Best Matt Damon Cameos

I was swinging past a newsstand the other day and caught sight of this ridiculous GQ cover. Hollywood's Smartest Actor? For the briefest of moments, I thought of doing a post that showed how insane this proclamation was, with appropriate video links. And then I immediately rejected that idea because I love Matt Damon. I love him in the Bourne movies, I love him in the Ocean's movies, I love him in Good Will Hunting, I love him in True Grit, I love him in Syriana, I love him in The Informant. I even love him in Stuck On You (I actually really like Stuck On You. I know, I know...). He's great.

But even more than Damon in movies, I love the way Damon pops up in things. So I thought I'd do a "Best Of" of Matt Damon cameos.

I'll start with some of the best bits from Jimmy Kimmel. For a long stretch, Kimmel always ended his show with apologizing to Matt Damon that they didn't get to him. Then Damon came on the show to continue the bit, and was so convincing in his animosity that a lot of people were fully convinced that the joke was real:

It launched a series of Jimmy-screwing-with-Matt-Damon bits, including this Bourne Ultimatum trailer, and climaxing with Sarah Silverman's surprise gift to Jimmy during one of his shows (it really was a surprise for him, too, that's not a bit):

And finishing with a cameo in The Handsome Men's Club:

Outside of Kimmel, I'd be remiss not to mention Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back:

His recent, strange appearance on SNL:

His dynamite Matthew McConaughey impression:

Playing Kristen Kreuk's hard-rocking secret lover in Eurotrip (how can you not appreciate an Academy Award nominee who cameos in Eurotrip?):

And, of course, Liz Lemon's boyfriend on 30 Rock:

Lastly... this doesn't really count, but I couldn't not include it: his appearance in Team America: World Police.

The 25th Best Movie I Saw This Year: Captain America: The First Avenger

It’s really been the year of colons, huh? Well, it’ll be even worse this year, when we all see Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace: The 3D Experience. When I review that movie, I promise to only refer to it by its full title (Boy, isn’t that review going to be fun? I can see it already. “This Jar-Jar character is terrible. And he’s coming right at me!”)

After watching Captain America, I referred to it as “a slow-witted Indiana Jones movie,” and I see no need to reverse my opinion now. Still, that’s not as much of an insult as it sounds. It may lack Indy’s sardonic wit, but it’s long on adventure and explosions and features a perfectly acceptable number of people gadding about in stiff 1940s cotton. It’s a solid, watchable summer popcorn film, with all the Pirates and Green Lanterns swamping the summer multiplex, solid and watchable are all I ask for. In fact, I require that the films that shouldn’t take themselves seriously don’t try to. Have you ever seen Michael Bay take himself seriously? Watch The Island sometime. Or Transformers 2. Vomitous.

The story unfolds like an origin story should. We meet our hero (Chris Evans’ head attached to a scrawny digital body. They could’ve made the exact same movie with me, but the digitizing would just have to be done in reverse.), a scrappy, deserving fellow waylaid by a frail mortal shell. He meets a miracle worker, who sees his potential. A mysterious, “scientific” process of supersizing muscles and bones begins, but after a successful test on Evans, the equipment is (shockingly!) destroyed by the Nazis. Let events vaguely similar to World War II commence!

The best part of the story happens after: in a shocking bit of realism, the commanders of the U.S. Military don’t send him out on secret missions only he can manage. Instead, they make him a figurehead and send him on a USO tour to cheer up the troups. He spends several months criss-crossing the country, glumly rallying support. It’s a neat bit of storytelling, and if I were a pastor, I bet I could get three weeks of sermons out of the metaphors there. But no matter. There are Nazis to kill! And some of them have the evil version of the serum or whatever that Captain America has! Will the Army let him go fight them, or will he have to strike out his own? That’s a mystery that… oh, well, you know the rest. Good news: it involves zip lining onto a train!

Joss Whedon has mentioned that The Avengers (the long-awaited combined sequel to Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, and Captain America) will mostly be told from the point of view of Captain America, and after seeing this movie I see no problem with that. Evans is handsome and muscular and big-chinned and all that, but he’s also wryly funny and surprisingly relatable. He lacks that movie star emptiness we’ve grown accustomed to in action flicks. It’s hard to root for a good-looking guy carrying a shield and wearing a goofy suit while espousing the value of American democracy, but Evans sells it better than anyone should, and the movie works pretty well because of it.

Not to mention: zip lining onto a train!

The 26th Best Movie I Saw This Year: Limitless

Limitless is a pretty good movie. But more than that, it’s a great idea for a movie. Our hero (Bradley Cooper) is bright but lazy – slovenly, even, barely holding his life together. A random run-in with an old acquaintance leads to him testing a miracle drug that makes his brain operate far above its normal capacity by, what else, tapping into his “subconscious” (the old “we only use 10% of our brains myth” in action again. ). He’s instantly hooked. For a few weeks, he lives the sort of life you’d want to with that sort of supermind – writing a novel in only a few days, playing the stock market for patterns, impressing people at parties. But he starts to notice mysterious men tailing him, watching. And then the side effects start to kick in…

The first half to two-thirds of this movie is exactly what it should be. Outside of maybe BBC’s “Sherlock”, Limitless shows us better than any other film the way a brilliant mind works, whipping from zooming shot to zooming shot, with careful sound design for each, making the viewer into the protagonist. We are caught up with Cooper in the trance of this new power, watching each mystery fit neatly together like a puzzle. Then the gloom of the degrading effects of the mysterious drugs takes over, and the movie descends into darkness.

