Alec and I had a dinner and movie night, and decided to see Lions For Lambs, the new Robert Reford movie. As it stars Tom Cruise, we were a little apprehensive about it, but after some glowing reviews decided to give it a go.

Lions For Lambs is a very “talky” political movie. Nothing much actually happens, but there is a hell of a lot of talking going on, which makes it hard for me to condense into a short review.

Tom Cruise plays a smarmy senator – perhaps the most perfect role he’s ever had. Meryl Streep is fabulous as a hard-hitting journo wanting to tell the world what’s really going on but facing opposition from her commercially-bent TV station. Robert Redford is a university professor who is trying to inspire students to reach their full potential and give a damn, frankly. In the midst of these three characters talking, talking, talking, a deadly situation is being played out in Iran. Two young soldiers involved in a new military strategy (being hailed as the new solution by Cruise’s senator) find themselves alone and stranded while the enemy approaches on all sides.

When the drama flicks back to Cruises’ smarmy senator telling Streep’s journo how they have to do “whatever it takes” to win, you can’t help but think of all of the young men and women in the Middle East right now whose lives are being sacrificed because of men like this, for a cause that has been warped by propaganda to resemble nothing of the real reasons the troops are actually there.

It’s time we all opened our eyes and stopped being apathetic.

This is not your average romantic comedy. It’s witty, poignant, sweet and sad, all rolled up into a tasty pie.

I haven’t seen a lot of Keri Russell lately. I used to love her in Felicity, and she shows in this movie why she was a huge hit in the show. She is so beautiful, in a best-friend-you-want-to-hug kind of way. She expresses so much in her adorable little face and huge eyes – in this film in particular, it’s sadness and extreme happiness.

Keri plays Jenna, a waitress who is stuck in a dead-end marriage with a dead-beat husband. The only thing Jenna has going for her is her talent of making fabulous pies. The pies are a running theme throughout the film, with Jenna making pies in her head to sum up the various situations she finds her self in, such as “I hate my husband” pie.

Nathan Fillion, Captain Malcom “Tightpants” Reynolds in Firefly, is her doctor who falls for her. It’s a great roll for him – he’s funny, sweet and sexy. And a doctor! The perfect leading man.

The dead-pan humour in this movie is great, especially from Keri Russell, in a role that is as far from self-absorbed Felicity as possible. She is quite luminously beautiful and has a great screen presence, with a girl-next-door quality that makes her a perfect leading lady, especially in a quirky, sweet movie like this.

Alec also enjoyed Waitress, so I think I can be safe in saying it deserves way more than to be dismissed as a “chick flick”. See it!

I wasn’t sure if I should blog about this, but I feel compelled to save any of the few people who stumble across my blog from the horrendous movie that is Good Luck Chuck.

As it stars Jessica Alba, I thought it would be a romantic comedy like Knocked Up, but no, it was actually about 100 times cruder and sexually graphic that KU, and was without a hot male lead. Hello? What was with the ugly guy with the expressionless face? Rule number one for romantic comedy: The leading man must make the women in the audience swoon. The only swooning I did was in horror at the multiple graphic sex scenes.

The general premise of the film is that Chuck has been hexed as a 10-year-old by a girl he rejects at a party and cursed to be always outside of love. As an adult, Chuck is unlucky in love – when he dates a girl, she meets her soul mate and gets married right after he breaks up with them. This gives Chuck the reputation of being a lucky charm, so women everywhere want to shag him – hence the excessive amounts of graphic sex scenes we endured. Chuck is also in love with Jessica Alba’s character, and [SPOILER ALERT!] gets the girl in the end. Huh? How does that work? The guy sleeps around and STILL gets the nice girl in the end? I don’t think so.

The only redeeming feature in this movie was the penguins that Jessica Alba’s character is obsessed with. It comes second only to Happy Feet for pure amount of penguins and talk about penguins. It was odd juxtapositioning though, like the movie producers thought that pairing off cute sweet penguins with disgusting crude men would make for a movie both girls and guys would enjoy. Umm … wrong? And thanks for sending out the message to guys everywhere that they can have both the girl who sleeps around to have fun with, and the virgin to marry.

Save yourself the hour-and-half and the $15. Don’t even waste the bandwidth to download it.

The only inoffensive shot I could find from the movie. Penguins shouldn’t be involved in this type of movie!

Alec and I finished up a great day with the new Pixar movie, Ratatouille.

We’ve been hanging out to see this movie for months, and it didn’t disappoint. In fact, we both agreed it was a toss-up with The Incredibles for best Pixar movie ever. Big call!

Animation has come so far since Toy Story. The humans looked great. Not real, but a still really well done. The rats were made very human-like with big eyes and ears and cute little pink hands.

The animators have also managed to make amazing backdrops, such as the country house at the start of the film and the scenes of Paris all lit up at night.

The storyline was great – super cute and not all predictable, some unexpected villains, and a back-up cast of thousands of fluffy little rats. One of my favourite scenes has them washed and fluffed dried in bulk. I would love to get one of those machines for washing my own dogs!