Book Review: "Great Big Beautiful Life" by Emily Henry

Thanks so much to Berkley and NetGalley for the complimentary advance copy!

First things first: if you’re expecting that Emily Henry’s newest book will be another fun and emotional rom-com, similar to her previous books, stop. While there are some similarities, in some ways, this book is very different than her others. (You’ll have to judge whether that’s good or bad.)

Alice is a writer, and she’s very happy with the career she’s been carving out for herself. Sure, it would be nice to land a “serious” gig that might finally impress her family, but she tries not to let them bother her. And when she scores a meeting with Margaret Ives, an octogenarian who was part of one of the most famous (and scandalous) families, she’s thrilled she might get the chance to write her biography.

When Alice travels to the island where Margaret has been living since disappearing from the public eye, she can’t wait to meet her. There’s a catch: Hayden, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, is also meeting with Margaret. How will Alice compete with him?

Margaret makes them a deal. Both will spend a month on the island working with her, and will give her a draft of their version of the biography. She’ll then pick who gets the job. Of course, Alice and Hayden couldn’t be more different—she’s a smiley optimist and he’s an intense grouch, not to mention he’s a household name and she’s not. And the more times they run into one another, the more their competitiveness turns to passion.

I loved the chemistry and banter between the two. But the book switches focus to Margaret’s life, which crowds out the love story. There’s even a bit of a mystery involved. It was just too many disparate pieces shoehorned together. I’m sure I’ll be an outlier here, but I definitely didn’t enjoy this as much as I hoped to.

Movie Review: "Jackie"

To me, Jackie Kennedy has always seemed like a total enigma. Although she approached her role as first lady with tremendous poise, grace, and style, quite often it appeared as if she wished she could have been anywhere else. And while I wasn't alive during the Kennedy administration, I always admired the fierceness with which she protected her privacy despite still being such an iconic figure, as well as her devotion to her children.

Pablo Larraín's film mainly concentrates on Jackie's life in the moments, days, and weeks after her husband's assassination, one of the most traumatic events the American public had experienced in some time. It also looks back on certain instances in which she demonstrated the flair, the youthful interest in culture, the elegance which endeared her to the public.

The majority of the movie has Jackie (Natalie Portman, practically disappearing into her character) talking to a journalist (Billy Crudup) about what she thinks her husband's legacy should be, and what life was like for her prior to, during, and after the assassination. Of course, she's not going to let him actually publish most of what she says, but the interview is a perfect opportunity to share her frustrations, her fears, what she perceives to be her lack of purpose, and most of all, her grief.

Immediately following the assassination, Jackie had to deal not only with her grief, but how to appropriately embody that to the American people. She was determined that her husband's funeral and burial should be appropriate for a world leader, especially one with his stature, despite his family's reticence and the desire of the new president to control the situation. (Those not alive during this time might not realize that for a while, no one was completely sure whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or if Kennedy's assassination was part of a larger plot which could endanger the country.)

Jackie was a whirlwind of emotions and demands, much to the chagrin of Bobby Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard), who has appointed himself her protector. He, too, is concerned about his brother's legacy, but isn't sure the spectacle Jackie wants is right for the country. But as she struggles with her faith, her feelings about her husband and their marriage, and her crushing grief, she is more concerned with doing what is right, what will make people remember her husband and his presidency into the future.

While the movie itself moves at a very slow pace, Portman is utterly mesmerizing. She has Kennedy's breathy, patrician speech patterns down pat, and many times when I saw her on screen I didn't think I was looking at an actress portraying Jackie Kennedy, I thought I was looking at Kennedy herself. This is truly a tour de force performance, one I thought was even stronger than her Oscar-winning performance in Black Swan. It could even net her a second Oscar.

Amazingly, although this movie has a large cast, it often seems like a one-woman show, because the focus is mainly on Jackie. I'm a Sarsgaard fan but didn't think he brought anything special to his portrayal of RFK, and while Greta Gerwig does a sympathetic turn as White House Social Secretary Nancy Tuckerman, and John Hurt brings some crusty charm as Jackie's priest, this is Portman's movie.

I don't know how close to the truth this movie adheres, but it was a fascinating look at such a turbulent time in American history, and how passionate Jackie Kennedy was about preserving her husband's legacy. Living in the Washington, DC area, it is a legacy that is still very much a part of this city, so we can be grateful for all she fought for.

Book Review: "The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation" by Melissa Rivers

The comedy world lost a real treasure when Joan Rivers died last fall. One of the hardest working women in show business, Rivers was unapologetically her own person, telling it like it is, but rarely with malicious intentions. She often said what everyone was thinking but would never say, and there were many instances where she was the only one who could get away with saying certain things about certain people.

