I’ve taken a few self-portraits. Yes, I have. Yes, I have.

I know today’s comic isn’t exactly movie-related. Maybe you were looking for something a little more on-point, genre-wise this morning. But after all the homo-erotic goodness of the last two weeks, I had to take the joke and run with it.

Coming up with the punchline was kind of weird. Since the comic is a autobiographical exaggeration, I kind of resisted the idea of casting myself as vain or being more concerned with myself than Cami. I didn’t want to give you guys the wrong idea about out relationship because the joke is kind of at her expense. Truthfuly, I would rather stare at Cami for 100 hours that catch a passing glimpse of myself in the reflection of a storefront window.

But upon realizing that I didn’t want to portray myself as being vain, I realized… I was being vain. So I ran with the joke. More movie stuff later in the week. Cross m’ heart.

Cami and I saw Inside Man over the weekend and I really liked it. I mean REALLY liked it. As in, "Hey, maybe the situation at the multiplex isn’t as dire as the evidence would have led me to believe three weeks ago! There’s hope!"

I think we can all agree that there hasn’t been very many good movies in the theater since the end of the holiday season. It’s okay. It’s low tide on cinema. Happens every year.

But watching the crafty Inside Man was like a beacon saying "The salmon are returning to spawn!" With spring brings renewal.

The movie is as tense as you might expect and there’s always some kind of new twist being thrown into the mix. Each of the four leads – Densel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster and Christopher Plummer – all sink their teeth into their roles and bounce off each other well without being too showy.  Densel didn’t launch in to Training Day level histronics. He actually milks a lot of comedy out of the tension just by being his usual, charming self. If anything, I thought Jodie Foster’s performance was possibly the weak link in the film, but that’s only if you’re going out of your way to complain about something.

The film was directed by Spike Lee, which I think made it even more impressive. A mainstream movie like this was something he needed to do a LONG time ago because I think the unfortunate truth is that people are more familiar with his politics than his considerable talent. There’s no reason he couldn’t tranition between these realms of Hollywood effectively. A movie like this might wake people up to his cannon of work.

If you’re dragging your feet on Inside Man for whatever reason, stop screwing around and go see it. I haven’t enjoyed a movie as smart as this one in what felt like an eternity!