The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)

The reason that this is Germany's submission for best international film and not Iran's is that the director, Mohammad Rasoulof, is a fugitive Iranian director and dissident wanted by the police in his own country, where he has received a long prison sentence and flogging. It is one of the five films nominated in that catagory for the 2025 Academy Award. The movie begins as what my kids would call a downbeat political and domestic drama in the familiar style of Iranian cinema, and then progressively escalates to something extravagantly crazy and traumatized. Iman is an ambitious lawyer who has just been promoted to state investigator – one step short of being a full judge in the revolutionary court. He gets a handsome pay raise and better accommodation for his family: which consists of his wife and two student-age daughters. But the promotion almost immediately brings disappointment and tension: Iman, a judicious man, is stunned to discover that he is expected to rubber-stamp death-penalty judgments without reading the evidence. He is told that he must now be secretive with friends and family who could be threatened and doxed by criminal elements as a way of pressuring him. There are a series of unfortunate events that co-occur in the midst of the widespread protests in 2022 (which are shown in the movie with actual footage taken at the time) and the situation quickly deteriorates fpr Iman's family.

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

At my most optimistic, I would say that there is value in trying to understand where people are coming from, regardless of how unpleasant I find them. I am admittedly not at my most optimistic--despite a stance since an openly racist sexual predator was elected to the highest office in the land of not consuming much in the way of media in an effort to maintain my sanity and ride it out, I got into a very unpleasant conversation on social media with someone who I think I mostly agree with who was chastising me for fear mongering regarding a desperately unqualified man become head of HHS despite Nobel Laureates, actual men and women of science, begging for that to not happen. So optimism is low, shall we say. This is a series of linked stories about people who are isolated, unpopular, and through their association with others with similar issues have convinced themselves that anyone but themselves are to blame and rather than try to figure out what they could do to make themselves happier, they externalize that blame and ramp up their anger. I see this in my professional life more frequently than I care to, and I do not need to read about it.

Anora (2024)

Wow. This is on the one hand a story you might think you have heard before. "Pretty Woman with a more realistic ending" or "Cinderella Russian style", but for me it is another "Life on the Margins" story by the director-writer who brought us another gem in this genre, The Florida Project. The title character, a vivacious Russian-American named Ani (short for Anora), she is doing exotic dancing and sex work, which is a matter-of-fact livelihood for her. She isn’t waiting around for a knight in shining armor to whisk her away from the club she works at. She just goes about her business with her clientele, and bickers with the other girls in the same profession—some, her genuine friends, and others, her rivals. Along comes Ivan, the prodigal son of a Russian oligarch, who looks and acts like he is in high school. He enlists Ani’s services one night and the two hit it off rapidly. She becomes his American fantasy, and he becomes her generous high-roller, bringing her out to his giant seaside mansion in Brooklyn for a fancy New Year’s Eve party and other affairs. It isn't until they get married that things start the unraveling process, a tragi-comedy that doesn't make the oligarchs look any better than you would imagine.

The New India by Rahul Bhatia

This book is on the New York Times 100 Notable Books list for 2024, and so I snagged it to put on my Kindle and read it while on a recent trip to Southern India. When Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata party to victory in 2014 – the first Indian election in 30 years in which a single party secured a majority – many in India pinned their hopes on him. He had promised to usher in development, citing his performance in Gujarat, where he had been chief minister for just over a decade. Even sceptics, appalled by his handling in 2002 of communal violence that left more than a thousand dead, the vast majority of them Muslims, were willing to hold their noses. They were swayed by his development rhetoric and jaded after 10 years of coalition rule led by India’s grand old party, Congress. But within days of his election, a Muslim engineer was murdered by goons, and other similar incidents began to occur. Modi stayed largely silent, making only feeble statements in response to truly grotesque attacks. His singular economic achievement – if it can be called that – was the 2016 withdrawal from circulation of high-value currency notes equating to 86% of India’s money supply. Liquidity was drained from the system and millions of small businesses folded. The short answer for this review is that whether Modi is a good choice for all of India is still an open question--the author would contend that he is not, and in his Northern India, Hindi centric policy making, there are winners and losers, and the economic powerhouse that is Southern India, more religiously diverse, and Tamil speaking will likely be less satisfied.

