Best Ways to Quit Your Job (as seen in movies)

Hate your job? Loathe your work? Despise your occupation? Or maybe even abhor your vocation? If you answered yes to one or more of the above you may be a perfect candidate for quitting. "But Mr. Magic Internet Man, how am I supposed to do that?" you may be asking yourself. Well, like with most things in life, Hollywood provides the answer. Here are the seven best ways to quit your job from the world of celluloid leaving the bridge you cross burning behind you.

Honorable Mention: Giving God the Finger - Dogma

Though we never get to see it actually happen, any scenario that involves throwing down a flaming sword and flipping God the bird is a pretty awesome way to quit your job as the Angel of Death.

5. Lumberjack - And Now For Something Completely Different

Quitting a job to follow your true calling in and of itself isn't quite noteworthy, save for the fact that your true calling is being a lumberjack. And you have a song to go with it that slowly reveals you're a cross-dresser. Easy to pull off too. In the midst of your work, like dealing with a customer or defending your client in court, you just stand up and say, "I never wanted to do this. I wanted to be a lumberjack!" And you could easily replace "lumberjack" with "Vegas show dancer," "mime," really any weird occupation that no one would consider a calling. This sort of non-sequitar is a great way to go out that'll leave everybody scratching their heads, saying, "What just happened?"


4. Shut the Fuck Up - Wanted



It may get a little sappy and daytime talk show in the middle, but surely we all have known that feeling of wanting to tell off a superior in front of everyone.




3. Stop Hitting Yourself - Fight Club



Follow these three easy steps if you want to quit your job but still get paid. First, demand a year's salary and other various perks in exchange for not ratting on something illegal or immoral the company has done. Second, when your boss roundly refuses increase the seriousness of your threat by directly putting him in a compromising position. Third, walk away triumphantly.


2. My Job Consists Of... - American Beauty



Like Edward Norton, Kevin Spacey utilized the above steps with equally effective results. Even though their systems are the same, American Beauty trumps Fight Club for Spacey's explanation of his job and for going with the simpler sexual harassment suit for step two as opposed to beating the shit out of yourself.

1. Fuck You - Half-Baked

Scarface's simple and curt resignation is the best way to end your tenure at any company. Hell, it's the best way to do most things. Use it when break up with someone, as your speech at your high school graduation, or really just anytime you leave a room.

Review: Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Kevin Smith’s second foray into making a movie without those beloved hetero life mates, the stoner duo Jason and Quiet Robert. No Askewniverse in this one folks. No references to Julie Dwyer. No scene at a Quick Stop. No Canadian female singers as God. Not even Ben Affleck. Just straight up real world antics of porn making (something everyone and their grandmother can relate to).

Basically the title says it all. Zack and Miri make a porno. Perhaps a more wordy plot summary would be: Lifelong platonic friends and roommates Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) find themselves in financial straits and facing losing their apartment so decide the lucrative idea of making a porno would be a quick and easy way of getting quick cash and enlist several old and new friends in their endeavor, but did not expect to have the newly risen romantic feelings of having sex with each.

It’s a very heartwarming picture with the relationship of Zack and Miri at the center, which is a difficult prospect given its subject matter. Unfortunately the flick does fall into the trappings of a typical romantic comedy. You know, where there’s this big blow-up between the two characters over what is simply misinformation. The porn angle does bring new credence and problems to this unimaginative turn, but still, c’mon. Luckily the acting and writing is able to rise above these trappings, but just barely. I also would’ve appreciated some more development on the peripheral characters in the film. Everybody they hire on to help quickly becomes best friends, which just seems a little forced (bow chicka wow-wow) given we only see them spend like four days together all if involving the prospect of soulless sex for money. The movie does present the idea that everyone is enjoying themselves in the project (it seemed more like they were making small movie among friends rather than a fuckfest), but I still would’ve preferred more background and growth.

Really where the movie fails is humor wise, which I found quite surprising. Not that it’s unfunny, because it’s quite funny, just not to the level we’ve seen from Smith over the years. There are still the brilliant comedic mot justes only he can spew, but just not enough for my taste. Seemed to be more Judd Apatow related (which isn’t too surprising given it seems more than half the cast is an Apatow alum). Special mention of Craig Robinson, who manages some truly great comedic deliveries. As well as the great cameos of Justin Long and Brandon Routh.

So Zack and Miri isn’t so much a comedy as it is a romantic comedy for the couple that doesn’t mind foul language, porn, and a flood of poop humor in their love stories. And really aren’t these the foundations of love anyway?

Rating: 6.5/10

Review: W.

