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Popcorn movies

Not much beats the cinema for going on a date. Movies are relatively cheap, you don't talk, and when it's all over you can avoid awkward silences by discussing the film.

Not much beats the cinema for going on a date. Movies are relatively cheap, you don't talk, and when it's all over you can avoid awkward silences by discussing the film. Dating at the movies is a safe and easy way to establish a sense of comfort and physical trust between two strangers. In fact, movies make such great dates an entire genre of films are made to fill this need. Romantic comedies, Chick-flicks, Date movies, whatever. They're generally short, non-offensive and forgettable, usually starring television stars trying to cross over to the big screen or Date movie icons like Julia Roberts.

Starting Friday at the Village 8 is the most obvious Date-worthy movie this year. Win A Date with Tad Hamilton stars super-cutie Kate Bosworth (Blue Crush) as an overly wholesome, small-town grocery store clerk who wins a dream date with her favourite Hollywood heartthrob. After the date Tad comes back to small-town-land and the obvious love triangle thing occurs, with everyone rooting for underdog Pete (the jealous buddy who's loved her for years). Comedy ensues and Director Robert Luketic's Date movie ends just like you predicted; if you were paying attention and not more focused on pulling off the infamous Popcorn Trick (which is so good it must remain a secret).

Also opening this week is The Butterfly Effect . A spooky thriller based partially on the chaos theory, a bunch of people who think every time a butterfly farts or flaps its wings in China it dramatically affects, not only our lives here, but the future of the planet. This movie also supposes time travel is possible by really concentrating hard and reading your old diary. Whatever, it's a movie.

So Ashton Kutcher, in his first dramatic role, travels through time trying to fix bad things that happened to his friends and ends up whipping through all sorts of parallel futures and times, screwing everything up. A dark and gritty script with decent characters and some neat twists gets completely drowned by the fact that Kutcher can't pull it off. Nobody ever said acting was easy, but Ashton would be much better suited travelling through time with Bill and Ted in their next "Most Excellent Adventure." Make's you wonder how he manages to nail Demi Moore.

The DVD of the week is Bad Boys 2 where Martin Lawrence and Will Smith race around Miami doing their classic love/hate bickering amidst an unfathomable amount of destruction. Action movies are really just about destroying buildings and blowing up expensive toys. It does look cool though, and fun to do. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is rumoured to be a CIA employee. He does produce some propaganda-like films ( Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbour, Armageddon) and you'd almost need government funding to pay for all the destruction in this movie. Neat though, and Cuban ecstasy druglords always make good villains.