Tradition!

Weddings can be stressful, or so I hear.  I have never put one together, so I can't say with any sort of knowledge base, but people tell me that.  Certainly the wedding of my oldest son was very stressful for me, but it was all related to the food, which my spouse and I were responsible for.  This time around, we do have the desserts on our plate, but be sure, and we are most certainly not people who decorate wedding cakes, so one more hurdle this time around to go. 
All that said, I really love an event where whole families congregate to celebrate a life event.  All my nieces and nephews will be here, as well as their parents, and some relatives that are more distant when it comes to blood, but who have always made the effort to attend these occasions.  My house has been filled, by larder has been emptied, I have relied on friends and family to help pull this off, and it is a very warm feeling indeed.  Rejoice, even though not everything in the world is well.

Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This is Coates first novel and while it is not him at his very best as a story teller, it contains all the elements of his writing that make him memorable.  This is a book with slavery at its center,  then anchored by the true stories of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to develop a narrative that is both new and familiar.
Hiram, the narrator, tells this story from a distance of many years, but he describes everything with bracing immediacy.  It begins with a horse-drawn carriage crashing off a bridge into an icy river. The driver is Hiram, a slave, miraculously survives. But the passenger, Hiram’s white half brother and the heir apparent of the Lockless plantation, drowns. For their father, this is just the latest disaster. Poorly managed tobacco farming has destroyed the soil on the plantation (the wordplay between Lockless and luckless is undeniable). Every year, more slaves must be sold down South to service rising debts. To the master, this is a troubling inconvenience. To the enslaved families ripped apart, it’s a death sentence.
After the drowning death of his half brother, Hiram jumps back to describe the traumatic loss of his black mother and his existence as the favored slave of his proud father/master. That precarious position introduces Hiram to the social and psychological contortions of America’s “peculiar institution,” and he becomes an insightful critic of the layers of white deception.  There is a search for freedom, the interplay with the Underground Railroad and historically accurate conductors, and the human tragedy of the legacy of slavery.

Breakthrough (2019)

Let me start off by saying that despite the fact that this movie contains a song that was nominated for an Academy Award, it is not a really great movie.  The story is told in a very religious light, and if you are a person of faith who likes a good miracle story, this is definitely one for you.
Three boys are fooling around and doing things that they know they are not supposed to do. When a restaurant owner spots the boys out on a not quite frozen solid lake and yells for them to come to shore, they go further out, and then the inevitable happens.  The ice cracks and they fall in.  Two are rescued quickly but the third has sunk and it takes a good half hour to find him.  We have all heard stories about people who have been frozen without oxygen surviving relatively unscathed.  You are not dead until you are warm and dead has truth to it.  In this story it seems like it went a step further, where vital functions returned later than would have been considered reasonable to expect, followed by a lengthy coma.  The outcome of this is never in doubt, so it is all about how this experience changed people, all of it whipped up with faith, god, and the role of the clergy in intimate family life as well as the community.  The song, which doesn't come into play until the credits, is very good.

Ad Astra (2019)

I am definitely not a fan of the life in space movie genre.  They represent a lot of technical accomplishments that I do not fully understand (the movie was nominated in the category of sound editing only, but visual effects is another frequent nomination category).  I typically find the plot very thin and the long periods of time focused on the big wide emptiness of space bore me.
So when i watched this, because it had been short listed for an Oscar and it was available, I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it is.  I know Brad Pitt won a long awaited Oscar for his performance in Once Upon a time in Hollywood but this was my favorite 2019 performance of his.

Set in the near future, Roy McBride (Pitt) is  a legend in a spacesuit. The opening has him in a dive from a tower that reaches from the ground into space is a power surge that devastates the entire planet, killing thousands of people. The source of the surge back to an anti-matter device stationed near Neptune, which just happens to be the last place anyone heard from a famous mission called The Lima Project, headed by Roy's father (played by Tommy Lee Jones).  For years, Roy believed his father was dead, but now he may not only be alive but behind an attack on Earth. Roy is sent to Mars to attempt to communicate with a father he has thought dead for years, in the hope that a reply will allow them to pinpoint his interstellar location.

