The Marrying Kind (1952)

Judy Holliday and Aldo Ray star as a married couple who go to court to get a divorce.  Told in flash backs, they tell their story to the judge who obviously wants them to reconsider.   It’s melodrama at its finest directed by George Cukor.  Still it's melodrama.  Grade: B

Ruggles in Red Gap (1935)

This Leo McCarey western is a treasure of comedy.  Charles Laughton stars as an English butler who becomes traded to an American millionaire over a card game.  A fish-out-of-water plot, he has to adjust to the American west and in doing so discovers himself.   The most magical moment of the film is when Ruggles recites the Gettysburg Address, I literally had goose bumps.   What a terrific film!  Films like these need to be celebrated so they don’t disappear and become footnotes in cinema history text books.   I saw this on TCM and I hope they continue to show it for many years to come.  Grade: A

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

First I’ll start on a side note.  I love the cover photograph of this book.  It’s the main reason I picked it up.  The premise on the back got me to purchase it.  The story is from four points of view: Alice, an 80 year old grandmother who decides to donate the family home to the Catholic Church after she dies, Kathleen, Alice’s estranged daughter who lives on a worm farm with her hippie husband out in California, doll house design competitor, Ann Marie (Alice’s daughter-in-law), who assumes the family home along with the beach front property around it will be hers someday, and writer Maggie, Kathleen’s daughter, who broke up with her boyfriend just before vacationing with her grandmother.   This tragicomic novel never really does anything daring but it’s an enjoyable read, enjoyable if you find dysfunctional families confronting each other while on the verge of discovery entertaining.   There were a couple laugh-out-loud moments and while none of these women stand out as very engaging characters I don’t think they were badly formed.  Sullivan is a gifted storyteller and I have a feeling she has many better books in her.  Grade: B

Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan

Published after her death, Marina Keegan’s collected work of writings is like being introduced to someone you would have wanted to be friends with, but sadly never will know.  It’s a farewell to a talent cut short, a career undeveloped but seething with potential.  My favorite pieces here are her personal essays, especially the one on about having Coeliac disease.  Her fiction is mostly just average.  But I loved reading this book because you can feel her youthful and fearless enthusiasm.  It’s inspiring that her friends and family had these works published for all to read.  Sad too that we’ll never she how much better she would have become as a writer.  Grade: B+

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

It seems a little unfair at times that Laika gets overshadowed by all the computer-generated animated feature films out there, especially when they’re creating some of the most beautifully crafted stop-motion animated of all time.  This film is no exception.  It’s stylistically a masterpiece with visuals that revival most non-animated films.  I’m watching the film wanting to yell at the screen to freeze frame so I can marvel at what I’m seeing.   The story of Kubo’s journey to find his father’s armor before his evil twin aunts and murderous grandfather, the Moon King, can find him and kill him is abundant with dark mystery and magic.  He travels with a protective monkey and later befriends a man cursed into the form of a beetle.  Directed by Travis Knight (CEO of Laika) and voiced by such talent as Charilze Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara and George Takai.  I can’t stress this enough, go see this amazing film.  I’m hoping it will win the coveted Oscar for Best Animated Feature, but it will be tough with Zootopia predictably being in the same race this year.  Of course it might not even get nominated which would be crime.  Grade: A