W. is an interesting film. Not thought provoking. Not emotionally stimulating. Just… interesting. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it just manages to not be enthralling. It’s a biopic about one of the most opinion invoking political figures of our time (go ahead ask somebody how they feel about Bush, I’m pretty sure they’re going to have a strong opinion), that just manages to be flat and tiring.

The movie is about the 43rd president of the United States of America, George Walker Bush (grey haired fella, squints a lot, current leader of our nation), focusing primarily on the Iraq War, his difficulty finding meaningful work after graduation, his alcohol abuse, and most importantly his tumultuous bond with his father and living up to his expectations.

I think it’s the editing and pacing of the movie that throws it for me. The film keeps moving throughout Bush’s life, skipping around from his presidency, to his college days, to his various jobs, to his attempts at running for office. Obviously these skips are supposed to be unified in dealing Bush’s main struggle: his relationship with his father. Still, maybe because this struggle never really captivated me, the whole movie feels disjointed. Without a proper singular narrative thread the film just sat there and played itself out. It never drew me in. It never popped out to excite me. Which is interesting for an Oliver Stone flick as he’s always been great at making pseudo-good flicks that were at the very least entertaining.

Like the movie, performance wise nothing really jumped out at me. Everyone does fantastic jobs at emulating their respective real world counterparts, going beyond doing a simple impersonation. They all went deeper than just imitating voice and mannerisms, making them real characters. Now obviously this shows brilliant skill from the thespians, but still no one performance ever grabbed you. Jeffrey Wright (Colin Powell) and Richard Dreyfuss (Dick Cheney) get close. As does the incomparable James Cromwell (George H.W. Bush), but that may be because he never really tried to impersonate George Bush Sr. and solely acted. Even Josh Brolin doesn’t amaze, and he was fantastic as the president. I realize how contradictory that sounds, but that’s just how this movie is. It could be that these characters never have any really big moments where they can emote where someone starts yelling or crying or whatever, and all the performances have to rely on subtlety. And the nuances were great; they just didn’t lead anywhere. But the entire movie seemed to follow that pattern: a whole lot of well done nothing. And well done nothing is still nothing (besides I like my nothing medium-rare; that's right I just made that joke).

Maybe I was looking for it to be a more interesting character study of our President, or maybe I was looking for a little more perspective historically speaking. Oliver Stone really dropped the ball in the shower with this one. Whatever it was W. was a lackluster look at this man we call Big Papa Smurf (well I’m sure someone does).

Rating: 6/10

Review: Sex Drive

When has a teen sex comedy ever been good?

No. You’re wrong. That’s a horrible movie.

So is that one.

Eh… I wouldn’t consider that one a teen sex comedy. More like a coming of age/underdog story.

Anyway as we've just proven, there isn’t a good one. Teen sex comedies were run into the ground during the 80’s, then started to come back in the late 90’s before it was mercifully shot out behind the chemical shed to put the genre out of its misery. Sex Drive is the zombie that rose from the grave. Sure it technically functions, but it’s lifeless and solely out to eat our brains.

Road trip to lose guy’s virginity. That’s it. That's the plot. All you need to know. I’m sure you can fill in all the gaps from there. Everything in Sex Drive has been done. The characters. The premises. The jokes. The plot. Everything. In fact they’ve all been done to death. It’s like Weekend at Bernie’s. All they did was prop sunglasses on these corspsified ideas and paraded them throughout the movie. It’s not especially bad, just uninspired and so very, very worn (insert joke about your mom here).

I will give some credit to both Seth Green’s subtlety sarcastic Amish character and James Marsden’s pumped up asshole. But honestly neither performance was really that great, just the only thing in this film that could be constituted as good.

Perhaps the one amusing thing you might take away from the movie is “RUMSPRINGA!!!” For those not familiar with Amish people outside of Witness and Weird Al’s Amish Paradise, Rumspringa is the period in young Amish people’s lives where they get a chance to experience the outside world (technology, drunken debaucheries, sober debaucheries, and so forth) so they can have a educated choice about staying with their religion (most chose to come back, go figure). Anyway our teens happen upon Seth Green’s community in the middle of this event, and there is this one wasted Amish chick who continually shouts, “RUMSPRINGA!!!” usually as an echo of its mention. It’s an amusing gag, and one I plan to carry over in my personal life, shouting “RUMSPRINGA!!!” anytime its appropriate (wild parties, Spring Break, and like) and even when it’s not appropriate (church, hospitals, things of that nature).

I’m bored with talking about this movie, so I’m forgoing a relevant conclusion instead finishing with telling you why the ending paragraph isn’t about the movie, which is of course this sentence you're reading right now.

RATING: 3/10