The other night, I watched Visioneers, the new corporate dystopian-future comedy starring Zach Galifianakis. Here is the opening seven minutes, which, I think, really get the movie off to a great start:

It's got great comic timing, an understated sense of wrongness, and some good ideas. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this movie because the plot fades out in the middle and the filmmakers just don't know how to end the goddamned thing. When you're writing about a dark and dismal place, there's a compulsion to solve all the problems of that place and, quite frankly, most narratives can't handle that kind of dramatic change. It made Visioneers seem cheap and kind of stupid.

Immediately after watching Visioneers, I wanted to watch a good movie. At a friend's suggestion, I watched The Big Kahuna, a movie starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito as industrial lubricant salesmen at a convention in Wichita. Here's the trailer:

It's a pretty great film, about religion and sales and the interaction between people. It handles the subjects in a responsible, adult manner, and the actors are doing some of the best work of their careers. There is another problem at the end of the movie, though: In a dialogue-free coda, someone thought it would be a good idea to play that inane "Wear Sunscreen" song that was all the rage back in '99 over the silent portion. This actually comes close to ruining the whole movie: Why would have a word-driven film, a movie where there's almost no action aside from dialogue and then close out with someone else's words—especially a long, way-too-cute speech that was long misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut? The faux-wisdom of the song's lyrics nearly undermines the smart, sharp dialogue that serves as an engine for the hour and a half before it. If you ever watch The Big Kahuna, mute the movie at the beginning of the short scene that takes place the next morning. That way, you'll save the ending from destroying itself.