News You Can Bruise for 2003 March 9

Sumana and I have been renting movies recently. Here are some reviews.

• I meant for Sumana to rent A Slight Case of Murder, but instead she rented A Slight Case of Murder. The latter is a made-for-TV movie starring (and partially written by) William H. Macy. However, it's interesting in its own right. First, it's what Very Bad Things should have been. Second, it was made in 1999 and it's a lot like The Man Who Wasn't There, which leads me to think that the following happened:

  William H. Macy: I enjoyed my slow burn performance in Fargo, but my character cracked under pressure and didn't get enough screen time. I know! I'll write a movie full of homages to the noir genre, in which my character does the Fargo schtick the whole time!

  ...

  Joel and Ethan Coen: How dare that Macy fellow do such Fargo-esque schtick in a non-Coen-brothers-approved film! We've got it! We'll make our own movie, similarly full of homages to the noir genre, and release it in theatres! Everyone will watch our movie and forget about his!

  ...

  William H. Macy: Damn! They're on to me! My only hope is to release my movie on video and give it the same name as the classic noir comedy A Slight Case Of Murder, in hopes that people will rent it accidentally!

  ...

  Joel Coen: What's for dinner?
  Ethan Coen: You were supposed to make dinner.

• The Apartment: Jack Lemmon is at his put-upon best, and occasionally gives voice to that aspect of his personality that is Professor Fate in The Great Race, which is how I will always remember Jack Lemmon. Good jokes and banter, incredible office sets. The villain of the piece is Fred MacMurray, and the movie came out the same year "My Three Sons" debuted, which adds a completely new subtext to "My Three Sons"; the movie could almost be a prequel.

• Shall We Dance?: Cute, inoffensive, and fun. A lot of memorable characters. As so often happens, I didn't think the lead actress was as good-looking as everyone in the movie did. Several characters try to steal the show, but the one who walks off with it is the friendly gumshoe who plays a bit part early on and then just hangs around for the rest of the movie to see how it turns out. I didn't think there was any way to top the cowboy in The Big Lebowski, but the gumshoe in Shall We Dance? does everything the cowboy does while actually being part of the movie world.

PS: The actor who played the gumshoe (Akira Emoto) was in Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla! I knew I recognized him from somewhere.