Movies I like

1. The Family Man
with Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni

Quick summary from IMDB:

A fast-lane investment broker, offered the opportunity to see how the other half lives, wakes up to find that his sports car and girlfriend have become a mini-van and wife.

I like this movie even though it didn't win awards or is on any top 100 movie list. I can't quite define why I like it. I like movies about real, normal lives and the complex emotions that come with it. I guess we all do :) I think both Cage and Leoni are really good in it, and one of those times the casting is spot-on. I could see another actor playing the depression and disgust with the family life as fake and unbelievable. But you really believe Nicolas Cage's character is ambitious and money-hungry, and seriously can't believe he's stuck in this suburban New Jersey life. And Tea Leoni really plays a life-can-suck-but-why-not-laugh-about-it? character Kate with her own ambitions and career choices. I like that her choice isn't just mom or professional. In either scenario, she has a career but one is nonprofit lawyer and one is high-paying lawyer.

I find it interesting that in the movie, Cage's character Jack is honest. He meets for the first time his best friend (played by Jeremy Piven who's married to one-liner Kate Walsh, weird!) and says true things but gets laughed at by Piven. Jack says, "Kate's my wife?" "This isn't my life," etc. Jack's daughter Annie perceptively realizes this new guy is not quite her dad and believes he's from aliens. Maybe from Jack's unfamiliarity with kids and need to be honest, he blurts to Annie, "I work on Wall Street. I don't live here. I don't know what I'm doing here." The only person that knows his secret is the young daughter who helps him figure out where he works and how to change a diaper. It's funny, bc Jack is trying to be honest. So a middle-aged suburban dad could say lines like that and we'd all just laugh and think he's having a grumpy day?

I guess the concept is so interesting to me. I wonder all the time what my life would have been like if I did this thing different, went to a diff college, chose that job instead of this one, moved back to SD instead of staying in the Bay Area, and such.

To spoil the ending if you haven't seen it, I like how it ends. I like how he has to go back to his "real" life and doesn't get to stay in the "glimpse" life like he wants. And I like how Kate is a top lawyer and he runs after her in the airport to convince her just to have coffee with him. He doesn't propose and there's no promise they'll end up together. But he's a changed man.

And Don Cheadle plays an angel-type character, hmm.