John Cusack's best movie

Everything about the essence of Cusack is captured in High Fidelity imo. Quibble if you must about whether or not the film is any good, but that's a crash course in HIM.

I think a movie can display him well, and he can be great it in it without it being essence of Cusack: Grace Is Gone, for example, which is completely counter-Cusack, but still an amazing showcase for him.

I thought he was great in True Colors too (and it was a better than okay movie iirc). Also a counter-Cusack role.

I gotta vote for Grosse Pointe Blank. The rapid-fire funny dialogue is everything I love about the guy.

(its prob my fave Joan role as well)

It was hard to choose between 2012 and Serendipity.

thin red line, bullets over broadway or eight men out for best movie cusack's been in, grosse pointe blank for best cusack movie

I gotta vote for Grosse Pointe Blank. The rapid-fire funny dialogue is everything I love about the guy.

^^^^

I'd rank'em:

Say Anything
Grosse Pointe Blank
High Fidelity
Being John Malkovich

I have a colleague who lauds Better Off Dead. I bought it on DVD. I can see why Cusack has all but disowned it.

man i've seen a lot of this dude's movies

top ten: Say Anything, Bullets Over Broadway, Better Off Dead, Grosse Pointe Blank, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, The Sure Thing, America's Sweethearts, Cradle Will Rock, One Crazy Zummer

bottom ten: Identity, 1408, Serendipity, Con Air, 2012, War Inc, Pushing Tin, Hot Tub Time Machine, Max, Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil (not so much a bad movie as a terrible Cusack performance)

Gosh, this is hard. I'd be sad so see no votes for 'The Road to Welville', in which he is so funny and so on the ball all the time. Cusack up to his best screwball shenanigans (like Bullest over Broadway).

I vote for Tapeheads even though it's not very good. All sorts of personal connections to what is, in all honesty, mediocre at best.

There are better films on the list but The Sure Thing is essence of Cusack for me.

Until Owen Wilson he was the best Woody surrogate too.

DL otm, so i'm going with Malkovich

There are better films on the list but The Sure Thing is essence of Cusack for me.

omg thank you for reminding me this is on here. Almost voted for high fidelity, but Sure Thing all the way.

big-ups for grifters, Say Anything, High Fidelity, Hot Tub Time Machine, Being John Malkovich and Grace Is Gone (if you can handle schmaltz) too. I know I liked grosse pointe blank the one time I saw it when it came out, but all i can remember now is shitty stuff involving minnie driver.

voted grifters just so it gets a vote

yeah the speech where he jumps into the pool is perhaps his single finest performance (xpost)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2uCXOKxfjU

he really is on a short list of people who can talk directly to the camera that i don't then want to shoot

"I know where you live."

"Aw, see, that wasn't a nice thing to say. That wasn't designed to make me feel good."

i know it's a cameo, but i just gotta acknowledge the scene in bob roberts where he's pissed that bob is the musical guest on Not SNL instead of the promised krs-1. I believe that would piss him off.

I liked Grosse Pointe Blank when I saw it - it reminded me of Demme's Something Wild.

Say Anything is his quintessential film; even if Being John Malkovich is better, it's not really "his"

but GPB and HF are fitting spiritual sequels to SA.

Aside from The Ice HArvest, his career has really sucked for a decade.

so you like GPB, Morbs?

yes (for one thing, it was the last time Dan Aykroyd was funny)

HF

High fidelity for me, followed by Better Off Dead.

"WHAT FUCKING 'IAN GUY'?"

nothing in the world could keep me from voting for grosse pointe blank, it has everything you'd want from a movie - ive seen it 20+ times, my favorite movie in the world when i was 13

it was also the last time he really 'brought something to the table' in a movie - now he just sleepwalks through everything - i couldnt get through 2012 because of him

"No meetings!" BLAM

Joan Cusack is terrific. "It was as if everyone had swelled."

Yeah, The Sure Thing is the essence of romantic/angst/comic Cusack.

Con Air was kind of interesting because his character didn't have any personal storyline (that I remember), for a guy whose essence is personal storyline.

Grosse wa great, yea.

I hated Identity, but not because of him...mostly because of the insidious plot and the cheap copout ending.

Also hated Con/Air.

Bullets Over Broadway was fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0ScNLt2zNc

benny the freakin jet! mirror in the bathroom! doesnt get any better than this

i ended up with a blanket dislike of all 90's 'indie crime movies' and haven't really gotten over it

fav movie: Malkovich
fav Cusack being Cusack: GPB

but hating on Con Air is like hatin on a retarded child

Jeez there's a lot of love for GPB here, huh? I've never seen it. Guess I should change that.

I love him. There's something so adorable and likeable about him. Idk. He's all time. Haven't decided what to vote for yet though.

Probably Malkovich or Say Anything I think.

gpb or better off dead

i want my two dollars

Wasn't mad about GPB. Too pleased with itself.

GPB is not a crime movie. The assassin shit is a metaphor for the garbage jobs 90% of us have.

dr. morbs i still can't believe you like say anything. it's enough to make me want to give it another chance.

The original title was "Grocer Point Blank"

HS what?! I can't believe YOU DON'T. >:(

This is, quite frankly, shocking and upsetting.

love the convenience store shootout scene in GPB

aw i'm sorry E! it creeps me out tbh.

it's not cold blooded cuz that's MINNIE DRIVER'S DAD, who he doesn't kill.

