Dark comedy is not a genre that was made for me. Though there are many exceptions to the rule, the comedies I most enjoy star actors such as Will Ferrell (Old School, The Campaign, Step Brothers, The Other Guys), Adam Sandler (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy), Jason Segel (I Love You, Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement, Sex Tape, or Ed Helms (The Hangover, We’re the Millers, Vacation). Some of my other favorite comedies are There’s Something About Mary, all three of The original-cast American Pie films, Meet the Parents, Daddy’s Home, Get Him to the Greek, Hall Pass, The Internship, and Long Shot. Some comedies I greatly liked from my adolescence include Uncle Buck, Parenthood, Father of the Bride, Three Amigos, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Money Pit, and A League of Their Own.
Category Archives: Brendan Gleeson
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Talk about The tragedy of being bored. Now and then, a movie earns more undeserved praise than it is worth because of an established director securing multiple acting heavyweights. The most recent example I can think of was in 2017 when Steven Spielberg combined with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks for The Post; the movie was dubbed an Oscar lock, especially after 2015’s fantastic movie Spotlight (also about a newspaper reporting a highly publicized scandal) received six Academy Award nominations, including two wins. Drab, The Post failed to meet expectations, earning just six Academy Award nominations and winning just two.
Cold Mountain (2003)
The year was 2003, and a quiet little movie named The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King took home the Academy Awards biggest prize that year, winning Best Picture. Some will argue that this reflected on the culmination of a pretty darn good trilogy and that will ensure that the Peter Jackson franchise was worthy of its share of accolades that maybe Best Picture of the Year wasn’t one of them. I can’t give my personal opinion on that one because I have yet to see the film as of the time of this writing (February 2019). I liked the first two enough and don’t really have a reason for not seeing the third yet other than length and the thought that I should probably watch The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers again beforehand. There was a slightly quieter movie that year that seemed to be the Academy sweetheart heading into Oscar night, a film that reestablished Clint Eastwood as a major force to reckon with as, perhaps, THE best director in Hollywood for the foreseeable future (2004’s Million Dollar Baby being his crowning achievement). Mystic River was nominated for six Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood) and earned both Sean Penn and Tim Robbins their long-awaited trophies. 2003 was also the year for the excellent Seabiscuit, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Monster, and Lost in Translation. But there was one movie that was better than all of these. It too was a major name at Oscar night, earning seven nominations and landing Renée Zellweger her first win after receiving nominations for 2001’s Chicago and 2000’s Bridget Jones’s Diaries at the previous two events. That movie was Anthony Minghella’s (The Talented Mr. Ripley) sweeping Civil War piece Cold Mountain.
Live by Night (2016)
For the last three or four years, I’ve said that I think and hope that Ben Affleck can be our generation’s Clint Eastwood. Affleck has completely transformed himself into a Hollywood A-lister. With a career that really began with Kevin Smith movies like Mallrats and Chasing Amy, Affleck became a household name when he won an Academy Award (best original screenplay) for Good Will Hunting, a film in which he co-starred with Matt Damon. Affleck then stars in big-budget blockbusters such as Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and The Sum of All Fears. But after he started dating Jennifer Lopez and co-starred with her in both the forgettable Jersey Girl and Gigli, a movie that many people have called one of the worst movies ever made, his perception as an actor began taking a turn for the worse. Forgettable money grabbers like Daredevil, Paycheck, and Surviving Christmas accompanied tabloid fodder and, seemingly, in the blink of an eye, Affleck became sort of a joke in the Hollywood circles. Meanwhile, best friend Matt Damon was striking gold with everything he touched. But in 2007, Affleck dabbled with directing for the first time and had one of the best directorial debuts of all-time with the quiet, understated, and much revered Gone Baby Gone. Knowing he needed a break from being in front of the camera, Affleck turned to his brother Casey Affleck as his leading man. Not only did it launch Casey’s career, but critics and fans alike wanted to know if Ben was a one-hit-wonder as a director or if this was a sign of things to come. Fortunately, this was just the start for Affleck, who has since directed The Town (my second favorite movie of all time), and Argo, the Academy Award Winner for Best Picture of 2012. Affleck also reemerged as a leading man with The Town, Argo, State of Play, and the amazing Gone Girl. In all honesty, Affleck was due for a dud. But, personally, I felt like I owed it to him to see whatever his fourth movie behind the camera would be. I was excited about Live by Night when I first heard about it, but I went in with lower expectations after seeing the critics’ score of 33% and the audience’s score of 57% on Rotten Tomatoes. While this easily was his worst movie as a director, it wasn’t bad, but rather because his other movies were so good. I didn’t love Live by Night, but I by no means disliked it. It was longer than it needed to be and had a couple of too many storylines. But Affleck created a well-crafted story with some memorable characters, and, honestly, I’ll probably watch this movie again when it comes to Netflix so I can better analyze it and catch all of the parts that I might have missed.
In The Heart of the Sea (2015)
I was excited when I saw a blurb earlier this year about In The Heart of the Sea coming to the big screen in 2015. I have stated numerous times that Nathaniel Philbrick’s novel of the same name is the single most descriptive book I’ve ever read. But Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex had a way to make me feel I was actually in the book. I read this book on a whim probably seven or eight years ago and was utterly engrossed. I didn’t understand the place of this movie in historical literature. I learned that it was set to be released in 2015, that it would be directed by Ron Howard (Apollo 13) and star Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Rush), which got me even more stoked. Finally, I learned that this would have a December release. Unfortunately, it has failed to meet its critics’ expectations and has been squashed. Still, In The Heart of the Sea was probably my anticipated movie of the year. I felt that this movie met all of my expectations and then some. It was exactly like the novel, and I gave it a solid A. However, I could easily see a scenario where this movie might not have been as enjoyable as it was for me.
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