Romantic comedy-dramas are not high on my list of must-watch movies. Until recently, I’d watch them mostly if the female lead fit into my view of super-cute (Drew Barrymore, Phoebe Cates, etc.) and my girlfriend suggested watching it (read: made me watch it). Hopefully a bottle of wine was there to help me through. Then I got married and had a child and all of a sudden lots of different types of chick flicks are much more bearable. I’m becoming a softie.

Despite some contrivances in the ‘will they or won’t they?’ department, Elizabethtown succeeds through a mix of (mostly) sly, quiet comedy and unsentimental sentimentality to become a light, mild but affecting musing on (you guessed it) life and love. Baylor’s screw-up at the shoe company sets the tone, as pure but misguided hope meets the inevitable failure of ridiculousness. More appealing is Baylor’s quiet meditation on life as he heads home, stumbling into but trying to avoid emotional connections. Bloom combines fey good looks and acting chops that make the comedy seem natural and unforced, while the romance and dramatic stuff is easy to believe.

Show stopping in its intensity is the pathetically goofy/touching memorial for Baylor’s dad. Baylor’s mom Hollie (Susan Sarandon) speaks with stirring passion, does a weird dance, and brings a lump to the throats of softies like me. But when stuck-in-town losers reform their old band Ruckus (featuring members of My Morning Jacket) to play ‘Freebird’ at the funeral, the majesty of the Skynyrd song and the hilarious unraveling of this particular live performance might just prove too much for softies in the audience, eliciting tears and laughter in equal measure. It’s a must-see moment that cements Elizabethtown in the unfairly maligned, totally worth a watch category.

On the other hand, there’s Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects. While I love Zombie’s musical output, his directorial efforts are another matter. With his heart clearly in the right place, it’s still been naggingly hard not to see Zombie as a director succumbing to victim-hood as an inadvertent Hollywood shill. The exception for me being The Devil’s Rejects, a movie that, for all its slavish aping of ‘70s grindhouse tics, kicks like a mule.

Plot-wise, it’s pretty simple; the psychotic Firefly clan is on the run after being unearthed from their sleazy rock during the previous Zombie film, House of 1000 Corpses. Captain Spaulding, (the truly amazing Sid Haig) Otis (the equally amazing Bill Moseley) and the rest – minus Karen Black who … snicker snicker … dislikes being typecast as a lowly ‘horror’ actress – are back duking it out with equally psychotic Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe) for the right to continue their killing ways.

But of course the finale, and what makes The Devil’s Rejects the perfect late-night companion to Elizabethtown, is what it’s all about. We’re talking Firefly clan head-to-head with a bunch of cops, a ton of guns, a fast-moving muscle car and that most American of rock songs, ‘Freebird’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It’s cinema mayhem of the highest order – controlled fury with slide guitar.

Now, maybe you might think Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ has a more broad-based appeal, or that the Allman Brother’s ‘Ramblin’ Man’ is more poetic in its twin-six-string-attack coda, and you might be right. Hell, go to iTunes and download all of them right now. But cue up Elizabethtown with your sweetie, and The Devil’s Rejects for later on, and tell me ‘Freebird’ don’t kick all ass.

Double Bill, out for now.