Artists Only: Matchstick Men

"Matchstick Men" shows up movies such as The Grifters because it is intelligent as well as slick. Nicolas Cage is Roy Waller, a veteran con man/OCD neat freak (stained carpets make him flip out), who is living a pretty routine life. In fact, routine is his life. His partner, Frank (Sam Rockwell, with a touch of wit), is a polar opposite, but still, they work well together and they get the job done. A pill problem sends Waller to his psychiatrist, Dr. Klein (Bruce Altman), who notifies him (after Roy tells him to call his wife for him) that he has a daughter, named Angela. Angela is played by Alison Lohman, who is convincing as a teenager, although she was not close to being one when she shot this film. She plays the part well, though, with a charming sense and a real chemistry with Cage on-screen. After a while (after his daughter starts crashing at his place), he breaks it to her what his real occupation is (he originally told her he was an antique salesman). She wants to help and so on and so forth. As a subplot, Roy and Frank are working on a long con to trick Chuck (Bruce McGill). Anyways, that's not exactly extremely important to this review right now. Just to tell you, the next part is a spoiler, and if you want to enjoy the full experience of the movie, I suggest that you stop reading. I am only including this for the purpose of discussion. My advice for those who decide not to keep reading is to view multiple times. What happens later is that Angela isn't Roy's daughter and that she is only there to get his coveted Safety Deposit Box passcode to take the money and run...to Frank. So basically Frank is a real son of a gun here (or to use the modern phraseology, a dirty rotter). So Roy is the (cigarette) butt of the joke and loses out on tons of money. He ends up (in a cheesy tack-on ending) being a carpet (ha, ha, ha) salesman and marrying a grocery clerk that he likes and making tongue-in-cheek parting remarks with his now grown up daughter (she's 15, so that's pretty darn old, ain't it?). I really wished they didn't do this. Anyways, Nicolas Cage is amazing in his part, and from this movie and The Family Man and Adaptation, he has proved to be the leading authority on the slick/nervous guy. Rockwell is at his smarmy best, playing a real smarty of a partner. The supporting cast is good, too. I also liked the many cons in this movie, especially the lottery ticket one (which I won't spoil). Bottom line: Ridley Scott is doing very well. A

How the Cookie Crumbles: The Fortune Cookie

Billy Wilder is one of the best directors of all time, and his films like The Lost Weekend, Some Like it Hot, and The Apartment were a joy to watch. The writing was crisp and witty, the acting was tremendous. And for one thing, Wilder knew his playing field. The Fortune Cookie is a somewhat composed jumble of elements that make a good Wilder film and junk that is totally unnecessary. This movie is basic: Jack Lemon plays Harry Hinkle, a Cleveland Browns cameraman who is injured by a collision with Luther "Boom Boom" Jackson (Ron Rich), a punt returner. The collision is about as low-quality as collisions get: you can just see the choreography when Lemmon throws the camera, runs backwards, falls over a tarp, and collapses, then stands up again, then collapses again. It is extremely clunky, and is done by someone who has obviously a rough time with broad slapstick. Anyways, he gets hospitalized (he only has a mild concussion). Enter Walter Matthau as Hinkle's brother-in-law "Whiplash" Willie, who wants to make some money off of Hinkle's injury. So he proposes that Hinkle, having only a mild concussion, fake that he is paralyzed, so Willie can sue the Browns for $1,000,000. This lawsuit becomes plausible after Harry (on sedatives) takes a test inspection from the Browns' doctors. But the Browns don't want to be sued, and they send in surveillance to try to find evidence that this is a scheme. These surveillance guys, played by Cliff Osmond and Noam Pitlik, are the best part of the movie. Now to the backstory: Boom Boom feels bad about "injuring" Hinkle, so he takes care of him. This is utterly depressing, because Boom Boom is such a nice guy, and you wish Hinkle would just tell him. It's so utterly depressing, it ruins the movie-watching experience, as it sometimes falls into the deep end of emotional schmaltz and dark comedy. Now, the acting: Lemmon is okay, trying to stay afloat, Matthau won an undeserved Oscar for his perfomance, Judi West as Hinkle's wife Sandy is okay, and Rich as Boom Boom is pretty good. A negative: there are overly used tones of sexism and racism that are possibly offensive. Plus, the scheme is highly implausible, and it has a terribly unrealistic scene where Matthau somehow gets the Browns to keep settling for higher and higher amounts of money. Bottom line: this movie which sparked The Odd Couple doesn't have the charisma to be a great Wilder film, it doesn't have the quirkiness to be a Lemmon cult classic, and it has too much sloppy piecing to be even a very good film. B