Tag Archives: Christie Robb

I Don’t Want to Go Out

There’s new whatnot ready to stream or BluRay its way into your home! Some of it’s worth a look, some of it’s not. Let us run that down for you.

Click titles for our complete reviews. And as always, please use this information for good, not evil.

 

The LEGO Batman Movie

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

John Wick 2

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

Table 19

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 

Bitter Harvest

Verdict-2-0-Stars

Murder on the Menu

by Christie Robb

I’ve been friends with a few vegetarians over the years who have made passionate, rational pleas for me to halt or at least cut back on my ravenous devouring of the animal kingdom.

I’ve read books and watched documentaries that explain in detail the often cruel practices that go into raising and processing my protein. And yet, to quote Pulp Fiction, “Bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good.”

And I can’t help it, I loves me a good steak.

In the 30+ years that I’ve been a carnivore, I’ve never been directly responsible for what I’ve eaten. Delicious meats seem to appear magically.

At the grocery store, animal parts are wrapped up in pristine white paper or in glossy plastic like little delicious presents.

Despite my intellectual knowledge about where my food comes from, I still find myself fundamentally ignorant because I lack a concrete experience of when the animal becomes the meal.

So, I set myself a goal: to kill and then prepare my own dinner.

My initial plan is to bag a fish. But after a day out on the creek, I left with nothing more than a wicked sunburn. Sure, I saw some fish, but only around the marina docks…where you aren’t actually allowed to fish.

Don’t tell me that fish aren’t possessed with some sort of intelligence. These guys know how to hide.

Now, my options are limited. The bunnies in my backyard are too clever and adorable to seriously consider. So I decide to become the Grim Reaper to one of the only live animals sold regularly at the grocery store…a lobster.

The decision is both convenient and light on the guilt meter. Lobsters are tough and pointy and I figure their claws give them a fighting chance.

So I drive myself to the Clintonville Giant Eagle and nervously wheel my cart over to the fish counter.

The helpful fish guy is pretty chatty. “This one,” he said, “I named it Lefty because he was missing his right claw.”

Great, I thought. They have names.

I select two 1 ½ pounders that the guy wrangles out of the tank. To schlep them home I receive a lobster box—the same sort of box my childhood gerbils came in, except without air holes and with a recipe printed on the side.

At home I open the box, experimentally stare into the eyes of the lobster on the top, and poke it gently on the back. Its eyes retreat into its head. I shriek and shut the box.

I’ve read online that you can put lobsters in the freezer to lull them into a dormant state before killing them. Supposedly this helps dull their pain. So, I pop the box in the freezer, pour myself a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and hop on my laptop to research how to kill these beasties humanely.

I watch a few videos demonstrating the technique of splitting their heads in half before boiling. (This severs their nervous system and is apparently a much quicker path out of life than the hot tub version.)

I steel myself for the kill.

I extract the lobster box from the freezer and open it on the counter. The lobsters have shifted position. Now they seem to be hugging each other with their rubber-banded claws. The scene is full of pathos.

Placing a cutting board and a chef’s knife on the counter, I check that the water is boiling in my big stock pot. I remove lobster #1 and place it on the cutting board.

Tapping the tip of the knife at the center of its head, the lobster’s eyes again retreat, but this time less far. I hope that this indicates less sensitivity. I drag in a deep breath. This is the moment when I discover if I have what it takes.

I look into the beady little eyes of the crustacean and thank it for its service. Then, I angle the knife up and plunge it down.

My aim is bad.

Either I winced or the knife was too dull. But instead of a nice, neat slice right between the eyes, the cut is too far too the left. A third of the thing’s head is now flopping to the side, still kind of connected to the body.

I scream.

There is diluted bloody water streaming off the cutting board and onto the countertop.

“Is anything wrong?” my husband calls from the living room.

I jump up and down quietly in socked feet, flapping my arms around, the knife flinging droplets of lobster blood across the kitchen. I swallow a squeal.

“Everything is fine,” I choke out.

The lobster is starting to wiggle on the counter. Clearly it’s starting to thaw out and is probably at the very least inconvenienced by the massive head wound. My hand clenches on the knife and I approach the counter, taking careful mincing steps to avoid the lobster blood now pooling on the linoleum of the floor.

