November 2018

I kicked off the month by flying to Fort Lauderdale to cover the boat show for Speedboat Magazine, and ended the month by signing off on the story I wrote about the event. I had a fun lunch, and a fun dinner, with Chris Davidson and Jim Wilkes. When I got home, my car had a dead battery, which led to a bad experience with the garage that came to swap out the battery. (AAA ended up refunding my annual dues as a result of the incident.) This was also the month that Joan and I saw Joan Baez perform at UCLA’s Royce Hall. All month long, I looked forward to going on my 20th cruise (on Carnival again) on Dec. 2. MUSIC: I listened to a bunch of songs by the Rolling Stones, and thoroughly enjoyed the new album by the Grip Weeds. BOOKS: On the audiobook side, I finished B.A. Paris’s book Bring Me Back, which was mostly a drag. Then I read Stephen King’s new novella, Elevation; it was just OK, but he included a truly marvelous short story called “Laura” that I just loved. I also “sight read” a great play called June Evening by Bill Naughton, then devoured some new Alan Ayckbourn plays, including A Brief History of Women, Arrivals and Departures and Hero’s Welcome. Looking forward to reading more Ayckbourn!

Here are the movies I saw in November:

BAD BEN (2016)—This was a low-budget “found footage” horror film along the lines of Paranormal Activity. Same basic concept: security-cam footage records some ghostly things going on in a house. No one is going to confuse it with Citizen Kane (or even The Exorcist), but it was a decent time-waster, which I watched on my iPad during the flight to Fort Lauderdale. (8)

HUNTER KILLER (2018)—While I was in Fort Lauderdale, I needed to waste most of a Sunday, as my flight was leaving about 10 hours after I had to check out of my hotel. So I saw a couple of movies. This first one was kind of a Hunt for Red October flick about some submarines and some politically tense maneuvers. Totally forgettable, but not bad as a time-waster. (7)

INDIVISIBLE (2018)—This was the second Sunday time-killer. I knew nothing about this movie going in, other than the reviews were fairly decent. Well, I got tricked—it turned out to be one of those “faith-based movies” that I try to stay very, very far away from. Fortunately, the religious angle took a backseat to the main story, about a priest suffering from a crisis of faith after some heavy-duty wartime tragedies. Like my other Florida movie, this one was also forgettable, but it did do its job. (6)

WILDLIFE (2018)—Finally, an excellent movie! Based on Richard Ford’s novel and directed by Paul Dano (who was so good playing Brian Wilson in Love and Mercy), this film takes place in 1960. An adolescent boy copes with the breakdown of his parents’ marriage. Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal are outstanding as his mom and dad. (9)

BEAUTIFUL BOY (2018)—Here’s the other totally worthy movie I saw this month. Steve Carell plays real-life writer David Sheff, whose son (Timothée Chalamet) is having some major drug-dependancy issues. Great performances by all involved, including Maura Tierney as his wife and Amy Ryan as his ex. (9)

BOY ERASED (2018)—A preacher (Russell Crowe) and his wife (Nicole Kidman) send their homosexual son to a rehab center where they try to pray his gay away. There’s an admirable story here about the evils of conversion therapy, and Joel Edgerton is deliciously evil villain, but I found the movie mostly lifeless. (6)

RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (2018)—The original 2012 movie, Wreck-It Ralph, was one of my favorite Disney animated movies. This long-delayed follow-up features the same basic cast, and a pretty good story—at least until the final 20 minutes. So many Disney cartoon films have to end with a gigantic, seemingly unstoppable villain who is ultimately brought down by our much smaller protagonist. So I was rolling my eyes when the filmmakers went the same, tired route with this movie. But the first half is fun. Unfortunately, most of the characters we loved from the film movie are given short shrift in the sequel, which is way, way too long. The one truly great sequence in the sequel involves Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) interacting with all of the other famous Disney princesses. There’s also a charming song written by Alan Menken. (8)