Cinema Qua Non – Indispensable DVDs: Part 3

Day Three – The final ten, a cross-culture collection teeming with big ideas, larger than life visions, and perhaps the greatest documentary on rugby you’ve probably never heard of.

DVD: Bottle Rocket

Director: Wes Anderson

Film: Bottle Rocket

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Cast: Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, James Caan, Robert Musgrave

MPAA rating: N/A

First date: 1996

Distributor: Sony Pictures

US DVD Release Date: 1998-12-22

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/blog_art/b/bottlerocketdvd.jpg

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Bottle Rocket
Director: Wes Anderson

1996

When an artist has a unique vision or style, no matter what their medium, more often than not it is that first piece of theirs you make contact with that strikes the deepest chord. It is the one you hold closest to your heart. So it goes with Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket.

From the outset we are slowly absorbed into a world that is entirely recognizable yet somehow sensationalized. Much like an oversaturated photograph, we can see the picture is real, yet the heightened colors give it a surreal, almost cartoon-like, quality. It is Wes Anderson’s characters that add these bright flourishes of color to the film, so realized that almost every line delivered reveals a keener sense of their psyche. The great humorist and writer Mark Twain once wrote “Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow.” This sentiment pervades all of Wes Anderson’s films, though never are the characters quite as humorously pathetic and human as in this one. Anderson would of course go on to develop and explore his ideas to more mainstream success, but the essence of his characters also began to get more masked in deepening idiosyncrasies over time. In Bottle Rocket, while the characters are indeed quirky, they are also in their rawest form, making this the most relatable and realistic of all his films.

Bottle Rocket speaks directly to that disheartening period of life — for some, and in particular the characters in this film, it is in the mid to late twenties, but of course it needn’t be. It is simply that moment that occurs, to many of us, when we see life simply isn’t going to turn out the way we had planned or hoped, and it will not get easier. In the film, Anderson’s three leads represent three aspects of our personalities that reflect major determinants in how and when this moment will come to us: fear, rationality, and the dreamer. These three elements push and pull and battle within, because they simply cannot entirely coexist, until ultimately one or more of these warring factions is suppressed or released completely.

While some of the humor is more overt, it is the film’s subtlety that is something to behold. In fact, it’s not feasible to pick up on every humorous detail in the film upon first viewing. Each repeat viewing reveals more buried moments, even though the film never asks, demands, or even expects for you to pick them out, or any metaphorical elements for that matter, to enjoy it. On a pure, straight-forward comedic level, the movie is still immensely satisfying. The understated soundtrack by Mark Mothersbaugh, of Devo fame, manages to mirror the film in tone and concept. It is subtle, a touch goofy, and yet beautifully crafted. Yet it is within the moments that Wes Anderson employs songs to convey, or intensify, a scene that he is at his best. He uses this device sparingly in the film, probably more due to budget constraints, but it makes each occurrence all the more poignant.

It is in Bottle Rocket that we get to see Wes Anderson’s unique and distinct vision unobstructed by bigger budgets or stars (keeping in mind the Wilson brothers, who star in the film, were making their big screen debuts here. It should also be noted that Owen Wilson co-wrote the film and deserves as much praise for the dialogue as Anderson.) While his characters here are often propelled as caricatures, they are always painfully human in their actions. Through his creations we see the simplistic splendor and humor that life holds, while always propped up on an underlying layer of recurring sadness that can just as easily take hold. After all, “It ain’t no trip to Cleveland.”

This is why Bottle Rocket is indispensable. Rory O’Connor

 

DVD: Starship Troopers

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Film: Starship Troopers

Studio: Tristar Pictures

Cast: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown

MPAA rating: R

First date: 2008

Distributor: Sony

US DVD Release Date: 2002-05-28

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/blog_art/s/starshiptroopersdvd.jpg

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Starship Troopers
Director: Paul Verhoeven

1997

“The Goddamn bugs whacked us, Johnny.” “You’re some sort of big, fat, smart bug, aren’t you?” “Would you like to know more?” Every day, at least one of these lines rattles through my head on ‘repeat’. There’s nothing I can do. I’ve tried everything — pills, ointments, doses of Nicolas Cage’s The Wicker Man injected intravenously into my veins — but nothing can seem to wean me off Paul Verhoeven’s fascist masterwork, Starship Troopers. If every DVD in the world was to be destroyed, save this Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris (pre-“NPH”) vehicle, I’d be perfectly OK.