I reposition the knife. The lobster squirms in a seeming attempt to flee.

“There is no escape,” I mutter as I swing the knife down.

My next cut is cleaner and I sever its head lengthwise and throw all the lobster bits in the boiling water.

I turn to lobster #2.

“Sorry you had to see that,” I say.

“Are you talking to me?” my husband hollers.

I ignore him, trying to think my way through my next kill.

All the experts say that the clean slice through the head is the best way to go. But probably not if you botch it. I look back over my shoulder at the pot. Any more delay and I’m going to have to deal with two separate cooking times. I’m already feeling stress about having to clean up so much lobster blood.

So, I pick up lobster #2 and dump it, still wriggling, into the pot on top of the body of its mangled companion. Its legs wiggle. Its tail flexes and curls around the edge of the pot. Is it attempting to climb out? I wonder. I stab at the tail with my knife and poke it down into the pot.

Slamming the pot lid on and slumping against a section of unbefouled countertop, I realize my heart is thumping against my ribs and my hands are trembling with an excess of adrenaline.

Twelve minutes later dinner is served, bright red and steaming. As we crack open the lobsters with kitchen shears and a garlic press (not owning the correct tools) my husband turns to me and tells me I did a very good job with dinner. Then he screams when he discovers a greenish bit inside his lobster.

“Is this his guts? Is this his guts?” he asks.

I have no idea.

This dinner is tasty and somehow more real than any other dinner I’ve ever had.

I don’t think I have it in me to become a vegetarian. But I might have it in me to become a murderer.

Boy Interrupted


After the Storm

by Christie Robb

There’s something about being a parent that helps you put into context and process the resentments you held about your own parents’ mistakes. You understand why they zigged when they should have zagged. Having the responsibility to create some sort of stability and comfort for a child drives home the fact that adulting is something that we make up as we go. None of us is perfect. And we all make mistakes. So, we treasure, even more, the good memories.

After the Storm is a meditation on this theme. Writer/Director Hirokazu Koreeda centers the film on Shinoda Ryôta (Hiroshi Abe), a moderately successful novelist turned private detective. Shinoda mourns the death of his father, the demise of his marriage, his separation from his adolescent son, a stalled career, and a gambling addiction.

He’s at the point where he has to decide whether to give up hope for being a late-bloomer and admit failure.

Unable to find happiness in his present life outside of a cheap high in the midst of a gambling binge, he’s eternally looking backwards at the opportunities he let slip away or dreaming about a future where he can finally buy his kid that new top-of-the line baseball glove, finish his novel, oust his ex’s new boyfriend, or win the lottery.

After the death of his father (also a gambling addict), Shinoda starts showing up at his mom’s house to help her out a little bit, to give her some spending money, and also to look for stuff to pawn. He’s months behind on child support. He’s turning down paid writing gigs to blackmail high school students. He’s spying on his ex.

One day, on a visitation with his son, Shinoda takes him over to his mom’s so the kid can visit with his grandmother and Shinoda can weasel a free meal. The weather turns bad just as Shinoda’s ex-wife (Yôko Maki) drops by for pickup. A typhoon ultimately strands the estranged family together at Shinoda’s mom’s cramped apartment. Initially awkward, the forced extended contact gives Shinoda a chance to live in the present, confront some of his flaws, and recreate a treasured moment that he shared with his father.

This isn’t a simple movie of redemption. But it’s not a melancholic tear-jerker either. It is a movie that will make you think about what kind of person you thought you might be when you grew up and weigh that against your assessment of your current character. And if you are a parent, it might make you wonder about what particular moment your kid might remember years later and wish to relive.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

First Dates Happen…

Thanks, Mom

by Christie Robb

About five minutes through my first date I realized something was going horribly wrong.

When I met the boy I was 15 years-old and trying my very best to be unconventional—which pretty much meant that I had a bad haircut, wore entirely too much eyeliner, and sported a pair of white fingerless gloves that I wore so often that the palm had permanently taken on a grayish-brownish hue. Not surprisingly, my love life to that point consisted almost entirely of one-sided crushes suffered in silence.

But this time I was determined to woman-up and ask the boy out. One day, while milling about in the auditorium lobby after a school play, I pointed the boy out to my mom.

“That one,” I said. “I’m going to ask that one.”

