse, so he doesn't lose a toe.

Heh.

I'm not really here to tell you about the "movie marathon" that followed, but since I did take Monday off work and watched four movies on the projector that day, I might as well briefly touch on each.

Lean on Pete

This came out the same year as Chloe Zhao's The Rider, which made my top ten of that year. I think I assumed it was a lesser version of The Rider and not worthy of my attentions, though obviously I did want to see it as it's been in my Kanopy watchlist for some time. Well, I'm really glad I saw it as it is another proof of the filmmaking abilities of Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years). I was hugely invested in this story of a teenager from a broken home whose story undergoes numerous twists and turns, all of which feel like a direct outgrowth of his environment and the very real difficulties of Americans near the poverty line. It was also a well-timed viewing since the Melbourne Cup was just run on Tuesday, the day I lost that toenail, so I had horse racing on the brain.

Old Dads 

I'd been bemoaning the lack of really bad movies I've seen so far in 2023. It's been the year of the mediocre. For maybe the first half of Bill Burr's film, in which he's the star as well as the writer and director, I thought I had a new contender for my worst of the year. It's one of those films where every joke is at the expense of a sensitive liberal whose behavior is exaggerated to make them a PC monster. Lots of disdainful discussions of privilege and pronouns. As the film went, I upgraded my assessment from hating it to disliking it, since the old dads do learn their lesson and some of the rougher edges are sanded off the PC monsters. But I expected a lot better from a comedian who has found a niche that I enjoy. (He's like Joe Pantoliano if Joe Pantoliano were funnier.)

After these two movies, this is when we finally went to the hospital. 

Deathgasm

Now I'm cheating a little bit since this movie was actually watched on our living room couch rather than on the projector. This was a suggestion by my wife, and when you are a medical patient and relying on someone who's catering to your needs, it's a good idea to heed their suggestions. I was going to be sleeping there to elevate my foot before my x-rays the next morning, so watching the movie there was probably also the right call. Anyway, this is a New Zealand film from 2015 about heavy metal music turning the residents of a small New Zealand town into zombies. Had a lot of fun with Jason Lei Howden's film, which feels inspired by the works of fellow countryman Peter Jackson.

I returned from the doctor around 10 a.m. on Monday, at which point I had already decided I was going to take the day as a sick day. So after a highly unusual two-hour (!) nap, I continued with my movies.

Reptile

One of the high-profile Netflix releases from around a month ago that had been eluding me. I really enjoyed the depth this movie has the chance to reach by running well over two hours, which made me feel like this world was very lived in. In what essentially amounts to a whodunnit, the script smartly sprinkles around potential suspects without you knowing which ones will be the red herrings. I really enjoyed Benicio del Toro in the lead role. However, my affection for the film has subsequently dimmed a little when a friend challenged me to try to remember the plot a week from now. He's got a point there, though the plot is rarely the thing that connects most with me about any movie. I'm probably more interested in performance and character and things I haven't seen before, and this movie did have some of that.

Joy Ride

After two false starts that both seemed too challenging for a sick day, I went with the 2001 Joy Ride directed by John Dahl, not the 2023 Joy Ride directed by Adele Lim, which I have also seen. This was one of those 90s thrillers (released just after the 1990s) that had the chance to be indistinguishable from two dozen other similar films, but I'd always had a soft spot for it. I'd seen it just the once, and of course I had to figure out if it held up. The appealing cast (Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, Leelee Sobieski) still worked on me, though I found the actual story to be a bit more preposterous than I remembered. The central antagonist is a truck driver with the ability to be everywhere at once like the most far-fetched serial killer, as well as setting up elaborate plans that similarly defy spatial logistics. I did enjoy it well enough and it went by quickly enough.

Pearl

As this has recently come to Netflix, I finally overcome some unspecified bias against it and threw on the prequel to Ti West's X. And was astounded. Not only did I like it a whole lot better than X, but I also found it to be completely different, barely even needing to be the same character and containing only a few Easter eggs for X. Mia Goth gives a truly committed performance that is all over the map between sympathetic and sociopathic. I just realized that "all over the map" is usually a phrase of criticism, but the wide-ranging aspect of her performance was key to the success of this movie. Big win here for West. 

And finally to lighten up a dour afternoon of murder and gore ...

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

My fourth time watching Walk Hard -- has it been that few? -- was as good as any of the others. In fact, I feel like I may have laughed harder in certain spots than I had on previous occasions. So many bits in this just land perfectly. I think we will look back on this as one of the great comedies of the early 21st century. It's just sad that some of its frames of reference are becoming too ancient to resonate with a young audience today, though I'd hope that some of these jokes would work for a younger audience even out of context. Can't show it to my kids yet, though, as it's still too adult (in all the funniest ways). Oh and I guess if I really wanted to get away from the gore, I shouldn't have watched a movie where a young boy cuts his brother in half with a machete in the first ten minutes.

