Movies Archives - Jane Heller

Movie Night: “Chi-Raq”

January 3, 2016

Oh, Spike. You really know how to shake things up. You were robbed when you didn’t win or even get nominated for a Best Director Oscar for “Malcolm X,” and now here you are with “Chi-Raq,” which combines passionate advocacy and riotous entertainment for a movie that many critics have called a wonderful mess. I agree. And I salute you.

Who else but Spike Lee would reach back to the fifth century B.C. for inspiration from Aristophanes’ Greek comedy “Lysistrata?” That comedy was about women who band together to organize a sex strike to stop their men from making war. In “Chi-Raq,” the setup has women on Chicago’s gang-infested, crime-riddled South Side joining forces to withhold sex from their men to stop the black-on-black violence. Their motto? Peace, not pussy.

We see diatribes on gun control, the problems between police and the community, poverty, the lack of education, race, you name it – not in a documentary but in what’s more like a hip-hop/rap opera. Did I mention that the dialogue rhymes?

The story – and yes, there is one – begins with Nick Cannon rapping the song “Pray 4 My City” over statistics (in bold red) showing that there have been more deaths in Chicago in the last several years than there have been in Iraq during the same period of time. Cannon plays a gang member involved with the gorgeous Teyonah Parris. A child on the South Side has been shot and killed by a stray bullet during the gang war (Jennifer Hudson plays the mother in a heartbreaking turn, especially given her own family history in that city). Parris’ neighbor, Miss Helen (Angela Bassett), suggests that Parris get all the women together and go on a sex strike to force their men to lay down their guns. Samuel L. Jackson in wildly colorful suits comes on screen every now and then as sort of a Greek chorus, and John Cusack as a white priest from the ‘hood delivers a long indictment of the system during Hudson’s daughter’s funeral.

If this all sounds like a big mashup of ideas, it is, but it’s so inventively done, so powerfully executed that you can’t look away. It’s as if Spike Lee got tired of watching CNN (or more likely MSNBC) and said, “Here’s what I think about all this shit” and inserted it into “Chi-Raq.” He’s not worried about offending anybody. He puts it all out there and lets us deal with it. And we do.

Movie Day: “45 Years”

January 1, 2016

It’s a pleasure when a small, quiet, independent film starring – gasp – two older actors comes along and makes a splash during frenetic, big-studio, tentpole season, but “45 Years” does exactly that. It’s been winning acclaim and awards for stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay ever since it made the rounds of festivals early last year (it’s 2016 today – Happy New Year).

Directed by Brit Andrew Haigh, the film is a searingly honest, understatedly devastating character study of a 45-year marriage that seems to be going strong – so strong that Kate (Rampling) and Geoff (Courtenay) are in the countdown week to their big anniversary party. A retired schoolteacher, Kate is busy preparing for the party, while Geoff, a former factory worker, lets her do most of the busy work. Theirs is a life of routine and contentment – until a letter arrives in the mail announcing that the body of Geoff’s old love, Katya, who died while they were on a climbing adventure in the 60s and fell down a fissure in a glacier, has been found after all these years. Geoff becomes engulfed in memories of their romance, and Kate notices it – and resents it. We learn that they’re not a couple that has told each other their innermost thoughts, so each little tidbit of information that’s revealed causes fissures in their marriage. Will their anniversary party go on as planned? Will their marriage go on as it was? Will it survive? The film’s last scene – last gesture – is one that will haunt me for a long time.

I know I’ve said this before about other actresses, including Brie Larson in “Room,” but if Charlotte Rampling in the role of her career doesn’t get and possibly win an Oscar, I’ll be shocked. “45 Years” isn’t for everybody. Michael found it slow – not much “happens” in terms of action – but he was as blown away by the story and the performances as I was. Not to be missed. Truly.

Movie Day: “The Big Short”

December 25, 2015

I didn’t read Michael Lewis’ bestseller about the credit and housing bubble collapse and subsequent bailout of the big banks, but I couldn’t wait to see the movie on which it was based. What a cast. What rave reviews. What a saga.

