First I must give kudos to Steve Zahn and Christina Applegate for their incredible performances. Christina has shown remarkable maturity from early roles and I predict one day may get an Oscar. This dark comedy starts out with our Bank manager or former bank manager riding a bus. After a boring monologue, and sorry attempt at crude humor, the story flashes back 36 hours. David (Matt Dillon) is engaged to Christina. She is clearly out of his league. Steve Zahn is best buddy, a coroner who robs people and hates the establishment. At times he is our voice of reason in this dark comedy. After losing his job and girlfriend in the same day, David is depressed. Steve takes him to a strip club and tells him he needs to start enjoying life. David responds (paraphrase), "You are going to give a bracket that you stole off a corpse to an 18 year old stripper and have sex in the parking lot while snorting crank off a Bowie knife." To which Steve responds, "And your point is?"The most comical scene is at a restaurant where Christina is breaking up with Matt. Her parents (Dad is a preacher) are there. She reads a letter about the break-up and discusses in some detail, their sex life while mom and dad listen.The movie ends up with multiple twists at the end which appears eerily similar the opening bank robbery scene in the "The Dark Knight." For those of you who enjoyed the twists and intellect of this movie I would recommend "The Brothers Bloom."

This movie was a very good effort. Matt Dillon plays David, the bank employee coming up on his two year review expecting a bonus and paid benefits but is fired instead. Things start really head south for him after that. He endures a day that continually gets worse from there culminating is a ten minute ending where there is surprise after surprise strung together.Steve Zahn as Jack is simply outstanding and Dave Foley delivers an underrated effort. In particular, the exchanges between these two are priceless.Jay Leggetts' character Dorff was both odd and hysterical and his interaction with Jack was very good.A special shout out to Jenna Fischer as the hooker Misty whose exchange with Matt Dillon in the hotel room still has me laughing. Otherwise, the efforts on the part of the female leads was lacking.All in all this movie is in my list of "drop everything" when it is on to watch. At the end of the day there are a couple subtleties that have me curious regarding David. He does a couple things in the movie that left me wondering if he was trying to do the right thing or mess with someone else?

Damn nice little surprise this one was! The little prologue sequence, with Matt Dillon's witty voice-over, lead me to believe that the movie indeed would have a sharp edge to it. Then the viewer gets transported to events that happened 36 hours earlier, and you start watching a mild comedy, easy-going with a touch of romance even. But after 15 minutes, Matt Dillon's character gets fired from his job as a bank manager, and things start going down-hill rapidly from there on for the poor dude.The movie just keeps on getting nuttier with every scene. Some of the humor is gross and rude (especially when it's coming from Dillon's dubious life-long buddy Jack, played by a pretty hilarious Steve Zahn), but it's in perfect balance with the sad and extremely funny events that happen to David (Matt Dillon's Character). Chistina Applegate is in it too, as David's girlfriend (I didn't even recognize her at first, even though she still looks beautiful as ever), and you should wait until you see what she comes up with, totally unexpected.Both the cinematography and editing are slick and modern-looking. Lots of nice little tricks in the editing department (speed-up sequences and sudden freeze-frames), but they are never too dominant and remain pleasant eye-candy (if you fancy those kind of techniques, which I do). It all adds up to a smooth look and a fast pace. In a movie like EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH, that dresses itself mildly hip, a good soundtrack is as equally important. And this movie delivers on that. A decent rock/electro soundtrack, and even better: Most of that music seems to be composed especially for this movie. So they didn't go and got some bands to be featured on the soundtrack, but most of this type of music on the soundtrack is instrumental, contemporary and suites the film well.Without spoiling anything, I might add that this movie will have quite some surprises in store for the viewer in the third act. Indeed, it all seems to lead up to that moment where David will snap and go nuts. As much as it is fun to anticipate on when that moment will be, I was very much surprised that there is more to it. Which left me with a satisfied feeling after I was finished watching this movie.This movie confirmed something I know already: I love Matt Dillon. I love witty, clever, fast-paced and good-looking indie-flicks. Hence, EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH is a winner!

'1' might seem an unduly harsh rating for this movie. After all, there are probably worse movies out there. But as far as i am concerned, if a movie is so bad it leaves you depressed and hollow inside, mourning the precious precious time that could have been spent memorizing the first 100 digits of pi, it is bad enough. The back of the box already gives you a warning. "A film in the style of the Cohen Brothers" it claims. When will i ever learn? I don't believe I fell for that. Real filmmakers don't want to be compared to other contemporary filmmakers, they want to stand on their own. A Cohen Brothers film compared to this is like comparing a Mozart symphony to a car alarm. This was one of those movies which attempts to be witty and edgy, the pitch was probably something like "The Bigh Lebowski meets Fight Club". For example, there is a scene where the main character is fired by his boss, and he pulls a gun on him. Then, big surprise, its revealed that never happened outside his imagination. The problem is that the boss was so cartoonishly odious that pulling a gun on him seems like an understatement. The scene fell flat, it wasn't surprising or shocking in the least. The dialog is peppered with attempts at wittiness and edginess, unfortunately it uniformly fails to be either. For instance, there was a little exchange that went something like: "His name is Fred Thomas." "So has two first names?" "Yes, what's your point." "No point, just making an observation." This little exchange had no point other than to bask in its own wittiness. Handled well, this might have been a barely acceptable stab at Pulp Fiction-like verbal interplay. It wasn't, it was so painfully awkward and unfunny that i felt embarrassed watching it. The movie is full of hollow and pointless "edgy" stylistic touches, like random pauses and fast forwards. The soundtrack slavishly plays to current teenage trendiness. The 'the dude' analog was shill and obnoxious. I haven't mentioned the plot, because it is not worth mentioning. Very very little happens before the pathetically contrived series of twists at the end. Avoid at all costs, not seeing this movie is worth at least $75.