2011-2012 Movie Rankings

I think most of you that I’m sending this list to have already read my movie rankings in the past, so I’ll spare the long intro.  Remember that it’s just a list of what I enjoyed the most, not necessarily what I thought was the best quality movie.  A good example from last year was Precious, which I thought was a very good movie, but I didn’t really enjoy it that much, and only ranked it at #39.  I watched fewer movies this year than last, in part because the Blockbuster in my neighborhood went out of business (I still do Blockbuster by mail), and also because it just seemed like there weren’t as many movies I wanted to see.  Last year my top two movies, Inception and True Grit are both probably in my top 50 movies of all time.  This year there was nothing nearly that good.  Really, all of my top 10 are movies that I had fun watching, but nothing stood out as a classic.  The only other change to the list is I didn’t put older movies in the numeric ranking – my first five movies are older movies that are considered “classics” that I didn’t try to fit into the rest of the list.  Of the 9 Best Picture nominees, I only saw 4 of them. The ones I didn’t see were:

The Artist – I will see it, it just isn’t out yet on DVD.  I’ve heard good things but it has the feel of a movie that will sit on my shelf for weeks before I finally watch it.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – Looks like pure schmaltz.  Unless someone convinces me otherwise, I’m not seeing it.

The Help – Looks boring.  Maybe I’ll see it, but I’m not in any rush.

Midnight in Paris – I’m not a big Woody Allen fan, but I’ll probably rent this at some point.

War Horse – It’s about a horse.  I will not be seeing it.

So here I the ones I did watch. 

Classics seen this year

True Grit – Is it too early to call this a classic? Last year I saw it in the theater and it was #2 on my list. I had to see it again on DVD, and it was just as good. One of the all-time great westerns, although it is much more than “just a western”.  I watched it the second time with Jodie and she hated it, further proof that our taste in movies could not be any more different.

The Shining – In general, I don’t like horror movies, which is why I had never seen this one. But after watching it this year, I can see why it’s considered one of the all-time greats. Jack Nicholson and Stanley Kubrick are both capable of amazing heights, and I’m not sure either of them has ever been better than they were in this movie.

The French Connection – I rented this movie because I knew it had what was considered one of the all-time great car chase scenes, and I love good car chases, so I wanted to see how it stacked up against some of my favorites. What I didn’t realize was what a great movie it was. My complaint with a lot of older movies, even the classics, is that they seem slow. This one is the opposite – fast-paced and intense throughout (and yes, a great car-chase). It holds up today and I can’t imagine how good it must’ve seemed when it came out in 1971.

Red River – Seeing True Grit made me remember how much I love westerns, and made me want to watch  this classic John Wayne movie about an ill-fated cattle drive. This is the kind of western I used to love watching when I was in high school (not sure if that’s a compliment or not). Was there anyone better suited to play the western hero (or in this movie, anti-hero) than John Wayne?  Maybe Clint Eastwood, but that’s about it.

Planet of the Apes – One of the movies I watched (and liked) this year was Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Since there have been seemingly dozens of sequels, remakes, and prequels to this original, I figured I needed to see what was so great that it spawned all these other movies. And in a lot of ways it isn’t great – cheesy acting, the special effects are silly, and almost everything Charlton Heston does or says is ridiculous. But…. having watched it now, there is some pretty great stuff about it. It seems dated, but at the same time it is actually a very thoughtful movie, and it deals pretty pointedly with ideas like blind religious beliefs and the nature of what it means to be human. I liked it more than I thought I would.

Movies I hated

44. Hesher – I love Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrutte). Joseph Gordon-Leavitt is one of my favorite up and coming actors. Natalie Portman is my celebrity crush. They are all in this movie, which made me think I would like it. Which made it surprising that I HATED this movie far more than any other movie this year. In the movie summary on the rental envelope it said that “a bullied boy whose mother just died in an accident strikes up an unlikely friendship with a Metallica-loving anarchist”. In the actual movie the Metallica-loving anarchist moves in (uninvited) to the house of a family where the mom just died in a car accident and torments them and does cruel things to the little kid. If you find that kind of thing enjoyable, then by all means, this is the movie for you. 