Chasing New Horizons by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon

When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto and its moons in July 2015, returning remarkable images and other data of these worlds, it was a culmination of an effort much longer than most people recognized. They knew that the spacecraft had been traveling from Earth for nine and a half years to reach Pluto, and probably understood that the spacecraft had been in development for several years before its January 2006 launch. But convincing NASA to fly a mission to Pluto in the first place, and then keeping the agency sold on the mission, was an effort as long and as difficult as the scientific and technical challenges of New Horizons.  The funding for the Pluto mission was an extended and uphill battle, one that I found somewhat fascinating.  The orbit of Pluto is 248 years, and so if we didn't fund a mission when it was relatively close to us, it could be several lifetimes before we could do it again. 
After all those efforts to get a Pluto mission launched, the actual flight of the mission to Pluto might seem a little anticlimactic, given the success it ultimately enjoyed in its flyby. But the book does go into detail about the years of work that went into the planning for the flyby and the issues along the way, including the computer problem just a week and a half before closest approach that put the flyby into jeopardy. It also, of course, recalls the joy of the successful flyby and the gorgeous planet itself.

Judy (2019)

Renee Zellweger's performance in this painful depiction of the end of Judy Garland's life won her a Best Actress Academy Award.  In the movie she is singing her heart out, baring her bruised soul, and acting with a ferocity that offers a window into what might have happened at the end of Garland's short and storied life. 
The movie largely relies on the audience knowing something about Garland's rise to stardom and her subsequent fall from grace.  There are flashbacks to when she was 16 years old and playing Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  The director had a creepy feel to him and the woman hired to en loco parentis her is feeding her stimulants to stay thin and sedatives to sleep--a habit that persists throughout her adult life.  It is easy to see why she might have been unhappy, with abject adoration from fans that ultimately move on to another star and an inability to participate in a marriage or to parent her children.  She just couldn't cope and in the end, she died young.

Fast and the Furious: Hobbes and Shaw (2019)

If you had told my 25 year old self that I would in the future watch each and every fast and furious movie, including a weekend long marathon of the first six, I would have bet big money that that would never happen.  Of course, at that point in my life I also wanted no children, so what a difference a decade can make.  The truth is that with four boys, I have seen many an action and adventure movie, and the pairing of Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson now seems like a must see to me.
This is exactly as you would expect.  The plot is that Brixton Lorr is a cybernetically enhanced soldier who possesses superhuman strength, a brilliant mind and a lethal pathogen that could wipe out half of the world's population. It's now up to hulking lawman Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and lawless operative Deckard Shaw (Statham) to put aside their past differences and work together to prevent the seemingly indestructible Lorr from destroying humanity.  I watched this on a plane in the run up to the Oscars, which is a perfect place to see this.

The Buried by Peter Hessler

The first thing to say is by way of warning.  If you think that you need to be a native of a place in order to tell its story, then it wouldn't make sense for you to read this book.  Hessler, who spent over a decade in China, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and later as a journalist, is a traveler.  He is naturally curious, and his entire writing career has been about telling stories that he sees and hears through his own eyes.  This book is set within the Arab Spring, which is when he and his family arrive in Cairo, and the years that followed.  He makes connections with several families while he is there, mostly the men, because in Egypt men mix with men and women mix with women, but not much beyond that.  He sticks largely with what he sees and hears and reads rather than trying to get inside the people he writes about, which is wise.  Then juxtaposed with all of this are his visits to an archeological site in Abydos, in the desert on the western side of the Nile north of Luxor.  Here he blends in some of the stories of ancient Egypt that are lesser known, but amongst the oldest.  It serves to remind us that Egypt is and always has been a very complex place.  A very good read, especially if you are contemplating a visit there.

Oscar Nominated Short Live Action Film (2020)

These two of the nominees, plus Brotherhood, really hit home for me this year.  Brotherhood is about a father jumping to conclusions about his son who ran off to fight with ISIS.  He assumes that he is the same man who left, but the war changed him, and he is trying to do a good thing for someone else.  The father does something that changes everything, and it is very very sad to watch.  As usual, a very high impact in a short time frame.
The Nefta Football Club is one where you are on the edge of your seat the whole time, really expecting things to go terribly wrong, and then you see a far better outcome than you could possibly imagined.
Then there is the winner, which is emotionally very nuanced.  A couple with small exhausting children look across their apartment complex courtyard at the lives of a young couple who do not have children.  What they each learn about each other over the course of the movie is heart breaking and heart warming at the same time.  It is not the one that I picked to win, but it is a very good choice.

