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Message: [QUOTE="storrsroars, post: 4317374, member: 2500"] I was supposed to work a polling station on Tuesday, but wife tested positive Monday night (she's fine, caught it at work) so I was told to go home. Free day, bit of rain, so decided to revisit couple of favorites I hadn't seen in a few years. Oddly they're both about hit men having personal crises. Don't know what that says about me ;) [B]Grosse Pointe Blank[/B] (Prime thru 5/31) John Cusack said it's his favorite movie of the dozens he's been in. Getting into an actual IRL relationship with Minnie Driver might've had something to do with that. Anyway, they're great together. It was the 73rd highest grossing film of 1997 at $38 million (the godawful George of the Jungle did $105 mill box office that year). Never understood why it didn't do better, everyone I know who's seen it enjoyed it, but it's now a bit of a cult classic. If you don't know the plot, Martin Blank (Cusack) goes back to Grosse Pointe for his 10th HS reunion. While he's there he has to execute a contract, while rivals want to execute him. Lots of great throwaway lines, especially when Cusack goes existential. Dan Aykroyd also plays his part as the organizer of a union for assassins with zeal. Sister Joan and Alan Arkin also have minor but funny parts. One of my top 25 comedies ever. [B]The Matador[/B] (Prime w/ads). Pierce Brosnan plays the most anti-Pierce Brosnan role of his career as Julian, an aging, emotionally stunted, crass slob of a hit man who's having panic attacks on the job. He's incapable of having a relationship and has no friends he can talk to about his problems. Until he meets Danny (Greg Kinnear), a struggling businessman, at a hotel bar in Mexico. While it's hysterically funny at the start due to Julian's outrageously bad-mannered behavior, the movie actually has depth as a study of two completely different men in crises, Danny, who has the stable life and love Julian seeks, and Julian, who has a certain wisdom that helps Danny in his darkest moment of crisis. Hope Davis is wonderful as Danny's wife, and several familiar character actors who arrange Julian's hits play it perfectly straight, adding weight to the storyline. It was Brosnan's only Golden Globe nomination (many reviewers thought it Oscar-worthy) and the film is nothing w/o him - and likely nobody else but him would've been able to carry the film due to his past roles as a suave, sophisticated spy, which makes this role particularly funny and engaging. It was also a box office bomb, doing only $17 mill as the 153rd grossing film of 2006. Can't account for taste. [/QUOTE]

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