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In The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg invented Facebook. In Now You See Me, he mastered magic tricks. In Rio, his animated macaw learned to fly, and his Lex Luthor will soon be nemesis-ing the caped crusader in Batman Vs. Superman. But it's safe to say that none of those pictures asked half as much of Eisenberg as Richard Ayoade's The Double, which requires him, pretty literally, to meet himself coming and going.

Eisenberg plays Simon James, a milquetoast of a man, so meek and mild he goes through life unnoticed, and I don't mean that as a figure of speech. Seriously, people don't notice Simon James. Not his boss who greets him as if he's a brand new employee after seven years on the job. Not the office building's entry guard who has demanded his ID every morning of those seven years. Not his co-workers, or his neighbors, or the copy machine gal (Mia Wasilowska) on whom he has a crush, though she's never learned his name.

Simon James simply makes no impression on people. Then one day, a new guy shows up who is less invisible than Simon James — James Simon (Eisenberg again). And to Simon's consternation, James is instantly an office superstar — popular, outgoing, the boss' pet, and the copy machine gal's big crush. This, although no one but Simon seems to notice that they look alike. Asked if James reminds him of anyone, a co-worker replies "who'd you have in mind."

Movies I've Seen A Million Times

The Movie Jesse Eisenberg Has 'Seen A Million Times'

Fans who worried that John Oliver's new HBO program might somehow diminish his legacy at The Daily Show can rest easy.

Because apparently he's decided to copy it.

That doesn't mean Sunday's debut of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver wasn't funny, because it was. Sitting behind an expansive desk with a city skyline at his back, Oliver uncorked a relentless load of telling barbs about the dysfunctional collision of media and politics, lambasting cable networks for speculating endlessly about 2016 presidential elections instead of covering the largest election in human history underway right now in India.

But it was also a half-hour of the wisecracks-on-news-coverage-made-to-look-like-a-newscast that The Daily Show has perfected.

We all knew Oliver was hired by HBO after his stellar stint filling in for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last year. And in Last Week Tonight, it appears that HBO has pretty much bought that program, right down to the in-your-face pre-taped interviews guaranteed to make the subject look like an uneasy participant in a joke where they're not quite sure of the punch line.

When we first heard from Eddie Lanier Jr. and his friend David Wright in 2006, Eddie, the son of a former mayor of Chapel Hill, N.C., was homeless and a recovering alcoholic.

In that StoryCorps interview, the pair talked about their friendship, which began on a highway exit ramp where Eddie held a sign asking for help. David would occasionally give Eddie money and a can of food.

Eddie recalled how one night, on New Year's Eve, David walked over to him "and says ... 'I'm going to take you home with me for a New Year's Eve party. How would you like that?' "

"I went to your home and had a shower, and you gave me some clean clothes," Eddie explained. "And we sat down at the table, and I told you some stories about who I really was, and who my daddy was. There was a lot more to me than you might imagine."

StoryCorps Legacy

StoryCorps collects interviews like this one through the StoryCorps Legacy program — an initiative to record the stories of people living with a life-threatening illness.

Need a good laugh? Try Chicago.

The Humor Research Lab at the Leeds School of Business at University of Colorado Boulder (and doesn't that sound like it was created by The Onion?) concocted an algorithm to rate America's funniest cities.

Humor researchers calculated factors like the number of working comics and comedy clubs per capita, funny local tweeters and visits to funny websites. They asked people to assess what they called their "need for levity."

Adrian Ward, a co-author of the study, says it's not all algorithms. "A city's sense of humor is a living, breathing thing created by everything from coffee shop conversations," he says, "to the laughter that erupts at comedy clubs."

Chicago ranked first, not surprisingly. It's home to great comic institutions like Second City, The Onion, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, and the Chicago City Council.

Boston is No. 2. Boston is a lot like Chicago, but smaller and better educated.

Washington, D.C., is fourth, perhaps because Americans like to watch the antics of official Washington the way they laugh at monkeys in a zoo who fling feces and scratch themselves.

Portland, Ore., is fifth; a nice nod to an engaging place. An unnamed Portlandian told researchers, "We enjoy Darth Vader wearing a kilt riding a unicycle playing the bagpipes."

Make that a line-caught, free-range, shade-grown unicycle in Portland.

New York is sixth. I bet it would be higher if they'd considered just Brooklyn, which, like Chicago, is it's own punch line. But it's too expensive to be funny in Manhattan.

Nothing deflates laughs like algorithms and analysis. But you might notice that all the cities atop this humor survey possess personality. You wouldn't confuse Chicago with Portland; or Portland with Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco, which are also among the top 10. Each of those cities puts a stamp on the people who live there, and humor is an important part of character.

I spent a lot of time last summer with a loved one in the intensive care unit of a Chicago hospital. One middle of the night, I came downstairs to the 24-hour Starbucks. Everyone in line looked wet-eyed and anxious. Spending all night in a hospital didn't seem like a happy occasion for anyone.

A Motown hit came on. And when Martha and the Vandellas sang that summer's here and the time is right, all us strangers joined in to sing a line to make us smile: "They're dancin' in Chicaaago ..."