43. Biutiful – I thought this would be great because it was directed by the guy that directed 21 Grams and stars Javier Bardem, the bad guy from No Country For Old Men, not to mention it got good reviews. I don’t even remember what it was about because I couldn’t watch the whole thing. Both unpleasant and boring at the same time.

42. Meek’s Cutoff – When I first heard about this movie it was at lunch and Andrew Duden read a summary of it, something along the lines of “A period piece about a group of settlers on the Oregon Trail.”  Andrew’s reaction was a long, exaggerated yawn. But after reading several positive reviews I thought it was worth a shot. I knew I was in trouble when there wasn’t a single word of dialogue for the first 10 minutes. After about half an hour I realized that I would not watch a more boring movie the whole year. I watched the rest of it on fast-forward to see if there were any interesting parts, and it was still slow. The lesson here: always trust Andrew Duden’s gut reaction to a movie.

41. Hangover 2 – Two years ago The Hangover was my #1 movie of the year so I should’ve been the target audience for this movie. Unfortunately the writers of the sequel spent about as much time writing the script for the movie as I am typing a one-paragraph summary of it. I’ve never seen a movie that was more blatant about copying the original than this one.  Awful in every way.  I would go as far as to say that if anyone tells you they liked this movie, you should never trust any movie recommendation they make ever again.

Movies that I didn’t really like

40. Thor – I watched a handful of superhero movies this year, and this was the worst one. This is sort of your typical bad summer movie – lots of special effects, some big names, but no substance.  On the other hand, watching this movie will help you understand some of the plot of the best action movie of the year (The Avengers), so it’s not a total loss.

39. Hall Pass – I thought this would be funny because it has Jason Sudekis (SNL), Owen Wilson and Jason Bateman in it. Unfortunately I don’t find movies about people having affairs all that funny. Actually, there were a few funny parts in this movie, but by and large there were too many parts in it that made me cringe to enjoy it.

Decent if you’re in the right mood

38. Our Idiot Brother –This movie stars Paul Rudd, who is always pretty fun.  I watched it on an airplane, and that pretty much tells you all you need to know about it – it’s an airplane movie. It’s not bad, there were a few laughs, and it was decent enough to keep me watching the whole thing, but overall it was pretty bland.

37. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol – I am not going to describe this movie because it is exactly what you would expect it to be.

36. Green Lantern – Better than Thor, not nearly as good as Captain America. My expectations were really low, but I actually ended up enjoying it.

35. Rio – Kids movie about a couple of parrots that are the last of their species and have to mate to survive, only they get kidnapped along the way.  I liked it.  My kids liked it more than I did.  Good family movie night fare.

34. African Cats – This is a Disney Nature movie about a cheetah family and a lion family. It was surprisingly entertaining.

33. Bored to Death – The second season of the HBO series starring Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifanakis, and Ted Danson.  Schwartzman plays a failed author that is a non-licensed private investigator. Galifanakis plays his friend, Danson plays his boss. It’s pretty funny, but never quite as funny as I think it should be. I’d rather just watch Between Two Ferns.

32. Limitless – Bradley Cooper (the guy from The Hangover) finds a drug that allows him to access the full potential of his brain. This allows him to become the smartest person on Earth or something like that. Kind of ridiculous, but I actually enjoyed watching it.

31. Hannah – I went to see this at the Laurelhurst theater simply because I read a review that said that the subway fight scene in the movie was the best fight scene in any movie so far this year.  What a joke. The “fight scene” lasts about 15 seconds, and it’s fine, but there is absolutely nothing special about it at all.  The movie as a whole is about a girl that is raised as a nearly invincible super-assassin and starts taking people out. Is it just me, or are there about 5 movies every year that involve some sort of secret agent or assassin that has nearly superhero-like abilities to beat up or kill everyone that tries to take them out?  This version of it isn’t bad, but between things like the Bourne movies and Salt and James Bond and Mission Impossible and almost any recent movie with Liam Neeson, this idea is getting old.

30. Everything Must Go – I like almost everything Will Ferrell is in, even the bad movies. His previous attempt at a serious movie (Stranger than Fiction) was actually my #1 movie of 2006, the first year I started doing this list. He’s not bad here, but he plays a character that you begin to hate by the end of the movie, and if you’ve read my movie lists before, you know that those are usually not my favorite kinds of movies.