It’s not just one thing, or even a few things, that make this two-disc special edition indispensable. It’s everything. Sure, Verhoeven consistently gives the best damn commentary tracks around, and the featurettes show him chasing his cast across the sets with a broom screaming in his thick Dutch accent, “I’m a bug! I’m a bug! RAAWWRR!” but the proof is in the pudding. The movie is a pastiche of every dream I’ve ever had of American cinema. It’s got the melodrama and beauty of a soap-opera (during development the crew referred to the film as “Melrose Space”). It’s got the self-aware B-movie dialogue that rivals Roger Corman’s best (my personal favorite: Michael Ironside, stone-coldly delivering, while fingering a hole in someone’s head with his prosthetic, metal hand, “They sucked his brains out”). It’s got all the gore you can cram this side of Robocop, featuring a decapitation from the top of the jaw and multiple appendages melting. All of this is presented with an overarching, self-aware message so densely compacted into every frame, every musical note, and every edit, that it informs each head explosion, each transparent character interaction, each WWII-inspired propaganda interlude, and each of your squeals of delight as cinema glory is passing you on-screen.

The film somehow manages to imagine all of these brilliancies under the banner of a science-fiction, futuristic, fascist utopia — and, oh yeah, there are gigantic, flesh-eating arachnids.

And it’s inside that utopia where Starship Troopers shows Verhoeven at his exploitative best — using all of these Hollywood meta-devices to promote his frightening idea: “War makes fascists of us all.” The society the film illustrates is one without sexism, racism, crime, poverty, and, for the most part, unhappiness, but is predicated on a simple fact: “Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.” If you believe that statement, then this world truly is your utopia. People who serve in the federation are higher in stature and are imbued privileges not allotted to those who do not, and dying for your country is more important than dying for a friend. The film is a journey of young teens coming to believe these societal ideals for themselves. And though Doogie Howser may start the film a class clown, he ends the third act wearing a Gestapo uniform like everyone else. In this world, war is hell, and hell is desirable. I’ve never seen that idea more vivid and transfixing than through the eyes of Paul Verhoeven.

If you’ve ever wondered: “How would we fight a war against interstellar spiders if Hitler had won World War II?” look no further than Starship Troopers. I sure don’t. Marc Calderaro

 

DVD: Living with Lions

Director: Unknown

Film: Living with Lions

Cast: Rob Howley, Will Greenwood, Doddie Weir, Barry Williams, Mark Regan, John Bentley

Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_with_Lions

MPAA rating: N/A

First date: 1998

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/blog_art/l/livingwithlionsdvd.jpg

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Living With Lions
1997

For all of the genre’s cheesiness and predictability, we all have a soft spot for the occasional sports movie. You know the type. Team of misfits come together, find their bond and unite, before overcoming the odds and dethroning the huge favourites in dramatic fashion.

But what if that movie wasn’t a Hollywood fairy tale or historical re-enactment seen through rose-tinted spectacles, but a document of actual events as they unfolded? That, in essence, is the eternal appeal of Living With Lions, the behind-the-scenes documentary of the 1997 British and Irish Lions’ Tour of South Africa, culminating in the now legendary three-game series against the world champion Springboks.

I’ve written about Living With Lions on PopMatters before, but the brilliance of this movie, which remains virtually unknown outside rugby circles, makes it well worth revisiting.

The game action is, of course, fantastic. The 1997 Lions team featured players who can rightfully be considered among the greatest of all time. But what makes the documentary so enthralling and inspiring is its warts-and-all access to the players, coaches, and medical staff, revealing the shocking brutality of a world of sportsmen for whom winning is everything, while violence and the risk of serious injury are daily realities.

This is a world of men whose bodies and wills have been forged in iron. Playing for nothing apart from the honour of wearing the red shirt and the prospect of becoming only the second Lions team to win a Test Series in South Africa, the commitment to the cause, to never take a backwards step, is unwavering.

The highlights are too many to relate here. Punches are thrown in training. Team captain Martin Johnson berates the doctor stitching up the gash in his face to hurry up so he can get back into the game. Rob Howley’s tears after breaking his collarbone. But best of all, it’s the shared moments before the games that make Living With Lions a unique document of the passion that makes winning possible at the elite level.