Heal, toe.

Audient Bridesmaids: Ray

This is the latest in a periodic series in which I'm watching all the best picture nominees I haven't seen, in reverse order.

If I'm trying to slow my roll toward a record number of movies ranked in 2022, there's an easy way to do that: take a break from watching 2022 movies.

So I picked back up Audient Bridesmaids with Ray (2004), having left off after the first entry in the series, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, back in April.

It occurred to me as I was watching that we usually don't go back to watch biopics after the year they were released. Among cinephiles with an omnivorous mentality, biopics are worthy of our attention precisely because they are new, not because they are intrinsically worth watching. Having a good director helps, having a compelling subject helps even more -- but then again, if you are a fan of the person being profiled, you should be seeing it when it first comes out due to eagerness alone. So both the cinephiles who watch everything and the people who love the film's topic are seeing it in the first year. Everyone else may never see it.

Another reason why it's hard to pull off a delayed viewing of a biopic, however, is that biopics may be more inextricably linked to the period in which they were made than any other genre. At one point, every biopic was a hagiography, focusing only on the good parts of the person, either because the film was made by somebody who already had stars in their eyes, or because the filmmaker required the cooperation of the estate of the person in question. Then we realized we needed to see the warts of our heroes in a movie about their lives, if we wanted that movie and ultimately that person to be taken seriously. Now, especially after incisive parodies like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, we've realized the limitations of the "cradle to the grave" biopic and demand movies that focus on only a small slice of the person's life in the spotlight. Even that is starting to feel a bit hackneyed, though, and the biopic is simply crying out for another reinvention, which explains the truly artsy and unconventional approaches we've seen to the form.

Watching Ray in 2022 feels like taking two steps backward on this evolutionary scale. The wickedest and most parodic parts of Walk Hard seem to be a direct response to a movie like Ray. Walk the Line is the more obvious reference point, given both the similarity of the title and the similarity of Dewey Cox to Johnny Cash, but Ray seems equally responsible for that film's jokes. As I was watching the beginnings of Ray Charles' heroin addiction, all I could think of was the hilarious scene in Walk Hard where Tim Meadows tells Dewey all the reasons he "don't want no part" of the drug in question -- even when it's marijuana and it "isn't habit forming!" And "it makes sex even better!"

And with this context in my head, it wasn't possible to take Ray as seriously as I might have in 2004. Taylor Hackford's film -- and I've always considered that an unfortunate name for a director -- uses every biopic cliché you could dream up, from the montages of show dates and songs climbing charts, to the put-upon wife at home who can't abide by the star's philandering, to the scene of succumbing to the shady handler, to the betrayal of close allies, to the single childhood trauma that appears to explain the artist's entire life. In this case, it was Ray's younger brother drowning in an outdoor bathtub as Ray looked on -- and yes, this is when he still had his sight. At random moments throughout the film he is haunted by visions of the lifeless body in water. Each time he staggers backward dramatically to demonstrate how much this still eats away at his mental well-being.

Because Ray is so beholden to these tired tropes, it seems hard to envision it getting an Oscar nomination for best picture. Of course, without yet having a movie like Walk Hard to identify just how tired those tropes were, we were living in a different time. The thing that certainly elevated the movie was one of the things I liked best about it as well: the performance of Jamie Foxx.

Foxx's success in the role of Ray Charles went a little to his head unfortunately. There was a time afterward when I think he thought he was Ray Charles, showing up on Kanye West records, flashing the million dollar Ray Charles smile, and generally thinking he was the shit. Since we had only just started to realize that the former In Living Color star was, you know, actually a good actor, it seems a shame to acknowledge that this was really Foxx's peak. The now 55-year-old has continued to work throughout, appearing as supervillains, the star of a Tarantino movie and Rico Tubbs. But he never topped Ray, and I've always wondered if being high on his own supply for a while there was a factor.

Still, this is pretty remarkable stuff, this impersonation of Ray Charles. It's also a cliché to say this, but you sometimes forget you are watching Jamie Foxx and just think that's Ray Charles up there on the screen. Foxx had his style at the piano and his personal speaking style down perfectly. It was a deserving best actor win. There are a few moments that I found a bit awkward, but I attributed them to the hack of a director, like forcing Foxx to repeatedly do that "awakening from a nightmare" thing after one of those visions of his dead brother. I'm not sure any actor could pull that off credibly.

I was also surprised to learn just what a "sinner" Charles was. When someone is blind, we tend to think of them as the opposite, as a saint. Charles was not. He was a dope fiend for something like 15 years. He repeatedly cheated on his wife. He was just plain mean sometimes. Ray earns points for showing us all this, and educating me on it. 

