Dune: Part 2 (2024)

Let’s start off with the good news.  This is gorgeously filmed and the acting is top notch.   I have not read the Dune series in 50 years, and I am pretty sure I petered out before the end, even though it was wildly popular when I was a teen, so my memory of the story line is sparse at best, and I cannot comment too accurately on how well the movie adhered to the original.  What I do know is that my youngest son kept commenting on it’s similarity to other epic storylines told across several movies, so maybe the details and the locations change but the struggle between good and evil looks pretty similar.  The movie doesn’t seem overly long, in spite of clocking in at nearly 3 hours, but the bleakness is pervasive.  It is likely to garner several nominations, and they will be well deserved, but overall, it is good rather than great.

Grown Women by Sarai Johnson

This is a multigenerational story about black families that is set more in culture than strictly in poverty (although, don't get me wrong, there is plenty of poverty here). The novel spans the 1940s through the mid-2000s, and the story is driven through the narratives of great-grandmother Evelyn and her three-generation lineage of daughters: Charlotte, Corinna and Camille. For much of the novel, Evelyn is present only through memories. Charlotte’s mothering of Corinna and Corinna’s mothering of Camille take center stage. It is about inadequate parenting and then downstream consequences of kicking your child out rather than believing them, about the value in getting over your wounded pride, and how trauma reverberates across generations. Evelyn is the catalyst — she never quite wanted the role of mother to begin with. Thrust into raising Charlotte, Evelyn wrestled with a desire to balance motherhood with pursuing her own professional endeavors. Their mother-daughter bond, or lack thereof, resulted in Charlotte needing to leave her home to focus on her life as a young mother. She and her daughter live in poverty as a result, and Corinna reaches out to Evelyn for her daughter Camille's sake. Camille serves as the bridge to her family’s matrilineal reconciliation. She carries the weight of generations past, and yet has deep responsibility to carve a new life for herself that includes empathy, hope and unapologetically living out her dreams.

Sugarcane (2024)

This is what generational trauma looks like. This impactful, multistranded documentary weaves together a dogged investigation into the horrific crimes perpetrated against generations of Indigenous children at a residential school run by the Catholic church in Canada, with accounts of the trickle-down of damage, from grandparents to parents to children. Specifically, children were raped, beatened and killed. The rapes produced babies, who were mostly incinerated. In the midst of uncovering what happened, which involved a detailed record review, ground penetrating radar to find unmarked graves, and in one case, DNA testing that revealed the father of one native elder to be a specific priest. The pervasive feeling of shame and being inferior, being unworthy of love are the legacy of the survivors of the residential schools throughout the Americas. It’s a remarkably courageous and exposed work, particularly for co-director Julian Brave NoiseCat and his father, Ed Archie NoiseCat, whose painful journey together in search of healing is the film’s spine. The sickening facts of the case are presented with a respectful restraint but it’s impossible to watch this and not feel a cold, hard rage on behalf of the victims. The Catholic church does not come off well, either in the past, or currently--they do nothing to atone for their sins, including not confessing them. This is streaming on Disney and is well done and well told.

Tell Me Anything by Elizabeth Strout

This author has masterfully linked the stories that she has created over the years across books to produce full pictures of the characters that she writes about--now she has put Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton together, side by side, to see what they have to say to each other. So while Lucy and Olive do develop a relationship here, the center of the novel belongs to Bob Burgess, the 65-year-old lawyer, the neighbor that Lucy went on leisurely walks with during COVID and beyond. Lucy still lives with her ex-husband William, the father of her grown daughters, with whom she’s rekindled a romance. Bob lives within the shadow of his overbearing minister wife, Margaret, but a fresh legal challenge spurs him into action: the defense of a middle-aged hermit, Matt Beach, accused of murdering his elderly mother in nearby Shirley Falls. The beauty of this book is that it is so ordinary--meaning it is both relatable and believable, the people within could be your neighbors. It is not so much reality TV but more Mr. Roger's Neighborhood meets Lake Woebegone; everyone is a little above average and very decent.

