Rental Rehash: The Merry Gentleman

Iz En Ur Church – spookn u!

Hello, hello, and hello once again my chickadees. Hast thou missed me? Hast it keep thee’n up at night, like thoughts of wiley rapist with a penchant for replacing eye-balls with shards of broken sheashells? Well. That’s not very nice, because I’ve missed you. Desperately in fact. Suffice to say, there’s been a shift in my professional life from smiling vacantly at people, to smiling vacantly. printing reports, and then immediately forgetting the name of everyone who calls my new boss and/or hanging up on them.

In addition to being an overwhelming sense of responsibility (Spiderman don’t even know) I’ve been ten kinds of furtively trying to find a way to blog my little heart out sans immediate firing. I thought I had it all sorted and then my new boss cropped up behind and was all ‘Are you buying shoes on the internet?’ and I mean, shut up, so, ammiright?

But then last night I was given the genius suggestion to draft all my prose (verbose and glorious as it is) as though I am writing a business letter in my office email account. This plan is awesome and thus far the only problem with it I can see is that I have far, far too much fun trying to make up names and addresses of people I might be contacting. (Mr. Henry DuCasse, 1134 Synodoche Lane, Little Waddington, NJ 02341) Ha ha. Awesome. I wish I knew that guy.

With that explanation out of the way, do yourself a solid and to beat the heat (I’m like a local news anchor – tune in for pandas eating cakes at noon! Also, several children died today.) with today’s Rental Rehash, check out The Merry Gentleman. Set in the frigid climes of what I believe is Chicago (Or someplace else in the midwest and cold? Your mom? Something?) During the Christmas season, it marks the directorial debute of Michael Keaton. Ha ha ha. Surprise! Rental Rehash continues to be Movies Starring Michael Keaton That I Have Been Watching. (Next Up: Clean and Sober, Batman, Batman Returns.)

Anyway, the movie is quiet, serious, and a tiny little gem – a welcome relief after the storm of awful that was The Last Time. Even my hard-up ass was all “Thank god there are no weird sex scenes next to Brendan Fraser’s comatose bod in this movie,” instead we follow Keaton as a near-silent, suicidal hitman, and Kelly McDonald (dude, I’m not some dude who gets all caught up in actress, but In.Can.Descent.) as a woman who flees her abusive husband (Bobby Canavale who gets a greeeeeat monologue – creepy as hell, dudes.) and through a series of shit happening because it is a movie and shit happens, the two form a strange sort of adorable alliance.

Kelly McDonald basically talks throughout the entire film, leaving little room for any of the other characters to verbally assert themselves.

So it’s like hanging out with me. Ay oh!

The dialogue can be a bit precious, but the story works hard to stick to the party line, and just when you think it’s going to veer off the rails and become another casualty of the “More is more” school of story-telling, it rights itself and stays true to the two power-house characters they’ve created. It’s an honest, refreshing, eerie, delight, and for that I can almost forgive the movie title.

Also Michael Keaton looks great in hats.