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In Love Happens Burke (Aaron Eckhart) has made lemonade out of lemons by writing a book about how to cope with losing a loved one after his wife dies in a car accident.  The movie picks up roughly 3 years after the loss of his wife.  He is on a seminar tour that brings him back to his old home town of Seattle, Washington (a place where he does not want to be I might add) where he meets Eloise (Jennifer Aniston) a flower shop owner who leaves random large words behind the hotel art that brushes him off by pretending to be deaf.  Throughout the course of the movie Eloise forces Burke to come to grips with his lemons and a romance blooms.

I really liked this movie.  Aaron Eckhart & Jennifer Aniston had really good on screen chemistry and the storyline was put together very well.  There were points in the movie that I thought conversation would have gone quite different in real life, but the raw emotion displayed by Eckhart is refreshingly good.  I was also pleasantly surprised that for a romance there was no skin shown.  Dan Fogler provides a great supporting role as Burke’s agent (Lane) and makes things light when necessary but you can tell from the way Burke and Lane interact that they have a lot of history and Lane really is looking out for Burke and wants the best for him as evidenced by a last minute meeting before the executive meeting that he has been trying to setup for Burke.  Judy Greer brings a solid performance in her usual role as second chair.  In Love Happens I would like to see Judy Greer in a leading role, she is funny enough and a solid enough actress that I think she would be able to pull off a leading role.  Time will tell though, if she does though, you heard it here first.  Finally, Martin Sheen plays the ex-Marine father of Burke’s deceased wife and he knocks it out of the park.  I don’t want to give too much story away otherwise I would tell you how, I can say that there is a reason he has been in the business as long as he has.

Grade: B+

Notable Movies for each actor/actress: (I’m going to try listing movies I think are worth seeing, please let me know if you find it useful)

Aaron Eckhart:

• The Dark Knight
• No Reservations
• Paycheck

Jennifer Aniston:

• The Break-Up
• Rumor Has It
• Friends
• Bruce Almighty
• Office Space

Dan Fogler:

• Kung Fu Panda

Judy Greer:

• 27 Dresses
• Elizabethtown
• The Village
• 13 Going on 30
• The Wedding Planner
• What Women Want

Martin Sheen (as of this writing he has 218 movies and tv appearances on imdb.com but I haven’t seen a lot of the movies, I have mostly seen him on TV):

• The American President
• Spawn – kind of a dark movie, but a comic book movie nonetheless, not sure I should recommend it because they only list the unrated director’s cut which I can only imagine is very dark.

Please let me know by adding a comment if you found this review helpful or if you would like me to change the way I do reviews.  Also, if you did like the review, please use the share links below to share this blog entry on Facebook, Twitter, etc…

Do you like to cook?  So do Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Julia Child (Meryl Streep).  Julie & Julia is “based on two true stories” and follows the lives of two women who as Julia Child “love to eat”.  In parallel it follows the lives of Julia Child who is forced to find something to do while her diplomat husband is posted in Paris and Julie Powell who is a cubicle dwelling phone operator in New York who by day answers phone calls in the aftermath of 9/11 that feels her life is going nowhere and she needs to do something to add meaning.  As part of following the two women and their adventures the movie chronicles the lives shared with their husbands and really shows a parallel between the husbands as well played by Stanley Tucci & Chris Messina.

There are several laugh out loud moments in this movie which was exactly what my wife and I needed as we watched it.  One of the best things about the movie for me was the interaction with the husbands and how they were just great guys.  In this movie they also explore the inevitable “make it or break it point” that comes with doing anything of value and how anything worth doing is worth pushing through that point and persevering.

Grade: B+

Notable Movies: (I’m going to try listing movies I think are worth seeing, please let me know if you find it useful)

Meryl Streep:

• Mamma Mia
• The Devil Wears Prada
• Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Amy Adams:

• Enchanted

Stanley Tucci:

• The Tale of Despereaux
• Swing Vote
• The Devil Wears Prada
• Robots
• The Terminal

Chris Messina:

• Rounders

Please let me know by adding a comment if you found this review helpful or if you would like me to change the way I do reviews.  Also, if you did like the review, please use the share links below to share this blog entry on Facebook, Twitter, etc…