Pet Rock: The Pop Culture Blog

By Mark La Monica

John Cusack is pretty much an acting legend for anyone ages 27-40. He's played just about every type of character and always manages to leave an impression.

He's catching plenty of pub right now for his latest movie, "Grace is Gone," where he plays an ex-military man who has to tell his children that their mother died in Iraq. Saturday's Chicago Tribune ran a good piece on Cusack. The Dec. 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly ran a good interview with him, too. Here's the video portion of it.

In reading those stories and in researching his filmography on IMDB.com, you forget just how many memorable movies Cusack has been a part of the last 25 years.

So, in the spirit of his character in "High Fidelity," here we go with our top five John Cusack movies. We're not saying these are his best roles, just the movies we'd order for a Cusack marathon if we had the unlimited plan on Netflix.

1) "Better Off Dead"

He skied the K-12, hung out with Booger from "Revenge of the Nerds," beat the Asian Howard Cosell in a drag race, beat up Ricky Smith and landed the French girl, played by Diane Franklin.

2) "High Fidelity"

He ran a record shop, pre-hooked up with Catherine Zeta-Jones, stalked Tim Robbins in hopes of getting his girl back, understood how to put together a mixtape, and re-landed the girl, played by Iben Hjejle.

3) "Runaway Jury"

He delivered this gem of a line in the morning to describe his night before: "I woke up on my stove," manipulated Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, rigged a jury, and landed the girl, played by Rachel Weisz.

4) "Say Anything"

He was the eternal optimist, Lloyd Dobler, the guy who pined over a girl for all the right reasons, the guy women of the 80s fell in love with (and still love), and then landed the smart girl played by Ione Skye.

5) "Eight Men Out"

In one of the most underrated baseball movies, he played the honest ballplayer amongst a group of crooked White Sox who threw the 1919 World Series, gave honor to America's pasttime, and surprisingly, didn't land the girl. Of course, in the movie based on a true story, he was already married to Helen Weaver, played by Barbara Garrick.

Honorable mention: "One Crazy Summer," "Must Love Dogs," "America's Sweethearts."

Here are a few clips from some of these movies above and the trailers for his two latest films.