The last thing I liked about the movie was anything related to the logistics of being blind. For example, when he was starting out, Charles used to ask to be paid in one dollar bills so he could count them himself. If they threw another bill in there by accident it was on them and to his benefit. Of course, we also see that people became frustrated counting out 80 or more one dollar bills. Charles did eventually get people he could trust to count the money, but the movie was a constant reminder of how easy it was, how tempting it was, to potentially abuse that trust and to rip him off. The way he chose what color socks to wear (he had a number sewn into them) and other logistical challenges were always interesting. There's also a heartbreaking scene where as a child, he falls over and calls out for his mother, who is silently watching from the other side of the room -- seeing what he will do to fend for himself and to develop the essential survival skill of memorizing his environment. 

The good things mentioned in the last few paragraphs were enough to earn Ray a mildly positive review from me.

This series will continue at some unspecified point in the future with The Prince of Tides in 1991. Yes, that means I've seen every best picture nominee from 1992 to 2003. 

My top five comedies of the 21st century

Laughing isn't something I've been very eager to do this past week. I missed an unprecedented (as far as I can remember) three days of work with a terrible hacking cough and related symptoms, which included chills, lack of energy, and rivers of phlegm. (Non-consecutive days, at that -- I went in Wednesday before relapsing Thursday.) This is also why you haven't seen a post from me since Tuesday.

You especially don't want to laugh when even small chuckles erupt into rib-bruising episodes that last 15 seconds. Fortunately, I watched plenty of movies not designed to make me laugh -- and one that was designed to make me laugh, but didn't.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about today. Today is project day. See, this week I also listened to Filmspotting's episode devoted to their top five comedies of the 21st century. That episode was inspired by BBC's recent critics poll of the top 100 movies since the year 2000, which is also something I'd like to tackle on my blog. But for now, I'll tackle it in a roundabout way, just as the Filmspotting guys did.

One of the responses to that BBC list was that it was almost totally devoid of pure comedy. Sure, it had films with comedy as one of their genres (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ratatouille), but hardly anything whose sole purpose was to make you laugh from start to finish. The Filmspotting guys decided to do their show as a corrective.

The thing is, their choices really disappointed me. Obviously comedy is pretty subjective, perhaps the most subjective type of film taste. But that doesn't mean you have to abandon objective critical discussion tactics when discussing comedy. And on those grounds I was inspired to come up with my own top five, to balance the injustices I saw on their lists. (Wouldn't you know it, though -- I had failed to listen to their #1 picks until during this very writing, and one of the hosts picked a movie that appears in my top five, removing just a bit of my righteous indignation.)

Before revealing my choices, I'll give you a bit of a sense of what I'm up against:

Josh Larsen:

5. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
4. Mean Girls
3. Songs from the Second Floor
2. Cedar Rapids
1. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazahkstan

Adam Kempenaar:

5. While We're Young
4. The Trip
3. Role Models
2. Shaun of the Dead
1. xxxxxx (I'll hold this one back for now)

Don't get me wrong -- this is not to say I don't like these films (all of which I've seen). Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorites. However, it being funny is not primarily the reason I like Shaun. Then there are those movies they chose that I am tepid to negative on, like Talladega Nights and Role Models.

To come up with my own choices, I went through my 17 individual Microsoft Word documents covering the years 2000 to 2016, which house a complete listing of movies I've seen in each year. To save time, I suppose I could have just reviewed my list of movies seen multiple times, since it's unlikely any of my choices would come from movies I've seen only once. But that might rule out something recent, and it would be interesting to know whether something I'd seen only once could still claim that kind of pull on me. In the end, all my choices were movies I'd seen more than once.

There were some other interesting patterns. For example, no year before 2004 yielded more than a single realistic contender, which means either comedy was going through a bad stretch around the turn of the century, or I just don't remember laughing very hard at the movies I saw back then because it was too long ago. In fact, I didn't shortlist a single film from 2002. The second half of the years in question were much more fruitful, with every year except for 2013 and 2016 yielding at least two contenders, and sometime as many as four. (Oddly, 2013 gave me zero contenders, wedged in between two other years that gave me at least three each. 2016 is still only half over, so its one contender was not such a surprise.)

One last bit of explanation. The five I chose were meant to represent a diversity of sensibilities, at least somewhat, though some clearly grew out of each others' sensibilities. I didn't repeat a director, in any case. This mostly occurred organically, anyway.

Okay, I think you've had enough preamble. I'll proceed with my top five, and then some honorable mentions in various categories.

