First Reformed is a slow-paced movie that builds to an expected climatic ending that doesn’t squarely deliver it’s punch. Ethan Hawk plays a depressed minister in an historic upstate New York tiny church with a string of unresolved issues haunting him. This church is overshadowed by its contemporary, which handles the business side of this…
The best thing about seeing movies this time of year is the prevalence of high caliber films. Three Billboards is one such film. It isn’t flawless. But it is a fine film falling easily at the top of the list for the year. If you’ve seen the preview, you aren’t surprised when I say revenge…
The Revenant was among the top five (or so) most-anticipated films for me this year. The previews promised drama, suspense, and amazing landscape as a backdrop. The film, an epic early 1800s piece focusing on survival and revenge, did not disappoint. After seeing the film, I remarked to a friend that it was good, but…
Suffragette provides a glimpse into a dim area of history. It’s a good movie, solid in its cast and tale. But it does not rise above the bleakness that surrounds the story. And it will not appeal to many, even if those many prefer not to admit the horrible treatment of women for so long.…
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…
My reading material the past few months has been varied. In the Heart of the Sea added to the blend, bringing a true tale of a fascinating but challenging time in America’s history: whale hunting, life on the open ocean, and the struggle and catastrophe of being lost at sea. More so, this book reveals…
A French film (with subtitles), but not nominated as Best Foreign film, Two Days, One Night came on my radar through its fantastic performance by its lead actress, Marion Cotillard. Cotillard has the nomination for Best Actress (some say taking the spot otherwise that would have gone to Jennifer Aniston for Cake), and Cotillard, as…
The Homesman is a dreary movie, but dreariness aside, it’s also a good movie. It shows the brutal and bitter side of frontier life, a life I cannot imagine how—or why—those brave souls in the past took on. But it shows too how that life destroyed not only lives but minds of some of those…
I saw Cake as more than a movie about a woman addicted to prescription pain pills. And it’s more than a movie about a woman recovering from a debilitating accident. That said, it could have been even more. I’m not sure how, but something was off. Jennifer Anniston was not one of those off things,…
This story needed to be told in this medium. This story needed to be told. I saw Selma today, on the first day of its wide release, needing to see it alone. I knew I could not tolerate seeing this film with anyone who cannot even try to understand the issues of voter disenfranchisement or…
For many (if not most) people, watching Wild will be a view from the outside of a woman on a journey to heal her soul as she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail. For me, it was a journey of my own as I tested the fortitude of the healing scars of my own path. Wild…
The Fault in Our Stars is another young adult novel in which the highlighted young adults speak/think/act/live well beyond their years. On the one hand, that makes the story appeal to a wider audience and romanticizes the two for others; on the other hand, though, it gave me too much of a skeptic’s eye in…
August: Osage County presents a painful, bitter, sad look at family dysfunction without much hope or goodness involved. It is a harsh look at a family struggling through addiction, death, manipulation, divorce, infidelity, suicide, and mental illness. The raw nature of the emotional journey of the family picked with sharp nails at the scabs of…
I didn’t like Sutter, the character who is the male lead in The Spectacular Now. But I got him. I didn’t want Aimee, the female lead, to like him as much as she did. But I understood her doing so. And the path he takes her on is anything but spectacular in the positive way.…