Nosferatu (2024)

This is the second horror movie that I watched this year because it is an Oscar nominee. I should really turn that around to make it more accurate. I watched a second horror movie this year because I very much enjoy watching the Oscar nominees. This is not a genre I watch either regularly or for pleasure, so a word of warning--my thoughts on it are notgoing to jive with an enthusiast of the medium's assessment. The movie is a fusion of two sources, the original 1924 silent film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” directed by F.W. Murnau; and Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and the 1932 Tod Browning movie that adapted it. I have watched neither of these, but I watched this with someone who had, and he was able to pretty much anticipate where the movie was going and what each scene was meant to convey--I will add that he was a film major, so we are used to his musings mid-film. It is essentially a love triangle with Nosferatu, aka Count Orlak, the young socialite Ellen Hutter, whom the monster sees as his soulmate, and whose sleeping and waking consciousness he invades with escalating force, and Ellen’s husband Thomas Hutter. Thomas is the stooge here, and he journeys from England to the count’s castle hoping to purchase it and please his boss at a London real estate company thus improving his family’s fortunes. It is of course a fool's errand, and he rather quickly ends up in thrall to the beast and increasingly marginalized as Nosferatu becomes increasingly obsessed with Ellen. It is a pretty standard tale of horror, so you can guess where it is headed. There is a lot of Gothic histrionics and not much substance for my taste.

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

In the post pandemic era (or maybe I should modify that to between pandemics, as bird flu seems to be heating up and getting ready to cause catastrophe), I have dipped my toe ever so slightly into the world of romance novels, and this author has been a repeat customer for me. I missed this book when it came out, but when it appeared on the NYT 100 Notable Books in 2024, I read it. This is a very quiet story, about a gay journalist who is grieving the sudden death of his boyfriend--who left him far too young, but also left him rich--and a rising baseball star. It is set in the early 1960's so they need to be discreet, but both of them are comfortable with their sexual orientation, and their love story unfolds in a mixture of both physical and emotional attraction, tempered with the historically accurate portrayal of their need to keep their their relationship a secret. The author does dialogue well and she is adept at building friendship before anything develops--she allows her characters to be friends before anything else, and even though you know where this is heading from the very beginning, she makes the journey enjoyable and this one does not disappoint.

A Real Pain (2024)

It seems like there are a small handful of movies that feel quite independent, meaning that they feel special and well done with a message. They are also likely to be commercial duds, able to make back what they cost to produce, but not blockbuster material, but that are both enjoyable and a bit painful to watch. This is one such movie this year--it is nominated for best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay. The story follows two cousins — David, played by Jesse Eisenberg (who wrote and directed the film), and Benji, played by Kieran Culkin — their grandmother has died and left them a little bit of money. They embark on the concentration camp tour of Poland to find out a bit more about her--she was a Polish Holocaust survivor. I have done this trip myself with a Polish Jew who survived the war by hiding in the woods. It is a harrowing experience, mostly because of the magnitude of what the Germans did on such a massive scale. The two men were once as close as brothers, the two have since drifted apart. David has a wife, a kid and a successful career. Benji, on the other hand, is an impassioned man with nothing really going on in his life. As the two explore Poland with a Holocaust tour group, Benji’s social abrasiveness and strong opinions both unsettle and endear him to David and the group. Having just read The Anxious Generation and the struggle of boys moving from childhood to adulthood, there is a real embodyment of that struggle here.

Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda

This is an interesting collection of short stories, which stand alone but are linked by all being set in Lagos, and many of them have an aspect of the supernatural embedded in the storytelling. Some reviewers call them horror stories, which is not a genre that I am very familiar with (neither in books nor in movies), so maybe I am way off base about this, but they seem more associated with magical elements which don't often go the way you might hope they would. There is also a visceral quality to these stories, like the author is not one to hold back on gritty details when telling a tale. The most important context for all of these stories is Lagos itself. The crush and overwhelm and class structure of the city and its countless inhabitants colors and constrains everything here. Many of the families involved are internal migrants, having left the Nigerian countryside for the city. When one character asks her aunt why no one had ever told her about her grandmother, the older woman replies “There are stories we leave buried so our children can move without weight.” It turns out there is quite a lot of weight in Nigeria, and the characters who travel in to the capital discover it in various different permutations once they get there. The unsettling multiplicity of the author's approach is present here: she blends societal forces, parental expectations, intergenerational trauma, economic precarity, personal guilt, and they all constrain the agency of her characters.

The Apprentice (2024)

The story of Trump's life is best told in this movie at the beginning. two distinct chapters: an hour in the ‘70s wherein a young, relatively naïve Trump (Sebastian Stan) learns the art of the deal from the relentless manipulative Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Then an hour about a decade later, when Trump has risen to a level of corruption and amorality that he would maintain for most of his life. The first half has an intriguing concept, and is reasonably well-told, but the second half falls short on where he has gone since then--that is less important, since now that we are getting the Trump 2.0 administration we can see that he is just all about breaking things, that his feelings are so badly hurt by having lost to Joe Biden, a man who is even older than he is, that he just wants to fleece everything and everyone, and he cares not a wit about who and what gets broken in his path. So, as you might suspect, this movie has two distinct chapters: an hour in the ‘70s wherein a young, relatively naïve Trump (Sebastian Stan) learns the art of the deal from the relentless manipulative Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Then an hour about a decade later, when Trump has risen to a level of corruption and amorality that he would maintain for most of his life. The first half has an intriguing concept, and is reasonably well-told, but the second half falls short of shedding any light beyond that, and maybe it is no more complicated than it seems. Pray that the techno-oligarchs do not destroy us all, and that we can survive this F6 tornado that has been unleashed on us all.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

This book is on the New York Times Notable Books for 2024 and Obama's recommended reading list, and so it is double recommended and with good reason. There is a mash-up of Gothic novel combined with cautionary tale here. The novel swings back and forth with two time periods when two children from the wealthy Van Laar family have disappeared, 14 years apart. When the novel opens in August 1975, an Emerson Camp counselor discovers that 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar is missing from her bunk. Barbara was conceived after the disappearance of her brother in 1961. Peter “Bear” Van Laar, a boy as playful and adventurous as his nickname, was 8 when he vanished from the Van Laars’ summer house that adjoins the camp and never found. There are several layers to the caution part of the story. The first is that generationally rich people see themselves as different, that the rules do not apply to them, and that attitude serves their communities poorly, but it is not always the advantage they see it as. That is played out here, with intergenerational trauma on view. The second is that there is a very clear cause and effect between the two disappearances that could have been avoided should they been faced but they were not. Finally, this is a wonderful portrayal of the challenges of adolescence, and that money complicates that as well. All told, this is a rich novel with many sub-stories within the overarching one, and it is highly recommended.

Conclave (2024)

This film is nominated in a few categories, but I feel like the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts--the Critics Choice Awards agreed and awarded this Best Cast. The movie sets the stage right away. The Pope is dead. If there is ever an organisation that has embraced the pomp and circumstance, it is the Catholic Church, and this happens in death just as much or even more than life. Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), who is Dean of the College of Cardinals, has to convene a conclave to pick the next Pope even though he protests that he is unworthy of the task. However, as cardinals fly in from across the globe, it is clear that there is tension regarding how the Church will move forward and also that everyone who is asked will serve, even those who protest they do not want the job. Will they go backwards and embrace tradition or will the vault forward and seek modernization? Or maybe somewhere in between. As the succeeding votes go forward, one secret after another is revealed, and popular candidates gradually lose momentum, until in the end, they make a choice. It is very well scripted and acted, and it is well worth watching.