5. What We Do in the Shadows (2014, Taika Waititi) - My #5 movie comes by its spot on this list rather unusually. It's a film I made the mistake of watching for the first time on the plane. Which doesn't mean I didn't find it funny, it just means it was not exactly a laughter-conducive environment. I ended up ranking it only 40th among my 2014 films. But my second viewing last year was with my wife, and it immediately primed me for my third viewing. This is just a delicious setup that consistently realizes its jokes, not to mention producing some actual blood and guts for horror enthusiasts and even some seamless special effects (made to seem all the more "real" by the mockumentary format). And part of why I wanted to get this on here was as a nod to the mockumentary as a form, though the 1980s and 1990s had far better examples of that form than anything worth honoring in the 21st century (other than this movie, that is). Favorite moment: When Waititi's main vampire Viago tiptoes down to the basement to wake up Petyr, the 8,000-year-old vampire who communicates only by bearing his teeth and making that "vampire hiss" that sounds basically like an exhalation of air. "Peeta! Peeeeeta!" he says in a sing-songy voice, as though calling forth a hiding infant.

4. The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005, Judd Apatow) - This was the one Adam chose as his #1. And I have to agree. (Well, not entirely -- it's my #4.) I have lately actually felt a bit of an aversion to this film that I can't really explain, which gives you some indication why I haven't seen it in nine years. But as I was coming up with this list, I just remembered the gales of laughter I unleashed in the theater as I was watching it. (And I also remembered that I ranked it my #3 film for the year.) It's no surprise the comedy pickings got better on my year-by-year lists after 2005, as Apatow's directorial debut put in place a new blueprint for comedy, one that has largely flourished (despite plenty of obvious examples of failures, and a likelihood that we'll totally burn out on it within the next five years). It was a grossout with heart, and it "went there" like few films I'd seen. I owe it a revisit, and at the very least I honor its role in our current comedy climate by including it here. Interestingly, this is the only film on this list I saw in a conventional theater environment. Favorite moment: As it's been nine years since I saw it, I'll just go with the one that came first to mind, that made me recognize I was watching something fresh and exciting: Seth Rogen's delivery of his story about seeing the woman have sex with the horse in Mexico. If the movie as a whole was an introduction of a new comedic voice, then within that, we were introduced to Rogen's distinct voice, which has arguably been nearly as influential as Apatow's.

3. Idiocracy (2006, Mike Judge) - Given the reputation in comedy circles this has built in the past ten years, it's hard to believe it was basically dumped, its studio having no idea how to market it. Tellingly, I was looking up movies to see at local theaters the week it came out, and even in the screening times listed on the website it had a placeholder name: Untitled Mike Judge Comedy. And I wasn't going to be that one person to go see it in the theater -- I had to discover it later on video. Fortunately, Idiocracy has made itself known in the intervening years, especially in our house, where my wife might call it her favorite comedy, period. Judge is underappreciated in terms of not only what he's contributed to the comedy world, but the different types of things -- Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill share more in common with their visual appearance than the actual content of their comedy, and Idiocracy is altogether different from both, though they all serve up satire in endlessly funny ways. Now that Trump is actually competitive in the presidential race, people are thinking of this movie as even more prescient than it already seemed even from the start. Favorite moment: When we see the changes to the outside of a Fuddruckers hamburger restaurant down through the centuries, as the name becomes increasingly more suggestive until finally landing on: Buttfuckers.

2. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007, Jake Kasdan) - If Idiocracy is the best satire of the last 16+ years, Walk Hard is the best spoof. It was another one that caught me by surprise, as I didn't prioritize a theatrical viewing. Once we queued it up at home, though, I couldn't get enough. I've seen it only twice, but only because I haven't had a natural opportunity to buy the movie yet. A sort-of third viewing came when I actually went with a friend to see John C. Reilly perform as Dewey Cox in a small nightclub in Los Angeles -- one of my truly cherished live performance experiences of all time. Kasdan makes by far my unlikeliest director to appear on this list, as even his best other movie (Orange County) is pretty middling as comedies go. This movie pierces the heart of its subject matter, the music biopic (specifically Walk the Line), and finds its comedy in a combination of parodies of the typical tropes of a music biopic, a handful of great impersonations, and some of the funniest songs written for a movie since This is Spinal Tap. I just grin from ear to ear as I watch this movie. Favorite moment: When Tim Meadows, as Dewey's band mate, warns him of the dangers of marijuana via many emphatically stated traits of the drug that should scare him: "It's not habit forming! It makes sex even better! It's the cheapest drug there is!"