I had been a fan of Rivers' since the 1970s, when I used to watch her on The Tonight Show, and I listened to her comedy albums, watched her television specials and her talk show, and even loved catching her on QVC hawking her products. And of course, nothing beat watching her and Melissa on the red carpet at awards shows.

Through all of her appearances and all of her insults, one thing about Rivers was ultimately clear: she loved her daughter Melissa more than anything, and their relationship was something she truly treasured. And the feeling was definitely mutual, as Melissa makes clear in her book, The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation. This is a collection of essays that look at Joan's childhood, what motivated her to succeed, her habits, foibles, fears, and pet peeves, and especially her interactions with Melissa and her grandson, Cooper.

This is a sweet, funny book that provides some interesting insight into Rivers' persona outside the spotlight, and it chronicles a mother-daughter bond that was truly special. I laughed from time to time (and tried not to do it out loud on the plane) and unsurprisingly, I even got choked up a little bit. It's a tremendously engaging book, but I wish that Melissa didn't try to be as funny as her mother throughout the book, as sometimes her jokes undercut the stories she was trying to tell. (She even provided her own rimshots occasionally.)

If you were a fan of Joan Rivers, or of the pairing of Joan and Melissa, or you just enjoy reading stories about mothers and daughters, you may very well enjoy The Book of Joan. It made me miss Joan all over again, and I'm grateful to Melissa for sharing her mother with us for so long.

Movie Review: "Selma"

Around the holidays, there is always at least one or two movies released which are either chronicles of an event or a time in history, or biographies of a notable historical figure or celebrity. And this year is no exception—the last month or so has seen the release of The Theory of Everything (about Stephen and Jane Hawking), The Imitation Game (about Alan Turing), and Ava DuVernay's fantastic Selma.

But while some commercials for Selma promote it as the story of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in actuality, the movie takes place over a short period of time in 1965. President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) has recently signed the Civil Rights Act into law, but many southern states in particular seem to be virtually ignoring it. In Alabama, for example, while African-Americans technically have the right to vote, white court clerks humiliate them and subject them to unfair harassment and testing that disqualifies them every time.

It's come to the point where King (David Oyelowo) and his colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have had enough. King asks Johnson for his help in ensuring that blacks have the right to vote by passing a Voting Rights Act, but Johnson isn't ready to do so—despite winning re-election in a landslide he feels an obligation to the leaders in many southern states who helped him win, and who don't support Johnson's movement toward equality. Johnson asks for time; King no longer has the patience to wait, especially as more violence is being perpetrated on blacks who simply want the rights they are entitled to.

Everything comes to a head in Selma, Alabama, as King and his colleagues plan a non-violent march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery, where they hope to meet with Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth), despite his outspoken prejudice. The first attempt to march is met with violence on the part of local and state police (all white, of course) and racist citizens, and this violence is broadcast nationwide by the media, so many people from all walks of life are motivated to come to Selma and join the march. King must decide whether to lead his supporters back into an environment which could be fraught with serious danger, while Johnson must decide whether to let events transpire as they are without his involvement, or if he should go against Wallace's wishes.

While I knew what the outcome of the march on Selma was, I didn't honestly know much more than that, so I found this movie suspenseful as well as mind-blowingly good. Some have pointed out some of the film's historical inaccuracies (for example, ignoring the role that the Rev. Ralph Abernathy played), but I don't feel this lessened the film's power in any way. This is a movie that is all too appropriate given recent events in Ferguson and New York, as well as the fight for marriage equality across the country, and it's frightening how prescient some of the dialogue is, much as it was in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln a few years back.

David Oyelowo, who impressed me last year with his role as Forest Whitaker's equality-crusading son in Lee Daniels' The Butler, absolutely took my breath away with his performance in this movie. He looks like King, has King's cadence, and his replicating some of King's most famous speeches and sermons gave me the chills. But alongside the big moments, Oyelowo shines in so many smaller moments in the movie as well. Selma doesn't paint King as flawless—it shows that this spiritual leader had his own struggles—and that is what makes Oyelowo's performance even richer. I knew just a few minutes into the movie, after his first speech, that this would be a career-making performance, and it is utterly Oscar-worthy.

Wilkinson does a terrific job with his portrayal of Johnson, as he straddles the line between what he knows he needs to do to ensure his legacy versus what he wants to do for political expediency, and he also depicts the struggle of a man in the midst of, as he puts it, "101 problems" coming at the same time. The supporting performances—including Roth, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King (she is a dead ringer for the woman she portrays), Stephan James as John Lewis (now a U.S. Congressman), Wendell Pierce as Rev. Hosea Williams, Colman Domingo as Abernathy, and Lorraine Toussaint as Amelia Boynton—more than hold their own against Oyelowo and Wilkinson. In my opinion, only Oprah Winfrey, in a small role, seemed out of place and felt more like acting than embodying a character.

