Tonight was apparently some award show for movies that we mostly haven’t seen (or, in the case of The Aviator, just wish we hadn’t), the results of which no one will remember in a week. I thought it was an appropriate time to recognize the work of one of our generations great actors: John Cusack. It may be reasonably be said that he suffers from a mild case of Hugh Grant disease (i.e. playing the same character in several different movies), but he has been in several essential movies for folks of my generation.

Just look at his filmography: Sixteen Candles, Stand by Me, One Crazy Summer, The Sure Things, and, of course, Say Anything, the quintessence of the teenage romance movies, and the singular reason why I still can’t bear to hear Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes. (Kickboxing, sport of the future….)

His greatest comedy, I believe, is Grosse Pointe Blank which was on again tonight (on StarZ Mystery channel, for reasons which are…. well mysterious, but that’s peripheral). The movie not only tackles one of the greatest themes and most difficult to do well (going back home again, specifically to one’s high school reunion). It comes out being the funniest of them all (and I’m even including Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, which was actually quite funny, despite every expectation I had.)

There’s a really good cast including Dan Ackroyd, and Joan Cusack gives a stellar supporting performance as well. The writing, which is the key to any movie worth watching, is superb. And let’s not forget the great soundtrack.

His greatest dramatic achievement is probably Identity, which was also on this weekend. If you haven’t seen it, set the TiVo. If you don’t have TiVo, well you ought to get it, especially if you can get it with DirecTV. I won’t give anything more away, except so that that the previews made it look like a horror movie or that it was really scary, and it was more just suspenseful and a few brief scenes of violence on-screen.

Runaway Jury was also a very good flick that was on this weekend.

(Revised 2005-03-02: fixed typo and broke up into entry + extended)