Matthew McConaughey delivers what I see as his best performance to date in Dallas Buyer’s Club, a movie great enough in its own right in telling its own incredibly compelling story but made remarkable by what McConaughey brings. Add Jared Leto, whose acting trumps McConaughey’s, and this is indeed a must-see film. The story, which…
What Robert Redford does with the expression on his face, the stare of his gaze, the slump of his shoulders – – – all work to demonstrate the true skill and craft that is acting. Whether he was perfectly suited for the role or the role for him, it is a match unlike most. I…
Having loved the book, I was intrigued to see how the movie would tell Liesel’s story. As with most adaptations, pieces were left out, blended, added, discounted, and hidden. But my experience reading the book was so recent, I was easily able to fill in many of the gaps (e.g., I giggled when Mama first…
Dame Judith Dench delivers a performance that amazed me at her ability to show how deep shame can run and how strong a grasp it keeps on a soul. Her quiet looks, her grimaced face, her bright glimpses of getting past, only to see her shrink back beneath the suffocating covers of inflicted and ingrained…
Fun. Flashy. Frivolous. I wanted to see this when it came out—on the big screen. But time slipped past. Sitting on a non-nighttime seven-hour flight created in me a captive audience, delighted to find this film on Delta’s “on demand” list. (I also watched Water for Elephants, but no review will be here as it’s…
This movie entertains. And that, surely, is its aim. After all, enough seems “off” with the science to me (even if it is awfully pretty) that it cannot have intended to educate. But this is not a documentary. It is a drama. And yes, it entertains as a good drama should. I often felt myself…
Movies have made me cry, weep, and hide my head in angst. Before watching this film, none had made me want to vomit at the level of disgust at humanity 12 Years a Slave evokes. Many cultures in the past have enslaved, imprisoned, and suppressed and oppressed others. (Many still do. Human trafficking, alas, is…
The Book Thief is another book I picked up to “read before the movie,” and I’m delighted I did. The genre (1940s Germany) isn’t what I typically turn to, but the story is told from a perspective of a young girl that allowed me to slip into this time and tragic period and settle into…
Much from the first book I read by Brené Brown (I Thought it was Just Me) is repeated here, but it’s “packaged” in more easily accessible chunks. The information is good, but it feels like it glosses the surface in a way that feels a bit too commercialized. (I suspect that’s my take based on…
I didn’t plan to see Last Vegas, but when a friend asked at 7:20 pm if I wanted to go see a movie that night, we picked what was showing. Among what was available and what both of us were willing and in a mood to see, we walked into the theater to see Last…
Courage. That’s the word that kept coming to mind as I watched Captain Phillips. But the *best* display of courage I saw was not in what Captain Phillips did. It was not in the crew. It was not in the team of SEALS. It was in the medic who treated the man who had been…
“Hello, Wendy. I’m home.” And so it felt to this Stephen King fan—coming home. So perhaps that was to a creepy, sinister home, but one, at the same time that was as familiar and comfortable as some old sheepskin slippers. It had been perhaps twenty (at *least* fifteen) years since I read some King. Having…
What an interesting book written by a gifted writer! I told a friend that I was reading Bonk, a book about the science of the study of sex. She, an academic, heard in my description that I was reading a book about gender or relationships or some such. Me, too much of a literalist, explained…
Reconstructing Amelia suffers from having been compared too much to Gone Girl. Gone Girl, it is not. But it’s not bad. It entertains—enough. And it is well written—enough. Reconstructing Amelia is a mystery, not-quite-thriller, told in the new style of piecing together a full story from different perspectives. The problem, though, is that the delivery…
Rush is a movie that offers a look at racing unlike I’d ever seen. Okay, so I haven’t seen much about racing. Even so, the movie entertains nicely. But what was more to me was its ability to share a glimpse into the psyches of racecar drivers, even as different as these two drivers were.…