29. Cedar Rapids – This stars Ed Helms as an insurance salesman at an insurance convention. The cast is pretty fun, mainly Helms and the great John C. Reilly. There are some uncomfortable parts, but they are made up for by the funny parts.

28. Crazy, Stupid Love – This is one of those Hollywood movies where there are a bunch of contrived plot twists that are just way over the top and totally implausible. Really, this is another movie you’d watch on an airplane. But at the same time, the big stars in this movie (Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, and Emma Stone) are all so much fun to watch that it makes everything else forgivable and I had a fun time watching it.

27. Cowboys vs. Aliens – Harrison Ford sucks. It is painful to admit that the guy that played Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Rick Deckard (Blade Runner) and Richard Kimble (The Fugitive), and Jack Ryan is washed up, but let’s face it, he hasn’t made a watchable movie in more than a decade, unless you count K19: Widowmaker as a watchable movie. I looked it up – the last watchable movie he made was Air Force One in 1997. Well, I am pleased to say, that the streak is over. This isn’t great, and he isn’t the main star (Daniel Craig is), but this is actually a fun movie. If you have high expectations for a movie called Cowboys vs. Aliens then something is wrong with you. This is just a fun, summer movie, and it doesn’t disappoint.

26. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – Gary Oldman is fantastic here as a retired intelligence officer trying to find a mole at the top of the British intelligence agency. There was a previous version of this that was a BBC mini-series, and that’s kind of what it feels like. Not bad, but the suspense never rises to a level that gets you really engaged in the movie. Normally I hate it when a good suspense movie ends with a car chase or fight scene that doesn’t seem to fit with the tone of the movie, but watching this I was almost wishing for some superfluous action.

25. Martha Marcy May Marlene – John Hawkes is one of the best supporting actors working right now. Last year I thought he deserved an Oscar for his role as a murderous meth-addict uncle in Winter’s Bone (one of my favorite movies last year). His character in this movie is maybe even scarier. The movie is about a woman that has just left a cult, and is mostly filled with flashbacks to her time with the cult. It’s really well made and the acting is great, but I can’t imagine too many people enjoying watching it. Most of the scenes with the cult are hard to watch.

Movies I liked

24. Waiting for Superman – Documentary by the people that made An Inconvenient Truth about the state of public education in the United States. There were things I didn’t agree with in the movie (for one, they make charter schools seem like the solution for all that ails education). But I thought it made a pretty convincing case that public education isn’t working for large numbers of people in this country.  The movie follows several families from different backgrounds that really want to be successful, and it is heartbreaking at times to watch and feel like there isn’t a whole lot of hope for them to succeed in their current circumstances.

23. The Guard – This is one of those unlikely-couple cop movies, with Brendan Gleeson playing a racist Irish cop (guard) and Don Cheadle as the FBI agent reluctantly assigned to work with him. There’s nothing original or spectacular about it, but buddy movies like this are made or broken based on the chemistry between the stars, and Gleeson and Cheadle are a lot of fun.

22. Rango – Not many kid movies stood out as ones that are enjoyable for the adults too, but this was one of the better ones. Johnny Depp does the voice of a chameleon that becomes the sheriff of a small western town. Not necessarily Pixar-good, but good.  Although speaking of Pixar, I didn’t even bother watching Cars 2 this year – I heard it was their first not-so-great movie.

Movies I really liked

21. Take Shelter – A family man in Ohio starts having visions of a massive storm, and as a result he starts doing things like using his family’s savings to build a storm shelter in their backyard. Only his mother suffers from schizophrenia, and he knows that maybe these visions are part of him starting to develop the disease as well.  There’s a sense of impending doom throughout the whole movie, and you never quite know what’s real and what isn’t.

20. Moneyball – Let’s see…a Best Picture nominee, about baseball, starring Brad Pitt, based on a book I loved.  Sounds like the formula for a movie that I would be wild about.  But for some reason I wasn’t excited at all about seeing it.  Once I finally watched it, I did enjoy it, even if I was very familiar with the story.  It’s based on the true story of Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, who popularized the “moneyball” idea – basically that small-market sports teams (like the A’s) could compete with the big-market teams (like the Yankees) by using statistical analysis, rather than the traditional methods of scouting, and targeting cheaper but still effective players.  The book is one of my favorite sports books, and now there are a lot of sports teams in all professional sports that use this kind of statistical analysis to target players and build their teams.  This movie does a nice job of capturing the story, and presents it in a way that non-sports fans can enjoy – in fact the reason that I finally saw this movie is that some friends that aren’t baseball fans at all convinced me that it was worth seeing.