“What, that one with the black hair over there?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, suppressing a grin.

“Really?”

I turned, suspicious. “Yes. Why?”

“No reason.”

In the weeks leading up to the dance I was a wreck, unable to eat solid food, fueled almost entirely on Dr. Pepper and social anxiety adrenaline. The notes I passed the boy in between classes were damp with flop sweat. Our phone calls had pauses where I tried and failed to ask the question I imagined was hanging in the air.

Eventually I asked, but I couldn’t tell you how I did it as I think I blacked out in mortification while doing it. However, I eventually came to and it seemed like he had, in fact, agreed. So, this was happening and I needed something to wear.

At my school, in the grungy ‘90s, the Sadie Hawkins tradition involved, not only girls asking guys, but for the couples to attend dressed in drag. So not only was I going to be trying to make it through a first date without humiliating myself, I was going to have to do it while dressed as a dude. Fine.

After many trips to thrift shops, I settled on a pair of black leather pants and a small man’s tuxedo jacket with tails (and the ever present gloves, now even more dingy as a result of all the sweating). Apparently the look I was going for was Punk Oscar Wilde Madonna.

On the big day, being 15-years-old and unable to operate a car, my mom drove me over to the boy’s house and dropped me off in the driveway. After shutting the door behind me and struggling not to hyperventilate, I heard my mom’s tires squeal as she peeled out of the driveway and fishtailed around the curve of the subdivision.

She was usually so overprotective. I’d expected her to come in to meet the boy’s parents like she did with the parents of every other new friend I’d ever had.

I mentally thanked her for granting me my privacy and recognizing the woman that I was struggling to become.

Taking a big breath to calm my battered nerves, I slogged up the driveway and knocked on the door. I was starting to see spots. Breathing, I reminded myself. You gotta keep breathing.

The boy’s mom answered the door. She explained that he was still getting ready upstairs. Then she peered out into the darkness of her yard and asked if my dad had dropped me off and if he was still out there.

This seemed like an odd question, but I figured maybe she wanted to meet my parents and reassure herself that we weren’t all psychos. I shook my head, unable to say words.

His mom ushered me into the living room and sat me down on a couch and asked me if I wanted a soft drink while I waited. I nodded and looked around a little, wringing my hands together in an attempt to keep them from shaking.

Her house had a unique decorating scheme. There were a lot of tchotchkes bolted to the wall. A lot of them looked sharp and pointed. Old timey farm equipment? I wondered. Gardening tools? I gulped. Instruments of torture? In a few minutes the mom returned and handed me a cold class of soda and a photograph.

I reached out and grabbed the photograph, my gesture a reflex more than anything else. I looked at the picture. Faded and wrinkled, it featured a bunch of people wearing the autumn color palate of the ‘70s. The picture showed a youngish man feeding a woman something from his fork. I gave her a vague smile and wondered why my date’s mom was showing me this.

“Recognize anyone?” she said.

This feels weird, I thought. Is this how dates normally go? The overhead light glinted off the prong of some sharp thing on the wall. What were the consequences of getting this question wrong?

I looked closer. Ok, the woman in the picture kind of looked like the mom, but younger. Maybe this was a picture of her first date? I squinted at the man in the photo trying to see features of the boy in the youngish man’s face.

I had to admit the man did look familiar.

But not because it looked like my date. It looked…like the old pictures of my dad from my parents’ photo album.

“I used to know your dad,” my date’s mom said.

Apparently.

It’s taken me about 20 years to realize this, but I have finally decided that there was no graceful way to react to being shown this picture. At the time I stammered something inane like, “that’s nice.” Then, my date came down the stairs dressed in his mom’s little black dress, a pair of Doctor Martin’s boots, and full make up. I took a sip of my soda and glanced at his features out of my peripheral vision. Do we have the same nose? I wondered. Or is that just contouring?

It occurred to me that there was a very high probability that I had accidentally managed to ask my half-brother to a Sadie Hawkins dance.

Once we were out of sight of the house walking towards the school gym, the boy pulled aside, turned his back, and extracted a squished up soft pack of Marlboroughs from his pantyhose.
“Got one of those I can bum?” I asked.

Once I got home, my mom sniffed me and looked at me with disappointment. “Did you smoke?”
I brushed her off.