Financial terminology makes my eyes glaze over and I’m an idiot when it comes to math, so I didn’t expect to understand everything that was going on in the movie – and I didn’t. But I understood enough of the big picture to get that director Adam McKay, who’s better known for his Will Ferrell comedies, came up with an ingenious way to tell a true story that’s full of financial mumbo jumbo, doesn’t have any heroes, and certainly doesn’t have a happy ending.

Basically, Christian Bale plays Dr. Michael Burry, a socially inept genius who quit medicine to start Scion Capital, where he figured out that American housing was built on a bubble that was about to burst. His investments in subprime home mortgages gets the attention of a cocky, ambitious Wall Streeter named Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), who explains it all to fellow investments broker Mark Baum (Steve Carrell). Baum has a complicated relationship with his job and his life (he’s in group therapy to come to terms with his brother’s death), but follows Burry and Vennett’s strategy even as he knows it could bring the country to its knees. As I said, there are no winners here and it’s hard to care about any of the characters. But McKay presents them in a unique, fast-paced style that drew me. (He uses amusing cameos by Margot Robbie, Anthony Bordain and Selina Gomez to explain technical terms to the audience.) The result is that I was furious all over again about how corrupt our financial system is and how all those assholes took the country down and never went to jail for it.

As with most movies I see lately, “The Big Short” had several places where it could have ended (directors seem allergic to the word “cut”), and it dragged on too long for my taste. A bearded Brad Pitt, whose Plan B Productions produced the film as it did with “Moneyball,” has some cool scenes as the voice of reason, and it’s always good to see Marisa Tomei and Melissa Leo even in small roles. Overall, the movie was very entertaining, and some of the dialogue was laugh-out-loud funny. The first film to show us exactly how such a heinous chapter in America’s history happened, “The Big Short” is a must-see.

Movie Night: “Joy”

December 15, 2015

I was excited about getting a sneak preview of “Joy” because director David O Russell’s last few movies (“The Fighter,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle”) have been so entertaining. I wish I could say the same about “Joy.”

Jennifer Lawrence is terrific as the real-life Joy Mangano, a divorced, working-class mother who invented the Miracle Mop and sold her product with great success on the Home Shopping Network. Lawrence leads a cast that includes David O Russell favorites, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper, along with Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini and Diane Ladd. The problem with the movie isn’t the actors. It’s the kitchen-sink approach to telling Joy’s story. The first half has a wonderful manic energy and I loved it. We learn that Joy’s divorced but her ex lives in the basement of her house and is still her buddy; that her father’s latest girlfriend is a wealthy widow who ends up backing Joy’s mop; that her mom hides in her bedroom watching soap operas (fun cameos by Susan Lucci and Donna Mills); and that her grandmother has always been her biggest champion, telling her she can do anything she puts her mind to.

It’s the second half of the movie that falls apart. The pace slows to a crawl at times, particularly when Joy gets to HSN. We watch her succeed, lose everything, sink to rock bottom, recover, become a mogul – and none of it makes a lot of sense. The tone veers wildly from girl-makes-good story to total farce, and the editing is choppy. Worst of all, it seems to take forever for “The End” to appear on the screen. “Joy” isn’t a bad movie by any means. It’s just not what I’ve come to expect from a good director. I loved that he chose to tell the story of a female protagonist, but I wondered throughout the movie why he picked this one. It’s just not that interesting.

Movie Night: “In the Heart of the Sea”

December 10, 2015

Michael, the sailer, really wanted to see this movie, and I, the Chris Hemsworth groupie, really wanted to see Chris Hemsworth – in 3D yet – so off we went to the members-only screening at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

Directed by Ron Howard and based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s acclaimed 2000 nonfiction book, In the Heart of the Sea, about the sinking of the American whaling ship Essex in 1820 that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, it’s an adventure thriller about – you guessed it – a man and a whale. Well, several men and one really large whale.

Told mostly in flashbacks by one of the Essex’s survivors (played by the always-watchable Brendan Gleeson), the story follows the crew aboard the Essex, which, after leaving port in Nantucket, is attacked by a mammoth size bull sperm whale. Adrift at sea on a crippled ship, the crewmen, led by Chris Hemsworth’s first mate who’s at odds with the patrician captain, are pushed to their limits, facing storms, starvation, panic, and despair.