Tomato Curry Lentil Soup

This has a great number of things to recommend it.  First and foremost it is delicious and it goes together in no time.  It comes from Ottolenghi Simple, which is an incredible cookbook, even when judged against Ottolenghi standards.  He is a talented chef, who publishes a lot of his recipes in a number of forums, so it isn't necessary to own his cookbooks (although I do, every single one of them).  This also uses largely pantry ingredients, so it is a good winter soup, requiring little in the way of fresh ingredients.  So you don't have to look for things that are out of season and you don't have to shop for it, so if you are snowed in, no problem.

• 2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil or extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 2½-inch piece ginger, peeled, finely grated
• 1 tablespoon medium curry powder (such as S&B)
• ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  2½ cups water or stock
• ¾ cup red lentils
• 1 14.5-ounce can crushed tomatoes
• ½ cup finely chopped cilantro, plus leaves with tender stems for serving
• Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
• 1 13.5-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk, shaken well
• Lime wedges (for serving)

Recipe Preparation

• Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium. Cook onion, stirring often, until softened and golden brown, 8–10 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, curry powder, and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add lentils and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add tomatoes, ½ cup cilantro, a generous pinch of salt, and 2½ cups water or stock; season with pepper. Set aside ¼ cup coconut milk for serving and add remaining coconut milk to saucepan. Bring mixture to a boil; reduce heat and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until lentils are soft but not mushy, 20–25 minutes. Season soup with more salt and pepper if needed.
• To serve, divide soup among bowls. Drizzle with reserved coconut milk and top with more cilantro. Serve with lime wedges.

No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder

The women’s stories are so common, they rarely even hit the front page. Man kills family, self. Man kills ex-girlfriend or ex-wife. He kills her in her driveway, in her bedroom, in her office, with a gun, a knife, by strangling. The stories are both too universal and too particular. And who can bear to read yet again that a restraining order didn’t protect her, that the cops couldn’t get there in time, that she did everything right — and still died?
Just this week a woman who shot and killed her abusive ex-partner was convicted of murder.  She had been held captive for 24-hours, raped, had a restraining order, and yet, when she shot him as he attacked her brother who had come to her house, she is a murderer.  The story was the center of a lengthy New Yorker article, and is yet another example of how poorly we protect women and children from violence.
The stories in the book are both lengthy and devastating, but Snyder keeps us reading by pointing us toward possible solutions. She delves into how researchers and front-line interveners are creating practical, cost-effective, evidence-based ways to save lives.
I thought I knew a lot about this, but it turns out I had a lot to learn, and I highly recommend this book as an education and an eye opener.

The Lighthouse (2019)

This was nominated for an Oscar for cinematography and it is a good candidate for that, using lighting and camera angles to tell a visual story that is well punctuated by a sound track that augments the effect.  Waves crash, birds scream, and rain pounds relentlessly throughout. The effect is to drive you a little mad, so you can see how the two men on a bleak island isolated from anyone would be vulnerable to that. It’s not just a film these two people on the edge of sanity, it uses sound design and filmmaking tools to push you the viewer there too. It has the feel of watching someone else’s nightmare from within, and you can tell from the very first scene, when Willem Defoe's character mercilessly berates the new lighthouse keeper that it’s not one that’s going to end well.
So when a storm comes up, there is no relief in sight, food runs low, and alcohol is flowing too plentifully that the worst is yet to come.  It is an atmospheric movie, one that sucks you up onto the screen and then lets you watch the devolving of the situation up close.  Not for the feint of heart, or the young.

Roasted Salmon with Gochujang Mayo

The Food 52 Cookbook last month was Everyday Korean, and there were quite a few things that people made that looked good.  I still have to turn my Napa cabbage into some kim chi to try more of these recipes.

• 1 1 1/2-to-2-pound  salmon fillet
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise preferably Kewpie.
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1-2 teaspoons gochujang Korean red pepper paste
• 1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
• 3-4 cloves garlic minced (~2 teaspoons)
• 1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon lime, or tangerine
• 1 Garnish scallions, cilantro, toasted sesame seeds, lime wedges,

1. Place 1 oven rack on the highest level of oven and a second rack below. Heat oven to 475 degrees. Line sheet pan (shallow baking sheet) with aluminum foil; lightly grease foil with cooking spray.
2. Pat salmon dry with paper towels. Place fillets (skin-side down) on foil-lined baking sheets; set aside.
3. Mix together mayonnaise, oyster sauce, gochujang, ginger or garlic, lime juice in a small bowl. Brush or spoon sauce evenly over salmon.
4. Place baking sheet on second rack in oven, and roast 8 minutes, until sauce sizzles and begins to brown. Heat oven to broil. Place salmon on top rack of oven, and broil on high another 3 to 5 minutes, depending on thickness of fillet and desired doneness. 
5. Serve with bibb lettuce, rice and garnish, if desired, with toasted sesame seeds, sliced green onion, cilantro, lime wedges, kimchi, and/or cucumber slices.