“You got something you want to tell me, Mom?”

She blushed. “I didn’t want to ruin your first date,” she said.

“You were going to let me commit incest?” I asked.

“What?” she asked. “No.”

Apparently, the night of the play she recognized the boy’s mom as her friend from back in the day—a good friend whose friendship had been strained a bit due to the fact that my mom may have stolen my dad from the boy’s mom at a holiday party sometime before 1979.

It was a fact she’d apparently decided to keep to herself, first dates generally being awkward enough on their own.

Thanks, Mom.

Too Much Movie, Too Little Time

Tommy’s Honour

by Christie Robb

I know zilch about golf, and was fascinated by the story of the father and son who pioneered the modern game, Thomas Morris and Thomas Morris Jr. But there was just too much story squeezed into this movie: class snobbery, ambition, shifts in morality, romance, father/son drama, the development of golfing as a profession, the innovations in technique, the designing of greens, death, grief, alcoholism…

The movie lacked clear focus and, thus, presented enough of the elements of the story to intrigue, but not enough to satisfy—often the case when a book is adapted. In this case, the screenplay was written by Pamela Marin and Kevin Cook, based on Cook’s own 2007 book Tommy’s Honor: The Story of Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris, Golf’s Founding Father and Son.

In Jason Connery’s film (yup, Sean’s son), the story is framed by the questions of a young reporter. He has traveled up to Scotland to interview Old Tom (Peter Mullan), who then launches into the tale of his son (Jack Lowden): a golf prodigy discontent with the way the gentlemen at the St. Andrews club treat his greenskeeper father. Young Tom is also unhappy that the toffs take the lion’s share of championship winnings and is determined to correct this, over the protestations of his father who is more at peace with the status quo.

Young Tom’s machinations to obtain more cash and to increase the prestige of the golf player come off a bit petulant and his disdain at his father’s lot in life undercuts the coolness of his father’s career. (Not only a greenskeeper—he was himself a champion—still the oldest winner of the Open Championship—who designed something like 70 golf courses and made equipment.)

It’d be enough, I think, to keep the focus on the golf, but at the same time, the movie tries to cover the relationship between Young Tom and the older woman he falls for (Ophelia Lovibond). She’d given birth to an illegitimate child and this causes a rift between Young Tom and his religious mum. Fine, certainly interesting. But there’s not enough time spent on the relationship to make the audience care about it and the romance takes focus off the golf. Then the woman’s death in a subsequent birth seems to be the catalyst for Young Tom’s decent into alcoholism and early “tragic” death. (Tragic in quotes as the movie seems to imply that Young Tom died from exposure—insisting he finish a golf match inexplicably held in Scotland on Christmas Eve, in a blizzard. A death’s not tragic if you can avoid it by going inside.)

To me, the best part of the movie was the credits sequence where the Connery flashes old photos of the real-life father and son with some simple accompanying text about their lives. So, ultimately, I’d have rather have been introduced to this story as a documentary. Or, if acted, as a BBC or Netflix series that would have allowed all the different facets of the story enough room to really shine.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

Choose Nostalgia

T2 Trainspotting

by Christie Robb

Choose life. Choose a movie. Choose a sequel, a prequel, a reboot, a franchise. Choose a revival. Choose familiarity. Choose nostalgia.

Watching the sequel to Trainspotting was like watching the new Gilmore Girls—only with more violence and heroin.

Is it social media that makes us feel we need to keep endlessly up to date on everyone? Is living in a chaotic world leading to an increased desire for tidy endings? Is it just the same kind of curiosity that makes folks RSVP to class reunions? Who needs reasons when you’ve got Trainspotting?

T2 takes place 20 years after Mark Renton steals £16,000 of communal drug sale profits from his friends and splits, vowing to live the life of a grown up. He experiences a minor coronary episode on a treadmill, which serves as the catalyst for a midlife crisis. And this crisis doesn’t take him on the path to buy a convertible, or to a hair plug consultation, or make him vow to consume a daily probiotic. Because the plot demands it, Mark is drawn back home to Edinburgh-to a bunch of people who feel that, to some degree or another, he ruined their lives.

In the original movie, Simon “Sickboy” Williamson states his theory of life, “Well, at one point you’ve got it. Then you lose it.” T2 isn’t bad. But it’s not great either. It’s lost some of the magic that the first movie had. But then it’s probably supposed to have.

