It took us a while to decide on a family movie for Christmas Day. Wonder disappointed no one. I cried, yes, and yes, I cried multiple times. But most of those tears were ones based on a warmed heart. Wonder is a year-in-the-life of Auggie. Auggie is the child who (if you’ve seen any previews…
In case you haven’t heard, the new film Lady Bird has nothing to do with LBJ. Or Texas. Or female birds. It has everything to do with family and growing up and relationships and love and meanness and gentleness, and, well, I think you’re getting the idea. And I bet you’re not surprised to learn…
About five years ago, my dear friend and frequent movie companion put his total trust in me, and we went to see the animated (almost silent save for a few lines in Gaelic) French-Scottish film, The Illusionist (L’Illusionniste, 2010). I’ve never lived it down. Today, he indicated that we’d hit a new low. 😉 Okay, so not…
Daddy’s Home is a light, fun, all-around run-of-the-mill comedy. It was our pick for the family movie on Christmas Day, and it suited everyone well enough, age 14 to 73. It was better than I expected. Sure, it’s corny sometimes. Sure, its humor sometimes tries too hard. But the laughs were as varied as our…
Excellent movie. Excellent. I should back up. I cannot unread the book. And the book was phenomenal. But that, to me, makes the movie even better: it was beautifully true to the book. To its voice. To its story. To its feel. The book is written from the perspective of young Jack. Five years old.…
First, I’ll acknowledge that this book probably will not appeal to a wide audience. But for me, I loved it. I loved its poetic rhythm. I loved its metaphor-laden prose. I loved its mystery and its depth. I even loved its dreadfully sad and self-pitying first-person protagonist. We Were Liars follows a handful of cousins…
Read this book. Everyone. Soon. Now. No, it’s not an easy subject matter. But it addresses one of the absolute guarantees of life: death. I originally bought this book, having heard the author interviewed on a podcast discussing end-of-life issues, for work. I often discuss end-of-life issues with clients as we talk about advanced…
What a fun movie! Granted, as I learned from reading the thoughts of another who saw the movie at the same time as I did, the film is not for everyone. But for me and my movie companions, it was a hit. Lily Tomlin delivers a fresh and spunky performance as the complexly layered grandmother…
Adultery—-it’s painful stuff. It’s one thing to be the adulterer. It’s another thing to be the other person. It’s something else—and I say much greater—to be the one cheated on, the one who accepts or turns a blind eye or even who is blindsided. But imagine the teen or preteen child of the married couple…
What a delightfully charming movie! Inside Out explores how our emotions help guide—and misguide—us as they take the controls inside of eleven-year-old Riley’s mind while she navigates growing out of childhood to an age and time when emotions become more layered, more affected, and more unpredictably complex. Her tale is built around her difficulties of…
Over the course of reading this book, I described it a few different ways. Initially, it felt disjointed and too jumpy. Then I settled into the rhythm. I began to learn the characters and their relations. And I started to read the stories of Teddy’s life—-those disorganized, jumping around, no respect to chronology stories—-I started…
Still Alice is one of the great movies of the year that everyone should see. It’s heartbreaking. It’s earnest. It’s painful. It’s real. No, it’s not based on a true story, but it is based on deep research. The premise is early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease, and although at its base it really is just the story…
What do parents do to shape their children, and how much is merely an attempt to live out the parents’ own dreams? Everything I Never Told You focuses on this question as it explores the death of a young girl—a middle child in a mixed-race family in the 70s. It does so gracefully and with…
Having finished reading a well-written, dense, deep novel earlier followed by another thought-provoking novel, I sought something lighter, something shorter, something quicker. In The Husband’s Secret, I found those things. The story takes a bit of time to follow as each chapter early on brings in a new set of characters. I was sure the…
When this book was recommended to me, I was basically told, “I’m not going to tell you anything about it. Just read it, and then we’ll talk. Don’t read anything about the book—not even the book jacket or cover. Don’t even look at the cover—just read the book.” And so I did. And so I…