I don’t see a lot of movies these days.? Until tonight the last movie I saw in the theater was probably Batman Begins and the last movie I sat through on DVD was Donnie Darko back at R and N’s. I’ve watched two movies in the last twenty-four hours.? Let’s go to the map!

First of all, I watched Garden State, as mentioned before it was a gift from my sister for my birthday.? It wasn’t bad, but could have been better.? In the interest of full disclosure I’m a big fan of Zach Braf and an even bigger fan of Natalie Portman’s body so I started off assuming I’d enjoy it - and had it come out seven or eight years ago it surely would have been on of my favorite movies.? Now days it was just another movie.

It couldn’t help but compare it to a truely great Natalie Portman flick, Beautiful Girls.? Each of them include someone coming home to their New England hometown to face their pasts and while there they meet up with a uniquie, self-confident, smart local girl played by Natalie Portman in both cases.? In both films that main character learns from seeing his old friends and the mess their lives are which, along with the girl, he finds the strength to make the touch choices in front of him.

Garden State felt like a lot of character development with no real plot though.? Over and over we got to meet some really great characters that, if they appeared at all, only made later appearances as background, not the interesting pieces of the story they could have been.? It almost would have been better to not have them there at all.

While Beautiful Girls is a better film, if you want to have a guilt free crush on Ms. Portman check out Garden State.? Marty (Natalie’s character in Beautiful Girls) is a lot more interesting of a character but she’s just thirteen.

Tonight I went and saw The Ballad of Ricky Bobby with my parents.? This one wasn’t bad for what it was.? Needless to say I didn’t have high expectations for this one, it stars Will Farrell for goodness sake.? My only real comment is that comedians need to realize that you don’t have to fill your movie with sex, religion and race jokes to be funny.? English is a pretty robust language, you don’t have to try to shock people to make them laugh.