A Good Week at the Movies

Saw two good movies this week. I picked P.S. because of a write up in the Los Angeles Sunday Times Calendar section. It was released in 2004 and I got the idea it was about a writer. It is not but was still a fine movie. Laura Linney plays Louise, a college admissions officer in Columbia University's Art School. She is divorced, 39 years old and lonely.

One day she sees an application from someone with the same name as her boyfriend of 20 years ago. She calls this person in for an interview and you learn that the boyfriend died tragically way back then. The current guy shows up and looks and talks just like the original Scott. She immediately takes him home and they have eager, passionate sex, which is done really well and is convincing but also funny.

Well the plot thickens, of course. Louise has a girlfriend and back in the day, this "friend" stole Scott from Louise. Also the ex-husband turns out to be a pervert doing a 12 step program to stop being a pervert. Poor Louise.

But here is what is great about this movie: First of all, Topher Grace who plays the current Scott is an amazing actor. I am a bit older than Louise, but if (big if) I were to seduce a younger man I would want him to be just like the Topher Grace character. Second, the relationship between Louise and her girlfriend is so real, so way beyond anything I've found in a chick lit book, so much like the way women friends actually are with each other.

P.S. is probably not a guy movie. My husband fell asleep during it, but he had had a margarita earlier. My theory on chick flicks though is that guys should watch them if they are really serious about understanding women. Unfortunately, most of them aren't.

Last night we watched The Incredibles, which I found to be incredible. I generally am not a fan of animated movies. (I never liked comic books either, which is so not with it these days, but oh well.) However, to be totally not consistent, I do like superheros. The Incredibles is about an entire family of superheros, who have been put out of work and into obscurity by some bone-headed government program, but who come back to save the world from a psychopathic madman.

Everything is great in this movie; the plot, the dialogue, the animation, the humor, the exactly right hipness of it all and especially the superhero kids.