It’s a movie about middle age, about looking back at who you were in your twenties and assessing what you’ve done or haven’t. Set against the backdrop of a gentrifying Edinburgh, we are presented with a familiar plot. Scenes from the first movie are rehashed. Renton delivers a new “Choose Life” monologue to a bored 20-year-old, which largely pans internet culture, shrilly condemning the choices of a stereotypical member of the younger generation in the same way he condemned the spirit-crushing lifestyle of clichéd older folks 20 years before.

Sometimes key scenes from the old movie are even played as flashbacks or projected on top of an existing new scene. The music too, is recycled. As if the characters stopped listening to anything new at 25.

Sure, it’s delightful to see all the cast members together again (Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner and Johnny Lee Miller) under the helm of original Trainspotting director Danny Boyle (who went on to win the Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire). But the enjoyment is not unlike seeing a fading star in concert, or asking for a tour of your childhood home, or meeting up with an old flame for a drink.

It’s nice for a bit, but maybe not quite as good as in the old days.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 

 

So that happened…a spider in the eye!

Oh No, Not Again

by Christie Robb

I’ve always had a thing about my eyes. Which is why having a small spider land on my left eyeball recently effectively ruined my day.

There’s a primordial memory floating around in my brain of my mother sitting on my toddler body, pinning my arms to the carpet with her knees while my father wrenches open my eyelid in an attempt to apply medicinal eye drops to combat a bad case of pinkeye.

I’ve loathed the concept of anyone’s wriggling fingers getting anywhere near my sockets ever since.

Unfortunately, this aversion was rather inconvenient as my eyesight started to deteriorate in elementary school. I knew what would happen if folks found out that I had trouble seeing the blackboard. They’d take me to that office where the people forced my head back against the chair and tried to wrangle stinging liquid under my clenched eyelid.

I became sneaky. When adults came into the room, I’d yank the book that I held three inches from my face out to a respectable distance and pretended to read until they left. I’d try to get into the classroom early and casually stand next to the blackboard to glean any information that was there. I’d get into fights with kids sitting next to me so that I’d have to be moved up to the front row, next to the teacher’s desk, so she could monitor my behavior. On vision test day, I’d memorize the eye chart while waiting in line and recite it as best I could when my turn came.

But, despite my best attempts at childhood subterfuge, I was eventually found out and by middle school I was outfitted with the thickest pair of glasses I have personally ever seen a human being wear. I’m sure there are people out there with stronger prescriptions. I assume they are legally blind.

In middle school I attempted to get contacts. Unfortunately, in order to get fitted for contacts you have to let someone touch your eyes to measure them. Despite my appearance-driven motivation and the assistance of several eye doctor staffers holding me down, I was unable to let anyone measure me for the contacts, much less put one in.

I attempted to train myself at home by putting a drop of water on my index finger and slowly trying to introduce it to my eyeball. The few times I managed to keep my eye open and accomplish this, the feel of the water against my eyeball caused me to fling my body across the bathroom and crash into the closet door. Eventually my parents asked me to stop, fearing for the structural integrity of their bathroom.

So, when the laser eye surgery option came along I was determined to get it. This was not only my chance at escaping the magnifying glasses permanently strapped to my face, this was an opportunity to avoid ever having to go to the eye doctor again. I made an appointment, asked them for a ton of valium, let five people pile on top of me to put the Clockwork Orange eye prier-opener on me, and then slice off the top of my cornea and shoot a laser into each eyeball for a full minute.

The next morning, I could see. A miracle. No one was going to need to get their fingers near my face for the rest of my life.

Until I somehow managed to get an arachnid under my eyelid.

I was trying to take the trash out back to the Columbus-issued trashcan. In order to do this, I needed to pass through the gate of my privacy fence and go around to the alley behind my house where the trash can lives.

I suppose an inexperienced juvenile spider must have been building a web in between the fence and the gate and I broke the web when passing. All I know is a black speck appeared to get slightly bigger as something sailed into my eye.

Dropping the garbage bag to the pavement, I shrieked and flattened myself to the walkway as if somehow assuming a prone position could possibly help. My hands cupped protectively over my eye socket as I rolled on the ground. Then I felt movement. Suppressing a desire to vomit, I sprang to my feet and bolted toward the house, screaming incoherent guttural sounds.