Becoming by Michelle Obama

I feel severely under powered to review this book seeing as I am probably amongst the last to have read it, at least for a crowd of people who liked and admired the Obamas and are seriously missing their kind of intelligent, thoughtful, and diplomatic leadership.  Maybe it is because the overt racism that has exploded out of the background since their departure from office is so vulgar and disheartening that I didn't want to expose myself to her thoughts on it all.
I should not have worried, she is a proud, smart, and graceful woman.  She reveals maybe more than I would have about deeply private things, but her eye to detail and her commitment to both her spouse and her family is really heart warming.  I enjoyed almost every page of this book, and fully recommend it the few of you who have yet to crack it open.
We are in a one step backward (maybe even two or three steps backwards) regime as of now, but this too will pass, and hopefully it will be in enough time to deal with the very serious crises that face our planet and our country.

The Cave (2019)

This is the second of two documentaries that were in the running for an Oscar this year that deal directly with those who remained in Syria throughout the Russian bombings, and the adversity that they faced, both physically and psychologically.  The issues around whether to stay or go are complicated in general, and in particular here the focus is on a doctor, and the medical needs in a civilian area that is undergoing continuous bombing are very compelling.  I read a review for this movie that was basically entitled "Do No Harm For As Long As Possible", which is the summary of what is documented.
There are a couple of things to note.  The first is that in this city, the hospital has retreated into what is essentially an underground bunker, which means that while there is increased safety, it is also like being relegated to a subterranean world.  Between that and the fact that there is an endless stream of people being brought in who have been blown apart and they lack enough medical supplies to adequately care for patients.  Think surgery during the Civil War.  At one point a doctor says "we do not have anesthesia, but we do have music".  Horrible.  It is anv overwhelmingly awful story well told.

Frozen II (2019)

Happy Valentine's Day!  This movie, a sequel to the first Frozen has been six years in the making, and while it is not much of a love story, to be sure, but is a story of women who feel confident in their abilities to manage their live, and I would contend that is what makes a good partner in life.  Someone who brings strength to the relationship, but is better for the partnership.
In addition to good female roles, the musical score is strong.  It was short listed for an Oscar in that category, but did not make the cut, and the only thing it is nominated in is Best Song.  This is about where my praise for the movie ends. The movie wasn't chosen for Best Animated Feature film, and having seen all five of the nominees, I think that was a good call.   The plot veers off in areas that are unnecessary and the link of the sisters to a native past is potentially a bit offensive.  The "go it alone" attitude ends up working out but is a tad irritating.  Enough already, can people not learn from their mistakes?  In any case, these are likely to be lost on young viewers who are probably going to enjoy the movie thoroughly.

Corpus Christi (2019)

This is a movie that openly questions the the Catholic Church, bot as an institution and as a hierarchical organization that is failing its followers badly.  Faith — that cornerstone of Christianity — backfires on believers when those who lead them cannot be trusted, as in the case of rampant sexual abuse of children which was not just covered up but also condoned.
The first and foremost question is what makes for a priest as a spiritual leader?  A devotion to God, completion of seminary training and ordination by a bishop to deacon status — all this must happen before one can wear the collar in the Catholic church.   But this stunning, quietly subversive movie sees the question in more existential terms.  It show a well-meaning juvenile delinquent who has been bullied in detention, but found faith in god while incarcerated.  he has been placed in a small Polish village for his probation in a lumber mill which is run much like a prison shop.  The harshness is a recipe for failure for him to succeed.  So he skips all that spiritual preparation to con a small Polish community into accepting him as a  proxy priest while the parish’s regular priest sobers up.  With his tortured energy and intense, ice-on-fire eyes, this mysterious interloper is earnest and surprisingly effective in his unconventional methods, and the sympathy is unambiguously in his corner, even if what he’s doing is immediate grounds for excommunication. Inspired by real events, the film dramatizes what turns out to be a fairly common occurrence in contemporary Poland: Evidently, every few months, someone is outed for impersonating a man of the cloth. The movie leaves the greater question of why this is happening alone, but does deeply question what makes a religious leader.