What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella

I am not one to read a lot of Sophie Kinsella, seeing as her genre is one that I do not read extensively in, but this was on the 2024 NYT Notable Book list, and I do make my way through about half of those over the course of the ensuing year, and it was available on Libby just as I was loading up my Kindle for a long trip where I would take no physical books--well, knock me over with a feather, this not what I expected. The author herself was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, which is an aggressive and uniformly fatal brain tumor, and so does her main character. Also like the author, Eve is a successful author with a lovely husband and five children, and so the story is parallel to the one that Ms. Kinsella is herself living. On the plus side, she does address some of the things that one needs to grapple with in this situation, and she also avoids quite a lot about it at the same time. There is a fair amount of humor and good spirits--which I 100% agree is the only way to go, otherwise you already have one foot in the grave, but there was a lot missing, at least to my ear. I get it, this is a personal story and it is hard to face, even when you have an avatar in the form of a book character through which to filter your hopes and fears, but speaking as someone who received what is usually a uniformly fatal cancer diagnosis 9 years ago, there was a lot more to it than is here, and I would have liked it to go a bit deeper. But it didn't and despite that, it is worth a read

The Substance (2024)

This is an exaggerated yet very well done horror film. It is a genre that I know almost nothing about and have very little experience with, but given those caveats, this seemed adsurdly bloody as well. The bottom line in this movie is that if you are not seen you do not exist and to be seen and female, you have to be youthful. Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), is the aging star who has had a career spent in front of cameras — first as a celebrated actress, and then as a celebrity fitness instructor— abruptly ends when an executive (played with exaggerated offensiveness by Dennis Quaid) decides she’s too old to be worthy of being seen. He gets to decide if anyone wants to look at her, and if he turns the cameras away, who is she? At least that is how it appears that she feels because when she is offered a Mephistophelian bargain--she takes a substance that will make her young--but only every other week--she jumps at the opportunity, and at first it goes very very well, but this being a horror movie, then it does not, and how very wrong it goes is for you to see. The remarkable thing is that Ms. Sparkle appears not to be missed at all, no one knocks on her door to check in on her, and she appears to have no friends. Her life really was on stage. The movie has beautiful cinematography and a unique voice--I hated the gore, but I did not hate the movie at all. It has several Oscar nominations, and while Best Movie seems a stretch to me, the other nominations seem at least defendable.

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

This is a book with a unique premise. It is set in 1977 and Adina, a girl from another planet, is sent to Earth. She is four years old when her father pushes her out of their spaceship and she wakes up in a classroom designed by her predecessors where they communicate Adina’s mission – to determine whether Earth is a suitable replacement for their dying home world: Planet Cricket Rice (the closest approximation of its name using English). And how will she report back? By fax machine, of course. The story spins out from there, chronicling Adina’s childhood and teenage years in Pennsylvania, living with her mother, Terese, who barely makes ends meet, her friendship with Toni and Toni’s older brother Dominic, and her obsession with Carl Sagan and Philip Glass. All of it, including Adina’s move to New York, where a fame of sorts awaits her, is documented for her extraterrestrial family, sent via the whirr and screech of the fax machine, of course. It is the 70's, after all. It is all told from the stance of someone who is outside looking in, and while we all know that Earth also has some of the hallmarks of a dying planet and a population that is not treating it like a hair on fire emergency, all seen from the perspective of aliens who wish they could have a do-over. It is sad, and wise, and funny and altogether enjoyable.

