Grandma is Lily Tomlin’s movie.  There are other actors, such as Sam Elliott, Julia Garner, and Marcia Gay Harden, and they all give nuanced, wonderful performances.  But the story is that of Lily Tomlin’s character, Elle.  Elle is a 70-something grandmother, recently widowed by the death of her long term love. She is a writer and poet, who is down to her last few dollars when her granddaughter, Sage, comes to her for help.  Sage is pregnant and needs money for an abortion, so off they go in search of funds, either collecting from friends who owe Elle money, collecting from Sage’s sometimish boyfriend, selling valuable (?) belongings, or borrowing…

‘Boyhood’ is the story of Mason and his family, and follows them from the summer of 2002 until the autumn of 2013. At the beginning of the film, Mason is in 1st grade. His parents are divorced, and he hasn’t seen his father in a few years, as he’s been working in Alaska. His father (Mason Sr., played by Ethan Hawke) has come back to Texas and wants to get to know his kids again. Mason’s sister, Samantha, is two years older than he, and is always ready to goad and torture him if she can get away with it. Their mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) is a loving, though imperfect…

Belle takes real life characters, switches their stories around a bit, and puts them into a Merchant Ivoryish version of a Jane Austen book, if Jane Austen had written a novel about race, and does so compellingly and satisfyingly. Dido Elizabeth Belle was the mixed-race daughter of a wealthy, titled British soldier in the late 1700s, when Britain was still very much involved in the slave trade. After the death of her mother, she is brought to the sumptuous country estate of her Great Uncle and Great Aunt to be raised, alongside her cousin Elizabeth. The girls grow up together as best friends and almost equals, though Dido doesn’t eat…

August: Osage County is the story of a brutally toxic family brought together for the funeral of the patriarch. This family is so dysfunctional it’s painful to watch. Based on the play by Tracy Letts, and starring Maryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Sam Shepard, Abigail Breslin, Ewan McGregor, Dermot Mulroney, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, and Benedict Cumberbatch, August: Osage County begins with Sam Shepard explaining the lay of the land to a new caretaker (Misty Upham, who plays the only sane person in the house). The lay of the land is that he drinks all day, and his wife takes pills all day, and they barely tolerate each other.…

The Book Thief is the story of Liesel, a German girl who is given up for adoption by her mother, who is a Communist and is perhaps being taken away by the Nazis. The story takes place in the lead-up to and during World War II. On the train with her mother and younger brother, Liesel’s brother suddenly dies. No explanation is given, other than harsh living conditions and not enough food. He is quickly buried, and as they family walks away from the grave, Liesel picks up a book dropped by the grave keeper. Rather than calling out and giving it back to him, she hides it in her…

Ted and Maya went to see “Catching Fire” on Friday, and they liked it enough that they were willing to go see it again with me yesterday. Perhaps luckily for me, my memory is crap for books that I only read once…Gone With the Wind and Little House on the Prairie, I know every word. Catching Fire, I have vague impressions, though I know they were good and I was hooked and HAD to get into the next book asap. So it was although it was new to me, which I’ll admit, I enjoy. Side note that the bad part of the film, for me, was that I didn’t eat…

I remember reading Henry James “What Maisie Knew” many years ago, perhaps in college. I’m not a good one for remembering books years later, plot lines and characters and so on. What I remembered from this book was, “Wow, these parents are assholes”. Fast forward to 2013, and there’s a film version. I was kind of scared to see it, because I remember being somewhat depressed by the novel, and I don’t always want to be depressed by films. Sometimes it’s OK, I guess. Then it got really good reviews, and my MIL went to see it and loved it, and I thought, OK, I’ll go. Well, it was apparently…

“The Way Way Back” is a summer coming of age movie, in which Duncan and his mom, her newish boyfriend and his daughter, go to his beach house to spend the summer. Gosh, how can anyone in their 40s afford to take the summer off from work, aside from (perhaps) school teachers, who are generally out of work all summer anyway? Yes, we thought that. Let it go. Duncan is about as awkward as a teen without braces and glasses and a neck-gear can possibly be. He desperately needs his father, but his father is out of the picture, and he’s stuck with a toad in the body of Steve…