That’s the short version. The long version involves much crashing of waves, breakage of ship parts and closeups of the men’s faces as they cope with sunstroke, delirium and hunger – not unlike last year’s survival-at-sea plot in “Unbroken.” The spoiler here is that there’s cannibalism. Hey, when you’re really hungry and your crewman dies, what else are you gonna do, right?

Thankfully, this is a Ron Howard movie, so our star and my heartthrob, Chris Hemsworth, survives, goes home to his wife and young daughter and lives happily ever after. Essentially, Hemsworth plays Thor with a New England accent. He did have to lose 30 pounds and said the 500-calorie-a-day diet was a killer, but his acting is negligible. He’s eye candy and that was enough for me in an otherwise snooze of a film that felt stiff, its dialogue wooden and predictable. For Michael, on the other hand, the film was two hours at sea and there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

Movie Day: “Trumbo”

November 26, 2015

Today was Thanksgiving and the day/night was jammed, but we squeezed in a morning showing of “Trumbo.” Was it worth getting up early? Not really.

The true story of Oscar winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, the movie has a fascinating tale to tell but seems to take forever doing it. We meet Trumbo and his family at their lavish ranch outside Hollywood where he’s the toast of the town, turning out scripts that earn him a lot of money and great acclaim within the industry. But we’re talking about the post-World War II Cold War when anyone even suspected of having Communist leanings was in danger of losing everything. Such is the case with Trumbo, a proud Communist who gets called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and refuses to name names of other Communists in Hollywood. As a result, he’s blacklisted for 13 years – his name removed from his scripts, his only work written under pseudonyms for sympathetic producers, even when his films won Academy Awards (“Roman Holiday,” for example). How he and his family stayed afloat during his purgatory fills the screen for two hours. A lot of it is compelling and some of it feels like a mediocre TV biopic.

Bryan Cranston gives the character everything he has. The real Trumbo was said to be a larger-than-life type and Cranston plays him that way – over-the-top and almost cartoonish. Diane Lane as his wife is given woefully little to do but play his cheerleader and occasional scold. Helen Mirren is terrific as Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist who’s determined to expose all Communists in Hollywood and make sure they never work again. And John Goodman is blustery fun as the schlock producer who hires Trumbo during his blacklist years.

This is a story that deserves to be known, not only for history’s sake but because it’s very timely in this climate where those who are judged to be “un-American” must be rooted out at all costs. It’s a cautionary tale with implications beyond Hollywood, in other words – a tale of what can happen when “patriotism” runs amok.

Movie Day: “Brooklyn”

November 25, 2015

Saoirse Ronan has the most entrancing eyes. They’re blue, then gray, then green, then blue again, and they have the ability to express the actress’ fears, excitements, loves, sadnesses. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Saoirse Ronan and her mystical eyes are the reason to see “Brooklyn.” She’s terrific as the naive, earnest Irish lass who comes to America in the ’50s – to Brooklyn, a melting pot of many immigrants, especially the Irish – and learns about herself and a very different world from the one where she was raised. Nominated for an Oscar several years ago as the eerie little girl in “Atonement,” Ronan will probably get another nom for this film.

A period piece based on the novel by Colm Toibin and adapted by Nick Hornby, “Brooklyn” is basically a lusciously shot girl-meets-boy story. Ronan’s character falls in love with an Italian boy, and they get married secretly – just as she’s called back to Ireland after the sudden death of her sister. There she reconnects with an Irish man who represents the perfect catch, and he wants a future with her. Does she tell him she’s already married? Which man will she choose? Does she return to Brooklyn or stay in her small town?

That’s the plot in a nutshell. There isn’t much story. Not a lot happens, and I found my mind wandering at times. But the film is pleasing – tidy, pretty and not very taxing.

One last thing. I saw the trailer so often in theaters and on TV that I felt as if I’d already seen the movie once I did see it. Memo to studios: Don’t tell the audience everything in advance!