Marriage Story (2019)

This is not a marriage story, this is a story of love disintegrating into something dark and vengeful, with a bit of a rebound to the center towards the end.  There is no redemption for any character in this, and this is not a tale of how to save anything except maybe a modicum of civility, but it comes at a high cost.
Divorce is like a death without a body. Something has been lost. There is grieving, anger, denial. In his personal and moving story, the writer, Noah Baumbach, captures the insidious nature of divorce, how two well-meaning people who still care about each other will do things they would never think they would do. Surely, you’re not the kind of person who would use secrets as a weapon in a divorce case? You wouldn’t turn a child against a parent to gain an advantage? It’s other people who do stuff like that. With remarkable grace and compassion for his characters, the writer portrays divorce as a great equalizer, turning us into versions of ourselves we didn’t expect to become.
It resonates in America because we are seeing some of that unraveling of civility at a public level.

I Lost My Body (2019)

The best way to experience this movie, a retelling of the novel "Happy Hand",  is by going into it cold and going along for the ride.  It is just that unique a way to tell the story of a hand disembodied from it's person and how they reached that point. 
The story concerns itself with two protagonists: There’s Naoufel, a young man who struggles with just about everything in life, from romance, to holding down a job, to dealing with a tragic loss from his past that sent him careening onto a very different path than he ever expected. And then there’s a severed hand, one that comes to life in a way that should be surreal but feels absolutely possible because of the very human emotions, actions, and reactions the hand takes on its journey back to find its body.
Then there is the Hand's story; that’s where the action, the excitement, the danger, and the mystery lie. And as an animation aficionado, watching the Hand come to life on its perilous trek across the city was an absolute joy. I’ve always loved filmmakers and animators who play with a sense of scale. You get to see the action play out from the Hand’s perspective even as it tries to survive in an out-sized world. You’ll watch a thrilling escape attempt, be impressed by its ingenuity, and even fear for its life during a tussle in the rat-infested subway tunnels. But the hand experiences more than just action and near-death battles; there are surprising moments of tenderness found here as well. That’s a testament to the incredible work of the animators and storytellers behind the scenes.  It is an ingenious way to show two sides of a story.

Harriet (2019)

It is hard to  believe but this is the first cinematic rendition of an American icon's life.  Harriet Tubman’s incredible story translates well to the silver screen. Yet somehow, the renowned icon, among the most celebrated freedom fighters of American history, has never been given a major movie to her name before. This is a careful and not too violent retelling of Tubman’s rousing tale, while we still wait for the delayed issuing of the new $20 bill slated to honor her legacy. It’s one that involves peerless contributions to abolitionism with hundreds of lives saved, after Tubman, played by a stirring Cynthia Erivo here, escaped from the hands of her slaveholders in the Maryland of 1849 at great risk and steadily became a fearless, storied conductor on the Underground Railroad.
There is a bit of a heavy hand on divine intervention (which may reflect Harriet's true story), coupled with wiliness and a reliance on the North Star and an intricate group of safe houses along the way.  Many people risked their life and property to bring slaves to freedom before the Civil War, and this is equal parts bravery on the part of the liberators and cruelty on the part of slave hunters and owners.  The sadism that ownership of another human brings out in people is well depicted here, and is a backdrop for what we are seeing reemerge in public discourse today.

Reelin' In The Years

Stowin' away the time.
Since I turned 60 this year i have been thinking about change.  When shoud l I retire?  How should I retire? What will the end of our careers look like?  What do we want to do when we have more time?  It should come as no surprise, after all I was 59 right before I turned sixty.  And I have spent ten years in my fifties, yet somehow it seems to have come out of nowhere.
The one thing I have no uncertainty about it who I want to spend these remaining years with.  Today marks 39 years of adventuring through life with the same person at my side, planning some of them and agreeing to others.  We have had a fantastic year of great food, new adventures, adding another granddaughter to our expanding family, soon to have a new DIL (although the truth be told, she has been with us all for several years and we do not require a marriage certificate to add people to our circle of family and those we treat as family).  There have been bumps, do not get me wrong--it has been a bed of roses: beautiful to experience, with some thorns to be coped with, but I am looking forward to another orbit around the sun together.