“This is your Everest,” whispers coach Jim Telfer as the eight best forward in Britain and Ireland gather in silence before the first Test as tension drips from the walls. “You’ll have to find to find your own solace, your own drive, your own ambition, your own inner strength; for the greatest game of your fucking life.”

“Say their names,” growls Martin Johnson, moments before he leads the Lions out to face the Springboks. “Venter! Kruger! Teichmann! They all fucking get it!”

You can’t script stuff this great. Robert CollinsLiving with Lions

 

DVD: Very Bad Things

Director: Peter Berg

Film: Very Bad Things

Studio: PolyGram Filmed Entertainment

Cast: Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz, Daniel Stern, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Jon Favreau, Jeremy Piven

MPAA rating: R

First date: 1998

Distributor: Polygram Filmed Entertainment

US DVD Release Date: 2002-11-05

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/blog_art/v/verybadthingsdvd.jpg

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Very Bad Things
Director: Peter Berg

1998

Black comedies are a risky proposition. By definition, they skirt the edges of taste, daring us to laugh at things we shouldn’t find funny: despair, misery, and mostly violence or murder. Ultimately, it’s also a disturbing reflection of ourselves — how morbid are we and why would we laugh at these things? Maybe that’s why it’s never been a burgeoning genre or one that’s well-respected: AFI’s top 100 U.S. films includes Dr. Strangelove as its token black comedy.

Peter Berg’s 1998 film Very Bad Things didn’t fare well itself. Despite having Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz at the top of the marquee (alongside Daniel Stern, Jeremy Piven, and Jon Favreau), it didn’t get good reviews (Roger Ebert hated it), and didn’t do well at the box office either, making back less than a third of its budget. Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) was similarly full of evil characters and lacked a real hero, but because it was a grim Western, reviewers and ticket buyers forgave that and embraced it.

Maybe Berg’s film didn’t resonate because it hit too close to home in some ways. The main premise is a bunch of old friends who lose their mind over a murder and turn on each other while trying to keep enough control to make a wedding happen. Diaz plays the bride-to-be and is just as obsessive and insanely driven as the groom’s friends who try to hide their crimes — even when she finds out what they’ve done, she’s more concerned about the ceremony than any blood-letting. Slater’s character masterminds most of the crimes and manically tries to keep things together. Gradually, the wedding party is picked off one by one, consumed by fear as they desperately try to conceal their secrets. The humor comes out in how conniving the friends become when faced with being exposed as killers. Not only is Berg knocking the American obsession with marriage, but also the dark rivalries that are hidden in male bonding. Because of the context he puts the story in, he makes both traditions seem like ridiculous jokes and pathetic mores. It’s not exactly something that popcorn-munching audiences like to ponder, even if they should sometimes.

Part of Ebert’s complaint is that the initial victims are minorities, and others have pointed out that there’s no police hounding the suspects about the string of murders. In an amoral universe like this one, neither point matters. These are disgusting people and the law and morality have nothing to do with it. Movies provide us with escape, but also ideally swoop vengeance on the wicked, and though Diaz’s character gets comeuppance in the end, it’s a spiritual agony she’s left with and not jail time or her own eye-for-an-eye demise that we usually crave and expect.

Though Berg has since done Friday Night Lights (the movie and TV series) and has the Will Smith hit Hancock under his belt (not to mention an ongoing role on Chicago Hope before that), Very Bad Things is his most powerful piece of work and a monument of cinematic grim humor. Jason Gross

 

DVD: Being John Malkovich

Director: Spike Jonze

Film: Being John Malkovich

Studio: Gramercy

Cast: John Cusack, John Malkovich, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, Mary Kay Place, Orson Bean

MPAA rating: N/A

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/blog_art/b/beingjohnmalkovichdvd.jpg

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Being John Malkovich
Director: Spike Jonze

1999

There is no film I hated more on this planet than Being John Malkovich when I was 15 years old. I saw it in the theater with my parents because I just liked the concept of it (it may have even been my first R-rated flick)… and I hated it with all my being.

