Costner's never better than when the film itself seems comfortable with chuckling at how seriously he takes himself. Bull Durham is no exception, boasting a treatise that borders on magic realism as it dissects the contrast between fun in sports and sex and the sober poetics of Intelligent Baseball and Complicated Romance. In the end, its a bit boorish to do anything but build to its obvious climax, but watching Tim Robbins play a goober this big opposite a purposefully Fantasy-driven Susan Sarandon is nearly enough to stop your brain from trying to process Shelton's 'Lessons for Life 101' message.

Zemeckis is so good at premises and so easily led by money. Contact is dynamite entertainment that's betrayed, constantly, by its insistence on using worn archetypes, unnecessary scenery chewing and weepy manipulation. At least Cast Away's lack of music for a whole hour made it seem somewhat rebellious.

Wacky 80s relic that actually succeeds in charming us until it blasts a classic set of dealkillers from the time period: The Overheard Shallow Guytalk and the Honesty Through a Well Timed Essay. The latter may not even have been reoccuring in these films. I just think its a shamelessly easy way to solve the problem of reconciliation. Because its episodic, there are more highlights than continuity and Cusack's bar pals, Cusack's roommate and Zuniga's stiff boyfriend all create colorfully wonderful hilarity.

Best. Travelogue. Ever.

Worst. Travelogue. Ever.

Matt Trout has now seen Short Cuts. As if anyone cared.

Because he's Woody Allen, the all-over-the-place charm of Annie Hall can neatly be written off as an extension of the most pure form of his neuroses. But I found out recently that the movie was whittled down from nearly three hours, so that could have something to do with it. Either way, its inclusion among the Xers' and post-Xers' 10 best of all time (along with, yes Rushmore) is pretty preposterous in my opinon. Did they all sleep through the uber-tedious part where he goes to L.A. and gets into the stock footage police situation?

At first, I thought it was a well intentioned treatise on how voyeurism fills the entitlement gap left by power-related detachment (initially, I thought, meant to evoke self-reflection on its own viewership, later discarded as instance after instance of contradictory points were made). Come to realize its all about fixation and fantasy as a vile hood prostitutes the girl he has a wee crush upon, thereby showing her how much he, um, loves her. Wait - what? Kim's film contains an omniscient sense of alienation wherein characters can be standing in a room with other characters and go completely unnoticed, but it fails to draw this into its worldview time and time again, veering from silent observations (the gangster) to plot-driven text almost arbitrarily (doesn't help that it's built entirely on the premise that someone can be drawn into a contract where they give up the rights to their own face and body.) This concept is fine as metaphor, but sours the thing when it repeatedly leans on the literal. Biggest problem is that the story is not springboarded into the abstract clearly enough. Because I feel like its on the table, I should address the following: Those comparisons to (ever-revered) The Piano are justified - though the mood drives that piece much more than this one - as Bad Guy, similarly, observes a woman stripped of her rights but expected to play nice. That Bad Guy was made prior to the last two Kim films eases the mind a stitch.

[Was that the same prison the main character in 3-Iron visits?]