Movie Day: “Spotlight”

November 15, 2015

I so wanted to be a journalist by the end of this movie. As the credits rolled, I kept thinking what a noble profession journalism is when it’s not about sensationalism and how maligned it’s become, especially during this presidential campaign season. Which is another way of saying I loved “Spotlight.” Finally, a film that more than deserves all the accolades and prizes it’s garnered. The acting, the writing, the direction – all first rate.

Based on true events, it’s the story of the investigative unit of the Boston Globe that, in 2001, spent many months getting to the truth of the sex abuses by Catholic priests and exposing not only the guilty priests but the monumental cover-up at the highest levels of the church. The so-called spotlight team won a Pulitzer for their work, and in this movie we see why.

Michael Keaton leads the team, and as good as he was in “Birdman,” he’s even better here because the part is less showy. He and his reporters, played by Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo, among others, are as committed to their jobs as they are to the Catholic church having been raised in it, so their conflicts abound. Their investigation is boots-on-the-ground hard work, overseen by their new editor, played by the always good Liev Schreiber, and by “Mad Men” star John Slattery as Ben Bradlee, Jr. There’s no romanticizing of the investigation, no glamorizing and, best of all, no speechifying. These journalists speak like real people, not characters from a screenwriter’s imagination. And the result is surprisingly suspenseful – a thriller without the car chases and snarling villains. It’s a straightforward exercise in filmmaking, and it’s all the more engrossing for it.

And yes, I’m putting “Spotlight” on my Best Picture list for Oscar time – a no-brainer.

Movie Night: “Room”

October 26, 2015

The Room

When I read Emma Donoghue’s novel, Room, a few years ago, it stayed with me for a very long time. Haunted me is more like it. The story of a mother who raises her five-year-old son – from birth – in a garden shed, held captive for seven years by the man she and her son call “Old Nick,” who provides the bare minimum of food and clothing while raping her whenever he stops by, Room was a knockout to the gut. Not only was it based on a true story that Irish author Donoghue fictionalized brilliantly, but it resonated in the present because of the awful case in Cleveland where the dog catcher or whatever he was held those three girls captive for years.

How could the mother – known as “Ma” in Room – nurture her child as beautifully as she did under such horrendous conditions? How did she come up with the escape plot that ultimately led them both to safety in the outside world? How did she adapt to life with her family? How did her son adapt to the outside world, when his only reality was the tiny space of the shed? It was book that both amazed and inspired.

Now we have Emma Donaghue’s own adaptation of her book for the film version, which won the prestigious audience award at the Toronto Film Festival and has earned raves. I add mine to the list. I absolutely loved the movie, disturbing and tense as it was.

Brie Larson, the actress with the breakout performance in “Short Term 12,” plays Ma and she’s great. You believe every word she says. You feel every emotion she feels. She’s the character in the movie, not some hot young actress playing the character. And Jacob Tremblay, the precocious young actor who plays five-year-old Jack, is a small miracle. What a face. What eyes. It’s been 24 hours since I saw the film and I can still hear his little voice, which Donoghue smartly uses in voice-over narration. I don’t know if the Academy will give him the Best Actor Oscar, but they need to nominate him along with Larson for Best Actress. Oh, and the movie should be on the list for Best Picture. In the supporting role of Ma’s mother, Joan Allen, who’s never given a bad performance that I’ve seen, was terrific too. There’s a scene with her and Jack in which she cuts his hair and he says, “I love you, Grandma.” I lost it and I wasn’t alone. Everybody in the theater reached for their Kleenex.

Highly, highly recommended.

Movie Night: “Steve Jobs”

October 24, 2015

Steve Jobs: The Movie

Let me just get it off my chest without any preamble: I hated this movie. I hated it so much I was tempted to trash all my Apple devices as soon as I got home.