1. Step Brothers (2008, Adam McKay) - And John C. Reilly is the star of both of my top picks. Narrowly the funniest of McKay's many collaborations with Will Ferrell (edging out Anchorman and leading the others by a wide margin), Step Brothers had me simply screaming with laughter. As my wife looked over at me while we were at the drive-in, she thought perhaps I was possessed -- she had never seen me laugh like that. And this makes four of five films I watched with my wife for the first time, while the other was one I watched with her the second. If I wanted to come up with a thesis on what makes Step Brothers my #1, as I've done with some of the other movies on my list, I couldn't. It's just the movie that made me laugh the hardest. It's also the comedy I've seen the most since 2000, as our fifth viewing was about a year ago. I also have a Step Brothers t-shirt. It helps that with my curly hair, I also look kind of like both Ferrell and Reilly in this movie. Also, it made my top ten of the year. Favorite moment: There are so many I could choose from, so I will just choose a little one, maybe the one that told me I was in for a wonderful ride: At their first dinner together as a joined family, Reilly's Dale makes some crude remark about Ferrell's Brennan, and Ferrell just gets this pained look on his face for a moment, which is completely unexpected -- it's a combination of disgust and genuine hurt. I don't know why but it may be the funniest look I have ever seen Ferrell produce.

Honorable mentions 

As a liberal, I'm a little displeased that my list couldn't include a female-driven comedy or a minority-driven comedy, but there were these two very strong contenders:

Spy (2015, Paul Feig) - The movie that turned me around on Melissa McCarthy, though I unfortunately must admit that the single funniest moments belong to Jason Statham. Feig deserves a mention given that he's also come through with Bridesmaids and The Heat.

Black Dynamite (2009, Scott Sanders) - Just saw this this year, and was laughing throughout. Reminded me of one of my favorite comedies of last century, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.

There were a couple movies I laughed at incredibly hard the first time, but they didn't hold up as well the second time. They are:

The Dictator (2012, Larry Charles) - Sacha Baron Cohen absolutely needs a mention.

The Interview (2014, Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg) - The controversial film that many people hated the first time. I loved it the first time, but only liked it the second.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008, Kevin Smith) - It took until the third viewing last week for me to turn on this one. Maybe Seth Rogen doesn't age well.

I also highlighted some movies that really surprised me, given what I expected from them. I had no idea these movies would be as funny as they were.

Date Night (2010, Shawn Levy) - I was openly disdainful when I saw the trailers. The opposite after I watched it. One of my favorite lines of the 21st century, delivered by Mila Kunis: "Those nipple clamps hurt me!"

Hot Rod (2007, Akiva Schaffer) - Seen it only once and don't remember the details, but I laughed a lot.

Wanderlust (2012, David Wain) - I had been down on Wain (see my thoughts on Wet Hot American Summer) so this one took me totally by surprise. Paul Rudd practicing and then delivering his dirty talk to Malin Akerman (and her response) is comedy classic material.

Stone Bros. (2009, Richard Frankland) - Comedy featuring Aboriginal actors that we watched mostly because my wife's boss was a producer. We laughed hysterically.

Hall Pass (2011, Peter & Bobby Farrelly) - As this is "late Farrelly" I didn't expect much, but this just missed my top ten for that year. Laughs throughout. Worried about a potential third viewing though.

And finally, funny movies from the period that in many cases I like better overall than the movies I've mentioned, but the reason I love them is not primarily because they are funny.

Tangled (2010, Nathan Greno & Byron Howard) - Has one of my funniest single lines of this century: As the hero, Flynn Rider, engages in a duel with a horse holding a knife in his teeth, while he uses a frying pan, and they move closer to the edge of a cliff, he shouts: "You should know, this is the strangest thing I've ever done!"

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, Nicholas Stoller) - Hilarious, but the heart is what I really remember about this one.

Elf (2003, Jon Favreau) - Take comment on Forgetting Sarah Marshall and apply here.

Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade) - Perhaps the hardest laughter I've ever experienced in a movie sustained over a ten-minute stretch, but the movie's profundity is what left me sitting in my seat in a pensive fugue state until the credits ended. (Sadly, this is also the only choice in this whole post directed by a woman.)

Okay, I thought I was done but here are just a few more honorable mentions that have no other category:

Team America: World Police
Napoleon Dynamite
21 Jump Street
Klown
Tropic Thunder
Zoolander (thought Ben Stiller deserved some love with these last two)
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (referenced but not actually singled out)

Okay! That was rather exhaustive. Turns out there have been some funny movies this century. Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Dewey Cox, live and in concert

When I woke up yesterday morning, I couldn't have known I would finish my day at a Dewey Cox concert.

Yet these were the true facts of my Wednesday.

I had already been planning to hijack our normal Wednesday night routine of dinner followed by whatever shows on our DVR seemed to exert the greatest pull on our attentions. I was planning to ask my wife to be excused from our normal viewing schedule to fit in the final of three John Cassavetes movies for this month's Getting Acquainted, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. I'd give her the option of watching it with me, but rather expected that I'd confine myself to the bedroom to watch it there myself.

Little did I know that the evening would be hijacked in an entirely unexpected and wonderful way that was wholly different from that.

At 6:16 p.m. I received this text from my friend: "Hey man, any chance you want to go see John C. Reilly performing as Dewey Cox with me tonight in Hollywood? I'm sitting on a ticket."