Flow (2024)

This move won the Golden Globe for best animated movie and it is certainly gorgeously animated, and my favorite animated movie that I have seen to date. The movie is set in a forest, though it's unclear where on Earth this forest could be — the fauna make that a little complicated. The protagonist is an ordinary black housecat, whose perspective we become closely attuned to. It's a solitary creature, dodging packs of dogs and predatory secretary birds, but it was clearly loved once. It takes refuge in an abandoned cabin adorned with more-than-life-size carvings of a cat that we presume to be it only gigantic. So humans lived here at one time, we know not when, but we soon understand why. One day, out of the blue, the forest is overtaken by an enormous flood. The water rises until only the peaks of mountains provide refuge. Our cat, by the skin of its teeth, survives, and it eventually comes across a capybara in a small, weathered sailboat. This vessel gathers a ragtag group of survivors over time, picking up a ring-tailed lemur, a secretarybird, and a yellow Labrador. As they traverse this new world, these strangers must find ways to coexist and to survive all the uncertainties that present themselves. I read a review that likened this to a video game, not to disparage the animation, but to give a sense of the journey this band of animals in on, facing down one peril only to be confronted with another, like different levels in a game. The exact meaning of it all eludes me, but it is beautiful and peaceful to watch.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I am slowly working my way through the half of the New York Times Best 100 Books of the 21st Century that I have not read (VERY slowly indeed), and read this, only my second book by this author. It is much like the first, which is a sweeping saga of a deeply flawed family who are essentially the opposite of supportive of each other, and unlikable at the same time. The Lambert family is essentially a sad cast of characters. The elder Lamberts, Enid and Alfred, are in a mess. Alfred, a once confident and able, if anal-retentive man, is succumbing rapidly to Parkinson's disease and dementia. He hangs out all day every day in the basement to avoid Enid, who has problems of her own. For a start, she thinks Alfred might still get better if only he'd do the useless exercises his doctor has given him. She's also obsessed with the idea of bringing her children together for one last Christmas – a prospect that seems horribly unlikely since the children don't want to visit her, her view of them is wildly distorted, and they have problems of their own. Gary tries to avoid the fact that he is crushingly depressed by drinking more and more martinis. Denise's love life has become so tangled that she's lost her job and just about everything else. Chipper has been fired from academia for sleeping with a student and things only get worse when he starts working for a criminal to defraud the people of Lithuania. The book is tragic in most senses of the word, and yes, there are moments of true hilarity amidst the crushing despair. It is realistic, from start to finish, and everyone manages to pick themselves up and do a little better. It is brilliant and difficult.

Frida (2024)

This documentary of the artist Frida Kahlo is one that you will love or hate, and it might depend on how you feel about the subject herself. Creative, colourful, and predominantly told through the words of its subject as recorded in her illustrated diaries, this engaging documentary about the Mexican artist is a beguiling and rather beautiful tribute to her spirit and originality. Its deft blend of archive footage and what I found to be lovely, organic animation of her works of art marks the directorial debut of Carla Gutiérrez, who served as the editor on several documentaries about groundbreaking women including RBG, about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Julia, which looked at the legacy of television chef Julia Child. Kahlo’s life was full and eventful, but while the film doesn’t attempt to explore every aspect and every romantic connection, it does delve satisfyingly deeply into her interior life, explored through her artistic output. There is something wildly appealing about how Kahlo approaches art that has endured robustly, more so than her fragile body endured, and for me, it is captured in this imaginative telling of her life and her creative process. I saw an exhibit of her early work, some dating back to her childhood, and the consistency with which she applied magical realism to her art is breathtaking, and reflected throughout this documentary, which is short listed for the 2025 Feature Length Documentary Academy Award.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

