New Movies

They have changed the new line-up of movies playing on the passenger channel, which has greatly expanded our entertainment options. The themes seem to be Matthew Lillard movies (“Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed,” “Wicker Park”) and Love Stories where the Lovers are Kept Apart by the Machinations of a Jealous Third Party (“Wicker Park,” “The Notebook”). “Wicker Park” is a romantic thriller about two beautiful high functioning mentally retarded adults who fall in love. She accepts a job in England and has to leave right away, so she tells her crazy neighbor to break the news to her boyfriend. I think they also live in a police state, where email, cell phones, and mailboxes have been outlawed and the only way to communicate is via Crazy Neighbor. The Crazy Neighbor is in love with the young man, so she never tells him the news and she tells her friend that the young man was in bed with another woman when she went to tell him. So the woman thinks that her boyfriend was cheating on her and the man thinks his girlfriend has just disappeared, and they can't clear any of this up because, as I said before, they don't have email or cell phones. This clears the way for the Crazy Neighbor to assume the young woman's identity two years later and seduce the young man (since he lives in a police state, they have burned all copies of “Vertigo”). In the meantime, she has struck up a relationship with Matthew Lillard, who is the young man's roommate/home health care aide. But the man never meets his roommate's girlfriend because he is always too busy, or because she is wearing Kabuki make-up (she is an actress who is starring in one of the avant garde productions that are frequently being mounted in Chicago where the actors wear unitards and cat make-up). Eventually everything is all cleared up. The woman moves back to the States and tries to get in touch with the man, the man realizes his crazy one night stand is also his roommate's girlfriend, the crazy neighbor apologizes for lying for the past two years, the man breaks up with the slightly less attractive woman he has gotten engaged to since his girlfriend disappeared, and the man and the woman finally get back together. They never say what happens to Matthew Lillard and the Crazy Neighbor, but I assume they stay together.

Randall and I watched the last hour of “The Notebook” earlier this week. The thing I liked about “The Notebook” is that just when you thought it couldn't get more unbearably sad, it would inventively find a way to do so (Gena Rowlands getting restrained and sedated! James Garner having a heart attack! Dying in each other's arms!) I'm sorry if I have just ruined the ending of “The Notebook” for you. No I'm not. You would have just spent the entire move crying.

We also saw “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” this week in Port Canaveral. This was the most disappointing film we have seen so far in Florida. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play two assassins who work for competing agencies that don't like the fact that their top assassins are married to each other, so they concoct a plan to get the two of them to kill each other. Then Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie kill everyone sent to kill them, so the agencies are like, okay, you guys can live, and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie go back to couple's counseling refreshed and invigorated.