Movies I checked out a while back

In the last few weeks I've seen a few movies, not as many as usual since I was in Florida & busy with actual social activities but here's what I thought about them.

First we have Love Happens which appeared to be a comedy in the previews but after seeing Jen on Chelsea Lately I knew it wasn't a comedy at all.  Sure, it had comical moments but it was a somewhat depressing drama about a guy who had lost his wife & is a Tony Robbins type of speaker & author of a self help book titled "I'm OK" or something to that effect.  Anyway, the guy (Aaron Eckhart) meets Jen in the lobby of the hotel he's working at & she's the flower lady.  She owns a local flower shop & anyway...they start hanging out & through the movie they both realize plenty about each other, themselves, and the people around them.  I enjoyed the movie for it's sorrow & the fact that these 2 people getting together wasn't really the primary focus of the movie as we learned a lot about the other characters who were also in it.  This is definitely not a guy movie but I'd suggest it to the typical chick flick kind of girl.

Next we have Taxi Driver which I've had saved on my DVR for over a year & finally decided to watch it.  This movie left me extremely disappointed...in the past I'd seen the beginning of it which grabbed my interest so when I saw it coming on HBO I recorded it for later.  Overall I thought the movie was boring, it was a lot of build up with an "as-if" ending.  I thought De Niro was great in the movie as was Jodie Foster but the movie itself was kind of pointless.  A cabby who hates the scum of NYC yet looks at it non-stop; all I kept thinking was "why in the hell would someone who hates the scum of NYC drive a cab & have said scum in their face all the time".  Like I said, I liked the acting, I enjoyed being in De Niro's head since he was a complete & total whack job & of course the classic "you talking to me" but aside from all of that it was blah, I wouldn't watch it again, it's too slow for my liking.

Third we have Ghost Town with Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni, and Greg Kinnear which I picked up as my free rental to go with the last movie I'll review.  This looked kind of funny in the previews when it was in the theater so I figured for free why not?  Well I'm glad I picked it up, Gervais is freaking funny so you can't really go wrong with a movie he's in and while the movie had it's boring points it was actually quite funny.  If I laugh out loud I consider something funny & I did LOL a few times during this one.  Basically Gervais plays a dentist who hates people, hates talking & just loves his peace & quiet until he starts seeing ghosts.  He's the only person who can see them so the ghosts start harassing him all the time & he wants nothing to do with them except Kinnear who convinces him to help with his wife he left behind (Leoni) so on goes the story & Gervais starts to fall for Leoni (shocker I know) and on goes the story which ends sweetly.  I don't want to say anymore or I'll give it away.

Last but not least we have Away We Go with John Krasinski & Maya Rudolph which I'd been meaning to rent & kept forgetting. & I'm so glad I finally checked it out.  This was totally my kind of movie, a little offbeat & not your typical love story.  Basically these 2 are pregnant & they are currently living where they do because of his parents well they up & decide to move out of the country for 2 years so the couple decides that there's no real reason to stay where they are so they start traveling.  They visit her sister in AZ, his cousin somewhere else, some friends in Vancouver (I think) and these people are quite the characters...Maggie Gyllenhaal plays LN (pronounced Ellen) and her character is hysterical as are Krasinski's parents.  The movie ended on a very sweet note once they decided where to live, it all made sense & it was great to see them happy.  I really liked the couple they played & the whole point behind the story of trying to find a place to root before becoming a family.  I definitely suggest this one & while it's a romantic comedy it's not really a chick flick, I think most boys would like it given the humor.