The Wild Robot (2024)

Happy Valentine's Day! In a world full of turmoil, this is a quiet place to spend the holiday. This is not my favorite amongst the nominate Animated Feature films for this year's Academy Awards, but it is my second favorite. The two share lush animation that outshines the story line (my favorite is Flow and the story is one that the reader imposes on it since there is no dialogue at all) and I would highly recommend watching it when you need an injection of calm into your week. These days, that feeling is hard to come by, of course, so perhaps watch it more than once. The titular robot here is Rozzum Unit 7134, assumedly a Silicon Valley invention, if Silicon Valley tried to update the Jetsons’ household assistant, whose delivery is foiled by a typhoon. Instead, she washes ashore on a remote Pacific north-west-esque isle. The robot, convincingly voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, has the flat affect of Amazon’s Alexa and the purely task-oriented mindset of programming, plus enough of a hint of confused yearning to immediately root for her. Roz is greeted with understandable suspicion by the furry inhabitants of the island. Roz neither looks nor thinks like a living thing. Her logic is pure binary – execute task, then return to manufacturer. Devoid of a clear purpose and thwarted in her return by the natural world’s chaos, she stumbles into the possession and care of something she does not understand: a lone goose egg, the rest of the family crushed beneath her. Raising the gosling up becomes her raison d'être and the audience comes along for that ride. Sweet and lovely, even with the sub-text that robots could take over most tasks currently accomplished by man.

All Fours by Miranda July

This is a mid-life crisis book, female style. A modestly well known artist is grappling with all sorts of things: he child nearly being still born, and her own struggles, which leads her to set off on a great adventure of a road trip from LA to New York. But it all goes off the rails right from the get go. Just outside of Los Angeles, not a day into the journey, she locks eyes across her windscreen with Davey, a devilishly handsome attendant who knows his sexual attraction at a smalltown garage. She squanders thousands of dollars commissioning Davey’s wife Claire to exquisitely redesign the room she takes in an ugly hotel, and there she remains for three weeks, joined every afternoon by Davey himself, with whom she discovers an astonishing mutual but unconsummated passion. He turns out to be foremost an incandescent, preternaturally airborne dancer, and through dancing they find forms of intimacy that finally make life seem real. Returning home she must somehow make sense of the rest of her life. She’s aware that her agonizing descent from ecstasy to misery coincides with symptoms of the menopause; a foisting of reality whose deathly overtones have had literal consequences in her family – her grandmother and aunt both killed themselves in their 50s when "the change" is upon them. Two things very clearly scare her. The first is the acceptance of mortality. Then there is sexuality. There is some very unique grappling with both of these in a way that is both gendered and ungendered and wholly fresh and different, which turn this explicitly into a novel about the menopause like none you have read before.

A Different Man (2024)

This is a classic Beauty and the Beast situation, where a severely disfigured man with neurofibromatosis, Edward, undergoes an experimental medical procedure to transform himself from his beastly appearance into a handsome beauty, only to discover that changing how he looks on the outside doesn’t necessarily change how he feels on the inside. Any psychotherapist worth their salt could have told him that, but Edward discovers it for himself and he is very disappointed about it. He was a B-grade actor at best, and when he transforms his visage, his acting skills do not miraculously improve because despite his newfound attractiveness, his insecurity continues to plague him. He still carries himself with the same hunched demeanor and halting speech as before. Then when a beguiling stranger, Oswald, shows up with the same disfigured face. Oswald is confident and charming despite his appearance, and the rest of the movie is Edward struggling with that reality. This is nominated for an Academy award in the area of Make-Up and it is an achievement in that realm.

Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa

This is a quiet, lovely story that is beautifully told. The year is 1972. Tomoko lost her father when she was six years old. Now that she’s twelve, she will spend a year living with her mother’s wealthy sister in Ashiya while her mother goes back to school to study dressmaking. In Ashiya, Tomoko encounters family she has never met and it is through her eyes that we learn the family dynamics. First is her impossibly handsome, half-German, Mercedes-driving uncle who has is fables to make people happy. Then there is her aunt as well as her uncle’s mother, Grandmother Rosa. Grandmother Rosa is a perfectly poised and coiffed 83-year-old German immigrant. The titular Mina, Tomoko’s cousin, is just a year younger. She is a frail elementary school student who will become Tomoko’s best friend for the year she spends in Ashiya. There are others but none so surprising as Pochiko, the family pet pygmy hippopotamus. It is through Mina that Tomoko grows up--Mina is obsessed with books but she is too frail to get them herself, so she sends Tomoko. There is symbolism in the novel and it is reflective of the books that Mina is reading. There is a fairy tale quality to it all that seems on the verge of collapse throughout, a kind of house of cards. I read a review that made the case that while this is on the surface a coming of age story about Tonoko, that it is also reflective of Japan on the cusp of change as well. The oil embargo of 1973 brought about real changes in the promise of prosperity that characterized Japan after the Americans withdrew in 1952. In any case, this is a well told story, written in 2006 but recently translated and published in English.

