Rick (2003)

Having been a little dismissive of the Hallmark Channel recently, I was surprised to find this oddity tucked away in its middle-of-the-night schedules and not even listed as a premiere; I'm not even convinced that it was a cable movie like most of their film offerings, since the strong language and sexual scenes are not the channel's usual bag.  However it was a very strange and provocative black comedy/drama, based on Verdi's Rigoletto in modern dress, written by the author of the Lemony Snicket books, and starring Bill Pullman as a completely unsympathetic company high-flyer who finds himself working for a man half his age.  All of the men in the tale are called names like Rick and Buck and Duke and Nick (words ending in a K are funny as Matthau might have said in "The Sunshine Boys") and each of them is obnoxious in their own special way.  When Pullman gets all snitty with interviewee Sandra Oh and later causes her to lose her cocktail waitress job, she puts a curse on his 'evil soul'.  All of a suddent taxis won't stop for him, he discovers that his nubile teenaged daughter is involved in on-line sex chat with his boss, and a plan to rid himself of the latter goes disastrously wrong.  All this with tinkly (and sometimes too loud) Christmas music in the background resulted in a surreal and disturbing film.  Not Hallmark's bag at all.