19. Easy A – Humorous take on the Scarlett Letter in a high school setting.  This didn’t get good reviews, but a couple friends recommended it and I really enjoyed it.  For one thing it stars Emma Stone, who is always fun.  Everyone at the school thinks she’s sleeping around, but really she’s just pretending to for the benefit of various friends at school (her closeted gay friend, nerds, etc).  It’s every bit as silly as it sounds but it’s a very enjoyable rental.

18. Attack the Block – Aliens attack Earth, only the place they land happens to be a rough neighborhood in London.  And the first people they run into happen to be a group of kids, setting off a kids vs. aliens battle over the course of the movie.  Only these aren’t the ‘nice’ kids you’d normally root for – right before the aliens land they are in the middle of stealing a woman’s purse.  The aliens have their work cut out for them.  Pretty fun and a different take on the alien invasion movie.

17. 30 Minutes or Less – Three years ago Zombieland was in my top 5 movies, and this movies is directed by the same guy, so I had pretty high hopes.  It isn’t nearly as good as Zombieland, but I still enjoyed it.  Jessie Eisenberg plays a pizza delivery guy who gets kidnapped and has a bomb strapped to his chest, and is told he has to go rob a bank or the bomb goes off.  He drags his friend into helping him plan and carry off the bank heist.  The friend is played by Aziz Anasari, and between Eisenberg and Anasari’s characters it makes for a pretty funny movie, but I was left thinking that it could have been better.

16. Four Lions – Throughout this movie, I kept telling myself “I shouldn’t really be laughing at this”, but that didn’t really stop me.  It’s a movie about four friends (the four lions) that see themselves as Jihadists intent on blowing stuff up.  Only they are so stupid you almost feel sorry for them as they continue to do ridiculous things.  Definitely a dark comedy, but good throughout.

15. Black Swan – A Best Picture nominee a year ago, I decided to pass on it at first because I didn’t think a movie about ballet would really be up my alley, and everyone that saw it told me it was good but hard to watch.  But, I usually try to see all the nominees, and when I finally watched it I was glad I did.  I can see why some people loved it and others hated it.  I thought Natalie Portman was great as a dancer that has to tap into her “dark side” in order to play her dream role.  It’s really creepy, and there are a bunch of points where you aren’t quite sure what’s real and what isn’t.  Much better than I expected.

14. Rise of the Planet of the Apes – This is supposed to be a prequel to Planet of the Apes, rather than a remake like the one with Mark Wahlberg that wasn’t very good, or a sequel, or a sequel to the remake.  As I mentioned before, there have been plenty of takes on the Planet of the Apes idea, but this is the best of the recent ones.  Like the original it hints at some bigger issues about what it means to be human, and about human nature.  This isn’t great cinema, but it is a smarter than usual summer movie, and it was a pleasant surprise.

13. The Debt – Speaking of pleasant surprises, I knew very little about this one going in, and ended up thinking it was terrific.  It’s a movie that you’re better off not knowing much going in, so I’ll keep it brief.  It stars Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkenson (both always great), as well as Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington as Mossad agents that are tracking down a Nazi war criminal in 1960’s Germany.  This has all the suspense and tension that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy lacks, even if the last act isn’t quite as good as the rest of the movie.

Top movies of the year

12. Hugo – You could make a pretty good argument for this being the best movie of the year.  It is a beautiful movie  - maybe the most beautiful film of the year.  It is a tribute by Martin Scorcesse to silent film and movies themselves.  It is beautiful, fun to watch, and touching at times.  It’s meant to be a movie that appeals to both kids and adults, and I guess that’s my only complaint with it – at times it felt too much like a “kid’s movie”, but I know that my kids were also a little bored at times and much of the movie was over their heads (they enjoyed it, but didn’t love it).

