no overarching, coherent theme for the reading and watching this month, but did come across some great stuff (and i’m almost done with a book that is practically certain to be a new favorite, but that’s technically june news, so wait and see!)

n.k. jemisin continues to be incredible and I Love Boosters rules. long live boots riley!

BOOKS

The Fifth Season (2015), N. K. Jemisin

It took me a bit to settle into this one, but by the end I was all-in. Lots of really fun, fascinating, cool stuff going on here narratively and thematically and with the world-building. Jemisin is an all-timer! not an immediate favorite of my heart the same way that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was, but still, well worth my time and i’ll eagerly read the rest of the trilogy.

Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of the Unknowing (2026), James K. A. Smith

an interesting book! in part because of the introspection that it prompted and the thinking about how i find the sort of unknowing that smith describes here (and then wondering if i ever have or if all the experiences that i may have previously classified that way are actually better understood as something else)

particularly of note here, i think, is the way that smith links mysticism and the avant-garde and sees them as serving the same purpose, experientially, for him. perhaps because the sort of meditative, solitude, mysticism that smith is drawing on is foreign to me and in many ways inaccessible given how i choose to structure my life, and perhaps because i don’t share smith’s affective response to avant-garde art, especially painting (which may be due to largely encountering these paintings as photo reproductions and not in their original, more obviously material form), the whole experiential underpinnings of smith’s argument just aren’t there for me. this mostly just made reading the book a fascinating sorta anthropological experience of trying to understand someone seemingly much like myself but also quite different (and in so doing perhaps understand myself better)

Funny Story (2024), Emily Henry

a pretty straight-up romance doing all the classic romance things and executed very well. funny! insightful! moving moments!

also just really artfully crafted in terms of set-up and all that to accomplish what it sets out to do. well done emily henry.

The Determined (2026), Rachel Rueckert

thrilled to finally sit down and read this! rachel’s great, i’ve loved anne bonny and mary read as long as i can remember, so very excited for it. and it’s good! rachel weaves together the story in a compelling way, using the structure and time to draw attention to different elements of the story and themes in ways that heighten the reading experience and help really dramatize some of what is at stake for these women and for us encountering their stories anew here

touches on lots of fascinating and complex and powerful ideas and ways of being a woman in the world. yo ho yo ho a pirate’s life for me!

The Obelisk Gate (2016), N. K. Jemisin

stronger than the first installment, i think. lots of really great, moving, jaw-dropping stuff here. builds on the fifth season in all the best ways a second installment should. loved it.

A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026), Michael Pollan

really interesting stuff here! love the way that pollan basically uses the book to mostly undo his sense of what consciousness is, even while digging deeper and deeper into it (and even if the conclusion still reaches somewhat for something to offer in terms of resolution). also just what a wild ride through the strangeness of the world and whatever consciousness may be! particularly loved the first chapter on sentience and what pollan does with plants (and, probably unsurprisingly, his work with feelings in the second chapter and the discussion of feeling vs thought, and all the humanistic elements in that discussion).

one of the things i have found very interesting in pollan’s more recent work (say the last 5-10 years?) is what i see as religious or spiritual impulses or implications around a lot of what he does, but his lack of interest (or willingness?) to really pursue those directions. just interesting to me (given my own abiding interest in religious/spiritual questions and frameworks for speaking to our current moment

The Navigating Fox (2023), Christopher Rowe

Fun! Lots of really cool worldbuilding and interesting ideas at play and sufficiently compelling action, but the ending is a bit underwhelming and the emotional/thematic mystery that becomes prioritized in the ending is not the strength of the novella.

But, if I were a kid and had read this, i’d absolutely be playing games inspired by the world and lore of this book! really incredible work sketching out the world and suggesting there’s more beyond what’s being described without ever feeling bogged down in it.