It’s here that things a rough patch. What made the film so watchable at first – the way the film let you see Cooper’s mind at work – has now disappeared as Cooper abandons the medicine and tries to muddle through on his own. We feel his frustration, but the absence of the movie’s gimmick makes it plain that without it, the film is simply a generic, by-the-numbers thriller.

Worse is the rushed, let’s-tie-this-up-quick ending. We jump several months ahead in time, and all of the mysteries of the film are answered – but off screen, during the point we weren’t watching. All that’s left is for Cooper to tell the villain (and by extension, us) what happened in the meantime. It’s hugely unsatisfying, and even if it’s not exactly clear how the movie could’ve gotten around its awkward coda, it’s certainly clear that they should have tried harder. The film does exactly what it had done such a good job of not doing earlier: leaving us outside of our hero’s magnificent brain. A victory’s no fun if you’re not there to be a part of it.

The 27th Best Movie I saw this year: Take Me Home Tonight

You will think, seeing this film so far down, that I didn’t enjoy this movie very much, but you would be wrong. We’ve moved into the realm of the flawed-but-still-good movies, of which I saw a large number this year. In fact, I may have seen more movies in this category this year than I ever have. Even the movie currently in my number one spot has some real flaws to it. No movie I saw this year would be in my top-three from last year, and last year’s top-ten was much stronger than this one.

But I think the overall quality of movies I saw this year was better. My number 18 movie last year was Iron Man 2, a film Take Me Home Tonight is much better than, and once I reorganize the list to include the films I most recently saw, it’ll actually end up even further down the list, being compared to messes like The A-Team and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader [Ed: it ended up even lower than that]. So take this low rating with a grain of salt: I really enjoyed this movie. And that goes for all the movies that follow it [All 26 of them. Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into?].

Of course, there was no reason to assume I would like it, since Take Me Home Tonight was filmed in 2007 and sat on a shelf for several years. Not usually the sign of a good comedy. But the film is carefree and fun and surprisingly heartfelt. It’s a solid cable and DVD movie, and I hope it gets a reputation as a solid cult film. It deserved better than the lukewarm reception it got at the box office, but that’s what you get when you shoot a comedy packed with eighties references and then release it well after the eighties-joke bubble has burst.

Time-stamping the movie further is the presence of Dan Fogler, the wild-eyed comedian that movie studio tried to make happen from about 2006-2008 without success. He’s okay here, bringing that same strange, manic energy to the role that he brought to all his roles, but you get why he disappeared so quickly after his brief moment in the sun.

Much better are Anna Faris, Topher Grace, and Teresa Palmer. I’ve written a number of times why I feel Faris is a severely underrated comedian, partially because seeks out broad comedies rather than indie darlings, but probably mostly because she’s a woman. This last year, society seemed to move from “women aren’t funny” to “the women in Bridesmaids are funny, but no other women.” Eventually, we’ll recognize that Faris is a much stronger comedian than, say, Kevin James, but just in less successful movies.

As for Grace, I’ve always liked him and don’t know why he isn’t a bigger star. Maybe he’s pushing too hard to get lead roles rather than supporting ones, but he’s a welcome presence in any movie (he livened the hell out of Too Big To Fail, that’s for certain). I’d like to see more of him in movies that aren’t Valentine’s Day or Predators.

The big find of this movie, though is Teresa Palmer. Who is this girl? Why is she in no movies? I demand that Hollywood fix this. She’s wonderful here – warm, complicated, interesting – and all in a role that doesn’t really require much of an actress, that of the perfect, secretly accessible hot girl. Normally these roles get handed to the Megan Foxes of the world, so it’s nice to see the role given to someone with a little range. 

In short, Take Me Home Tonight is all you require a lighthearted rom-com to be: fun, frothy, but layered enough to keep you invested. And, if nothing else, it’s definitely better than The A-Team.

Updated Movie List

I'm going to go back through the posts and re-number them soon, since I'm adding a few movies to the list (I chose to do this list based on release date rather than whether I saw the movies before January or not, because otherwise it gets really confusing for me when I'm trying to do Oscar posts). Here's a quick update of where I am on that front:

Movies I’ve Just Recently Seen and Haven’t Figured Out Where They Rank Yet
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Adventures of Tintin
Midnight In Paris

Movies I Haven’t Seen Yet, Plan To Go See, But Probably Won’t Make It To
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Young Adult

Movies I Haven’t Seen Yet, Plan To, But Almost Definitely Won’t Find The Time For
War Horse
My Week With Marilyn
Hugo
The Artist

Movies I’m Probably Fooling Myself If I Think I’ll Ever Make It Out To See Them
Take Shelter

Movies I Missed in Theaters That I Won’t Manage To Get On This List Because They’re Not on DVD until January 20^th
50/50

Movies I Redboxed Three Days Ago and Really Need To Watch Tonight
The Help