Time Traveller's Wife, Drop Dead, Electric Mist

Better Off Dead (1985) stars John Cusack as a teen whose love and object of devotion has left him for the school ski instructor (Do high schools really had ski teams??  I live in Fargo, so an utter impossiblity).  He takes this poorly, tries to kill himself (but not really), he meets a foriegn exchange student, romance insues (oh, I'm not giving the plot away, there is not plot to give), the end.  It co-stars Booger from Revenge of the Nerds---he showed up a lot in 80's comedies.  This is a non-sequitar movie with romance as it's excuse for gags and comedy.  Cusack is not at his finest so if you're looking for a good repesentation of his work, this movie is not one of them.

In the Electric Mist with theConfederate Dead (2008) stars Tommy Lee Jones and John Goodman.  That's what go me to watch and they kept me watching (that wasn't a compliment to the movie).  They are the good parts.  Jones does a good Cajun accent (it takes place in the bayou of Lousiana), Goodman sports a Cajun accent too and together, they act up a storm and so does everyone else.  There are no bad actors here.  What was bad was the script.  It didn't make any sense.  It introduced characters without giving reason as to why they were important (Goodman's character for example), there's a back story involving the murder of black prisoner from the 1960's whose significance isn't sufficiently explained, and then there is Lee's character and the confederate soldiers he meets in his hallucinations.  There's a completely unneccessary voice over (the movie isn't that complex).  The script breaks right, then left, then right again when it could have just taken the ball right up the field.  This is a movie about a serial killer and it should have been made a thriller focusing on that from the start but that story line doesn't fully emerge from the surrounding story (mess).

Time Travllers Wife (2009) Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston. Screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin (he wrote Ghost).  Adapted from a book, this is a very tender romance about a man who travels through time because of a genetic disorder and the woman who love him despite his often dissappearances.  Rubin got it right (even though it doesn't answer which came first, the chicken or the egg but this isn't sci-fi so take your objections elsewhere) and his screenplay got lucky because Bana plays Henry with a maturity  toughness that masks his vulnerablity tiredness of time travel.  McAdams plays Claire, his wife, and she loves Henry deeply but at times resents him for not having an freedom (if he can travel through time then time is set in stone and she had no choice but to fall in love with him).  It's beautiful and sweet without becomes sugary or sachrine and as it comes to its tear inducing finale, the heart aches for their pain and tears want to flow.  Writing a movie that touches the heart with gentleness and making the audience FEEL is a tribute to the writer.  It means the charecters were real, the acting was good or great, and the directing was invisible (which is what you want in these movies.  This a charecter and acting movie, if the director does their job they blend into the job and the audience doesn't realize they were there until the end).  Great movie.