Tag Archives: Matt Damon

May 14, 2020 · 1:13 pm

The Set of 400: #80 – My Favorite Balcony Rat

Today! Because I’m the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy –

The Departed (2006)

Directed by Martin Scorsese (x4)

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio (x5), Jack Nicholson (x6), Matt Damon (x8), Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin (x3), Martin Sheen (x2), James Badge Dale (x2), Anthony Anderson (x2), Ray Winstone, Kevin Corrigan (x2), David O’Hara, Mark Rolston (x3), Kristen Dalton

One would think that a person committed to living in apartments for as long as humanly possible would at least be in their largest one as years and successes accrue. But considering the square foot-to-penny ratio in Chicago compared to North Scranton, it is unlikely I will ever live as vastly as I did from the fall of 2005 to the summer of 2008. It wasn’t the world’s nicest apartment, but it was huge, featuring this giant open staircase area, which afforded me the opportunity of displaying wall decor far larger than I possibly could before or since. Thus, I procured the biggest movie theater poster I could find – the six-foot-by-four-foot Departed canvas, seen above. Man, whatever happened to that poster? I didn’t bring it to Chicago, because come on, the only place that would’ve fit in apartment #1 here was a ceiling.

I’ll admit, the rat is a little on the nose

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April 24, 2020 · 1:12 pm

The Set of 400: #94 – My Favorite Incriminating Area Code

Today! Because it’s not just lysine, it’s citric. It’s gluconate. There was a guy who left the company because he wouldn’t do it. He was forced out. The gluconate guy, he’s out of a job –

The Informant! (2009)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh (x3)

Starring Matt Damon (x7), Scott Bakula, Joel McHale (x2), Melanie Lynskey, Tony Hale, Tom Papa (x2), Rick Overton, Thomas F. Wilson (x2), Scott Adsit (x2), Ann Dowd, Patton Oswalt (x2), Andrew Daly (x2), Clancy Brown (x3), Tom Smothers, Dick Smothers, Paul F. Tompkins (x2), Candy Clark (x2), Frank Welker (x2), Larry Clarke, Eddie Jemison (x2), Allan Havey, Ann Cusack (x3)

One of the most underrated comedies of recent times, The Informant! is a brilliant, hilarious true story centered around the very sexy, cinematic subject of price fixing in the lysine market. Thus, the trailers had no idea how to convey the story, never mind the tone, so the movie was an almost complete mystery when it was released. I know people who saw this movie and hated it – expectations being for a fairly normal film at the least, but what you get one of the most unreliable narrators ever taking you through a film filled with great comedians not being obviously funny. The subtlety of the movie, the quiet satire of super corrupt big business in a very dull corner of corporate America, populated by the likes of Scott Adsit, Tony Hale, Patton Oswalt, and the Smothers Brothers playing lawyers and government agents and judges heightens the ridiculousness of, again, a relatively normal setting. It’s just oft-kilter enough, just five degrees off center at all times, so that the longer you don’t buy into the manner the story is being told, the less you can possibly enjoy the weirdness. Continue reading →

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March 23, 2020 · 1:15 pm

The Set of 400: #118 – My Favorite Dutch Mirror Interrogation

Today! Because you’re a malfunctioning $30 million weapon. You’re a total goddamn catastrophe –

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Directed by Doug Liman

Starring Matt Damon (x6), Franka Potente (x2), Chris Cooper (x2), Brian Cox (x7), Clive Owen, Julia Stiles (x3), Walton Goggins, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Gabriel Mann (x2)

That’s right, folks – all three Bourne films are on the list, and none cracked the top 100! Weird, right? First Toy Story, and now this travesty? Well, it wasn’t always this way. Without consulting past lists – I’m saving that for some unspecified time in the future of this countdown – I know at least two of the Bournes typically would crack the 100 – that was the entire size of the list in the past, you’ll remember. So what happened here? My guess is that as these movies tend to blend together for me, differentiating became harder and so they merged into this portion of the list – they all appear here between #118 and #195 – and could not push forward as a group or individually. As you’ll see when you finally get to the top 100 – starting day after Tax Day! Get your shit in order! – it’s comprised in near equal parts with gigantic films familiar to every living soul on the planet and an assortment of cult movies and/or downright disregarded household classics I’ve overcome my shame of admitting how much I enjoy them.

No matter how many times eight-year-old Joe watched it, Masters of the Universe wasn’t making the list, however

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March 6, 2020 · 2:19 pm

The Set of 400: #129 – My Favorite Waterloo Tube Station Espionage

Today! Because this is where is started for me. This is where it ends –

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Directed by Paul Greengrass (x2)

Starring Matt Damon (x5), Joan Allen (x4), Julia Stiles (x2), David Strathairn (x3), Scott Glenn (x3), Albert Finney (x2), Edgar Ramirez, Paddy Considine, Daniel Bruhl, Tom Gallop (x2), Corey Johnson, Colin Stinton

The excellent Bourne trilogy concluded in a major way with Ultimatum – and then there were two more relatively unnecessary movies, one with Damon’s Bourne and one without, that you can basically ignore. In the continuing conversation of Best Movie Trilogies, people tend to start dropping franchises from the discussion once there is a fourth film. This, I feel, is wrong. Sure – if the movies are made one right after the other, and they all tie tightly together, maybe don’t count pieces of those as trilogies. But, a series that just splits an obvious third film in two (The Hunger Games, for example) – we can still call that a trilogy, no? Or if the fourth film is cash-in bullshit made way after the fact (Indiana Jones, Scream, American Pie – I’m not making judgments whether they’re good or bad trilogies here) or is basically unrelated (The Bourne Legacy, Mad Max) – we can ignore those, huh?

