Movies on Cable You'll Love -- Super, Cedar Rapids, Four Lions

My DVR bounty has shriveled down to almost nothing (thank you network schedules) so I'm scouring the program listings to find stuff to watch and came upon three films that I really enjoyed. And here they are.

Super (Dir. James Gunn, 2010) --  Plays again this Mon night/Tues morning on Showtime, check this link for more airdates. Rainn Wilson is a guy married to Liv Tyler, a former drug addict who ends up being drawn back into that life by the local smarmy heroin dealer played to a T by Kevin Bacon. Wilson's character decides that the bold action he needs to take to get his wife back includes becoming a local superhero; he gets help with that from a comic book store employee (Ellen Page) becoming that Crimson Bolt. She eventually talks him into letting her by his sidekick, Boltie. Not gonna tell you any more about the plot. It is executed very well, surprised me at a few turns and I'm still thinking about how it ended more than two weeks later.

Cedar Rapids (Dir. Miguel Arteta, 2011) -- Plays again tomorrow (1/3) at 12:30 pm on Cinemax, check this link for more airdates. Ed Helms, who also produces on this stars as a small town Iowa insurance salesman whose world is opened wide by a trip to the big city for an annual convention. Ironically, every convention he holds dear is challenged in this film with help from John C. Reilly, Anne Heche and a particularly funny Isiah Whitlock Jr. riffing on his favorite show:

It has so much heart, this film, it's just about beating off the screen by the time it all ends. Helms is pitch perfect.

Four Lions (Dir. Chris Morris, 2010) -- I think I might have caught the last play of this on TV for a while but I imagine it will be back. I didn't think writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain (Peep Show) could make me laugh about four inept jihadists in London but they totally did. Read an interview with Morris here to get inside how that got done.

I don't wanna say too much about this one, but I will say there's an Osama Bin Laden joke in here that our President rendered moot. That made me smile. And I laughed a lot.

Here's the trailer.

Catch one of these movies. I would bet one or more of them are also available to Netflix instant, but you can check that yourself.