Les Miserables (2019)

There is a lot to unpack in this Oscar nominated movie. 
It takes a riff from Victor Hugo’s majestically sprawling account of poverty and revolt in 19th century France and it is not given so much an update, or even an official adaptation, as it is a major kick in the head.  It is set in the director’s native banlieue of Montfermeil, which is also the setting for parts of the famous novel, the film is something like Hugo’s classic story mixed with The Wire— a gritty and fiery urban thriller underscored by scathing social commentary on the current state of the Paris suburbs, depicted here as a powder keg ready to pop..
It is cops versus the poor.  The team of police officers consists of veteran squad leader Chris, aka “the Pink Pig,” a crooked trash-talking cop who operates outside the law to get the job done; Gwada, a more guarded local who follows Chris’ orders without much argument; and newbie Stephane aka “Greaser,” who’s been transferred over from Cherbourg, in Normandy, in order to be closer to his son.  Stoic and highly observant, Stephane reflects the observer's view. Lawlessness, or at least a kind of organized criminal hierarchy, rules the land, with various groups competing for territory and forever on the verge of violence is what he sees, and his coworkers throw some gasoline on an already smoldering situation, and it blows up in their face.

For Sama (2019)

There has been a documentary, whether it be feature length, short, or both, that has been nominated for an Academy Award every year over the course of the Assad war on his own people.  This year two full length documentaries come from within Syria, and one short documentary chronicles the aftermath for refugees.
This film is framed as a mother’s letter to her young daughter and opening with footage of an airstrike as experienced from inside the target zone, the exceptional footage drops us into the thick of things from the start.
The film resembles a home video from a bomb site. Waad al-Kateab took up the camera in 2012 to document the protests of her fellow students against  the regime. She kept filming as her home town of Aleppo fell under siege, turning from the carnage only to record her growing affection for a doctor, Hamza, and the birth of their first child, Sama.
These vignettes shot over years comprise the most compelling screen study yet of how this conflict blitzed everyday life. The new mother struggles to put the youngster to bed as terrifyingly loud shells explode; she notes the insecurity that comes from seeing friends shot down and your neighborhood pummeled into craters. Sama derives from the Arabic for sky, yet here the name becomes synonymous with hope, a promise of better times to be protected at any cost.  THe ending is not a happy or a hopeful one.

Short Animation 2020 Oscar Nominees

Our local independent movie theater is showing the amalgamation of the Oscar nominated shorts, and this year in their introduction to things that are upcoming, the woman stated quite clearly that the animated shorts are not for children.  You can say that again.
Memorable is visually stunning, and it takes on the theme of dementia.  A painter and his wife are struggling as he loses touch with who she is and even who he is.  It is very sad, and yet very beautiful at the same time.  This and Daughter are my two favorites, in that they have a touching story line as well as visually spectacular animation.

Kitbull is a major studio entry, but again, not a children's theme.  A pitbull who has been raised as a fighting dog, and treated like a slave is befriended by a stray street cat who show him a way out.

The most main stream and the sweetest of the entries is a man doing his child's hair while her mother is unavailable.  It is a source of sadness for both of them, and it is clear that they care deeply for each other, and so they struggle forward, with good results.

Sister is a story of loss and regret, centering on China's One Child policy.  Unlike the documentary that centers on the same topic, which was short listed for an Oscar nomination, but did not make the cut, this one is a gentler way to address the topic, but no less startling in it's conclusion.

Finally there is Daughter.  This one is available for rental on Vimeo, which is how I saw it, and it is my pick for the win.  It is a story of a daughter who is grown sitting at her aged father's hospital bedside.  She is reminded of a moment in her childhood when she sought comfort from her father and he was unable to provide it.  We are left to assume that this has colored their relationship over the years, and only then did she look at it in a different light.
The common theme this year, aside from Kitbull, is family relationships, how they progress, revealing some fragility as well.

Ford vs. Ferrari (2019)

This is at core a racing movie, one set so as to let the audience feel the thrill and the risk that the drivers put themselves every time they get behind the wheel and aim to hit 200-miles per hour.  Even if instinctively you get that would be dangerous, somehow this movie makes it real.
The movie is based on a weirdly true story set in the 1960s, and centers on two charismatic purists, the legendary ex-racer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and the rowdy, insolent Brit Ken Miles (Christian Bale), who’s a prodigy both behind the wheel and under the hood. It takes nearly half an hour to get the plot in fifth gear. After being rebuffed and insulted following a failed attempt to purchase the Italian company Ferrari to add hipster cred to his family-car image, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) vows to build his own race cars and crush the smug Enzo Ferrari in the 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans. Ford exec Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) reaches out to Shelby, who reaches out to Miles, whose penchant for insulting his wealthy but insufficiently auto-sensitive sports car customers has brought him to the brink of bankruptcy. With a blank check, the pair get busy hammering frames and shedding scores of pounds of engine parts.  Their relationship, and reliance on each other's expertise is a testament to teamship that is rarely seen.  Good movie, if a bit too long.