Now, as a husband, a father, and someone who is generally always tired from a day that involves a 50-mile commute round trip, my first instinct was to reject the offer. There were plenty of reasons to do so. If it weren't the uncertainty of how this offer would affect my role in my son's bedtime routine, or the fact that I'd be putting another couple dozen miles on my car, my mere exhaustion would have been reason enough.

But clearly I wanted to do it, having not seen this friend I like very much in about a year, so I simply read the text to my wife to gauge her reaction. No sooner had I finished reading it than she was basically ushering me out the door with a big smile on her face. "How often do you get an opportunity like that?" she asked. Since the show didn't begin until 9, no immediate ushering was needed, and it wouldn't even affect putting my son to bed, which was only 45 minutes off.

Seeing John C. Reilly performing live as the title character in 2007's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story would have been incentive enough even for people who don't like the film, but who appreciate the actor in general and would love to see this little experiment in Andy Kaufman-style showmanship play itself out. As it happens, I love the film, as described in this post, which was meant to be the beginning of a series of reflections on unexpected gems under the banner "Overachievers." I haven't actually written another post in this series since then. (Two days later, I wrote a piece about The Terminal under a similar "Underachievers" banner, and haven't continued that series either.)

So at 8:45 I found myself outside a bar on Beverly called Bootleg, which is more properly in Silverlake or even Echo Park than Hollywood. I couldn't believe this was actually the place. The crowd outside was sparse, to say the least. As I waited for my friend to arrive with the tickets -- off to the side, since a sign discouraged gathering at the bar's entrance -- only a couple people trickled in here and there, and most of the time it was just myself and the bouncer.

When my friend arrived and we entered, I was struck by the intimacy of the space. I didn't see any signs which delineated the capacity, but I figured it could be no more than 200. Even though Walk Hard was not a huge hit and is now five years in the past, I expected that an appearance by Reilly as Cox could summon a much larger audience and fill a much bigger space. Of course, I was thrilled that it wouldn't and hadn't.

We met the other two in our party -- a woman I hadn't met, and a guy I'd met about seven years ago but hadn't seen since -- and the place started to fill up a bit. The reason there were only 37 people there when we first entered was that there was an opening act, Mike Andrews, whose appearance consumed nearly the first two hours of the evening, as it turned out. This was fine by me, as I was immediately under the spell of his ensemble, which grew to about six people at its largest. In fact, remind me that I'm going to look up this guy on itunes when I get home tonight. He has a cinematic connection as well, as Andrews mentioned working with Mira Nair on an upcoming movie (which must be either Words with Gods or The Reluctant Fundamentalist, her two upcoming credits on IMDB). His band's music did indeed have an Indian flare, and at various times reminded me of The Beatles, Phish and Donovan -- all bands I really like.

I'm glad I was genuinely grooving on the music, because otherwise the wait for Dewey Cox to come on stage might have been interminable. I could only imagine the frustration of those who didn't dig it, as the opener actually went on a ten-minute break before resuming, and the clock sailed past 10:30 and toward 11. I came to realize that Andrews was more properly the headliner, and Cox -- the star attraction -- was actually more of a guest doing a mini set. We'd already gotten to that point where each song figured to be the last one, when Andrews finally revealed that they still had three more songs. At least then we knew how soon Reilly would take the stage. And to reassure me that there was no great misunderstanding about what the evening had in store, at least I'd already seen him twice -- once to come out to the bar to get a quick drink (or maybe just make an inquiry of the bartender), and once when I went to the bathroom and saw him strumming his guitar around a certain corner. It was funny how open the venue's back was, how I basically could have just intruded right in on Reilly gathering his thoughts as he reviewed his upcoming songs. I was reminded of the fact that one of the things about the character is that he thinks about his whole life before he goes on stage, so in a way, you could say that's what Reilly was doing as he prepared.

Andrews didn't actually leave the stage at around 11:10 when it was finally Cox's turn -- to our surprise, Andrews' band was Dewey's band, at least for the purposes of this show. Changing the nature of their sound considerably, they welcomed Cox on stage with a roar from the crowd.

I'd wondered what incarnation of Cox from the movie we'd see. Probably not this one ...

... but I considered this one a real possibility:

Of course, the actual incarnation he chose made a lot more sense. If we were to believe that Cox was a real person -- the back story that was teased was that he had faked his own death and had instead been living by the Salton Sea for seven years, a fate worse than death for anyone who's been there -- then he would most certainly appear as the Fat Elvis version of Cox:

And in fact, this was the exact outfit he was wearing. On my two-year-old Blackberry 8530 with its shitty camera, this is how he looked last night:

Yes, that's really the best picture I have.