Yesteryear (2026), Caro Claire Burke

so much to say about this. definitely a page-turner, keeps you engaged and interested throughout, tackling some necessary and relevant themes and topics for our present moment. a little over half-way through i started to suspect i was going to be dissatisfied and frustrated with the conclusion and i was right! partially for structural reasons—i think the way the mystery and twist/reveal is handled requires the book to to break some of its own rules, denying its characters their own agency/perspectives AND i think it cheapens the whole conversation the book is tackling, raising way more questions than it even considers really addressing.

i think the narrator is so close to a really complex, fascinating, compelling insight into the influencer/tradwife/conservative-religious-woman world, but the choices for the conclusion of the book undermine so much of the potential that was present before, insisting on the least interesting, least generous reading of the character, and that bums me out!

the last third of the book also just has so much going on that i think should have been front-loaded, then tease out the rest of everything, and really delve into the complexities implied by the wildness of that back third. but alas.

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FILMS AND TELEVISION

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

love the gentleness of this as it grapples with big feelings and the way the strange magical elements are just woven throughout and not explained (either explained away or given like a world-building lore background—they just are!)

movie night with the fam

Lion (2016)

dev is so good, even in this full-length feature film advertisement for google earth

(i like it! it’s moving and good and interesting and sia’s end-credits song is catchy as hell)

Sound of Metal (2019)

finally convinced cec to watch this with me and it holds up. riz ahmed is incredible. just a fantastic performer that deserves way more credit and attention. love him here.

and this whole film is just beautifully crafted and artfully, intentionally put together to really help you experience and be with ruben in the midst of this event that he experiences as a chaotic disruption to his life. also love how everyone we meet feels like a real, fleshed out person, even if we only get little glimpses of them.

still just an incredible movie. so so so good

and that final sequence? chef’s kiss

Ratatouille (2007)

gotta know which ideas came first for this—a rat that loves to cook? a bastard child of a chef who is actually terrible at cooking? the french rat culture of eating garbage but playing jazz? a rat that turns a human into a puppet by pulling their hair?

a great time

movie night with the fam

Ramy Youssef: In Love (2026)

ramy’s so good. also loved the fun, film stock stylistic flourishes/imperfections here

Serpico (1973)

gotta love a man with a code tortured by his adherence to it given the corrupt world he finds himself in

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

the scene where moses and ramses talk right before the destroying angel goes around is sooo devastating

ramses saying to moses “but then again, you were always there to get me out of [trouble] again” with the hint of a smile?

ramses’ son being afraid of the dark and standing with the torch so only the mouth of the crocodile in the mural behind him is visible?

the light showing more and more of the mural until the final shot after ramses’ declaration of there being a great cry in all of egypt showing everything cementing the parallel and foreshadowing the death that is coming?!?

incredible economic thematically unified storytelling

the way you can see the warmth and love between them almost come back to the surface with this whole possibility of a different resolution to the story and then we watch ramses harden and turn away from that possibility but for tragically believable and almost commendable reasons (mixed with pride/evil/etc) is just some of the best the movie has to offer

this movie’s so good

Troy (2004)

this is, uh, not good

certainly suffers by comparison to my recent re-read of SONG OF ACHILLES and also re-watching THE PRINCE OF EGYPT in the midst of working our way through its 3-hr runtime.

watched the director’s cut, which is maybe worse than the theatrical? i don’t know--hard to remember it exactly from that newborn late night/early morning haze when i watched it the first time. they take out josh groban’s end-credits song! a tragedy for the 2004-ness of it all

brad pitt manages to make achilles EASILY the least interesting person in the story, which is truly a feat

and then the screenwriters and director and most of the actors all conspire together to really render this as boring and unemotional as possible

with the exception of eric bana, who is doing pretty good work here

Finding Nemo (2003)

lots of delightful world building/random story touches—hippie turtles, sharks in recovery, fish that know about dentistry, etc

movie night with the fam

Chef (2014)

jon favreau wish fulfillment that is also incredibly 2014

I Love Boosters (2026)

HELL YEAH

this is the janky, bonkers, vibrant, stuffed-to-the-gills, radical kind of movie that i want from boots riley.

