For palate-cleansing Val Kilmerosity, I recommend Thunderheart.

Oh yes. Plus, Graham Greene, yum. That was a damn hot duo, there. Um.

Val is also hit or miss with me, but I love him so very much when he hits: Top Secret, Tombstone, Real Genius.

Yupyupyup.

Dudes, Willow.

For sheer fun and physicality, that would be a yeppers.

Also, is it me, or are there not very many female protagonists in Mamet works, and for "not very many" read none?

The Lindsay Crouse character in House of Games rocked, although she's not particularly likable. I like the Catherine Winslow character from The Winslow Boy very well, but of course, she's not a Mamet creation. Plus, I kept thinking how much more I'd have liked the character if she were played by someone like Cate Blanchett instead of Rebecca Pidgeon.

Neil Labute (ptooi!)

Sing it, sister.

And I have a warm love for Thunderheart.

Years after I first bought it, a Native American friend vehemently stated that the incidents depicted were not 'based on' real events...they were real events. Gave the film a whole new depth for me.

Didn't Mamet write The Untouchables? I think that that film proves that Kevin Costner can't play intensity without making me laugh at the attempt.

That he did. Only thing that immediately springs to mind for me about that flick was the homage to Eisenstein's famous Odessa Steps sequence. I think I've forgotten everything else that happened.

How about Nurse Betty? That's got a female protagonist, but I've not seen it. I remember it got pretty good reviews?

I really liked it.

I like Val Kilmer and have never seen a Mamet film.

What I remember about The Untouchables, besides the Mad Magazine treatment which is always weirdly insightful amidst the comedy, was that the sequence with the baby carriage falling down the stairs felt like an homage to me, even when I was a teenager. (How I knew, I don't know, but I did. It made the whole movie feel kind of ersatz, to tell the truth.) Years later I saw parts of that Eisenstein movie to which it is an homage, and had some nice meta.

Glad to know I'm not the only one on the I'm invisible in Mamet's mirror train. And, true, better to be invisible than to be treated like dirt. Although, that's like better to be eaten by a lion than by eleventy million fire ants, you know? Not much in the way to choose from.

I liked the way it showed the corruption in the Chicago police force at the time, and contrasted the innocence and naivete of Costner's Ness before he hooks up with Connery. If it wasn't for Connery, the movie would fall apart at the seams. Instead, it's something I'll watch whenever I run across it on TV.

Mamet's pretty much a guy's guy in person, too, according to a friend who was at Mamet's acting school. Spartan is watchable, though cold.

I recall *loving* The Untouchables, but I am wee bit afraid of watching it again, having developed sour feelings toward both Costner and De Palma since.