Dramatic Movies with Stakes Most Twee

These are probably good movies, but the trailers are so fucking dramatic for such insignificant matters, I've always avoided them. Make sure to watch the trailers so you can hear the music intended to gear you up for these tiddly-wink premises.

4. Miami Vice creator and Oscar nominee Michael Mann directs Oscar winner Al Pacino, Oscar Winner Russell Crowe, and Cristopher Plummer as tv producers and execs at Sixty Minutes arguing over whether to air an expose on malfeasance at tobacco companies in The Insider. Instead of an exciting story about a whistleblower getting beaten up or threatened by evil profiteers, this focuses on the political turmoil behind the scenes of a tv news show when the network refuses to air his story. Nominated for seven Oscars! Everyone tells me it's a great movie. With that creator and cast, I'm sure it is. Oh well.

3. Robert Redford directs Ralph Fiennes, John Turturro and Rob Morrow as contestants and investigators on a rigged Quiz Show. In case the stakes weren't low enough, this true story is from the Fifties, so the prizes involved were in the tens of thousands of dollars. Wake me up after you're done explaining how that was a lot of money in the Fifties. CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION! Zowie! Did that make you want to watch it? Me neither.

2. Oscar nominee Stephen Frears directs Helen Mirren in an Oscar winning performance about the figurehead of the United Kingdom in The Queen. Not that she's an important enough world figure to need her life story told, but is this a story of her life, covering the many years she has "reigned" over 16 states and colonies? Is it even the soap opera crap surrounding her kids and their divorces and scandalous affairs and what their mom has to say about it? No, the high drama in this movie is centred around 61 million tabloid-eating Brits demanding to hear their reluctant Queen eulogize her ex-daughter-in-law Princess Di. What could be less important? How could the stakes be dropped any lower? Get ready, here it comes....

1. The Wise Owl Award-winning Marc Abraham directs Alan Alda and Greg Kinnear (host of "Later with Greg Kinnear", formerly known as "Later with Bob Costas", eventually known as "Later with Cynthia Garret" and "Later with [any warm body willing to fill this undying slot]"). Begin with jazzy music and scenes of the inventor's family, playfully build up to his invention and his demonstration for Ford Motor Co, and then *BOOM* cue the doomy bass thumps in this true story about an intellectual property lawsuit over the patent for intermittent windshield wipers, drawn out over decades because the guy wouldn't settle for $30 million. I present you with Flash of Genius, winner of The Most Twee Stakes in a Drama According to Rob 2008.