This is not your usual Amy Tan book, and I would characterize it as a memoir more than anything else. The author self-discloses that she is prone to obsessiveness, and we know that birds have a way of bringing that quality out in people. When the author finds something that she loves, she jumps in with both feet and gets those around her on board so that it goes her way, and that is what happened here. She is someone who, like a lot of us, has enjoyed nature and being outdoors, and birds are a ubiquitous part of that no matter where you are. It wasn't until 2016 that she caught the bird watching fever, and then during COVID, when in the Bay Area where she lives there were very few things to do outdoors, she took it from a hobby to a mission. She notes that on top of the love of nature she has also enjoyed sketching throughout her life, and that birding has been an avenue to hone those skills as well. On the up side, this book really got me thinking about myself and how I related to birds, and where I want this to incorporate this into my life, especially as I inch towards retirement and having way more time. The downside is that this just really seems more like interfering with nature, of brining it into your life in a really organized and somewhat strange way rather than just observing. She wants to be part of their lives, to be recognized by them rather than watching them, to the point where she is purchasing literally thousands of dollars worth of worms that she stores in her refrigerator to get birds to come back to her yard in droves. All in all I would say if you are an Amy Tan fan, you should check this out, and then if you are not, but you really love birds and stories about the people who are obsessed with them, this would fit the bill.

Inside Out 2 (2024)

Yet another mental health movie from the Pixar oeuvre, featuring emotions and how to manage them. Joy is on top as the emotion bundle goes, and she believes she has perfected an unimpeachable system for molding Riley. With the help of the usual crew—Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust—she deposits the glass balls holding Riley’s worst memories to a distant realm called the ‘back of the mind’, which is an age old strategy for getting by. Those of use who are from New England are very familiar with it. She deposits the best moments to an underground lake whose tendrils form a forest that reaches from the glimmering waters toward the sky, forming Riley’s core beliefs. “I am a good person,” the girl often repeats to herself. You can’t really argue with Joy’s methods. Riley, now 13 years old, is giving, smart, and, by Joy’s own account, exceptional. The girl who once feared loneliness in her new Bay Area surroundings has a tight-knit friend group too. The trio are so close that they’ve formed a formidable team on their hockey squad. They’ve even caught the eye of a high school hockey coach who has invited them to a three-day camp where players like Val-—Riley’s hero-—attend. For Joy and her cohorts, you can’t ask for much more. Along comes the biggest, most obvious obstacle possible at the teenager Riley: Puberty. A late-night alarm, in fact, announces its beginning, leading to some additional emotions appearing: Embarrassment, Ennu, Envy, and the most destructuve emotion of all, Anxiety. When Riley learns her best friends will be attending a different high school next year, Anxiety takes it upon herself to wholly recraft Riley in the hopes that new version of her will impress Val. She throws away Riley’s present sense of self to the back of her mind and exiles Joy and the other old emotions. It’s up to Joy and company to restore Riley’s former sense, journeying to the back of the mind, before Anxiety totally upends Riley’s ability to function.

Real Americans by Rachel Khong

There is a tension in this book about what it is to be "real" in a country where almost everyone is an immigrant. Even the Native Americans, who are arguably the only real Americans, came from somewhere else, on foot or by boat, but they did not originate here--and also have intermingled DNA with all the other immigrants over the centuries since. The vibe here is that white people are the "real" Americans and that Asian immigrants are the interlopers who are trying to fit in. The book spans three generations of a Chinese-American family. The relationships between each generation are both loving and deeply troubled. May is a woman who flees Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China to come to the U.S. She’s a brilliant scientist (a researcher of biogenetics, which becomes weirdly relevant) but struggles to form a close relationship with her daughter, Lily. Lily wants the loving relationships she sees in other American families but her mother can barely identify her emotions, much less identify them. The third generation is Lily's son Nick. As is so often the case, in both literature and in life, this is a family that does terrible things to each other, with consequences that span decades. The characters are both sympathetic and unlikeable, shutting each other out and making decisions without ever talking to each other, and in the end, the secretive nature of one generation is passed down to the next. And even as each generation tries to overcome the deficits of the previous generation, it doesn’t make things better. Lily tries to be the affectionate parent her mother wasn’t, but both overcompensates and is no more honest with him about his father and grandmother than her mother was with her. Nick also finds himself in troubled relationships, because he’s uncommunicative and closed off. And so it continues, trauma bleeding from one generation to the next, and yet, with a twist of genetic manipulation added into the mix.