I had no expectation that I would walk out of the theater thinking Steve Jobs was a swell guy. By all accounts, he was a prick as well as a marketing genius, and the film, based on Walter Isaacson’s bestselling book, captured his prickdom in all its ignominy. No, my problem with the movie was the movie. Aaron Sorkin has been a brilliant screenwriter over the course of his career – from “A Few Good Men” and “Moneyball” to “The West Wing” and, one of my favorite films in recent memory, “The Social Network.” His snappy dialogue and “walk and talk” sequences are legendary. But somewhere in the development process of “Steve Jobs,” Sorkin must have been allowed to hold the movie and its director, Danny Boyle, hostage. The result is Sorkin on steroids – a never-ending series of scenes in which Jobs, his marketing director Joanna, and Lisa, the daughter he refused to acknowledge as his own until late in the film, argue. Oh, wait. Jobs also argues with Woz, his old partner, and John Sculley, his old boss. Each of these arguments occurs directly before or soon after the launch of a new product, and each ends with Jobs staring at the person he’s just insulted as if nothing has happened. Nearly the entire movie takes place backstage or on stage in whatever venue Jobs is making his presentation. We hardly see him at home or doing regular people sorts of things. He’s an entity that exists to present products and receive applause for his creations, which is fine except that it has the effect of making the movie an exercise in claustrophobia.

Reviewers have praised “Steve Jobs,” in part, for its unusual structure – i.e. it doesn’t follow the usual chronology of a Hollywood bio-pic and there are no flashbacks or time cuts to provide background or depth of character. All fine and good. I like films that take chances or I wouldn’t adored last year’s “Birdman.” But to sit there for two hours listening to otherwise great actors like Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet speechifying Sorkin dialogue made my eyes glaze over. Bottom line: I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Movie Night: “Bridge of Spies”

October 16, 2015

Bridge of Spies

I loved this movie. Loved. It. I couldn’t stand the last Spielberg film I saw, which was “Lincoln” (aside from Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance I was bored stiff) and before that “War Horse” (overly sentimental), nor do I have much interest in spy stories (I fell asleep during the most recent film based on a John Le Carre novel). But “Bridge of Spies” got such great reviews today and Michael loves anything having to do with the CIA, so off we went. And I was riveted from the opening credits.

Based on a true story that I didn’t remember from my history books, Tom Hanks plays James Donovan, an insurance lawyer who is tapped to defend Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (played by the great Mark Rylance in a best supporting actor-caliber performance) in order to arrange an exchange for American spy-plane pilot Francis Powers, who’s being held in a Russian prison. Donovan rises to the occasion and mounts a spirited defense of Abel, risking the wrath of his fellow Americans, including his family, and soon becomes embroiled in espionage involving the intelligence communities of the USA, Russia and East Germany.

The story moves at a brisk pace, despite the movie’s nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, and the plot hurdles toward an extremely tense and touching finale that left me both breathless and weeping. Yes, I actually shed tears at the end of a spy movie! The ending is uplifting and full of patriotism without being in-your-face-rah-rah. And the cinematography is outstanding. It not only captures 1950s era New York but also the bleakness of East Germany. And the script is great, thanks to a rewrite by the inimitable Coen brothers, who inserted humor in what might have been an otherwise grim film.

I can’t recommend “Bridge of Spies” highly enough. I expected it to be prestige-type Best Picture Oscar bait, but I didn’t expect it to move me the way it did. I was on such a high leaving the theater that I forgot my Yankees cap and had to go back and fish it out from between the seats. If the rest of the fall/winter movies are this good, it will be a stellar Oscar season for sure.

Movie Night: "The Martian"

October 8, 2015

Wow. What a movie! I’m not a science fiction fan and didn’t love “Gravity,” for example, but “The Martian” isn’t a science fiction movie. It’s a movie about science – big difference. It’s also a movie about hope and ingenuity and it’s such a positive statement about the courage of astronauts undertaking dangerous missions. Go NASA, in other words.

Matt Damon is great as the astronaut who gets inadvertently left behind on Mars during an aborted mission. He’s all alone on the lonely planet while everyone at NASA, including his crew, assumes he’s dead. From here on, the movie could have been a bore like the Robert Redford sailing movie from last year, “All Is Lost.” It could also have been like “Castaway” in which Tom Hanks talks to his volleyball (or was it a soccer ball? a basketball? can’t remember). Instead, it’s a survival story that’s truly about surviving. Damon’s character grows potatoes in his organic, hermetically sealed garden and sustains himself that way. He manages to get his electronics working to the point where he can communicate with his command center and slowly there’s a mission to bring him home.

