Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Making his directorial debut, Black--the screenwriter responsible for such awesome cinematic machismo as "Lethal Weapon" and "Last Boy Scout"--reinvents crime noir with this hilarious riff on hardboiled detective fiction and vapid LA culture. Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr.) is a two-bit thief who stumbles into an acting audition after a robbery gone wrong. The producers fly him to Hollywood where he takes private eye lessons from a gay PI named Perry (Kilmer) and gets embroiled in a complicated conspiracy involving a dead body and a femme fatale from his past (Monaghan). Kilmer and Downey have never been funnier, thanks to Black's sharp-as-a-laser dialogue, and Monaghan is insanely easy on the eyes. Sam Spade never had it this good.