the music throughout is on point. the movie is in many ways aggressively obvious with its themes and takeaways, but does so with such style and aplomb and heart that it works (clearer articulation of marxist riffing on hegel than i’ve heard in any of the critical theory classes i took in grad school). AND importantly, the movie has so much else going on that is not explained and that sits alongside the other stuff that you can’t simply reduce it to that radical political message

the practical effects and miniatures here are delightful, just a riot—the whole third act is amazing. just went for it in similar fashion to sorry to bother you and i am here for it!

performances are great—love lakeith in his supporting role, keke palmer is so good, eiza gonzalez is great, and everybody is really just a delight to watch and be around

could be a fun, disorienting double-feature with the devil wears prada or a rich pairing with the underseen blindspotting, which also is about oakland and gentrification with music and musicality being central to what the film does, but is otherwise quite different

White Collar, Season 4 (2012-13)

after a long hiatus we finally returned to watching White Collar and it’s still great. i think this is probably the weakest season so far—the overall arc of the season is just not as engaging as previous and doesn’t fully engage the strength of the show—peter and neil’s relationship. but still fun heist-y/con shenanigans

Robin Hood (1973)

still perfect. love it and love that the kids love it

movie night with the fam

a somewhat random smattering of things gathered together here today—but happened to get quite a bit of poetry in there not totally on purpose, which is a delightful serendipity. read two top-notch, new favorites—City of Brick and Shadow and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi.

currently trying to decide if i want to try and loosely theme my may reading or just follow my heart, so i guess we’ll have to see in a month where i ended up! two new releases, a book and a film coming in may, that i am EAGERLY anticipating—Paige Lewis’ Canon and Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, so look forward to hearing if they live up to the hype that me and like three other people have for them haha

BOOKS

Picturing Christ: Understanding Depictions of Jesus in History and Art (2026), Daniel Becerra, Jennifer Champoux, Mark D. Ellison, Matthew J. Grey

A quick read that pairs scholarly rigor and devotional approaches—a lovely example of what disciple-scholars can do.

reviewed for AML

This Will Be Fun (2024), E.B. Asher

this book is certainly fun! some the princess bride energy with a queer twist. even manages to be somewhat moving in the midst of all the playful, fun, cozy rom-quest stuff going on. it’s a little on the tell-y side (prose-wise) and some of the tech/magic of the world-building was a little eye-rolly to me, but the characters are fun, and it’s got just a nice, light, playful vibe all the way through rooted in some more complicated human emotions. will definitely read the sequel

City of Brick and Shadow (2014), Tim Wirkus (given name currently stylized as T.I.M.)

oh man, i can’t believe i waited this long to read this! i heard Wirkus do a reading either from this book or a short story around the time of its release, back at BYU (unless my memory is deceiving me!), and was intrigued then, but just never got around to it until now and wow, what a blast! twisty! noir! missionaries behaving shockingly like missionaries might behave! mystery! fascinating questions and ideas of faith woven into the nature of the mystery and the plotting of the book and its resolution(s). i’ll be thinking about this one for a long time. loved it.

Sacred Scar: Poems (2026), Scott Hales

The ecumenical and deeply personal nature of Scott’s poems here is the true strength of collection. The poems are always grounded in some emotional truth/kernel that matters to Scott, in a way that you can feel. the poems pull from all sorts of sources—christian history, family history, scott’s life, and more—and use each of these sources to demonstrate the idiosyncratic influences at work on scott’s spiritual life, offering a glimpse of how he pursues spiritual truth through his poetry. and the result is lovely.

reviewed for AML

Brighter and Brighter Until the Perfect Day (2025), Sharlee Mullins Glenn

may we see more and more wondering and imagining that pushes even further than glenn does here to new horizons for mormon thinking! love to see someone so willing to wonder and imagine and hope we can get more of that and that those that love glenn’s work can give it the close attention and care that it deserves.

