Read on Twitter
Going to spend the day watching all the movies that fall into my favorite micro-genre (the dudely corollary to the “manic pixie dreamgirl” phenomenon). I call it:
The Manic Dreamboat Assassin Boyfriend
First up, the great @johncusack in the 1997 hit Grosse Pointe Blank
The Manic Dreamboat Assassin Boyfriend
First up, the great @johncusack in the 1997 hit Grosse Pointe Blank
A key element to the Manic DreamBoat Assassin Boyfriend film is that he doesn’t actually *like* killing people-he’s just kind of good at it and it pays well, TBH. Also, it’s imperative at some point that he grapple with the existential dilemma that is life ... and death for hire
In addition to establishing the micro genre, Grosse Pointe Blank is tippie tops bc of the excellent casting. Joan Cusack is a goddamn gem (PLEASE give us more John+Joan movies) and i can
notgetenough of Dan Ackroyd as a nihilistic villain.
notgetenough of Dan Ackroyd as a nihilistic villain.
NEXT UP in Manic Dreamboat Assassin Boyfriend films: the 2015 Sam Rockwell/Anna Kendrick banger Mr. Right (currently streaming on Netflix wink wink). Honestly, my all-time favorite @AnnaKendrick47 movie.
I mean, like, yah he *kills* people for a living BUT he only kills people trying to kill OTHER people and all while doing a soft shoe routine in a clown nose WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE.
Reasons not to miss? Murder aside it’s actually a super cute rom-com where two social misfits find love and acceptance in one another. And bonus points for casting: Tim Roth gives us a sexy a southern accent and RZA steals a whole bunch of scenes.
Submission #3 in our Manic Pixie Dreamboat Assassin Boyfriend binge sesh is the under appreciated action gem American Ultra, the movie that posits the question “what happens when your artistic uber-stoner live-in boyfriend turns out to be a secret sleeper CIA dreamboat assassin?”
I honestly don’t understand why this movie bombed so hard? It’s got so many things going for it: mousy stoned Kristin Stewart, Topher Grace as a sniveling power-hungry twerp, Connie Britton kicking absolute ass and taking names, a weird ape-based graphic novel sub-plot pastiche?
The interesting thing about the Manic Dreamboat Assassin Boyfriend trope is that it casts to type. So both Cusack and Rockwell got a chance to play the Manic Dreamboat Assassin Boyfriend more than once. Arguably Sam Rockwell’s first was in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
I say *arguably* because you could ask “Didn’t Sam Rockwell play the Manic Dreamboy Assassin Boyfriend in Charlie’s Angels?” but in order to say that we’d have to agree the movie exists which it doesn’t. That movie is so bad it never happened. No I don’t care that it has a sequel
The final entry to my favorite micro-genre is Cusack’s timely yet disturbing, uber-dystopian 2008 flop: War, Inc. Re-watching this movie during the past 4 years always feels like getting punched in the gut with the inevitable decline of our fragile democracy and it makes me sad.
