Movies and Stuff and being sick

We watched a couple of movies. Miami Vice and Talladega Nights. Hated the first, loved the second. Miami Vice was a huge disappointment. First, the director (Michael Mann) seemed to go out of his way to make Colin Ferrell look bloated and pasty. He was about as sexy as one of my used tissues in this movie, and I gotta tell you, that whole crazy-irresponsible-drunken-Irishman-who'd-fuck-anything-that-moves thing he's got going? Yeah. I'm into it big-time. So major disappointment there. Second big problem is, the actual city of Miami--which, given the film is called Miami Vice, and given how much on-location stuff the TV show used to do, we rather expected to get really homesick from seeing so much of--is basically nonexistent in the film. They spend some time in Cuba, which is always exciting for South Floridians, among whom Cuba is sort of like Shangri-La: exciting and forbidden and dangerous. So that was kind of neat to see, but again, we might as well have been seeing a soundstage. All of the film was like that. With the exception of a couple of shots in the beginning of the downtown skyline and a few shots along I-95...nothing.

Plus the entire thing was shot in these very tight close-ups that gave the movie a claustrohpobic feel. And everyone muttered and looked very serious all the time, and the whole film was them muttering and looking serious. Hardly any action took place. No car chases, one shoot-em-up that lasted a few minutes and was filmed, like the rest of the movie, in such darkness we couldn't see what was happening. It was always cloudy, and when we saw the ocean out someone's windows it was hazy enough to obscure the horizon. Just blah. Dull and ugly.

Talladega Nights was fun, though. Mindless, but clever, if that makes any sense. The cast was stellar, including of course John C. Reilly who is always so damn funny (except when he's doing wonderful dramatic work, of course.) Every time I watch Boogie Nights he makes me giggle. And Gary Cole! And Michael Clarke Duncan, reading "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret". Which is one of my favorite bits in the movie. (My favorite is the haunted house thing. "Get out..." Tee-hee-hee.) Anyway, since my Dad is a big Nascar fan, and he used to run quarter-miles all the time when I was a kid (he had a '67 Mustang fastback he used to work on), watching racing movies of any kind still has a nostaligc feel for me. So perhaps I enjoyed this one more than I might normally have, but I love the Frat Pack movies anyway, so I liked this one. It might become one of my "watch when sick" movies, along with The Godfather, A Room With A View, and lots of sitcoms on DVD.

What are your "comfort" films?