i can’t help but feel that an epic poem needs to be longer! bigger! push glenn’s insights and wonderings to even further extremes! perhaps our day and age needs just a tease of an epic, the speculative prelude to what could be, but i wanted more! (and maybe this is also tied to me being a weirdo that has spent lots of time speculating in some of the same directions as glenn that i wanted to really see glenn take those initial impulses and run with them further—the arc of the poem here felt like setting the stage, getting all these interesting pieces in place and then ending rather than letting them play out more completely)

Loved Ones: Poems (2026), Kevin Klein

really enjoyed these lovely poems by kevin! a fantastic slice of latter-day saint life and spiritual imagination.

reviewed for AML

Vigil (2026), George Saunders

still chewing on this one. it’s interesting for sure and worth digging into. would love to read and discuss with a group, fruitful stuff here for discussions and analyses.

didn’t quite LOVE it, but worth a read.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (2023), Shannon Chakraborty

this on the other hand i ADORED. just a delight from start to finish. loved loved loved it. retired-pirate captain who is also a muslim and a mom forced to come out of retirement for one last job to save her family engaging in some john wick style shenanigans and a somewhat hidden magical world? SIGN ME UP.

really love the way that the magic feels fully integrated in and organic to the world that Chakraborty builds here and particularly the way that religion is nested within that broader sense of magic, with religious folklore and characters’ religiosity, including religious practices, embedded in how they act and make choices, without overwhelming the main action of the plot. so many great sequences and interactions.

there’s a few moments that feel a bit out-of-time-present-day-y, but for the most part, i was in the world and loving it. opens itself up at the end for more adventures (the sequel is coming out later this year!) and i will eagerly pick it up, but it ends with sufficient resolution that you could stop here if for some reason you don’t want to continue sailing the indian ocean with our beloved muslim pirate captain

Circe (2018), Madeline Miller

interesting to read alongside/just after The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi and in fairly close proximity to The Song of Achilles. this one spoke to me less than those two, but is still lovely and melancholy and haunted and interesting in how it touches myth, history, etc. definitely worthwhile.

Light in the Canyon (2026), Darren Cools

got an ARC of this and was very excited when the pitch compared it to A Wrinkle in Time (which i recently reread and found a new deep love for), so perhaps i was doomed by impossible/idiosyncratic expectations, but i’m getting a bit ahead of myself. i liked the book! it’s decent and doing some interesting things, with some compelling religious/spiritual stuff baked in. it feels a little constructed/artificial/convenient in how everyone ends up being connected to each other and the big emotional climax fell flat for me (partially because i wasn’t quite sure what the big/main concern was going into it and partially because of a cliffhanger-y structural choice that i found very annoying.

ALSO there’s stuff going on with gender and maybe i just have heightened sensitivity to that conversation and kept waiting for some polarized take to jump out, but the way the book deals with gender is strange and muddy—perhaps because it defies clear bounds of the current political discourse or because it isn’t fully integrated/thought through.

Joseph: An Epic (2025), Zachary Hutchins

i was equally intrigued and skeptical of this book when i first heard about it, but was finally pushed over the edge to read it and took it all in over a couple of hours in an afternoon. it took me a bit to settle into the rhythm of the book (maybe the first 30min of those 2hrs) but once i did, i really dug what hutchins was doing here. lots of fascinating thinking about joseph’s place in american history and what sorts of religious ideas and experiences are allowed to be taken seriously there, as well as some provocative interrogations of gender and how that has played out throughout the history of mormonism.

i especially loved the more explicitly speculative, imaginative, bits—particularly the whole court of devils and all the things going on there and also the recreation of the lost 116 pages.

hutchins says in the prefatory material that he chose to end the poem where he did partially to enact for the reader the sense that joseph’s life was cut-short and all of that, which i think is a partial accounting for my experience with the poem. but i still think that epics need to be LONGER. maybe in part here because i am quite curious what hutchins would do with nauvoo and polygamy and all the stuff going on there!

all to say, glad i read it—lots to think about

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FILMS AND TELEVISION

Pete Holmes: Silly Silly Fun Boy (2026)

another comedy special forcing me to confront that i don’t really know how to evaluate them! i laughed!