I'm glad to say that the man really committed. He danced around. He grooved. He sung his heart out. Yeah, he had to rely on a discreet little teleprompter at the front of the stage from time to time, but Reilly is a professional -- he never let it affect his stage presence. And he'd semi-memorized enough of his songs that only for one or two of them was he beholden to this crutch. Even the word "beholden" is unkind, because he never stumbled, never missed a word, and emoted exactly as the songs demanded.

I found myself wishing that I'd brushed up on the movie -- which I'd only seen once, despite my fervent desire for a second viewing -- but then again, how could I have? There was no way to know it would be necessary. Which meant I didn't have the kind of familiarity with the songs that a recent viewing would have given me.

But I was glad to see my recollections come rushing back. He played the title track as his second number, and in another song or two was on to "Let's Duet," the memorably raunchy-sounding love song that constantly reveals itself to be less raunchy than it originally appears. (Sample lyric: "In my dreams you're blowing me ... some kisses.")

Now, a side narrative that had been occupying me was whether we were going to get a guest appearance from any of the movie's other stars. If this were a road show -- which I seriously doubt it will become -- there would be little chance that anyone else would devote it the time or the energy other than Reilly himself (and his band, of course). But here in Los Angeles, it's easy to imagine someone popping over on a lark, since they live here anyway.

The someone we might be likely to see was Jenna Fischer, aka Pam from The Office. If you're considering Walk Hard to be a straight parody of Walk the Line, Fischer played June Carter Cash (Reese Witherspoon) to Reilly's Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix). "Let's Duet" was ostensibly sung by Fischer in the movie, so it was certainly conceivable that she'd make a cameo here. And since I've always loved Fischer, I was seriously hoping for it. In fact, early on in Andrews' set, I thought I'd seen her pass me in the crowd. I engineered a fake trip to the bathroom to confirm it, but it wasn't her.

And she didn't take the stage either. Instead, a woman named Angela Correa took the stage. There was a reason I said that Fischer had "ostensibly" sung the song -- it was because this woman Angela Correa had actually provided the vocals. Predictably, she knocked it out of the park here.

This incident illustrated one of the ways the evening verged on breaking down the wall between the character and reality. In order to explain why it was Correa on stage rather than "Darlene" (Fischer's character, who would be an ex-wife to Cox at this point), Cox told us that Darlene was tone deaf and that Correa had to stand off stage and sing any time she performed. So that was a plausible cover.

Reilly did refer to the film on a couple occasions -- "You don't know how it feels when your life story is a bomb" he said, paraphrasing -- but it was as though the film existed as a documentary of his life, not a fiction film. Another good cover there. At one point he actually asked the audience if anyone present had not seen the movie, and a man in the front row copped to it. He brought him up on stage and handed him a copy of the DVD, saying it's now available for "only $20." It was part of a running gag that Cox's reappearance on stage was motivated by a desperate need for money. In a great bit of theater, he actually extracted a twenty dollar bill from the guy, and as far as I can tell never gave it back to him. Damn, I would have paid that twenty bucks.

The comedic highlight was his encore, which he performed after running through the crowd, over the bar, around back and back on stage again, in another great bit of theater. (In fact, he jostled the table next to us as he went by, knocking a glass beer bottle to the ground and spilling beer on my friend.) This was the third song I was sure I recognized: "(Have You Heard the News) Dewey Cox Died." The three of us guys (the woman had mysteriously disappeared by this point) in my group laughed hysterically throughout this number, which is an impassioned imagination by the singer of the popular reaction to his death. Rarely has death been so funny.

After this encore, Cox/Reilly concluded what had been about a 30-minute set and left the stage for good this time. While that's brief by the standards of most musical acts, it's a rather impressive length for an out-of-shape 47-year-old actor who does not do this kind of thing for a living, and has not (to my knowledge) inhabited this character either on camera or off in about five years. During the final roar of applause and cheering, I felt dizzy with enjoyment.

As it turned out, we lingered for a lot longer afterward than I had expected to linger, especially given that I needed to be at work by 7 a.m. this morning. This was due in part to the fact that I recognized another person in the crowd, a friend of mine who I only see every couple years, but who plays a significant role in my marriage. You see, this guy -- an actor working in obscurity, but regularly enough to pay the bills -- appeared as Bob Crachett in the performance of A Christmas Carol where I met my wife. If this guy hadn't been in it, our mutual friend wouldn't have invited my wife and me (among others) to see it, and I never would have met her. So I'm quite fond of this guy, even though I see him rarely.

Anyway, talking with him and his girlfriend, and introducing them to my group, led to the aforementioned extended lingering. As various people in our extended group peeled off to use the bathroom, it prolonged the whole post-mortem socializing out of a polite deference to waiting for the most recently departed person to return before saying goodbye. The conversation flowed easily enough, but I was conscious of the fact that it was now after midnight.