Ridley Scott of “Alien” fame knows how to shoot a movie for maximum effect. He’s a terrific director and should get an Oscar nom for this one. (Note: Seeing it in 3D was amazing!!!) He makes you feel as if you’re on Mars with Damon and experiencing everything he’s experiencing.

I won’t reveal more about the plot, and will just end by saying “The Martian” is what moviegoing in a theater is supposed to be about: a grand entertainment. This is not one to wait for on TV.

Movie Night: "Grandma"

September 23, 2015

This one’s been on my To-See list, simply because there aren’t a lot of star vehicles for actresses of a certain age and I like to support them when they happen. Besides which, Lily Tomlin is an icon. She played memorable characters in her comedy routines back in the day, and now she plays a memorable character in “Grandma.” Written by Nick Hornby and directed by Paul Weitz, it’s a slight movie – barely an hour-and-a-half long – but it offers Tomlin the chance to play a misanthropic lesbian poet whose work was once all the rage. Her partner of 30-plus years has died after a long and costly illness. Her well of creativity has pretty much dried up. She has no money (and, in fact, has cut up all her credit cards and made a mobile out of them). And her ambitious, over-caffeinated daughter (Marcia Gay Harden) doesn’t speak to her.

One day her granddaughter shows up asking for money to pay for an abortion, and she and Tomlin set out on a 24-hour road trip of sorts to try to come up with the money. Among the old friends Tomlin hits up for the cash is an old boyfriend, played by Sam Elliott. As much attention as Tomlin is rightfully getting for “Grandma,” the movie also gives us a Sam Elliott we haven’t seen before. He’s vulnerable. He’s hurt. He’s not the strictly macho guy we’re used to seeing, and his scene is powerful stuff.

I can’t say “Grandma” stayed with me – the story is thin, as I said, and quite predictable – but Tomlin fits right into her role, and her voice and image are hard to forget. She may just be the sentimental favorite at Oscar time.

Movie Night: "Black Mass"

September 19, 2015

I’m not one of those rabid Johnny Depp fans, but I loved his performances in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” (the first one; in the rest, he became a cartoon), “Chocolat,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and others. He’s had a long career for someone who’s hardly ancient, and if you ask me, most of his films have been awful. His collaborations with Tim Burton (“Sweeney Todd,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Edward Scissorhands”) were way too over the top for me, and his high-profile box office duds (“The Lone Ranger,” “Dark Shadows,” “The Tourist”) made me wonder if he was losing his talent or just needed a new agent to help him choose better projects.

Now he’s being called the “Comeback Kid” and an Oscar contender for his star turn as Boston gangster Whitey Bulger in “Black Mass.” It’s a solidly commercial film – nothing art house here – that focuses on Bulger’s criminal exploits and cozy relationship with the FBI. Whitey, like many a hardened movie gangster, kills, orders his underlings to kill, but is nice to his mother and brother and helps little old ladies across the street. There’s a lot of blood splattered on car windows, in other words.

What’s different about “Black Mass” (different from the Scorsese movies, for example) is it’s less operatic. Based on a book by two Boston Globe investigative reporters, it tells Bulger’s story in both a dramatic and almost documentary style, which I liked. The violence, while necessary, isn’t the hide-your-eyes kind, and the actors all do great work here. (And this is an actor’s movie; the female parts are window dressing.)

Depp adopts a raspy growl of a voice, as if he’s led a hard life with lots of cigarettes. The makeup that ages him is heavy and distracting, but his icy blue eyes signal his criminality, as well as the dead front tooth that, even on those few occasions when he smiles or laughs, says, “I’ll whack you if you look at me wrong.” He’s completely believable as this guy from start to finish.

I don’t see “Black Mass” as a Best Picture choice – it’s not of that caliber – but I’ll be stunned if Depp is overlooked in the Best Actor category. He’s back for sure.

