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★★★★★ Serendipity dir. Peter Chelsom

Watched this again with my girlfriends tonight and once more remembered how much I freaking love this movie. How have chick flicks gone so downhill in recent years? John Cusack is infinitely dateable, Kate Beckingsale is adorable and the movie actually has some twists and turns. Compare that to some of today’s fare and - yeah - writers are getting lazy. Or should I say producers and studios are. The film follows star-crossed “soulmates” Jonathan and Sara as they meet, put too much weight in fate and must then, years later, find each other in order to know if what they had was something special - all before their impending nuptials to other people. Jeremy Piven as Jonathan’s best friend is both hilarious and surprisingly intelligent and Eugene Levy as a store “associate” will make you laugh out loud.

★★★★ Rock of Ages dir. Adam Shankman

I’m a little conflicted about this movie. Because…it’s a freaking ’80s musical. Which means - super awesome ’80s music, but also a god awful script to go along with the god awful lyrics in the songs. Based on a Broadway play (aren’t all musicals these days?), it’s exactly the story you would expect - small town girl with musical aspirations moves to Hollywood, falls in love, gets heartbroken and becomes a stripper only to find that everything turns out just peachy in the end. It’s chock full of painful coincidences and horrible cliches. But then there’s Alec Baldwin as a washed up bar manager with long hair. And Tom Cruise as a criminally insane rock legend. If nothing else, go to see this movie just for the love ballad between Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand in which they sing Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore to flashbacks of their time together. Yes, that happened.

Too geeky?

★★★½ Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs dir. Phil Lord, Chris Miller

Another apocalyptic film. I’m not usually a fan of animated movies, but they seem to be growing on me - I mean, Up basically brought me to tears. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs isn’t quite so moving, but it is funny. Even more so for anyone who has studied film and knows how much the filmmakers are parodying popular apocalyptic films. I mean, come on - the “food storms” are hitting every famous recognizable landmark around the world first? Wit, right there. Anyway, basically the film is about a boy inventor striving for the respect of his fisherman father who invents a machine that can make food from water. In a series of unfortunate events, the machine ends up in the sky and food starts falling in the form of weather. But something goes wrong. Dun-dun-duuuun. And boy inventor Flint Lockwood must save the day with his monkey sidekick and pretty weather girl in tow.

★★★★½ Take Shelter dir. Jeff Nichols

I’m in an Apocalypse in Film class right now and yesterday we watched Take Shelter. My prof said afterwards that he was afraid while watching it with us that we must all be thinking, “Okay, where’s the apocalypse?”. But trust me - it’s there in every claustrophobic shot of the film. This is some movie. Probably not the best to watch if you’re looking for a feel good movie (but then again, when would you watch an apocalypse film for that?). But damn good. Watch it if you’re looking for something tension-packed, mind-blowing and fantasmic-ly acted that straddles the line between family drama and…what? Sci-Fi? Maybe. Horror? Only kind of. Anyway - it’s fantastic, as a father whose family has a history of mental illness begins to have dreams about the end of the world and struggles to figure out if they are prophetic or simply early signs of schizophrenia. Michael Shannon is indescribably good.

★★★★½ Salmon Fishing in Yemen dir. Lasse Hallström

This little film seems to have slipped under the radar, probably because it’s a British production, but it shouldn’t have. Salmon Fishing in Yemen is like a little understated piece of life that just makes you feel - a little hopeful for once. Ewen McGregor is spot on playing a biologist/fisheries expert on the spectrum and struggling through an unhappy marriage. Emily Blunt does well as the insurance agent in charge of a wealthy Sheik’s British assets whose boyfriend of three weeks is presumed dead in Afghanistan. Basically, a Sheik wants to bring salmon fishing to the Yemen, despite the fact that the climate does not support the fish, and he enlists these two to make it happen. I guess the plot comes from a book by the same name, so it isn’t wholly original but I couldn’t help but be delighted while watching in knowing that THIS was a film I’d never seen before. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often when you go to the movies anymore.