11. The Descendants – This is a terrific film – really it’s a better movie than just about everything I have ahead of it on this list.  Part of my not ranking it higher is that I went to see it on a ‘guy’s night’, and there is no denying that this movie is a downer. I think I would’ve actually enjoyed it more had I watched it at home on DVD on a slow night.  Despite dealing with heavy material (George Clooney’s wife is in a coma for most of the movie) it is really well done.  The two daughters are the best part of the movie, as they struggle to deal with what is happening to their family.  Everyone talked about how great Clooney was, and I always like him, but to me he was still just playing his usual George Clooney character.  Very worthy of its Best Picture nomination.

10. Captain America – Superhero movies are not everyone’s cup of tea.  If they’re done wrong they end up being special effects time-wasters like Thor, or even worse, The Hulk.  If they’re done right, they end up like The Dark Knight or Iron Man – truly entertaining movies that make billions of dollars.  This one is a lot closer to Iron Man than Thor.  It’s entertaining, it’s full of action, the historical context is fun, and all in all it’s a worthy superhero movie.  Plus the bad guy is Hugo Weaving (aka Mr. Smith in The Matrix – one of the all time great bad guys).

9. Contagion – I love apocalyptic movies  - Zombieland and The Road are a couple recent ones I loved, and I’m hooked on the TV show The Walking Dead.  Part of what I like is that the good ones focus not necessarily on what went wrong, but how people treat each other when society is collapsing around them.  This movie is terrifying too, not because of zombies or vampires, but because it feels like it could actually happen.  It is basically showing what could happen if something like SARS or H1N1 really got out of hand, and it is really scary.  Part of why I loved this is that they got the science right – actual scientists from the CDC consulted throughout the movie to make sure that it was more realistic than say…Outbreak (which I liked at the time but was actually pretty silly).  I liked this so much I showed it in my Biology classes this year during our microbiology unit, and it was a great jump-off point for discussion on a number of topics.  Plus, you’ve got to like a movie where the heroes are scientists.

8.The Tree of Life – I’ll start by saying this movie is not for everyone.  Not everyone likes movies without much dialogue.  Not everyone likes movies that don’t really have a discernible plot.  Not everyone likes movies that smack in the middle have a 20 minute visual history of life on Earth from the Big Bang to the dinosaurs to man.  Supposedly a lot of people walked out of the theater during that part.  This is a truly unique movie.  The movie follows a couple (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) and their two boys and the ups and downs of their lives.  It is impossible to describe what this movie is like in a paragraph because there is so much going on.  On one level it’s a very spiritual movie – Scott Buchanan and I exchanged pages-long emails discussing the “deeper meaning” of the movie.  But at a different level what really struck me was the relationship the portrayal of the relationship between the father and his sons.  Not for everyone, but unlike anything else on this list.

7. The Avengers – The idea of trying to fit 6 superheroes into one movie sounds like a summer-movie disaster waiting to happen.  At first it sounds like the equivalent of watching Transformers 6 – really big, lots of ‘splosions, no plot.  Thankfully, that’s not what happened here.  It’s directed by Joss Wheedon, so the movie has great, funny dialogue, and it’s fun and over-the-top without being too over-the-top.  If you don’t like superhero movies, then this probably isn’t for you.  But if you like stuff like Spiderman or Iron Man, then it’s hard to imagine you being disappointed by this one.  It helps a little with the plot to have seen Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America before seeing this, but it isn’t really necessary.

6. Drive – Hands down the coolest movie of the year.  It has a lot of familiar elements to other crime movies, but it was surprising in a lot of ways.  The plot doesn’t sound that exciting – Ryan Gosling plays a getaway driver, and falls for a woman in his apartment building whose husband is in jail.  When the husband gets out of jail, Gosling agrees to help him with “one last job”.  But despite the plot that doesn’t sound spectacular, the movie has a unique style that made it one of the most interesting movies I’ve seen in a while.  For one, Gosling plays the lead, but he doesn’t have more than about 10 lines of dialogue in the movie.  It’s also paced slowly at times, but then it has moments that explode with shocking violence (that’s one thing I didn’t like – I thought the violence was a little too much).  And as you might guess in a movie called Drive, the chase scenes are great.  Part of what makes it so cool is the music – the soundtrack has sort of an ‘80’s retro feel to it, and it just fits the mood of the film perfectly.