But what lingering allowed me to do was go up to Reilly afterward and congratulate him on a great show. As the crowd thinned out, he appeared out in the area where we had all stood for the past three hours watching the show, and mingled with members of the band. No longer dressed as Dewey, he wore jeans, a light blue shirt and a hat that can best be described (by someone with my limited understanding of the different species of hat) as a tan-colored bowler. Given the intimacy of this show and the fact that he was essentially making himself available to the public, I felt no qualms about going up to him.

I tapped him on the shoulder and offered him my hand. I said "I just wanted to tell you that you did a great job, that was awesome." Or something similarly innocuous but not inane. Having a couple beers allowed me to sound less inane than I sometimes do in these situations.

To use an Australian term favored by my wife, he seemed really chuffed. "Oh, thanks a lot," he said. "I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for coming out." In fact, his words trailed behind me as I was walking away, almost as though he would have talked about it more if I'd wanted.

The best thing is something I haven't even told you about. Do you know how much this whole thing cost?

Ten bucks. Or, $13 with the convenience fee.

Here's hoping that $13 goes straight into Dewey's pocket, so maybe he can finally move out of that shitty mobile home on the edge of the Salton Sea. 

Overachievers: Walk Hard

It's not often that I'm prompted to run straight to the computer after watching a movie. But with no post up yet today -- I never exceed one per day -- I have a clean slate to do that tonight.

The movie that prompted this was Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Not only did it prompt me to go straight to my computer, but it also prompted me to create a new recurring-as-needed series on my blog: Overachievers.

Overachievers -- and its inverse, Underachievers -- will be series that allow me to spotlight films based on how they compared to my expectations for them/what I had heard about them. If a movie is much better than I thought it would be, Overachievers makes a nice way to spread the word. However, if it's been unjustly hyped, Underachievers can save my readers from it. (To the extent that people allow themselves to be biased one way or another by what I write.)

And tonight's overachiever is Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

I guess I only really discussed this movie with one other person who saw it, but that discussion left such an overwhelmingly negative impression of it that I'd kept a wide berth from it since then. I did form negative impressions of it myself -- a trailer that looked too broad by half; too much infantile dick humor in the title. But without that conversation, I probably would have seen it two years ago. After all, I consider myself a patron of Judd Apatow's many-splendored buffet. If Apatow's name is on it, I'll see it sooner rather than later.

Apatow has minor misses -- but my conversation with this friend led me to expect a major whiff. So I passed up a couple decent chances to see it. Until just recently, when my wife decided that she wants to watch basically nothing but simple -- preferably funny -- cinematic fare until she gives birth in two months. I lap up dumb comedies with the best of them, and now I didn't need to feel guilty anymore. So Walk Hard was one of three movies that came home with me from the library on Friday. It had to be good for at least a laugh or two.

Was it ever.

I think it's fair to say that I was laughing from the very first minute of the movie, and did not stop for more than a minute the rest of the way.

Quite simply, this is one of the funniest parodies I've ever seen. It takes all the well-known cliches of rock n' roll biopics and drives them just 10% into the absurd. Okay, maybe 20%. But with a few obvious exceptions, almost everything that happens in Dewey Cox could happen to a real music icon. It's not the Airplane! school of parody, where everything is a sight gag and few of them are logical. It's not the _____ Movie school of parody, where everything is just a really obvious parody of a really popular person or movie, regardless of whether it actually relates to movie's theme. No, Dewey Cox is the blessed result of a director and star pulling back on the reins -- and being all the more uproarious for how seriously they're devoted to being just plain funny.

I am in such a dizzy post-Dewey state right now that I can't even give you a laundry list of specifics, though believe me, I want to. I will say that not only is John C. Reilly brilliant in the lead role -- playing himself from, hilariously, age 14 onward -- but he's supported by a terrific and frankly huge cast of funny people, most notably his two leading ladies (Kristen Wiig playing Wife #1, Jenna Fischer playing Wife #2, in following the Johnny Cash template). Special props to Tim Meadows as his lifelong friend and the guy who gets him into every new kind of increasingly serious drug. The scene where Meadows tells him "you don't want this shit!" regarding marijuana, then proceeds to explain all the ways it's great as if they're negatives ("It's not habit-forming!"), is absolutely brilliant.

What's even better is that the music is totally legit. There had to be 15 new songs written specifically for this movie -- sung by Reilly, I'm pretty sure -- and they all sound like they could have been played by a real musician of the era in question. Only the lyrics are slightly goofier, but even the goofiness is underplayed -- most songs are more absurd than the most obvious interpretation of their lyrics, because of things a 21st century post-ironic audience would recognize, but they wouldn't have recognized at the time.

One final proof of how unexpectedly pleased I am with Walk Hard: During the entire time I've been writing this post, the DVD title menu has been replaying the title theme on permanent repeat. I believe this is the 32nd iteration. Or is the 34th?

Anyway, way to overachieve, Dewey.