No Time To Die (2021)

This movie is way way too long. This is practically a mini-series because while it is just under 3 hours, it seems longer. I recommend two sittings. There is a changing of the guard at MI-6, with James retired and a new agent inhabiting the 007 moniker. This is Daniel Craig's swan song in the role, and so the plot harkens back to old enemy's and new ways for bad guys to wreck world-wide havoc in their diabolical plans for control and revenge. Rami Mallek is the bad guy, and he looks about the way he did in Pappillon, when he was in a jungle prison (ie. not good), and there is an elaborate sub-plot for revenge that he is intent on carrying out. What makes this worth your time is the visual and sound effects (for which the movie is on the short list for an Oscar nomination for). The opening sequence is tightly framed and almost poetic—even just the first shot of a hooded figure coming over a snowy hill has a grace that Bond often lacks. The shoot-out in Cuba moves like a dance scene with Craig and Ana de Armas (a Cuban born actress) finding each other’s rhythms. There’s a riveting encounter in a foggy forest and a single shot climb in a tower of enemies that has a one-shot scene that is beautiful and suspenseful.

How The Word Is Passed by Clint Smith

This is one of the best books that I read this year. The book travels the United States city by city, and takes us on an unforgettable tour that seeks to look clearly at our past and the role of slavery in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. I was unaware that there is now a tour that focuses on the role of slaves in Jefferson's life that is not about the gloried past of the South but rather about reckoning with Jefferson as a man. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation–turned–maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted. This is both scholarly and moving, filled with stories that bring things to life and are memorable. Do not miss it.

Free Guy (2021)

Let me start off by saying that this is not a deep movie, do not dig too deep for meaing. I think this is supposed to be fun, even though you can certainly read some meaning into it. Ryan Reynold is Blue Shirt guy, a non-player character better known as an NPC in a video game. he gets up, puts the same outfit on each day, gets coffee on his way to the bank where he works, and where there is also an armed robbery every day, and then he goes home to do it all over again. That is until one day when he sees a girl cross his path and he wants to follow her, talk to her, and so he grabs some sunglasses off a bank robber, and goes for it. There is a world within the game that he inhabits, but there is a world outside the game and players who come into the game he can talk with, so there are two parallel worlds at play. He realizes that he needs to help the girl within the game to also help her outside the game, and the interplay is fun and entertaining to watch.

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

This won the National Book Award for Fiction this year. There were quite a few really good books on the long list, including one that was my favorite book I read in an overall excellent year of reading, but as the title infers, this is a hell of a book. It is a story without a plot, meandering along with an author who is on a book tour to promote his book, you guessed it, Hell of a Book, when he sees the shadow character in this book, a young black boy he calls "the Kid", someone who is maybe a figment of his imagination, maybe a hallucination, and maybe just the author as a young boy. The Kid has a back story, parents who try to protect him, but he is severely mistreated, called names and bullied because of the color of his skin, who watches his father gunned down by police based solely on the color of his skin, and who feels that being invisible is his safest bet. It is an exploration of racism, a mirror being held up for both the author and the reader to see into. Clever and powerful.

Luca (2021)

The animation in this latest Pixar film is pretty spectacular, and for me outweighed the story itself, although if you are thinking of giving up midway, which is what happened to me when I started to watch it this summer, stick it out. The story follows a formula of children growing up a bit and wanting to express themselves and break away from their parents, the parents wanting to protect their children, and the unsavory influence who puts ideas in their child's head. The twist is that Luca and Alberto aren't kids, they are sea monsters, or what I think of as merboys, who shed their tails and scales when they are on dry land. The dry land is Italy, so there is a bit of Italian and lots of pasta in this seaside fishing village that is very charming. They are befriended by Guiliana, a local girl who is more of a tomboy who wishes to beat the town bully and seeks the glory associated with being a winner. There is the inevitable falling out amongst friends, and Alberto almost gets them killed, but in the end they all stick together, no matter the price. Fino!

