Double Feature

April 2007 - Do you know who Mark Ruffalo is? You'd know him if you saw him. A few years ago, he played Jennifer Garner's love interest in 13 Going on 30. These days, you can see him as a cop in Zodiac. He chooses interesting roles and here are two examples.

In 2000, Ruffalo teamed up with Laura Linney, who also makes interesting choices, to star in the R-rated drama You Can Count on Me.

Ruffalo and Linney play a brother and sister who were orphaned at a fairly young age. Linney's character, Samantha, took over the role of mom to younger brother Terry (Ruffalo). These days, Samantha is mom to eight-year-old Rudy. She works at the local bank and is dealing with a new boss (Matthew Broderick). Terry, meanwhile, has wandered the country looking for work and smoking pot along the way. He needs money, so he figures he'll visit his dependable sister and hit her up for a few bucks.

Terry intends to stay for only a day or two, but it lasts longer than that when he takes an interest in Rudy. The two do guy stuff like shoot pool and hammer nails while Samantha starts an affair with her new boss, whose wife is pregnant. Jon Tenney plays a local guy who wants to marry Samantha, but she's not so sure.

Overall review: Ehhh, it was OK. The characters are true to life, but I think the movie needed to do a better job of explaining their motives. We see these people, we recognize them, but we don't really know them.

Ruffalo then made several other films including XX/YY, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Collateral. And, in 2005, he teamed up with Reese Witherspoon for a romantic comedy called Just Like Heaven.

Ruffalo plays David Abbot. When we first meet him, he's apartment hunting in San Francisco. He doesn't like anything until a wind-blown flyer directs him to the apartment where Elizabeth Masterson (Witherspoon) used to live. Ruffalo likes it because it has a comfortable couch.

Masterson is a career-driven doctor. She gets off a 24-hour shift at the hospital and is on her way to meet a blind date at her sister's house. But, she never makes it because her car is hit head-on by a truck. When next we see her, she's a spirit, haunting her apartment and yelling at David because he's a slob and left a water ring on her coffee table.

The rest of the movie follows David and Elizabeth as they bicker, share secrets and help each other live again.

Overall review: Liked it. Previews made this film look similar to City of Angels with Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage, but that didn't turn out to be the case. Ruffalo and Witherspoon are charming as two lonely people brought together by very unusual circumstances. The soundtrack includes a song from The Cure. Nothing too serious here, but a nice way to spend 90 minutes.