But what I should point out here is this -

1) The tone of the past couple entries reminds me surprisingly of my blog-writing-style in high school.

2) What is fantastic about both these films is that they are not predictable.  I hate films, generally, because they tend to be so short that the cliche/original content ratio seems to always be too high.  Some Judd Apatow films have their moments, but all of them spend a significant amount of screentime on cliche and beginnings and middles and rising actions and ends that you all see coming a mile away and has no particular interest or power.  It would be so hard to make me care about someone running to an airport to stop a girl from going away.  In principle, it is a very powerful idea.  Can you imagine if this actually happened to someone you knew, and it wasn't a film cliche?  It would be insane.  You'd tell your kids and your grandkids.  You'd narrate the moment when he went "fuck it" and ran through security, or whatever, to get to her (do they do that in movies?).

I really really liked Herzog's Bad Lieutenant. You honestly don't know where it's going, and it is so out of "left field" sometimes that it is a hilarious comedy.

Battle Royale, I think, was the first film I saw that really drove this message home.  It's fun because it's about something insane and high-stakes and who dies and who lives is apparently determined sort of arbitrarily.  More like a game show, really.

Or No Country.  So much fun. (spoiler warning) I loved when 2/3 through the film Woody Harrelson's character is introduced, then is pretty much immediately killed off.  It shocks.  It jars you out of your comfortable position as a dude who knows what's going on, jars you into the film, maybe?  Dare I say that arbitrariness has an effet de reel?  And when you don't know what will happen you care about what will happen.

The connection between all these films is that they are not art. They are entertainment, and supremely good entertainment because they avoid cliche in the service of making films unpredictable, in the service of making them fun.

Corroboration corner:

" Is this shambolic maniac Herzog’s idea of an American hero? " -Karina Longworth