Even if you know little to nothing about the civil rights movement, Selma is a movie to watch and to savor. Ava DuVernay films some scenes with the tension of an action movie, and not a moment feels forced or wrong-footed. You watch events unfold as the characters do and are moved by them. Definitely one of the best 2014 films I've seen.

Movie Review: "The Imitation Game"

Alan Turing was one of the most brilliant minds of the last century. Yet because of the work he did, and the circumstances of his death, very few people know of him and what he accomplished. Hopefully, thanks to The Imitation Game, people may better understand the history-making contributions he made to our world.

At the start of World War II, Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), an instructor at Kings College Cambridge and a published mathematician, goes to a job interview conducted by the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School. A military operation is searching for a way to break the German army's Enigma code so messages can be intercepted and the Nazis can be defeated. But this isn't a simple code—it changes every day at midnight, and there are millions and millions of possible permutations to consider.

Turing's confidence in his own intelligence, combined his with utter social awkwardness and obliviousness, quickly irritates the military commander (Charles Dance) who still reluctantly hires him, and then completely alienates him from the team of men with whom he is to work. And when the team leader (Matthew Goode) refuses to let Turing build the "super machine" he thinks could break the code, Turing takes matters into his own creative hands, and quickly gets control of the group, although he further raises the ire of the commander.

An effort to recruit additional people for the operation introduces Turing to Joan Clarke (a plucky Keira Knightley), a highly intelligent woman who wants a career far beyond those women were allowed in the 1940s. Joan is the perfect intellectual complement to Turing, a sounding board for his ideas and someone who tries to help him negotiate the more human side of his work. But while Turing truly enjoys Joan's companionship, he harbors a major secret of his own—he is gay—and the disclosure of this secret could land him in prison.

The Imitation Game follows Turing and his team as they race against time—and the powerful Nazis wreaking destruction across the world—to try and break the code. Turing must overcome those who doubt his abilities and the power of the machine he has built, he must battle the commander bent on firing him and labeling him a spy, and he must figure out a way to make sense of his life as it is unfolding. It is a heavy load for anyone to bear, especially someone who has always felt on the outside looking in.

I have always been a huge fan of Benedict Cumberbatch. His eyes are tremendously expressive, and his performances always combine steely strength with emotional vulnerability. (See his marvelous work in both Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Star Trek Into Darkness and you'll see what I mean.) But Cumberbatch is an absolute revelation as Alan Turing. Confident in his intellect yet insecure in what he is trying to accomplish, conflicted about the aftereffects of his work, and emotionally fragile, his Turing is so complex, admirable yet awkward, irascible yet sympathetic. While Cumberbatch's performance isn't as showy as Eddie Redmayne's in The Theory of Everything and isn't a comeback like Michael Keaton's in Birdman, it is his performance that affected me most profoundly. He already has received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and I expect to see him nominated for an Oscar next month, deservedly so.

Knightley brings some of her trademark toughness to her role yet she imbues Joan with tremendous sensitivity and even a little vulnerability. She more than holds her own in her scenes with Cumberbatch, in particular the scene when he admits to her that he is gay. She, too, has been nominated for both Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, and also is deserving of an Oscar nomination for her performance. The members of Turing's team—Goode, Allen Leech, and Matthew Beard, in particular—each have strong moments, as does Mark Strong as Turing's MI6 defender.

If I have any criticism about this movie it's the way it's structured. The movie shifts between 1951, when a robbery at Turing's home leads a police detective to suspect that the man is hiding something, to Turing's work during the war. It also periodically moves to the late 1920s, when he was a young man at boarding school and first let his emotional guard down. While I understand the need to tell all three parts of this story, the shifts back and forth were a little jarring, and at the end, what I really wanted to see was how they broke the Enigma code.

The Imitation Game is well done but I found it a bit difficult and painful to watch. But in the end, I hope that people realize what an incredible genius Alan Turing was, and realize that some of the greatest minds our world has seen aren't always the ones we expect, and are far from perfect.

Movie Review: "The Theory of Everything"

Science is definitely one of my weaker subjects, so I'll admit going into The Theory of Everything I didn't know much about Stephen Hawking, although his book A Brief History of Time was a fixture on the best-seller list in the late 1980s when I managed a bookstore during college. And while the film gave me more perspective on Hawking than I had, what it gave me more than anything was a tremendous admiration for his courage and determination as well as his spectacular intellect.

Hawking (a masterful Eddie Redmayne) was a doctoral student at Cambridge in the early 1960s, an absolutely brilliant mind yet utterly unsure on what to focus his PhD studies. At a party he meets Jane (Like Crazy's Felicity Jones), a feisty poetry student who is intrigued by him but not quite certain if she can handle his intelligence and unorthodox views. But as the two begin falling in love, tragedy hits—Stephen is struck with a motor neuron disease similar to ALS, and is given two years to live.