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

I have to admit, while I have only read three previous novels by this author, I find him to be an excellent storyteller who tells compelling stories about black people in America. He is unemotional in rendering extremely difficult situations and making them both real and bearable to hear. This is almost light in comparison to his last two books. Set in the early 1960s, it is an extraordinary story about an ordinary man. Furniture salesman Ray Carney is a good guy who ever so gradually becomes a man gone wrong. He gets sucked into schemes and heists through his cousin Freddie, the proverbial bad influence. The lure of what Freddie's world offers is just too much for Ray to turn his back on. The novel is structured in three parts, covering a period from 1959 to 1964, each climactically peaking with criminal activity. Part one demonstrates how easily a man can step downward into crime. Part two covers Carney’s upward criminal journey, what might even make you think it is not a disaster. Part 3 considers whether a man should step up to help others, what is one's responsibility to the greater social good? This book made me think that I need to go back and read the books that come before it that I have missed.

Jingle Jangle (2020)

I meant to watch this last holiday season, when a song from this jubilant Christmas musical was short listed for an Oscar. The season got turned upside down for us last year (COVID), and the song didn't make the nominee list and by the time I was done watching Oscar movies it was April, and let's just say that over the top Christmas movies should not be eatched in spring. So we made it happen this year. This is a sprawling musical extravaganza whose candy-colored, dandily overstuffed revelry spills over with joy and jubilance. It even has a hint of being at an in person performance, which of course we are all pacing ourselves with these days with omicrom rising (I am finally learning the Greek alphabet in order after all these years of just recognizing the letters but not knowing the exact order, mores the pity). It has a talented and largely all black cast which is just an added bonus. The story has a hopeful beginning, a bah humbug middle and the obligatory happy ending, all wrapped up in the magic of imagination and possibility. Tis the season!

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

This book explores the difficulties that are inherent in being not just an immigrant but also Asian in this funny/not funny book. The jovial nature hides some of the bitterness that is just below the surface, easily scratched and found. The story, written as a Hollywood screen play, follows a "Generic Asian Man" in his efforts to become more than a bit player. He yearns to be a "Kung Fu Guy,” which is the very definition of making it, a mantle of success. He wants to move from the background to the center of the screen. It’s not easy. For the past century or so, American movies and television have relegated Asian characters and actors to the margins, with few exceptions. Generic Asian Man — he has a name, Willis Wu — is stuck playing Background Oriental Male. If he’s lucky, he might get to speak a few words as Delivery Guy. Willis is trapped in these roles — not just as an aspiring actor but as a character on a page. The troubles of black Americans are not downplayed, but rather book end the stereotypes for Asians.

Power of the Dog (2021)

Wow, this is an incredibly powerful movie, set in a desolate beautidul place with an unsettling tone from start to finish. The score, the cinematography, the acting, and the directing are all pitch perfect. There is sparse dialog but the music keys you in to the mood of each scene quite brilliantly. Stick with this, because I think being uncomfortable is part of the point. Phil and George are brothers who do everything together on thier frontier Montana ranch, but they are nothing alike. Phil runs the show in every way and George says little to nothing, all the while he is being put down and belittled. When George adds a wife and her mostly grown son to his family, Phil goes about undermining them in the way he works to marginalize George. But there is something very wrong with Phil, that is clear. My spouse and I watched this separately and on different days, and when my son and I were midway through the movie he asked me who I felt sorried for and while there are two other characters who might fit that bill, Phil was my answer. All the main cast members are spectacular in this, but Benedict Cumberbatch is heads above the rest. He radiates the character of Phil in every possible way, and is amazing to behold.

Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

I heard about this book from an NPR interview with Ibram Kendi about the books that he would have his own children and other people's children read in order to raise anti-racist humans, so wrapped this into my post-George Floyd committment to knowing more and being better. A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion, her brother's sexual orientation, and her own relationship to the world. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—-especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. Her mother would quash her passion, but a teacher recognizes her talent and she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club. She doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less find the courage to speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems. In the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent, and her fierceness is something to behold.