Soundtrack To A Coup D'Etat (2024)

This is a wonderfully innovative documentary that is set on the eve of independence from France for the Congo. There is worry about communism, because the Cold War is still going hot and heavy, but there is also the question of natural resources and who will control them. The later question is an ongoing one, which gives this more relevance than it might otherwise have. The rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba is the backbone of this film. On October 28, 1960, for instance, Louis Armstrong jubilantly arrived in the Congolese capital to perform as part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of Africa. Four months earlier, the Republic of the Congo’s bid for independence had become a living reality. Three months after Armstrong’s performance, with the murder of Lumumba, the dream had already died. It happened that fast. The film uses jazz as the soundtrack for this troubling story, and it is quite effective--Jazz legends: Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach, and Armstrong--are featured, and improvisational jazz proves to be a perfect foil for the story that unfolds. The take home message, told with 20:20 hindsight, is true independence for former territories turned countries was always going to be a fraught proposition in the face of colonial powers afraid to part from the unchecked wealth they gained through ultra-violent oppression.

Entitlement by Rumaan Aman

The author of this is slyly subversive. He has a way of uniquely challenging the reader's preconceived notions without raising anyone's hackles too much. He also takes a female perspective with seeming ease, which is a plus. The subject in this book is money, and how it absolutely never trickles down. The title refers to the personality of the rich--those who earn billions and those who are born into it have the almost universal attitude that they have earned this money, that they deserve it and what it buys, that they are therefore entitled. Asher Jaffee hires Brooke Orr to charitably distribute his vast fortune. Brooke is black and adopted by a white single mother who makes her the beneficiary of a privileged, liberal background involving a Vassar education and a supportive, multiracial entourage of prosperous college buddies and well-connected solicitous family friends. The reader comes to realize, is that even a well-off, well-meaning and well-dressed upbringing are no defense against the debasing influence of the uber wealthy. This couldn't come at a better time, what with billionaires set to tell people living in poverty what they should give up in order to make things work better for those who already have much more than they would ever need. I am acerbic on this subject but the author is almost amused--until it becomes clear that he is not.

