BlackKklansman (2018)

Oh my god, this is really an incredible story, all the more so because it is true.  The film has garnered a number of Academy award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor.
Ron Stallworth was a Black Colorado Springs police officer who successfully infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, going so far as to speak with David Duke on several occasions. Stallworth’s undercover police work, aided by an immeasurable assist from his white partner, Flip Zimmerman (so well played by Adam Driver), helped expose and quash an attack on Black activists.  There you have it in a nutshell, but the telling and unfolding of the story is so well done.
Stallworth (played by Denzel Washington's son) broke the color barrier himself.  As he approached the Colorado Springs Police Department building, the camera hangs above him as he walks into frame.  His job interview serves as his first quiz and a view into his future. “We’ve never had a Black police officer,” Stallworth is told. “So you’ll be the Jackie Robinson of the Colorado Springs police department.” This analogy is a loaded and telling statement that resonates across the film.  The KKK is one thing, but the middle of the bell curve on race was nothing to brag about either.  Really outstanding.

Vice (2018)

Do not go to this movie if you want to be cheered up.  Maybe not the best choice in the new year season, where you are trying to get to a place where you see sweetness and light ahead.  It is about former Vice President Cheney’s rise to power and takes a strong position that Cheney—a shadowy puppeteer pulling the strings of the president and thus of the world—was bad.That is not really a stretch, because it was very clear that Cheney wanted a war, one that would enrich his crony's and he really had no hard feelings about bankrupting the country while he was at it, not to mention the impact of the war on countless lives of American veterans, and civilians as well as combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
The thing that comes out of this is how this is really an arc of influence, one that was interrupted while Obama was in office, and while the economy got back on track, again, not harming too many of those in Cheney's stratosphere, but now they are back on track.  It is almost unbearable to watch in the era of Republicans unraveling the fabric of what has been built since the 1950's in terms of a safety net, and ignoring virtually everything else except enriching themselves and those who paid to put them in government. Disgusting.

Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

This is a theatrical, sumptuously filmed and costumed version of this well known story.
Mary Queen of Scots was a woman who wanted power and love and ended up with neither.

She is a headstrong leader played by Saoirse Ronan who was a devout Catholic, which put her at odds with the Anglicans.   Her rule was challenged by the men around her—like those on her council, her second and third husbands and even the men outside her castle.  Yet for all her tenacity, Mary never gains the full loyalty of her people for various reasons. Coupled with her disastrous marriage and several more betrayals of trust, the queen is forced to abdicate the throne, leading her to an untimely fate. 

The other aspect of the movie is Mary's claim on the English throne and the future fate of her son, a situation she discusses with Elizabeth I (played by Margot Robbie, portrayed as the least glamorous cinematic interpretation of Elizabeth I).  Robbie, however, plays the paranoid and tortured queen well, using a tense, nervous energy against Ronan’s cool and cutting performance. It is a film well worth seeing, and drinking in a bit of English history along the way.

Quincy (2018)

Wow, this is really a great story.  Quincy Jones is one of pop music’s most gifted producers, this documentary on his life’s work offers a personalized glimpse into a bygone world of entertainment and the legacy of racism that black artists still grapple with today.  He started back in the days of bebop, with Count Basie and Frank Sinatra.  He looks impossibly young in that footage, but really, the documentary covers the whole of his life, from those early days when he was barely 20 up to today, when he is still working, still producing and over 80 years old.
The documentary is a bit of a family affair, with quite a few of his children playing a role in both the story telling and in his life.  He has the rare combination of wide ranging talent and  a workaholic approach to music.  He did so much over such a long period of time, and it is lovingly on view in this film, which is streaming on Netflix.  It closes with the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.  Really fitting.

Kung Pao Noodles

 My youngest son made these and they were actually pretty good.  I had been thinking of them as Kung Pao Chicken, which I would rather have with rice.  These are more like a spicy noodle dish, which were very good.

• 1 pound spaghetti
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 3 boneless, skinless thin-sliced chicken breasts
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup dry roasted peanuts
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced

For the sauce

• 1/2 cup reduced sodium soy sauce
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 cup dry sherry
• 2 tablespoons red chili paste with garlic, or more, to taste
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil

1. In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, chicken broth, dry sherry, red chili paste, sugar, red wine vinegar, cornstarch and sesame oil; set aside.
2. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions; drain well.
3. Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper, to taste. Add to skillet and cook, flipping once, until cooked through, about 3-4 minutes per side. Let cool before dicing into bite-size pieces; set aside.
4. Add garlic to the skillet and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in soy sauce mixture and bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until thickened, about 1-2 minutes. Stir in pasta, chicken, peanuts and green onions.
5. Serve immediately.