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

incredible

really hit hard emotionally by the tragedy of ramses this watch—came to believe that he couldn’t be loved or wouldn’t matter unless he was Powerful and Strong and then was so stubborn and prideful and hated being told what he had to do and bewildered by the change in moses that he doubled-down again and again until he lost everything

and moses! the burden of prophecy! of being turned against your brother and your former people by god to liberate your people by blood! devastating. moving.

AND it tells all that with breathtaking animation and top tier songwriting and manages to have an incredible tonal balancing act (so bittersweet!) and thematic richness and nuance without toning down or softening the story

a masterpiece

movie night with the fam

The Aeronauts (2019)

decent performances from our two leads, but structurally this film is weird! and the arc of the plot has peak tension way too early and then has a funky episodic quality that makes it feel much longer than it should and then also its relationship to history is just bizarre (and maybe offensive?)

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)

cece insisted that this was something that needed to be seen to have a true understanding of mid-/late-aughts teen girl sleepover culture. and it is undoubtedly a fascinating cultural artifact! what a soundtrack!

Dogma (1999)

okay, this is like one-half to two-thirds a movie made for me and then one-third to one-half a movie decidedly not made for me. but the sheer, this is clearly the result of someone just going all in on their ideas of it all is pretty infectious, even when it’s the sorta stoner-sex-comedy stuff that i am just utterly disinterested in

but super fun to see lil’ matt and ben with some good omens energy and all the bonkers theology stuff is certainly my jam

had hoped this would become a new all-timer for me, but it’s not quite the right cocktail for that. but certainly glad to have finally seen it. a wild wild ride. and a top tier cinematic depiction of god.

The Swan Princess (1994)

“you lost your queen…”
“that’s twice in one day!”

movie night with the fam

Apollo 13 (1995)

very very very sleepily watched this, but it’s pretty good, even sleepily watched!

The Pitt, Season 2 (2026)

this show is so good. it takes its structural constraints/premise (real-ish time coverage of a single shift, each episode one hour for the characters and a little under an hour runtime) and then uses that to the fullest to explore what it is interested in thematically. great performances, fantastic a-plot/b-plot pairings, periodically pointed social commentary that still feels pretty organic to the world of the show. so good.

The Incredibles (2004)

top tier superhero film right here. really excels at weaving the humanity of the characters into their super-ness and using their powers and such to dramatize and explore those human struggles at a bigger scale, always keeping the stakes grounded in real human emotions and relationships.

incredible.

movie night with the fam

Invictus (2009)

this is good! a somewhat interesting genre fusion of political drama and sports movie (more of a political drama structurally) that uses the two things to good effect. matt damon’s accent is strange, but not overly distracting. should be a decent way to introduce the kids to south african politics/history down the road

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

aside from the tragic mis-/under-used Tess, this is pure heist movie shenanigans at the top of their form. a great time.

concluded my jesus novels project—The Five Books of Jesus and Dayspring reign supreme—and cece and i wrapped up our movies linked by an actor journey from Miracle to The Farewell. it was fun to plot out possibilities, but ultimately i discovered that the serendipity of doing it by accident is much more pleasurable than intentionally plotting out the journey.