Forty Four Years

What a long strange trip it has been. It all started here, in a 19th Victorian mansion turned cooperative living house in Providence, I from the West Coast and he from the East. We could have met at a Grateful Dead concert in the fall of 1977 but we did not (there were over 100,000 people there, so perhaps not surprising)--the first concert we saw together was Bob Marley in the fall of 1980, which was both a great concert and amongst the last that he performed--these two concerts did set the tone for many great shared musical experiences over the ensuing years. We loved much of the same music and we loved seeing it live. Our attendance at concerts dwindled over the years after we had children, and included more orquestral than modern music, but another truism of our early years was travel, and that has been a constant ever since. We love being on the road, talking with local people, exploring art,architecture, landscapes, and best of all, experiencing the local food. As of this very moment we have lived in surprisingly few houses--seven--had twelve dogs (one less than the 13 cars we have collectively owned, at least when you exclude the ones that were bought largely for offspring to drive), four children, three grandchilden and sadly, only three cats, the last of which we had to gift to my parents when it became clear that my spouse was allergic. It has been a bed of roses, with sweetness and thorns. We have weathered cancer in a child and my own cancer, the terrible losses they both wrecked, and the frightening reality that while we all die in the end, that that end might have come sooner rather than later for us. We have also had great strokes of luck and been able to recognize it as such and to savor it. I am so grateful for what we have built together, and hope for many more years to keep up the good work.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Unlike almost everyone else, I have not loved Sally Rooney's books, but that changes here. This is a winner. Her talent for wry humor remains, but this feels like a much more grown up story. The story is set in Dublin in 2022, from late summer to Christmas, the book follows two brothers: Peter, 32, a lawyer, and Ivan, 22, an amateur chess player, whose progress through the rankings has flatlined since their father, recently dead from cancer, first got ill in Ivan’s late teens. The undercurrent of the novel is the grief they are grappling with now that their father has died. Ivan is the awkward brother, and when his unexpected victory in a comeback event ends with him bedding the 36-year-old venue manager, Margaret, it sets Peter off his axis a bit. Peter is the charming brother and he carries on with women, two in particular; his former university debating partner, Sylvia, a literary academic and Naomi, a soon-to-be homeless student Ivan’s age. The plot is a classic farce. When Peter breaks up with Naomi, she’s got nowhere to go, and neither does Ivan’s dog, now that his mother is fed up with looking after it. But their father’s house is of course still empty. It’s a coming together waiting to happen. Ditto the potential for ill will in Peter’s disparaging response when Ivan confides in him about Margaret, who it turns out is still married, though she doesn't want to be. Ivan sees how his brother is being a hypocrite about age-gap relationships, all of which uncorks a lifetime of bad blood stored up around their parents’ divorce when Ivan was a child. A rekindling between Peter and Sylvia only makes him more of a hot mess. You see where it is going a long way off, but the journey is the pleasurable part, not the destination.

Maria (2024)

This is nominated in one category for the 2025 Academy Awards--cinematography. It is one of my favorite categories because while the story is important, the atmosphere is what a movie creates and those that create it best are ever more enjoyable to me, even when the story is less engaging. That summarizes my feeling about this film. Angelina Jolie plays Maria Callas, the exceptional American-Greek soprano, with an ethereal presence, grasping the intense grief of the once-in-a-generation singer who’s been losing her voice. In the beginning, sings “Ave Maria” from Verdi’s Otello, perhaps both as a little prayer to her past, and as a reckoning with her present. The voice we hear belongs to Callas throughout, but the actress is giving it her all otherwise. The end is inevitable--the film starts there-—Callas died in 1977 at the young age of 53. There is an icy yet mournful quality to the story being told, as Callas walks through Paris streets and reflects on her life and her carrer. This is essentially a compassionate ghost story on the beloved things we lose, as they deteriorate and slip away.

The Rich People Have Gone Away by Regina Porter

This is a startling unique story, set in the time of COVID lock down. That is the back drop, the underlying structure, which requires you in overt and subtle ways to both remember what it was like, and grapple with how something like this might have happened more easily because of what was happening. The story is populated by a number of characters, many of them pretty unlikable. The first is Theo, an interior decorator, who is an open marriage, a fancy term for a serial cheater. His pregnant wife, Darla, is a professional bassoon player rendered unemployed when covid shuts down the Great White Way. In these early days of the lockdown, she’s been keeping herself busy by making her own masks and sanitizing the apartment with eco-friendly cleansers. Weary of the stress of city life, these two expectant parents leave Brooklyn for some respite at the family’s summer cottage in the Catskills. During a hike in the woods, Theo is being particularly obnoxious and then tells Darla that his great grandfather was black and maybe their child would be too. It is like throwing gasoline on a fire, and Theo and Darla part, she to continue to hike and he to go home. The twist is that Darla takes off. She disappears and when it goes on for days, Theo comes under suspicion. A woman hunt ensues, and the story ricochets between a host of characters with the central themes of how race and class complicate the great variety of human experiences evolves into a story well told.