I raced into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Snot and tears everywhere. Screwed up left eyelid. Dragging in a ragged breath and, bracing one foot behind me so I wouldn’t fling myself backwards, I used both hands to pry open my eyelid.

Inside just peaking out from under my eyelid, I saw it: black and with entirely too many legs.

I screamed and shot back, falling over the edge of the bathtub and collapsing into it, my head striking the wall. I had a spider in my eye and was alone in the house and likely would be for hours. I had to remove it myself.

My first attempt at spider-extraction was to run tepid water into my cupped palms and lower half my face into it while straining to keep my left eye open, mumbling, “ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” over and over. This proved to be unsuccessful.

So I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a large stock pot and filled it with water. Pulling my hair back into a quick ponytail, I submerged my entire head in the pot. I shook my head from side to side to try to dislodge the persistent interloper. No dice. In an attempt to scream I inhaled some water.

Sputtering and now thoroughly damp, I surveyed my eye in the mirror. Spider was still there, appearing to wear my eyelid as a blanket.

By now the adrenaline of my initial series of panic attacks had metabolized. I was tired, defeated and disgusted. I raised my hands to my face, took a deep breath and on the exhale screamed and flipped my eyelid inside out. I flicked at the spider, sailed back into the bathtub at the feel of my finger grazing the sensitive inside of my lid, and prayed for death.

After a minute, I extricated myself from the tub, stood, and saw a tiny exoskeleton on the white bathroom tile.

I lifted my foot and stomped the shit out of it.

Later, I made a phone call I’d hoped never to have to make again. “I need an appointment,” I said. “Somehow I got a spider in my eye and I need the eye doctor to check it out.”

After the receptionist stopped laughing, I said, “And make sure a lot of people are working that day. It’s going to take at least a few of you to pin me down to get the eye drops in.”

No Escape

Toni Erdmann

by Christie Robb

It has already been a rough year. If you are looking for a movie to help you escape the bleakness of the year, Toni Erdmann isn’t exactly going to be it. No space battles, no superheroes, no fantastic beasts. It’s a spare and complicated film about a sad, silly man trying to reconnect with his distant, ambitious daughter.

The daughter, Ines (Sandra Hüller), works for an international consulting firm based in Bucharest. Her job is to compellingly propose outsourcing to oil company management. She shoulders the responsibility of job losses so that executives can sidestep the guilt. Ines doesn’t see much of her family and her father, Winfried (Peter Simonischek), jokes about hiring a substitute daughter to take Ines’s place (at Ines’s expense).

After the death of his beloved elderly dog, Winfried visits Ines, appearing unannounced in the lobby of her office building. Unfortunately, she’s in the midst of a project that may help her make partner. Her dad’s presence and corny jokes (delivered in front of clients) get under Ines’s skin and threaten her advancement.

Failing to reconnect, Winfred agrees to go home. Ines hits a bar to vent to some networking contacts about her horrible weekend. The man next to her at the bar introduces himself. It’s Winfried in a bad wig, with bizarre false teeth, claiming to be “Toni Erdmann”—consultant and life coach. Unwilling to out him (and by extension herself) to her contacts, Ines plays along while Toni inserts himself into her professional life, showing up at her office and at after-hours parties.

Hüller and Simonischek are outstanding, giving utterly believable, finely wrought performances—Hüller in particular. Ines’s carefully crafted professional polish requires that very little of her interior life is visible, and Hüller manages to get a lot across with the twitch of a lip or a downward tilt of the head.

But this is not the heartwarming, wacky father-daughter reconnection movie you might expect. There’s little of the tidy warmth that characterized Thicke’s Growing Pains. But there is a lot more realism. Writer/director Maren Ade’s film is almost three hours long, giving time to contextualize the characters in a way more typical of the new Golden Age of Television. We understand why Ines might be tempted to throw herself out of her apartment window, and we get why Winfried/Toni might not exactly have the answers for why she shouldn’t. But we see how hard he tries.

