On the one hand, I had to see this movie to check out Jon Heder’s Napoleon Dynamite follow-up. |’m also a huge fan of Mark Ruffalo’s work in You Can Count on Me. Just Like Heaven’s premise, however, a leap of faith romantic comedy, and a Reese Witherspoon lead were major drawbacks.

Witherspoon plays overworked, no life doctor Elizabeth Masterson. Things are looking up though, as she’s just been given a promotion and becayse her sister has set her up on a promising blind date. But then, well, she gets hit by a truck and ends up in a coma. Bummer.

Enter Ruffalo’s David, a gloomy young guy who seems to have a lot of money but still likes to drink beer out of a can. When he’s not moping about, he ends up being confronted by a ghost version of Elizabeth. It turns out, he ended up in Elizabeth’s apartment. She hasn’t quite realized that in reality she’s bed-ridden in comaland, and she’s peeved by this mega bachelor in her her apartment.

David and Elizabeth hit it off in an oddball way and the movie develops into a romance of sorts, which probably looked mighty fine on paper. It does wear thin through the course of the film and towards the end the cheese factor becomes quite large. I could almost see Ruffalo cringing in certain scenes.

Ruffalo and Witherspoon are an odd pairing, sort of like the high school cheerleader and the drama club wallflower. To their credit, they manage to remain watchable and more or less pull it off. Hader play the comic sidekick in a small role. Napoleon Dynamite fans won’t find much to enjoy here, but Hader is nevertheless pretty good.

Fans of romantic dramedies won’t be disappointed with Just Like Heaven and it even has some appeal to guys. All in all, Just Like Heaven is just like David’s cheap beer — it goes down easy and is quickly forgotten.

Buy Just Like Heaven (Widescreen Edition) from Amazon.

When you’ve got hind quarters like Jessica Alba, acting skills are optional. In Into the Blue, she plays Sam, a young woman living in the Bahamas with her diving instructor boyrfriend, Jared (Paul Walker). Together they scrape together a humble life on an old house boat. For Jared, being a diving instructor is just his day job, as he dreams of an exciting life as a prospector, hunting for buried treasure. A hurricane has recently swept through and he hastily gets fired, deciding that his time is now and that it’s “all part of the plan”.

The bad guy is introduced early in the form of Bates (Josh Brolin, the only real actor here), a successful prospector and bona fide asshole. He and Jared have a macho rivalry, though Jared doesn’t have much to show for it.

The plot thickens when Jared’s friend Bryce (Scott Caan) and his girlfriend of five days (Ashely Scott) arrive. Bryce has the dough that Jared needs to start doing some serious treasure hunting. Bryce is also a show off who is willing to put his pocket before his heart. Things start to get complicated when one of their diving expeditions leads to a sunken plane filled with cocaine. At this point, a moral battle starts bubbling to the surface. Jared can definitely use the money and for Blake there really is no question. Sam, however, will have nothing of it.

Into the Blue has magnificent underwater sequences, not the least of whcih involve Jessica Alba flummoxing about. On the other hand, the flim is often very lame, in particular when the cheesy soundtrack kicks in or when the wooden actors poorly deliver badly written dialogue. Big no five to Scott Caan whose non-performance is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Paul Walker is a bit less inept, and he certainly does have that blue-eyed, hawk look appeal, but he would be much more at home in an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. Into the Blue is certainly nice to look at, but you won’t discover much beneath the surface.

Buy Into the Blue [Blu-ray] or Into the Blue (Widescreen Edition) from Amazon.

From the get go, Lord of War is on to a good thing. Here you have a unique take a on an arms dealer, played smirky as hell by Nicolas Cage. This is trademark Cage, so if you hate him, as many do, you’re not going to like it. I, on the other hand, acting skills aside, feel a strange affinity towards him, so I see that as a good thing. Still, the movie is heavy on the narration and rubs it in, way in, that they’ve got a fascinating topic to run with.

Cages’s sidekick brother (in arms), played by wannabe rock star Jared Leto, is a bit too reminiscent of what down in Face Off, and after a certain point he plays nothing more than dead weight. The other top gun is Cage’s nemesis, played by Ethan Hawke. He’s actually a bit unspectacular in the role. I didn’t even notice him at first because he just looked so boring. They shoudl have given him a little tick, like a strange haircut or something. He’s too clean cut, too moral, and sports the ugliest sunglasses.

The movie has a ton of international flair and insight into politics. It is a movie, but one gets the sense that some of Cage’s narrative shields does ring true. Whether he’s talking about the end of the cold war or conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, we feel like we’re getting insider’s view on the world’s power plays.

Of course, there has to be a love interest. In this case, it’s an unattainable billboard model with a desperate past. It gets off to a good start, but is quicky degraded to marriage mush. I’m not saying we had to go Mr and Mrs Smith here, but Cage’s character and his wife just lag on screen. His ambivalence towards her, makes us feel the same, and then we’re just waiting for the scenes with her to be over.

Unlike many a film, Lord of War, actually has a very well-done ending. Though, not a great movie, by any means, if you’re interested in another way of viewing the ways of today’s world, check it out.

Buy Lord of War [Blu-ray] or Lord of War (2-Disc Special Edition) from Amazon.