A lesser woman would have taken the opportunity to leave Stephen, and a lesser man would have allowed himself to wallow in self-pity until his body betrayed him. But as the movie (which is based on Jane's memoir) proves, neither Stephen nor Jane are lesser people. The movie tracks Stephen's rapid physical decline, juxtaposed against his brilliant scientific discoveries. It also chronicles Stephen and Jane's relationship, both the highs and the lows, as well as the challenges that his condition caused their marriage.

In movies such as My Week with Marilyn and Les Miserables, Redmayne proved himself to be an actor of diverse range and a strong presence. But nothing I've seen him in prepared me for his utter transformation into Stephen Hawking. At the start of the movie, he is a floppy-haired, clumsy, almost impish presence, with Austin Powers-esque glasses and a mouth that moves as fast as his mind. And as the disease takes its toll, Redmayne metamorphosizes physically, drawing his body into itself, but his face, while often frozen into grimaces, never loses its expressive ability. This is a performance on par with Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot. (Seriously, he's that good.)

And if Redmayne's Stephen is the physical center of the movie, Jones' Jane is the emotional center, and her performance is no less brilliant. I've been a fan since first seeing her in Like Crazy in 2011 (here's my review of that one), but she is truly impressive here, playing the sometimes-idealistic, sometimes-vulnerable woman who clearly served as a catalyst for Stephen Hawking's bravery. One scene early in the movie, when she watches Stephen struggling shortly after being diagnosed, shows the range of emotions she is going through without resorting to a single stint of histrionics. I had goosebumps.

The other performances in the film are equally worthy of standing alongside Redmayne and Jones, particularly Charlie Cox as Jonathan Hellyer Jones, the church choir director who becomes a companion to the Hawkings', and David Thewlis, as Stephen's mentor and professor. While the movie doesn't expect you to understand the science Stephen was so passionate about, it does give you numerous glimpses of his trademark flashes of humor, which again, make Redmayne's performance so nuanced.

To use a British-ism, I thought this movie was really lovely. But in the end, it is worth seeing mainly for the breathtaking performances. Redmayne is so clearly deserving of an Oscar for this role, and I hope that Jones' name will be among the Best Actress nominees this year as well. This is a love story, a story of triumph, and most importantly, the story of perseverance, and I am glad I had the chance to experience it.

Book Review: "Bruce" by Peter Ames Carlin

When you grow up in central New Jersey, particularly one town away from Freehold as I did, Bruce Springsteen is almost a religion. I had the same Spanish teacher he had in high school, knew all of his songs by heart, danced to Jersey Girl at more sweet 16 parties than I could count, saw concerts on countless tours, and at least once made the "Bruce pilgrimage," stopping by many of the places along his historic rise to legend status.

More than 25 years after moving away from New Jersey, "The Boss" is still a cultural touchstone for me, even though my accent changed a long time ago. Yet my perceptions of Bruce have always been the ones culture presented us—the outspoken political crusader, the fierce protector of his home state, the self-appointed spokesperson for those down on their luck or without luck at all, the muscle-bound troubadour, the brooding and sensitive poet of his generation. Which is why, although I don't traditionally read biographies, I chose to read Peter Ames Carlin's meticulously researched Bruce.

As you'd imagine, a book written with Springsteen's authorization—and complete access to everyone involved with his life, music, and career from the start—paints a fairly well-rounded picture of both the artist and the man. There's much I already knew about the starts and stops along the way of his musical journey, and anyone as obsessed with pop culture as I am certainly followed the stories of his personal life—his marriage to Julianne Phillips, their divorce and his subsequent relationship, marriage, and life with Patti Scialfa.

But while Carlin definitely spotlights the Springsteen you think you know, and certainly includes recollections and endorsements from many in his career that have been acolytes and advocates from the start, he is careful not to paint Springsteen as a saint, but rather a flawed, mercurial, sometimes-cocky-sometimes-insecure man torn between just wanting to make music for his fans and feeling compelled to serve a different purpose. I wasn't aware of his tumultuous relationships with the members of the E Street Band through the years, or the legal troubles he dealt with as his star began to rise, and the personal and psychological demons he's fought throughout his life. And the more I learned and read, the more I understood the passion and inspirations behind his music, which, of course, has led me to listen to it more and more.

This is a long book, and sometimes it moved a little slowly for me. While some insight into Springsteen's ancestry provided depth and insight, I could have done with a little bit less on the generations that preceded him. And given all of the footnotes and all of the names that come through Springsteen's life, sometimes it was difficult to remember who was whom, where they fit in, and why they mattered. But undoubtedly, while Carlin is an admirer of Springsteen the artist and Springsteen the man, he was able to write a more objective account of both than anything I've seen, and write it well.

If you've ever wondered about the man behind the legend, or how he got to where he is, Bruce is the book for you. And even if you're not a huge fan, it's still tremendously interesting and insightful.