Only a few years prior, Peter Weir‘s The Truman Show had an unsettling yet profound effect on me (altering my perspectives on what reality truly is), and Malkovich‘s concept — about people crawling around inside the brains of others and ultimately controlling them — unnerved me to the core. I wanted to walk out of it during the screening, but I had to see the ending — and I had nightmares for days. The movie just wouldn’t leave my head. I was thinking about individual scenes ad nauseum, as if my brain was somehow still digesting the whole experience.

I finally relented and gave it another viewing: and I enjoyed it. I didn’t love it — I just enjoyed it. A few weeks later, I saw it again. Then bought it when it came out on DVD. Then booed when Charlie Kaufman lost the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Now, I have grown to love the movie, as it is every movie I have ever loved: the first half-hour is the sharpest, wittiest, and most downright surreal comedy ever made. Then, it becomes a dramatic meditation on the true natures of love and celebrity. Finally, it transforms into a tragedy of near Shakespearian proportions.

It also features career-defining performances from Malkovich, John Cusack, and a wonderfully defrumped Cameron Diaz, but, really, it is Kaufman and director Spike Jonze who are the stars of this show (and the gloriously bizarre, misleading special features on the DVD). No other movie features monkey flashbacks, horny marionettes, and a jazzy dance number called “Malkovich Malkovich” — and no other movie will leave you as emotionally shaken as this one. If I leave this earth with only movie in my grave, it would proudly be Being John Malkovich. Evan Sawdey

TV Show: Freaks and Geeks

US release date: 1999-09-25

Network: NBC

Cast: Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Becky Ann Baker, Joe Flaherty, James Franco, Samm Levine, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/features_art/f/freaks-and-geeks.jpg

Website: http://www.gbdesigns.com/freaksandgeeks/

MPAA rating: N/A

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Freaks and Geeks: Yearbook Edition
1999–2000

As far as indispensable DVDs go, it’s impossible to leave out the newly back-in-print Freaks and Geeks: Yearbook Edition. Without a doubt, Freaks and Geeks is a series that I return to over and over again. Its lasting power lies in its ability to straddle the line between teenage angst and drama and innumerable cringe-worthy high school moments without ever going over the top. From Nick’s repeatedly embarrassing attempts to woo Lindsay, to Kim’s dysfunctional family, to Bill coming to terms with his mother dating his gym teacher, all the stories are told with sincerity, humor, and a great deal of affection for the characters.

Freaks and Geeks focused on the kids who existed on the fringes of high school society, the outcasts. Any series that manages to create seven distinct characters that don’t fall into the usual tropes of one-dimensional jocks, nerds, or popular kids, as well as tell their individual stories over the course of only one season, deserves high praise indeed. Even when making fools of themselves or trying too hard to fit in, there’s always an element of real relatability to the characters that further sets the show apart from other teen-centered stories. For all the poignant moments, there were equal parts humor, and balancing the two without overreaching was what the show did best. And really, is there anything more hilarious than Nick’s transparent ode to Lindsay, “Lady L”?

The already crammed-with-extras regular DVD set is given an even fuller treatment in the yearbook edition. Aside from almost 30 commentary tracks for 18 episodes (that range from standard writers, directors, and cast members to Freaks and Geeks fans and some of the cast’s parents), tons of deleted scenes and alternate takes, and behind-the-scenes footage, this edition comes packaged as a McKinley High School yearbook complete with authentic yearbook doodles and dedications by all the characters, as well as essays, photographs, and an extra two discs of material that include table reads, auditions, and raw footage. The episodes alone would make it impossible to ever tire of the show, but when combined with the perfect packaging and enough extras to keep any fan coming back for more, the Freaks and Geeks: Yearbook Edition is, without a doubt, indispensable. Jessica Suarez

 

DVD: You Can Count on Me

Director: Ken Lonergan

Film: You Can Count on Me

Studio: Shooting Gallery

Cast: Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Rory Culkin, Matthew Broderick, Jon Tenney, Gaby Hoffmann

MPAA rating: R

First date: 2000

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You Can Count on Me
Director: Kenneth Lonergan

2000

Though I’m a lifelong cinema obsessive, I have a laughably small DVD collection. Probably 15 movies, tops, as well as a smattering of music DVDs. The movies I own tend to betray my classicist love for mid-century Hollywood: Casablanca, Rebel Without a Cause, and Touch of Evil will always be there on the shelf. Still, the film in my collection I’ve watched more than any other — indeed, when options are slight and plans are cancelled, I reach for it — is You Can Count on Me, Kenneth Lonergan’s 2000 directorial debut. (Eight years later, it remains his only commercially released full-length film.)

