Fireflies in the Garden / Adventureland

I have an incredibly embarrassing crush on Ryan Reynolds, embarrassing given its disproportionate size and because he is your archetypal Hollywood actor who is very cheesy and used to be engaged to Alanis Morisette but is now married to Scarlett Johansson. (Us Weekly reader, moi? Nooo.). i'm not quite sure how it has developed. and gotten so out of control, more to the point. well, i do know, it's because i've been to screenings of two films with him in in the space of two weeks - Fireflies in the Garden, and Adventureland. In the former, he plays a writer fucked up because his father, Willem Dafoe, psychologically tortured and bullied him as a child. He returns to his family home for a funeral and a whole bunch of horrid emotions stir up trouble. but the film flicks seamlessly between his tortuous childhood and his complex emotional entanglements now, and is moving and not your average Hollywood film wading through a quagmire of grand emotional matter clearly beyond its reaches. this keeps things on a perfectly intimate scale and is affecting without being schmaltzy, plus has a brilliant ensemble cast that includes Ioan Gruffudd, Julia Roberts, Emily Watson and Hayden P from Heroes. RR is H.O.T. the tortured writer kind of hottie with the sort of muscly arms it would be criminal to have anywhere but around you, an attitude problem, and a high sex drive, which is obviously the best kind. in Adventureland he plays the sort of cool, smooth, music, handyman guy who is not in fact cool at all, rather a small town sleazebag who spins stories to high school girls in order to sleep with them, even though he's married. but since i am more than happy to play high school girl to his sleazebag, i'm more than happy (worth repeating, obviously). i should also probably mention that RR's role in Adventureland is minimal, in fact, and the film is really one of those lovable loser romance teen flicks set over the summer in an adventure park cum funfair. apparently it's supposed to be set in the 1980s, but apart from the fact that they play Amadeus by Falco on repeat, i saw virtually no evidence of this. I went with John who works in film so should know his stuff and who thought it was cute. i thought, well, that there should have been more of RR in it. he plays the shit so well.