Some of cinema's most iconic shots of Chicago appear in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the film is certainly Matthew Broderick's most iconic role. So, it's hard to watch the actor in the Chicago-set Diminished Capacity and not ask yourself, "is this what's happened to Ferris?" He is now relatively passive, paunchy and pitiful in the role of Cooper, a newspaper editor who has recently suffered a mildly debilitating concussion. And the character could be classified as yet another sad sack, one of three such parts he can be seen playing at present (Then She Found Me opened in April and is still in theaters; Finding Amanda debuted last week).

But is it fair that we most associate Broderick with Ferris, thereby continuing our disappointment in seeing him play one nebbish nobody after another? Couldn't we redirect our memories and accept that Broderick's modern roles are more like grown-up versions of Eugene Jerome, of Neil Simon's plays Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues, who he portrayed on Broadway as well as in the film adaptation of Biloxi? Were Eugene not the fictional incarnation of Simon and had he not therefore become a famous writer (and were he not from an earlier time period), the character surely could have gone on to be the pathetic teacher of Election or Then She Found Me or the absentminded editor of Diminished Capacity.

The title of Michael Keaton's directorial debut -- The Merry Gentleman -- is meant to be pretty ironic, because the only true gentleman in the movie is anything BUT merry. He is, as a matter of fact, a cold-blooded assassin who contemplates suicide after completing every contract. Even the normally perky Kelly Macdonald is generally quite miserable too, here playing a woman on the run from an abusive husband -- and a woman who just (unknowingly) became friends with that assassin guy.

Professional hitman Frank Logan is at the end of his rope. Clearly fed up with a life spent taking lives, Frank finishes up his latest contract, and then hops onto a rooftop ledge and considers a long plunge. At that same moment, on street level, a sweet young lady named Kate looks up to appreciate the new snowflakes -- and catches a glimpse of Frank. She screams, he slips and falls (backwards), and when the cops show up they find pretty much nothing. But the next morning (once a corpse is found in an upstairs office) two smart detectives pop up to ask Kate a few questions about the man she saw.

Needless to say, a killer of Frank's expertise is already well-aware of what the witness saw.

One thing you'll probably notice if you watch a lot of festival movies is this: When you dig beneath the big-time, A-list, "gala titles," you come across a lot of medium-sized flicks that come from relative newcomers -- but feature some great work from veteran actors. Renny Harlin's Cleaner is one such example: It's a so-so movie that's probably worth seeing just for the performances of Samuel L. Jackson and Ed Harris. Brad Furman's The Take is another one of those flicks: It's got a passably compelling story, a half-decent screenplay, some nifty touches from a young director ... and a lead performance by John Leguizamo that's really quite excellent.

Written by Josh and Jonas Pate (Deceiver), The Take opens by introducing us to a firmly middle-class (but entirely admirable) nobody: Felix De La Pena (Leguizamo) is an armored truck driver who gets kidnapped and shot in the head during a vicious robbery. Against all odds, Felix survives and (with the help of his devoted wife Marina) slowly starts down the road to recovery. But Felix isn't the same man anymore. Although he's still able to walk, talk, drive and otherwise function pretty reasonably, he's also quite a bit "slower" in the head ... plus he's now fostering one nasty little temper. Meanwhile the brutal crook who led the robbery (Tyrese Gibson) is busy tying up a bunch of loose ends -- and you just know the two men are bound to butt heads again.