What I Read, Watched and Ate: Favorites of Summer 2015

September 9, 2015

I know, I know. I could have posted a pic of late summer tomatoes, which have been luscious here in CT. Or corn on the cob, fish on the grill, a lobster roll or an ice cream cone. Instead, I gave you a Cobb salad. Big deal, you think. But it’s not just any Cobb. The one above was a creation of one of my new favorite places, Kingsley Tavern in Kent. It’s made of really fresh romaine, avocado, blue cheese, tomatoes, hard-boiled egg, celery, chicken and – drum roll – the crispiest, most delicious bacon I’ve ever tasted, all dressed in a light, tangy vinaigrette. I craved a salad on a hot steamy night recently, and Kingsley’s Cobb delivered.

But there were many treats of summer of the edible variety: the grilled prawns at Purdy’s Farmer & the Fish in North Salem, the swordfish at Terra Sole in Ridgefield, the chocolate tasting dessert at Arethusa Al Tavolo, the blueberry pie from the Bridgewater Village Store. To say I ate well this summer would be an understatement.

I was a book glutton too. I devoured novel after novel over the past few months, and while I didn’t love every single one, I did love reading in a joyous, leisurely way. Among my favorite novels were: Days of Awe by Lauren Fox, Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet, Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont, Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum, Disclaimer by Renee Knight, Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll, The Daylight Marriage by Heidi Pitlor and Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill. I’m looking forward to a whole crop of fall books.

In addition to sports on TV, classic movies on TCM and non-stop news on CNN (it was the summer of Trump, after all), I belatedly discovered Weeds and binge watched the Showtime series with abandon. What great writing, not to mention the performances by Mary-Louise Parker and Elizabeth Perkins. I also went back and re-watched The Affair, also on Showtime, in anticipation of the first episode of Season 2 on October 4th.

I only went to a handful of movies in the theaters this summer, and the few I saw didn’t come close to making a favorites list. “Love and Mercy,” the Beach Boys movie that garnered mostly good reviews, was long and meandering, and though Paul Dano was great and the inside-the-studio stuff was interesting, I was less than enthralled. “Trainwreck,” which I expected to adore because of the hilarious Amy Schumer, wasn’t funny. I don’t know how else to say it. I sat there waiting to laugh and didn’t. And “Ricki and the Flash” was fun in the way it’s always fun to watch Meryl Streep do her thing, but was otherwise forgettable. I can’t wait for the big Oscar-y movies to open. On my must-see list are “Grandma” with Lily Tomlin, Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s “Steve Jobs,” “Black Mass,” the Whitey Bulger story starring Johnny Depp and “Carol” with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, to name a few.

Bring on fall!

My Friend Died, and It Sucks

August 4, 2015

Michael and I were living in Florida, about to move to LA, when I got an email from a woman named Laurie Burrows Grad. She said she was chairing a Penn Women Author Event to commemorate 100 years of women at the University of Pennsylvania, where I attended the Annenberg School of Communications. She asked if I’d be willing to participate. I wrote back thanking her for thinking of me but explained that I was overwhelmed with my imminent move to Los Angeles. She wrote back that she lived in LA and that if I needed anything when I got there, I shouldn’t hesitate to call her. “And you’ll come for dinner and meet my husband Peter,” she added.

“How nice is that?” I said to Michael. “They don’t even know us.”

Laurie and I continued to email and we discovered we’d soon be neighbors, that the Beverly Hills duplex Michael and I had rented was only blocks away from her house. She offered yet again to have us over for dinner and we looked forward to it.

On our first night in our Beverly Hills rental, friendless and furniture-less, since our stuff was on a Mayflower van making its way across the country, Michael and I were surprised by a knock on the door. It was Laurie and Peter with shopping bags containing goodies to eat and drink and little battery-operated lights we could put on the floor by our air mattress until our lamps arrived.

“How nice is that?” I repeated to Michael.

Laurie was beautiful inside and out, I discovered, and Peter was hilarious with the ability to mock you in such an endearing way that you didn’t mind being mocked. (The first time he saw me, he nicknamed me “Bones.” Normally, when people joke that I’m skinny or scrawny or bony, it makes me mad, but Peter? I loved that he had a special name for me, just like he had special names for all his close pals, because he said it with such affection.) Both he and Laurie had huge hearts, and the word “generous” didn’t begin to describe them. (And I’m not just talking about the fact that they’d raised millions of dollars for the Alzheimer’s Association as a result of their “A Night at Sardi’s” benefits.) Oh and one more thing: they adored each other. You could see it in their eyes, in the way they treated each other, in the way they touched each other. When you were around Laurie and Peter, you were thrilled to be in their orbit.