Like many people, I was initially drawn to this film by Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the rudderless and occasionally estranged Terry Prescott, who returns home to upstate New York to borrow money from his sister, Sammy (Laura Linney). As Terry, Ruffalo is magnetic and almost casually self-destructive, an unreasonable and unfailingly human pulse that alternates between warm congeniality and the martyred pouting of the forsaken — Terry’s enough of a well-intentioned screw-up that he can take his young nephew fishing in the morning, and then take him to see his deadbeat father in the afternoon (and proceed to punch him out). It’s my favorite performance of the aughts so far, one that Ruffalo has yet to top since.

But Ruffalo/Terry isn’t the only thing You Can Count on Me has got going. Linney throws down as the more “normal” sibling by socially accepted standards, though she’s just as damaged and prone to erring on a fundamentally human level. And beyond its centerpiece performances, You Can Count on Me is a humble yet resonant depiction of the stickiness of close-knit relationships, shot pragmatically by Lonergan in a style that contradicts the wham-bam ostentation of his better-known contemporaries.

It’s about falling out of touch and reconnecting, about relying on people and sometimes being let down, about how mistakes and forgiveness are odd but constant bedfellows. And after all the normal storminess that Terry and Sammy find themselves weathering, this is ultimately a comforting picture, open-ended and still looking forward to increasingly positive things. Zeth Lundy

 

DVD: Moulin Rouge

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Film: Moulin Rouge

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo, Jim Broadbent, Richard Roxburgh, Kylie Minogue

MPAA rating: PG-13

First date: 2001

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Moulin Rouge
Director: Baz Luhrmann

2001

Visionary director Baz Luhrmann, who brought us Strictly Ballroom and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, achieved perfection of vision and art in his 2001 release, Moulin Rouge. It is a story about love — it is a feast for the soul. The film stars an incredibly talented cast: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo, Jim Broadbent, and Richard Roxburgh, to name a few.

Set in the time of Toulouse Lautrec in Bohemian Paris, it takes the viewer on a non-stop journey and you are instantly drawn into this new and exciting world of wonderment and reverie. It’s a dazzling portrayal of what it was like to be a “child of the revolution” during the Bohemian movement of the 19th century. It exhibits the basic tenets of Bohemian ideals: truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, love.

The totality captures the essence of the legendary Moulin Rouge. Christian (Ewan McGregor), a penniless young poet, travels to Paris to experience life, and satiate his “ridiculous obsession with love.” Upon arriving in Montmartre, he is befriended by Lautrec (John Leguizamo), and through this association, he is introduced to Satine (Nicole Kidman), a courtesan at the Moulin Rouge. Christian is employed to help create a stage production for which Satine will star in. The two fall in love, and carry on a love affair in which they face difficulties until ultimately, they meet with tragic circumstances.

This is an indispensable film. What Lurhmann achieves through use of music is extraordinary, using current music to comment on another time period, and the best part is that it works. The music, along with the fantastic dance sequences, create a brilliant musical. The film showcases songs from some of the most beloved musicians, among them the Beatles, the Police, Elton John, and Queen, and these famous pieces, such as Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” and the Police’s “Roxanne”, are reconfigured in ways that work beyond one’s wildest imagination.

Moulin Rouge enraptures the viewer from beginning to end. It is a film for anyone who appreciates beauty and artistry. Never has such a love story been so hauntingly depicted by superb acting and the haunting effect of music. The viewer is left wanting more, and more importantly, a sense that, “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return.” Katrina Wheeler

Moulin Rouge

 

DVD: Punch-Drunk Love

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Film: Punch-Drunk Love

Studio: Columbia

Cast: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Luis Guzmán, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mary Lynn Rajskub

MPAA rating: R

First date: 2002

Distributor: limited

US DVD Release Date: 2003-06-24

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/blog_art/p/punchdrunklovedvd.jpg

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Punch-Drunk Love
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

2002

DVDs have become film lessons, toys for grown-ups, and continuations or even revisions of the film itself. But at the end of the day, it’s the movie that matters. You press play, and your TV screen opens up a larger world of light and sound. My favorite films to watch over and over, the ones I turn to in good times and bad, are larger-than-life fantasies that resonate with real-life pain. More often than not there’s a love story, some comedy, an evocative setting, an uncomplicated plot, memorable dialogue that contains truth about human behavior, and music that serves as a character itself. Those are comfort elements for me, and Punch-Drunk Love is a comfort movie.