Richard Jewell (2019)

Some have characterized this as the misunderstood white guy hero, but I did not see it that way.
Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) is the security guard who saved many lives by identifying a suspicious package at the Centennial Olympic Park, just before it exploded. But a few days later, he became the prime suspect by the FBI who were able to profile him as a ‘lone bomber.’ Jewell went on to employ Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) as his attorney to defend him against the accusations. The film follows  how he quickly went from being a nation’s hero to their villain.
Clint Eastwood’s masterful direction infuses constant suspense in a true story. He allows the audience into the heads of his unsung heroes and those who are falsely accused.
It’s hard to watch as Jewell’s faith in the uniform diminishes when he sees how the FBI manipulate their positions to suit their narrative. Hauser’s performance humanizes the character – it’s hard not to feel sympathy for him despite his overbearing tendency to extend his own authority recklessly. Sam Rockwell gives another terrific turn as his wise -cracking attorney, Bryant, often bringing dark humour to the proceedings. Jon Hamm as the FBI agent and Olivia Wilde as the zealous reporter make for a despicable duo, whose ambitions precede their morals. Kathy Bates is heartbreaking as Richard’s mother Bobi Jewell, who wants her son’s dreams to come true. Their performances are a testament to Eastwood’s ability to extract subtle, yet heartfelt depictions, as he painstakingly weaves the narrative.  Watch how quickly you can go from hero to villain with the government manipulating the press.

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

There is so much that is ground breaking about this movie.  It’s the first hipster Nazi comedy. Written and directed by the New Zealand-born  Taika Waititi, himself an odd mix of Maori and Jewish, it’s like a Wes Anderson movie set during the Third Reich. The opening-credits sequence hits a dark but devilish note of rock ‘n’ roll effrontery when the Beatles’ German-language version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” plays over documentary clips of World War II Germans raising their hands in the “Heil Hitler!” salute. This is followed by scenes at a Hitler Youth camp, where Sam Rockwell, as the squad leader, and Rebel Wilson, as some sort of seething assistant, parade themselves as confidently one-note caricatures.
The movie centers on a young boy who's so absorbed with Hitler that he is his imaginary hero, his mother, who is dropping anti-Nazi pieces of paper wherever she goes, and the Jewish girl that she had hidden in a secret room off her deceased daughter's bedroom.  It is spectacularly good even though it may not sound like it.

The Two Popes (2019)

The movie is inspired by true events, air centers around Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), the soon-to-be elected Pope Francis, and the aging Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins). Their ideological and temperamental differences, and the theological debates that spring from them, drive the movie’s action as the leaders spar over the future of 21st-century organized religion. And though much of the movie is fictional, those very real debates have consequences far beyond the cloistered enclave of the Vatican, with the Church’s determinations on issues like appealing to youth in the 21st century and being relevant, celibacy, sexual abuse and the church's role, and the role of women in the Church having ramifications for the lives of the world’s more than one billion Catholics.  This is a series of civil conversations between two men who largely disagree with each other, and is a model for how we might try to problem solve serious issues that face us nationally and as a planet, but thus far has completely eluded us at every level.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

I really liked this movie, which is not so much about the life of Fred Rogers and more about the profoundly healing quality that he shared with those less fortunate than himself.  Tom Hanks is preternaturally calm in this role, almost channeling the children's television hero himself.
The movie isn't so much a biopic as it is a way to look why Mr. Rogers affected generations of children, young and grown. If his character seems too simple, it's because that's how many people saw him, uncomplicated.  If his presence seems too good to be true, often the scene can be traced back to the article or an old episode.
What is new is what Mr. Rogers can do for adults.  He picks a man he sees as damaged to interview him, and while that man sees himself as running the conversation, he clearly is not, and over time, it becomes clear to everyone.  Mr. Rogers is a healer and he chooses people to help.  It is such a heart warming story that is totally unexpected and yet entirely predictable.