And we were definitely in their orbit. Laurie and I would talk on the phone forever and then email right after. Michael, who doesn’t make friends easily or often, couldn’t get enough of Peter. While Laurie and I would be in her kitchen kibbitzing, he and Peter would be downstairs watching porn channels on TV and laughing like idiot boys waiting for their mothers to scold them. We’d go out for dinner. We’d go to the movies. We’d spend New Year’s Eves together and Oscar night and all the rest. And when they said, “We’re staying at a friend’s on the beach in Santa Barbara for the weekend. Want to come?” we not only said yes but became so enamored of Santa Barbara that we moved there.

I was emailing and texting with Laurie this past weekend while she and Peter were on their annual trip to Vail. She was telling me what a good time they were having and I was telling her the latest about CT, where Michael and I had bought a house in April to spend more time with my mother. I missed the Grads now that I was on the East Coast again, but we’d recently had lunch with them when they came to NYC and we pledged to spend more time together when we flew back to CA over the winter.

Then came a terrible phone call on Sunday morning: Peter had died.

Just like that. While I was sleeping. While I was completely in the dark.

I woke up assuming they were enjoying their last day in Vail and instead Laurie was dealing with the loss of her beloved Petey. How could this be true? How could someone who’d been so alive, so vital, be here one minute and gone the next? I couldn’t fathom it. With one big exception, I’d been remarkably lucky in the friend department when it came to good health. Yes, I had just turned Medicare age, but all my buddies were fine, a few aches, pains and prescription drugs aside.

Not Peter, apparently.

No one didn’t love Peter Grad. No one. He could walk into a room and charm even the crabbiest person. He could play a round a golf with Joe Schmo and the President of the United States and put them both at ease. He could elicit a laugh even on your gloomiest day and then order you a pizza or grill you a steak. (No one made eating as much fun as Peter. With him, food was entertainment.)

Laurie is bereft, naturally, and I feel helpless that I can’t take her pain away. I wish my mother didn’t have dementia so I could ask her what her friends did or said that most comforted her after my father died.

I only hope that the outpouring Laurie’s getting from people will ease her grief a little. She did have the good fortune to be married to the love of her life for a very long time. May the gift of that sustain her.

RIP, Petey.

Movie Night: "Selma"

January 13, 2015

We braved the rain the other night (yes, it actually rained in Santa Barbara – for two days, in fact – and hopefully the percip helped the drought conditions) and went to the Arlington Theater to see “Selma.” The night before on his MSNBC show, Lawrence O’Donnell had gone into such a state of rhapsody over the movie that, in addition to many other glowing reviews as well as the timeliness of the subject and my own interest in the civil rights movement, I was eager to see “Selma” – particularly on the eve of the Golden Globes awards.

The good news: David Oyelowo, yet another Brit playing an American icon (lots of them these days), gets Martin Luther King Jr.’s vocal cadences amazingly well. The bad news: I wish there’d been more fiery speeches to show off his talent. “Selma” is a more ruminative movie than one that gets you up on your feet shouting “Amen.” It shows King in quiet, contemplative moments – too many of them for me. We see him strategizing with his close group of advisers. We see him trying to make his point with LBJ (Tim Wilkinson, another Brit playing a legendary American). We see him navigating strained marital waters with his wife Coretta. And all of these contemplative moments move at a very slow pace, many in darkly lit spaces.

It’s when “Selma” opened up and showed us the people of Selma and the consequences of their fight for their right to vote that the movie came alive for me. Their courage, their persistence even in the face of formidable opposition, even in the face of unyielding Alabama Governor George Wallace (another Brit, Tim Roth), was inspirational and riveting. But as for King himself? Let’s put it this way. As I was coming out of the ladies’ room after the movie, I heard several women echo my own thought, which was: “How can a story about such a magnetic man make him seem so un-magnetic?” The film was emotionally flat in places where it needed to soar. I was disappointed.