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# How Do You Know
- URL: https://tombeaverbooks.ghost.io/how-do-you-know/
- Published: 2026-10-05T19:44:12.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-06T01:19:29.000Z
- Author: Tom Beaver
- Tags: Book: Movies And TV, #Import 2026-10-09 17:51

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STORYCONTEXT: Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, Dir. James L. Brooks, 2010

It’s amazing how many movies I don’t even hear about until ten years later. Was very happy to stumble across this one. A man and woman meet when they’re each facing a major crossroads in their life, but it’s not about them becoming better people, because they’re already excellent people—mature, honest, considerate. It’s about watching how people like that solve their problems—while continuing to treat other people well. Could have been insipid and insufferable, but avoids these pitfalls by a mile. Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd play the non-neurotic, morally unflawed pair, making them interesting by means of vulnerabilities rather than flaws, by an absence of cliché, by sheer authenticity. Lenny Venito, an actor I don’t know from anything else, has only one scene (making a marriage proposal), but its so full of color and heroic effort (a man of limited language struggling to say the most important thing of his life) that it’s almost the equal of the whole rest of an excellent movie. *\~ Sept. 13, 2020*