Please help me forget this

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December 18, 2019 · 2:10 pm

The Set of 400: #186 – My Favorite Heavily Mirrored Berth

Today! Because I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody –

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Directed by Anthony Minghella

Starring Matt Damon (x4), Gwyneth Paltrow (x3), Jude Law (x2), Cate Blanchett (x3), Philip Seymour Hoffman (x5), James Rebhorn (x2), Philip Baker Hall (x4), Jack Davenport, Sergio Rubini, Celia Weston

Ah, 1999! My fourth and fifth semesters of college really landed a lot of movies on this list – here we are at eleven already! – and I’m also surprised to find 1998 with only six, and none so far. Those are six pretty high ranking films! As I’ve mentioned, I consider the corridor of 1997-1999 as one of the best in film history (this is also possibly due to my finally being able to drive in this time period), and so films from this era keep cropping up.

A wonderfully atmospheric, psychological thriller, The Talented Mr. Ripley takes Patricia Highsmith’s solid murder yarn and elevates it to great cinema through a bevy of sterling performances and Minghella’s solid writing and directing – his best of the ’90s (Yeah, you heard me, English Patient!). Matt Damon was coming off Good Will Hunting, Gwyneth had just won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, and Cate Blanchett had just been robbed of that same Oscar for Elizabeth. This film also launched Jude Law – even if his career got way uneven for a long time afterward – snagging the film its only acting Oscar nomination as the object of everyone’s desire, Dickie Greenleaf.

I mean, obviously, right?

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December 5, 2019 · 2:20 pm

The Set of 400: #195 – My Favorite Alexanderplatz Exposition

Today! Because we don’t have a choice –

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Directed by Paul Greengrass

Starring Matt Damon (x3), Joan Allen (x3), Franka Potente, Brian Cox (x3), Julia Stiles, Karl Urban, Marton Csokas, Gabriel Mann, Tom Gallop, Michelle Monaghan

Just so you’re prepared – this is my least favorite of the Bourne trilogy, and even this one cracked the 200. The most recent Damon outing – Jason Bourne, I want to say? – wasn’t eligible, and wasn’t anything special, and that random Jeremy Renner movie was fine, but the first three – man, those are exciting, highly interchangeable films.

Like the Mission: Impossibles, these all take place in random, similar looking foreign cities, which you get to see whip by out the windows of speeding cars. Bourne will get involved in some conspiratorial bullshit in a frowsy apartment or abandoned train station, but then it’s right back to running. The first movie is an all-out chase, as they are coming for Bourne hard, the third movie is when he finally manages to piece the whole puzzle together, leaving the middle chapter – which is a straight revenge film, albeit also chocked full of chases, and an ending that gives some closure, but obviously benefits from the existence of a third film. Second films are hard, you guys.

With the obvious exception of the Breakin‘ franchise

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November 18, 2019 · 2:20 pm

The Set of 400: #208 – My Favorite Internet Troll Comeuppance

Today! Because Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms –

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

Directed by Kevin Smith (x2)

Starring Jason Mewes (x2), Kevin Smith (x2), Ben Affleck (x2), Jason Lee, Matt Damon (x2), Chris Rock (x3), Will Ferrell (x2), Shannon Elizabeth (x2), Eliza Dushku, Jon Stewart, Judd Nelson (x2), Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher (x2), Jamie Kennedy (x2), Wes Craven, Gus Van Sant, Shannen Doherty, James Van Der Beek, Jason Biggs (x2), Jeff Anderson (x2), Brian O’Halloran (x2), Ali Larter, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, George Carlin, Seann William Scott (x5), Tracy Morgan, Diedrich Bader, Joey Lauren Adams, Alanis Morissette, Morris Day and the Time, William B. Davis

Okay, if you are ready to jump down my throat at the inclusion of this film, take a gander at these two list facts: 1) This is the second and final Kevin Smith to make appearance, meaning 2) This is my favorite Kevin Smith movie. SHUT UP! I fully recognize that virtually all of his movies are better than this – Clerks, Mallrats, maybe Chasing Amy, maybe Dogma, Clerks II, Zach and Miri Make a Porno – and like most people I haven’t seen anything he’s made in the last ten years. But none of his movies are funnier than Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I don’t care what you say.

It’s funny, right?

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September 20, 2019 · 1:15 pm

The Set of 400: #249 – My Favorite Prison Tuxedo

Today! Because you can’t have six cards in a five card game –

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Starring George Clooney (x2), Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia (x2), Elliott Gould (x2), Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Carl Reiner (x3), Bernie Mac, Shaobo Qin, Eddie Jemison, Don Cheadle (x2), Topher Grace, Joshua Jackson (x2)

A remake so much better than the original that it’s almost unfair to mention its existence, 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven was the movie that I think everyone assumed Steven Soderbergh could make, but never would. Sure, Out of Sight hits largely the same tone, and with Clooney, too, but it isn’t quite the bustling movie star popcorn extravaganza that this film is. But while in some cases I’ve advocated that a filmmaker winning an Oscar was detrimental to society as a whole – Spielberg’s four year hiatus after Schindler’s List, James Cameron’s everything after Titanic, etc. – Soderbergh’s win for Traffic may have actually freed him up to make something more purely fun, purely Hollywood than we would’ve expected.

And boy did it deliver. Yes, the sequels were underwhelming and unnecessary, straight through to last year’s okay-if-beating-a-dead-mare Ocean’s 8, but the first movie is a dazzling gem of subterfuge and sleight of hand. From Danny Ocean’s first appearance, getting out of jail in a full on tuxedo, this movie is chocked full of style, attitude, and more than a little winking-at-itself humor that totally works. Sure, with a cast this large and accomplished, it’s bound to feel like some folks got a little wasted through lack of use, but they do manage to give everybody just enough character bits and snappy lines to satisfy – for the most part. Continue reading →

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