Under Everything by Daisy Johnson

This book was short listed for the Booker prize, and quite interesting.
The narrator of the book, Gretel Whiting, writes early on that “there are more beginnings than there are endings to contain them”: a crucial lesson about life and memory that shows us how to read this complex, uncompromising novel. Until she was 13, Gretel lived on a canal boat with her mother, Sarah. But she hasn’t seen her for 16 years, and her search for her mother pulls everything else in with it: past, present, future. It even affects her work in Oxford updating dictionary entries. She gets stuck on the word “break”, comparing her memories of Sarah to the task of defining awkward words. She checks morgues compulsively and revisits a flat she once shared with her mother.
The artfully eccentric mother-daughter relationship lies at the heart of the novel, surrounded by a thicket of men animated by their own cruelty, menace or uncertainty. They fall away and return in much the same way as the Bonak or "canal thief". There is a bit of the surreal, a bit of darkness, but in the end, a well structured and unusual tale.

The Favourite (2018)

The very best thing about this movie is that there are three female characters who play separate but equal roles in a beautifully costumed in a sumptuous setting.
The story is sort true, in that at least two of the three characters existed and had a relationship.   Queen Anne (Olivia Cotton, who I know from Broadchurch but this is an iconic performance), one of the lesser-known monarchs of England who reigned in the early 1700s during the war with the French. An occasionally distracted and often irritable royal figure with what appears to be stasis related skin changes, overall poor health and a soft spot for luscious desserts, she lives with her trusted friend Lady Sarah Churchill (an authoritative and and terrific Rachel Weizl) and tends to her 17 rabbits that tragically fill an emotional void for each of her failed pregnancies. The duo’s royal order, however imbalanced, gets disturbed by the arrival of the calculating, mud-covered ex-aristocrat Abigail Masham (Emma Stone like you’ve never seen before and very far from Lala Land), who humbly accepts a position as a servant while courting an agenda of her own to restore her glory days. Initially, an unsuspecting Sarah lends Abigail a genuine helping hand, only to quickly realize the treacherous intentions of the double-player.And then we are off to the races, who will win out?

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

There is really nothing left to the imagination in this non-stop CGI chase scene involving seriously pissed off over sized animals that make you feel that really, it can't have been this bad. 
The movie opens with a few DNA pirates on a stealth mission at the now-abandoned-by-humans island park where the dinosaurs still roam.After the volcano erupts, people and a handful of dinosaurs escape, and then we get a glimpse of the kind of things that people will do to make money (spoiler: almost anything, nothing is stopping too low).  There is a small child involved, which is almost gratuitous when you stop and think about it, and her name is Maisie (what does she know?  Well, what she finds out is pretty harrowing, that is for sure, way worse than what Henry James had in mind).
The film stomps through its two-hour running time hitting a lot of action beats that the series has hit before; the variations therein are along the lines of equations you used to do for homework: dinosaurs, volcanic eruption, a number od characters the audience may or may not have any emotional investment in, especially given the precision of the special effects, leaving us with what the dinosaur movie is: soulless, bereft of personality, delivering meticulously engineered thrills.

The Wife (2018)

This is a tightly wound movie that will keep you thinking about coupls do for each other, how they lie about themselves and each other, and what the nature of intimate relationships is.  It all started when she was a student and he a professor.  He loved her writing and she thought he was brilliant, and thus they came together.
Long down the road from that era, now the wife (played to spectacular perfection by Glenn Close) thinks of everything: where her husband's glasses are, when it’s time to take his pills, what he should eat for lunch. After more than thirty years together, she anticipates the husband’s needs and meets them before he even realizes he has them—and certainly long before she’d ever consider tending to any needs of her own.
It’s an efficient if unhealthy dynamic that’s kept their marriage going through two kids and a grandkid on the way, through bouts of infidelity, through the husband’s spectacular and longstanding literary success and up to his crowning achievement: winning the Nobel Prize. There is a twist in all of this though, that comes to a peak in the midst of the celebrations, with a spectacular conclusion that leaves you mulling it over for days.

Shirkers (2018)

There is something surreal about this movie.  Like Crazy Rich Asians, it is filmed in Singapore.  There is also an element of #MeToo, mixed with the stealing of someone else's work.  There is a lot going on in this documentary that was short listed for Best Documentary, along with 14 other films.
It is a hybrid caper confessional. The director, Sandi Tan revisits one of the most jarring experiences of her life and invites her friends, those involved with her movie in the ‘90s, and film critics to excavate the original project that gives this documentary its name. She retraces her steps from her childhood in Singapore with friends Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique, both of whom carry some baggage from this experience of their youth. Tan compiles old photos and handmade zines to playfully illustrate how they all met and bonded before starting one of the most ambitious projects of their young lives: to make a movie.
In remembering her past, Tan admits she was under the influence of a mysterious American self-proclaimed impresario, Georges Cardona. He taught the teenage girls how to make a movie, and after a fateful road trip with Tan, convinced her to film her script. He pushed the girls and squeezed money out of their bank accounts to complete shooting as he served as the film’s director. Once the filming was done, Cardona took the film stock and parts of the production with him as the three girls waited to hear from him. Tan heard from him once more before he vanished, taking all of their works and dreams with him.  Years later, when he died, the film was returned to her, and this documentary is also about her search for answers.