5. Bridesmaids  - Easily the funniest movie of the year.  It’s crass, it’s lowbrow, and more than anything else, it’s hilarious.  Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose best friend (Maya Rudolph) is getting married, and she and one of the other bridesmaids immediately hate each other and compete to be the better friend.  I know that as a nearly 40 year-old adult that I should probably not be so easily amused by poop jokes, but the scene where they are trying on bridesmaids dresses after accidentally eating laxatives is wet-your-pants funny. 

4. The Hunger Games – I pretty seriously considered moving this one down about 5 spots, because I knew that by putting it at the top of my list I would lose all credibility with some of you.  Oh well – as I’ve mentioned many times before, this is not a ranking of best picture nominees, it is just a ranking of which movies I enjoyed the most, and this was one of my favorites this year.  I had not read the book before seeing the movie (I have now), so I’d imagine I had a little different perspective going in.  I wouldn’t call the film “art” along the lines of something like Tree of Life or Hugo, but it is a really entertaining story.  Now that I’ve started reading the books they are really hard to put down.  The idea isn’t even terribly original – in more than one way it reminded me of The Running Man (but sadly with no Schwarzenegger).  The lead actress, Jennifer Lawrence is great – if you didn’t see her in Winter’s Bone last year, I’d highly recommend it (although not exactly a cheery film).  I got grief a couple of years ago because I watched Twilight, and even though I put it really low on my list, just the fact that I watched it was enough for me to be given a hard time.  So I’m guess that by putting what is essentially a teen movie near of my list I’m inviting ridicule, but this was a year without any real standout movies, and if Jefferson can post “Katnisssssssss!!!!!” as his Facebook status the day the movie came out in the theaters, well, at least I’m not the only dork around.

3. Super 8 – When I saw the previews for this and saw that it was directed by JJ Abrams (Lost) I thought it was going to be a monster or alien movie, and to a certain extent, it is.  But much more than that it reminded me of movies like the Goonies or Stand By Me, with a group of kids teaming up to solve a mystery.  Great fun, and really well done.  One of my tests for how much I really like a movie is if I’m hoping that it gets to the end so that I can find out what happens, or in the case of the best ones, I’m hoping that it doesn’t end because I’m enjoying the storytelling and the unfolding of the movie so much.  This was one where I didn’t want the end to come.  I won’t say that it’s totally original – there are elements from a bunch of other movies here, but I felt like it was done in a way that was more of a tribute than a rip-off.

2. The Adjustment Bureau – I pretty seriously considered giving this the number one spot.  It’s a science fiction movie based on a Phillip K. Dick short story, which is always a good thing (see Blade Runner if you need further proof).  I liked the movie so much I checked out the story from the library later that week, and found out that the movie is actually much better than the short story.  Both the book and movie versions involve a group of bureaucrats (the adjustment bureau) that are responsible for making sure that people go where they’re supposed to go and interact with who they’re supposed to interact with to make sure that things happen according to plan.  In the book it’s just sort of a clever twist on the “butterfly effect” idea.  But in the movie it is a much more fleshed out story involving Matt Damon as a charismatic young man running for office, and the woman that he isn’t supposed to bump into, Emily Blount.  The chemistry between the two of them is terrific, and it manages to be a science fiction movie, a love story, and a suspense movie all in one. 

1. Win Win – My fear in putting this movie at the top of my list is that it will give you expectations about it that you probably shouldn’t have.  It’s a simple movie, small budget, and certainly not very fast-paced.  You will not be blown away, shocked, moved to tears, laugh uproariously, or anything else that you might expect from the top movie.  But it also felt more “real” than any other movie I saw this year.  Paul Giammati plays a high school wrestling coach that takes in a boy to live with him when the boy’s family situation gets crazy.  The kid ends up being a really good wrestler, and really seems to be succeeding with his new family, but things get complicated, and maybe Giammati’s motives in taking in the boy weren’t 100% honest either.  The acting is great, the character development is great, and it is a charming story, but not without some significant sadness and anger along the way.  It also manages to avoid the melodrama and absurd plot twists that usually manage to diminish the final act of this kind of movie (see Crazy, Stupid Love for an example of that).  My summary here isn’t really doing it justice – just rent this movie, it’s great.  But it’s great in a very simple kind of way.