The Double Feature Weekly Wrap-Up, 6/24/12

Welcome to the second edition of The Double Feature Weekly Wrap-Up at From The Rental Queue! This week's films were definitely more challenging than last weeks but I think I managed alright in the end. My self-imposed rules about matching up films can be found here in last week's post. So, without further ado, this week's double feature recommendations.

• The Myth of the American Sleepover - This coming-of-age drama centered on the last night of summer for a group of teenagers was very sleepy, dreamy, and vapid. I would pair it with Skateland, another dreamy coming-of-age period piece about in a similar vein.
• This Means War - This spy-versus-spy romcom was all show and no substance. It would pair perfectly with Cruise and Diaz's Knight & Day, which I found equally as simple and flashy with a very similar plot and tone.
• St. Trinian's - Okay, this was the toughest of the week. This British cult classic with a star-studded cast combines a farcical collection of characters and evolves into a crazy heist film. There's honestly nothing like it I could put my finger on until I thought of The Maiden Heist - a crazy star-studded farcical film about a crazy heist. Tonally it's very similar and I think they make a quite good match. This was really a tough one though.
• Jeff, Who Lives At Home - Ah, the Duplass brothers really scored with this absolutely lovely evolving tale about finding your purpose. This was another tough one because whatever I picked I wanted it to have the same overall understated, observational feeling. Wes Anderson's Rushmore I think would be marvelous to watch with this - in fact, I may have to do that one night.
• Seeking Justice - This confused revenge thriller missed on nearly all fronts and, since it tried to be so many things it made it really difficult to pair with something. If you want to go straight revenge thriller look no further than Chan-Wook Park's revenge trilogy, of which Oldboy is the best. If you want instead a thriller that focuses on saving a family member you could try Taken or, even better, The Next Three Days. I think though my final call for a double feature here will be The Son of No One, Dito Montiel's odd thriller that combines the two themes far more successfully than Seeking Justice does.
• Rampart - Woody Harrelson gave the performance of his life as a rampaging cop in this beautifully drawn thriller. The logical pairing is Casey Affleck in The Killer Inside Me, an equally provocative (although less nuanced) look at a devolving sociopathic lawman in Texas.

There my list for the week - happy viewing!