What does an image of a colorful butterfly and a human brain have to do with the 2012 Bourne movie? You’ll have to read to find out.
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Having finally seen “13 going on 30,” I can report that the 2004 movie starring Jennifer Garner has given me a new favorite line.
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This quote delivered by Philip Seymour Hoffman in his role as rock critic Lester Bangs remains my favorite line from “Almost Famous.”
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I have some thoughts about revisiting “Ruby in Paradise” a long, long time after seeing it for the first time, unaware of who Ashley Judd was at the time.
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“It seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant.” Hmm …
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“Leave No Trace” is the best movie I’ve seen in months and belies its title by leaving a substantial part of itself with the viewer.
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Published June 17, 2018
Lady Bird was released in December, but I didn’t get around to watching it until awards season, just before the Oscars. I meant to write something about it sooner, but life got in the way. I loved it enough to buy it, and I re-watched it this weekend.
Published May 3, 2018
My desire to see “The Post” owed mostly to my long career in newspapers, but motivations are often complex, and that was true about my interest in this movie. A believer in the role that newspapers have as watchdog, I felt an extra pull to view Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham. Those characters, the editor and the publisher of The Washington Post at the time of the controversial public disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, have been well known to me for decades.
Published February 2, 2018
The mass shooting Wednesday in Parkland, Florida, and the public reactions from students who survived it caused me to think a lot about high school. During my four years, nothing remotely close to it ever happened. Until Columbine in April 1999, something like that occurring on a high school campus was largely unimaginable to me.
Published February 12, 2018
Earlier this month, I reconnected with a good friend from college. Conversation soon turned to movies, and she recommended “Housekeeping” (1987). Directed by Bill Forsyth, it is based on Marilynne Robinson’s 1981 novel. If you watch it in a mood similar to mine when I saw it a couple of weeks ago, you might be taken aback by the use of the word “comedy” in the opening of Vincent Canby’s November 1987 review for The New York Times. Taken in full, the description “haunting comedy” feels closer to the mark.