Here are some movies Pam and I have watched recently on DVD. Haven’t been to a theater all year…yet.

• “Law Abiding Citizen,” with Gerard Butler (of “300” fame), was a lot better than I expected. Butler’s wife and daughter are brutally killed in a home invasion, and he later exacts horrific revenge. That’s not giving anything away. The rest of the movie is a cat-and-mouse game with police, and it all comes to a surprising conclusion.
• “Twilight: New Moon” is the second movie of the Twilight series. Pam and I liked the first movie, and we liked this one just as well. Vampires dominated the first movie; now we have werewolves. The movies are well-done, and have a definite tone to them. They are not high-action movies, but romances with a, uh, bite.
• We also watched all six of the Jesse Stone TV movies, starring Tom Selleck–5 on DVD, and the latest this past Sunday night on CBS. These are based on the books by Robert Parker. Parker started this series around 1998. We loved these movies. If you watch a movie and then read a Jesse Stone book, you can picture Selleck in every scene and saying every line. He plays Jesse Stone perfectly. Like the Twilight movies, they have a slow-paced, smalltown mood.
• Having watched the Jesse Stone movies, we decided to try the Spenser movies made in the 1980s. “Ceremony” is the first one. I liked Robert Urich in the title role, was okay with Avery Brooks as Hawk, but didn’t like the gal who played Susan. She just wasn’t Susan. I didn’t particularly care for this movie, and it had a lot of gratuitous nudity. But we’ll try another one.
• “All About Steve” is a Sandra Bullock movie, and who doesn’t like Sandra Bullock? In this movie, she plays a very quirky character who pretty much stalks a guy. It’s a fun, light-weight movie.
• Finally, “Blindside,” the movie which won Sandra Bullock an Oscar. This was a great story, an inspiring story. This family took a huge step in adopting a basically homeless young black man into their family…but they changed his life. Now I know why everyone has raved about this film.