Seeing double movie review: Jim Beam's 8 Star/ The Men Who Stare at Goats.

My esteemed husband Mr Cachinsky and I enjoy a nice nightcap on the weekend evenings as a reward for not fleeing our reponsibilities-- work, the Sisyphean chore of laundry, the yellow lakes Oliver Sunbeam makes me-- in a dark trenchcoat and fedora on a dirty Greyhound bus with the earliest departure time.

This weekend, after three weekends of trying, our local Redbox saw fit to stock The Men Who Stare at Goats. We decided to enjoy the film over drinks and chose a thoroughly affordable bottom shelf whisky made by Jim Beam called Eight Star, with mixed results.

Eight Star alleges to be a mix of grain alcohol (basically vodka, if Wikipedia can be believed, and it can't) and bourbon. Mr Cachinsky is a man of iron dispostion and enjoyed himself. While I love both bourbon and vodka, apparently my digestion system protests over being served them together, particularly after a supper of chili dogs. If you are a more formidable opponent of dubious liquors and are in the gripping talons of poverty, you can do worse, however. C-.

The Men Who Stare at Goats boasts some damn brilliant casting and a zany stranger-than-fiction plot I can't even begin to unravel and wouldn't dare to ruin in which The Dude somehow is in charge of a military unit and has a battle of wits with Keyser Soze. Soze wins, of course, until Timothy Leary enters the picture, we all free our minds, and our asses follow. Stephen Lang should get some sort of trophy for lifetime achievement for his freakishly smiling Gen. Hopgood, utterer of the immortal line, "I'm stepping into the next office." In the film, that is hysterical. I've been saying it all weekend, even after the Eight Star wore off. The film is made, however, by repeated Jedi references thrown at Ewan McGregor, and George Clooney, he of the is-he-or-isn't-he gossip, straight-facedly declaring "I love dance." The ending was a falling-off from the good times of the film as a whole, a little too trite and slapped together, but I would still recommend it, if for no other reason than to watch Stephen Lang exit his room. B+.