Cusack's about as believable as an assassin as Woody Allen

agree w shakey in that the film tries to cuddle up to cusack, ultimately emphasizes his charm over his murderous sociopathy. does so in a way that allows it to function as a romantic comedy, but i wanted something a bit more dark & nihilist at the end, something more in keeping with cusack's character.

GPB is sort of like heathers, if at the end of heathers, snatchy and pump up the volume had gone off happily ever after.

xpost you wear a crown of challops

lol @ snatchy and pump up the volume

The ending of GPB is a disappointment. The only way it could have ended satisfactorily was if he'd murdered Driver's dad and she'd said "YAY!" and fucked him on Dan Ackroyd's corpse.

lol

"wait, you go down a tunnel and become john malkovich for 15 minutes? just conceptually this makes no sense to me."

John Malkovich was a very unconvincing John Malkovich

all this discussion of GPB is centered on cusack's sad sack assassin character. i think one of the reasons that it's so easy to accept both martin's sociopathic amorality AND the happily ever after ending he's granted is that cusack is basically just playing "john cusack in a weird role." we're accustomed to seeing him play the loserish but basically decent suitor, and that's pretty much what he gives us here, washed down with a bunch of "insane psycho killer" joeks.

another way to look at the movie, though, is to think of it as a romance, as something that occurs between two characters, male and female. i liked and related to minnie driver's debi a good deal more than cusack's martin (a joke of a character that quickly becomes repellent if taken seriously). she deserved better than this emotionally impoverished crazyman who's almost certainly going to get her hurt or killed in short order.

the fact that the movie shrugs all this off at the end bugged me. didn't make me hate it, i still count it one of my favorite cusack movies, maybe one of my favorite 90s pop comedies. i remember having reservations, that's all. should probably see it again...

The key phrase right there is "pop comedy". it really isnt worth being taken to task for not being "convincing" or "silly ENOUGH" or whatever.

well, all art works for us or it doesn't, this way or that. pop comedies shouldn't be exempt from critical analysis just cuz they're, you know, just pop comedies.

2 votes for 2012... really?

thought it was a Rush poll sry

wow I actually thought SA was a shoo-in for first. wow @ grifters love.

So did I, but the rules were to vote for best use of Cusackness, perhaps that skewed it.

Cusacker Blues

wow, i'd better watch 'grosse point blank' again. i remember it being pretty funny but i can't remember much about it other than wishing it had someone other than minnie driver -- most unwatchable actress ever.

he doesn't want to go to his reunion! he's only in town because he's supposed to whack somebody in town the same week!

Maybe obvious, but I always figured this happened on purpose - Joan C's character deliberately messed with his jobs to force him to Grosse Pointe and thus have to go to the reunion as well. This bears out when you see Grocer getting pissed cos the job's been pulled out from under him (when he spits out his pen and goes "alternate vendor? WHAT fucking alternate vendor?" I lol).

Thus, Grocer is pissed at him stealing his job so he goes after him... the CIA guys are after him for stealing their "we don't assasinate people, we do our jobs" angle, and hilarity of crossed purposes ensue.

Speaking of which, Hank Azaria's role in this film is totes underrated. I love that guy.

speaking of which, america's sweethearts is great

minnie driver is an absolute delight, idk what happened to her career

*cautiously waves sarcasm meter around*

I feel sorry for Grace Is Gone.

_dying_ at shakey in this thread

i know right! i've been speechless

"its like the premise of Cars. does not compute"

theyre cars... who are alive.

*shakes head* nahhhhh. no way!

but american psycho... that's some convincing depiction of a psychopath right there (and it's funny too)

hahahahaha max

a psychopath who is superficially charming...? couldn't be!

so youre telling me these guys... dress up as women... to escape from the mob?

does. not. compute.

nuns on the run?

agree with contenderizer tho about the end, which is the whole reason why the

~let my love open the door~
*holds baby*
this changes everything epiphany

scene just derails the movie for me

good morning!

well, I guess it could be a thing for ppl who want to have babies

who says "good morning" 17 minutes before noon? completely unconvincing, I don't buy it.

time travel

babies solve nothing.

unless you need a cheap source of baby meat

"cheap"

$60k/lb

and that's for a fresh, white baby!

man swift really didnt factor in inflation

Babies, fyi, solve pension crises iirc

still GPB.

"are you alright?"

"No, I'm NOT all right! I'm hurt, I'm pissed... I gotta find a new job!"

"You must have done some naughty shit there, Bart! There's a contract out on your life. I should know, I was hired to kill you. But I'm not going to do it. It's either because I'm in love with your daughter, or I have a newfound respect for life."

"That punk is either in love with that guy's daughter, or he has a newfound respect for life!"

I used to have such a thing for John Cusack. But in my opinion GPB is where he started coasting. I'd have said High Fidelity, but upon looking at his filmography, there's not a lot of there there.

Love & Mercy is probably my favorite of his since Grosse Point Blank

it’s not for everyone but i just love his portrayal of wilson, i like how he stops short of doing an impression but somehow still physically carrying and/or suggesting all of the turmoil

that was a good'un, yes, and I saw it during the throes of my BB obsession

Yeah he was good in that movie.

Anyone seen Grand Piano? I found it in a list of underrated thrillers and saw it had Cusack and Elijah Wood and was written by Damien Chazelle - surprised I'd never heard of it, with those names. It's a decent enough high-concept thriller but Cusack doesn't make much of an impression. Elijah commits much better to the ridiculous concept

lol love you in this thread, Shakey