It’s a playful, experimental film, where strange glows and flashes of light appear throughout the film, mysterious but also reminiscent of rainbows, shadows, and the glare of the sun. It’s a comedy where the jokes are about loneliness, embarrassment, and long-held resentments. It’s also an old-fashioned, big-screen romance, where the main character wears a bright blue suit at all times, and does an impromptu tap dance in a supermarket. Punch-Drunk Love is light on its feet but heavy in its heart, taking all of the bitterness, anger, and sadness wrapped up inside of human beings — in this case, inside of Adam Sandler, not insignificantly — and washing it away with the breeze of the ocean, the sound of a melody played on a beat-up piano, the idealized notion of a true love.

Watch a movie enough times and you come to appreciate even the tiniest moments: a facial expression, an image, a piece of music heard only briefly. One of my favorite scenes in Punch-Drunk Love comes after our lovers have joined up in Hawaii, one of those movie-dream vacation spots free from the anxiety of real life. Night has fallen, the setting is gorgeous, and the camera glides through a crowd of people watching a musical group sing a bittersweet, romantic song. At the front a woman dances, and we watch the graceful movement of her hands. She points to the right and the camera follows. There the lovers are, sharing a tender moment by candlelight, against the crashing of waves. It’s a movie moment, but also a normal human one: two people in a crowd, sharing a moment in time. In that light, even Sandler’s suit doesn’t look as Hollywood blue. They look like regular people, though the feeling in the air is absolute contentment: a momentary fiction, in the movies and in life. Dave Heaton

 

DVD: The Office

TV Show: The Office

Subtitle: Season Three

Network: NBC

Cast: Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, Ed Helms, Rashida Jones

First date: 2005

Distributor: Universal

US Release Date: 2007-09-24

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/film_art/o/office-s3.jpg

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The Office
2005-present

In the first episode of the third season of The Office, Karen Filippelli (Rashida Jones) mockingly imitates her new co-worker Jim Halpert’s (John Krasinski) wry self-aware grin, a smile that, anyone who considers himself a hardcore fan of the show, has probably attempted to replicate. It’s in this moment that the characters, and the show itself, become more than just a prime-time smash, evolving into a group of people that you can readily identify with. The characters feel more like friends than subjects in your voyeuristic pleasures. And it’s this ability to relate to the characters on such a personal level that makes The Office Season Three one of the best seasons of television in the last decade.

Whether or not you’ve spent extended amounts of time working in an office, it’s pretty easy to identify all of the type-casts and relate them to someone in your life: the dim-witted boss (Michael Scott), the office hotties (Pam Beasley and Filippelli), the supportive mother-type (Phyllis Lapin-Vance), and of course, the obnoxious over-achiever (Dwight K. Schrute). Although many shows have this same gamut of characters, The Office eloquently ties all of their seemingly outlandish actions together, finding a way to humanize even the strangest moments (e.g., when Dwight leaves the temp, Ryan, in the middle of a beet field to teach him selling techniques).

What’s truly incredible about The Office Season Three is that not only are there no weak episodes, but there are no few, if any, weak moments. The awkward times in episodes like “A Benihana Christmas” — Michael being unable to tell which of the Asian Benihana waitresses he’s fallen in love with — are nullified by Michael’s genuine heartbreak or any other number realistic personal struggles. Unlike future seasons, where the palatable passive aggression is off-putting (Season Four’s “Dinner Party”), Season Three skirts these problems, creating humorous tension that is only as masterfully done in the best moments of 30 Rock.

Simply put, the third season of The Office is more craftily calculated, and frankly, funnier and more personable than any show in recent memory. It’s a season that inspires hope (Jim and Pam finally getting together at the end) and shows the dramatic highs and lows of the human spectrum in a way that no television show has done in recent memory. Chris Gaerig