Queendom (2024)

THis is a not at all dull documentary about a fascinating subject. Jenna Marvin is a daring 21-year-old queer artist in Russia who takes the moniket "Drag Queen" to a whole new level. Using found objects, layers of makeup and tape, and a jaw-dropping amount of creativity, she manifests otherworldly outfits and strange creatures that seem to have fallen out of a sci-fi TV show and onto the streets of Moscow. The costumes alone are worth watching this movie--I have never seen anything like it, and her impossibly tall and thin physique accentuates a lot of her style. Some of her outfits are fun and fanciful, others are directly political, drawing attention to the causes that matter most to Jenna. Her public drag performances earn the curiosity of the public; others scorn her, and the police are only too happy to keep her away from others. Jenna and her friends sometimes film these harsh encounters to capture the homophobic anger her silent presence in public spaces provokes in strangers. But after attending a protest taped in the colors of the Russian flag, Jenna is expelled from beauty school and returns home to Magadan, where her grandparents live and where she must decide for herself how to survive. A world away from Moscow, Magadan is a desolate place, a former Soviet-era gulag that lived on past that chapter in the country’s history--Jenna's grandparents do not get her either--they encourage her to join the military and head to Ukraine, not realizing she would be killed by her fellow soldiers. Yet Jenna is in danger whether she’s in a major city or a rural town because Russia has penalized its queer citizens, not protected them. Jenna is strikingly bold in her performance and courage, taking her creations to the streets, the faces of the people who might reject her, and this documentary.

Knife by Salman Rushdie

While I didn't love this memoir, which is about the brutal attack on the writer when he took the stage to talk about the importance of keeping authors safe, I think everyone should read it--it is a short and thorough accounting of the author being stabbed and recovering from that. It contains immediate reactions to the attack, the rescue, and then the short and long term process of physical and emotional recovery. There is the medical miracle of his medical care and survival, which is detailed and gruesome but also necessary, and there is the PTSD and how he combated it. Rushdie may or may not be your ideal of what a writer should be from a personal standpoint, but there can be no argument against the fact that he is an exceptional writer, and he brings his craft to this memoir. As they say, those who are victorious write history, and he certainly has embraced that maxim. He is trying to win by grappling with what happened, all the way down to facing his attacker. There is a lot to reckon with and Rushdie does so on quite a few levels.

Armand (2024)

I can to watch this movie because it is on the short list for International Feature Films for the 2025 Oscars, which is a list that I really enjoy--a curated selection of movies that being an overworked home body, I would never venture out to see (a retirement goal for me is to buy a year long pass to the independent movie theater in my small town and spend some time in the middle of the day each week watching movies. It is also the first movie written and directed by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, who is the grandson of the director Ingmar Bergman and the actress Liv Ullmann. Enough said, if you are familiar with their work. In my eyes, this is a movie that has a text and a subtext--whenever that happens, I am never sure if the subtext I perceive is the one that was intended. And I do think that this is an instance where you really cannot say much about the movie without tainting the experience for first time viewers. Most concisely, the parents of two six year old boys who have had a fight at school, but it is really about so much more, including kinship, jealousy, revenge, and the manipulation of children to serve the intentions of their parents.

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno Garcia

This is the sixth book by Silvia Moreno-Garcia that I have read, which means that I have read over half of her oeuvre, and this is not my favorite of the bunch. I think that while I would say that I do not love mysticism, that I do very much like it in her hands, and this one does not have it. The element that it does have that is another aspect of the author's work is a love of the noir. The story is about the making of a movie in 1950's Hollywood recanting the biblical tale, The Seven Veils of Salome, and it is told through the eyes of three women. The first is Vera, a young Mexican woman who is cast in the role of Salome, surprising everyone--there is only one person rooting for Vera and that is Vera herself--her mother is bitterly disappointed that Vera's sister Lupita evaded her master plan for her, and Vera swooped in the scoop it up. The other is Nancy, who is destined for failure, drugging and drinking and trying to use sex to gain influence, all things that hold no sway with Vera. Then there is Salome herself, the original, the woman for whom the story is told. I love the way the author weaves together a story, and how the Mexicans come out looking the very best and for all the right reasons, but this was by no means my favorite of hers. It did make me want to go back and read another one that I have missed, which is the best thing of all, that she leaves you wanting more.