This is definitely not the movie that delivers on the uncomplicated warm fuzzies. It’s sad and weird, sometimes funny, and thoroughly awkward. But it might inspire you to embrace a loved one, and after this year, a good long bear hug is probably something we could all use.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

Abs-olutely Fabulous

The LEGO Batman Movie

by Christie Robb

This year’s spin-off of 2014’s The LEGO Movie centers on Batman—the brooding solitary vigilante with the wonderful toys and the nine-pack abs. We catch up with him doing the usual thing—saving Gotham City from a supervillain. But when he gets home after a long day, who does he have to share his life with? Just a judgey Alfred, Siri, and a microwaved plate full of lobster. Apparently Batman’s greatest fear is intimacy.

The Bat can’t even identify his “bad guy”—breaking Joker’s heart when he decides to “fight around.”

So when Barbara Gordon takes over as police commissioner amid plans to work more collaboratively with Batman, he gets the heebie jeebies. Discovering that he’s accidentally adopted an orphan doesn’t help. Nor does the Joker’s rounding up of all of Gotham’s villains and submitting a group resignation letter.

Faced with demands on his emotional intelligence and without purpose, Batman begins to crack. Sure that Joker is up to something, Batman refuses to work with Gordon and inadvertently places Joker in a position where he can destroy all of Gotham for good.

Only one thing can stop this nefarious plan…teamwork.

LEGO Batman is a PG-rated movie that is probably even more fun for adults than for kiddos. Those responsible for paying the tab will get to enjoy spotting the references to other Batman movies, identifying terrible Batman TV show villains (like the Condiment King), and wondering how the administrative folks at the studio acquired permission for all the outside intellectual property required for the climax.

The movie also has a remarkable depth of voice talent. Will Arnett handles the gravel-voiced protagonist, but Michael Cera steals scenes as the endearingly twee Robin. Not only do we get Rosario Dawson as Gordon, we get Ralph Fiennes as Alfred and Zach Galifianakis as the Joker. But even characters that have minute amounts of screen time get good coverage. Billy Dee Williams, for example, briefly reprises his 1989 role as Harvey Dent.

And, in the end, we learn everything is cool when you’re part of a team.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

A Movie that Gives Your Heart a Hug

A Man Called Ove

by Christie Robb

There’s a concept in the northern countries of Europe that helps the people there combat the rigors of the long, frigid, winter nights. It’s called gemütlichkeit in German, hygee in Danish, and mysig in Swedish and loosely translates as “cozy.” But it’s not just a sitting in front of a crackling fire, blanket on lap, warm drink in hand kind of physical cozy. The concept encompasses emotional coziness—friendliness, peace of mind, social acceptance. The Swedish film A Man Called Ove, exudes mysig.

It’s the story of a cantankerous old widower who has recently been counseled out of his 40+ year job. His life has shrunk to the point where his days are spent patrolling his neighborhood enforcing homeowners’ association rules, yelling about where dogs can answer the call of nature, and tossing junk at stray cats. His plan is to wrap up the loose ends of his existence, and then join his wife by taking his own life. But the plan is delayed by the young family that moves into the house across the street, running into his mailbox in the process.

And you probably know where the movie is going to go from there. You’ve seen versions of this story before: Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Up, St. Vincent, etc. Crabby old guy softened by the connections made with a youngster. But that doesn’t make Ove any less charming.

In Hannes Holm’s adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel, Rolf Lassgård manages to make even the angriest, most nihilistic version of Ove seen in the first portion of the film somehow likable despite his rudeness. And, in flashback sequences that occur each time Ove attempts suicide, his life story is fleshed out, revealing past events that have contributed to his current demeanor. This makes his subsequent, often bumbling, attempts at increased connection more poignant. And the family that provides a catalyst for his change is helmed by the fantastic Parvaneh (Bahar Pars)—friendly, decent, very pregnant, and taker of absolutely zero-shit from anyone.

It’s the kind of movie that makes you appreciate the beauty in the small details in life, the mysig: a well-cared-for green plant perched in front of a frosty window, a child’s drawing, neighbors that know your name and wave to you from across the street, a car ride with your dad. It’s the kind of movie that you’ll appreciate as the temperature dips, the dark comes creeping ever earlier, and the sky takes on the appearance of soiled sidewalk. It’s the kind of movie that might be best enjoyed with a small group of good friends and a warm beverage.

Verdict-4-5-Stars