BOOKS

10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World: How Parents Can Stop Smartphones, Social Media, and Gaming from Taking Over Their Children’s Lives (2025), Jean M. Twenge

skimmed through this real quick on a sunday morning, since i am largely already sympathetic to twenge’s rules. no idea how persuasive this would be for someone on the fence, but it did identify some helpful things to be aware of and intentional about moving forward (particularly in the real world independence and parental controls sections)

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005), Anne Rice

honestly, this works shockingly well for 1) being a first-person POV novel in Jesus’s perspective, and 2) focusing on Jesus’ life as 7-year-old boy. there are some interesting things happening with the narrative of jesus and how rice conceptualizes him, but ultimately, this is not an all-timer for me. and probably not worth your while unless you are very curious about what a novelization of a year or so in jesus’ childhood told from his perspective would be like. i think it’s just immensely difficult to tell the story of jesus where he is centered without some of the stakes feeling off or overwrought or boring. also difficult to write a novel for an adult-ish audience in the perspective of a child.

perhaps the more interesting work here happens around the edges with how joseph and mary and jesus’ family is characterized. anyway. a good enough start to my jesus-novel reading month

The Last Temptation of Christ (1955), Nikos Kazantzakis

I’ve never been fully enamored with the Scorsese adaptation of this, though I find it quite interesting in some of its imaginings and implications, so was curious how the book would fare, and perhaps not surprisingly, much the same. i think scorsese really captures the emotional tenor of the book and it feels akin to some of his other work in a way that makes his attraction to it understandable.

the book is engaging and really presents a jesus that struggles, that seems to inhabit a spiritual world defined by a mighty, masculine, old-school struggle, where everything is difficult and warfare and you have to fight for anything good to come of life. this is the world of those muscled biblical heroes in classical art.

and incidentally is a world almost entirely foreign to my personal spiritual experience. which is not to say that my own spirituality is without tension or paradox or complication—just that the nature of those tensions is not of the same character as that experienced by jesus throughout the novel or seemingly by kazantzakis in his own spiritual life.

likely would have had a good time discussing this in a grad seminar-style book club as there’s no doubt lots of interesting stuff going on and i’d love to try and dig in a bit more to the prose and everything to sharpen my intuition about the struggle piece and how exactly it functions. but alas. i read it alone—so if you have also read it and want to help me (virtually) create a grad-seminar-style conversation about it, please do!

i think ultimately i want jesus stories (films and books) to help me understand why people followed him and this book is not really interested in that question (or if it is, it’s in a way that remains obscured and utterly baffling to me)

A Life of Jesus (1973), Shusaku Endo

Despite some unclear descriptions I have come across of this book, it is not a novelization of Jesus’ life! And therefore not really belonging in this project.

However, since it was short and I had borrowed it from the university library, I gave it a quick read anyway.

The book is generically a bit odd—primarily a summary of the most significant events in Jesus’ life, mixed with a recap of relevant scholarship complete with Endo’s commentary on all of it. It is fairly devotional in tone and approach, while academically informed. Endo’s novelist’s eye on the narrative(s) and scholarship and ideas of truth are interesting and sometimes provide new ways of understanding things.

Likely because of my mini-project, I wanted Endo to lean into his novelist side and just tell the story! But, alas, that was not to be. Though it was interesting to read this immediately after finishing The Last Temptation of Christ given the very different vibes surrounding their shared commitment to a Christ with a message of “love”.

Becoming the Writer You Already Are (2023), Michelle R. Boyd

A good, helpful book! Gave me some tools for thinking about my own writing process and figuring out how to better lean into the natural rhythms and strengths of that process and shore up against its weaknesses. Also offered some language and ideas for working with writers in an academic context that will be quite helpful professionally, I think.

The Five Books of Jesus (2012), James Goldberg

I have read this once before and really enjoyed it, but had forgotten so much of it! I love the way the book presents Jesus as a storyteller and weaves that thread of stories throughout the narrative and then explicitly in the final moments reflecting on the multiple canonical gospels of Jesus alongside all the countless stories that have been told about him since. I particularly like the way that James dramatizes and depicts Jesus’ storytelling as key to why people followed him (and the complex, varied, diverging responses to Jesus).

But the thing that I perhaps loved the most, and found the most moving, on this read is the way James handles Judas, and especially the relationship between Judas and Andrew. Judas, in James’ telling, is haunted by the violence of Rome as visited upon his sister, and his own inability to avenge it. Judas is a believer, certain of Jesus’ calling as the Messiah, and ultimately inpatient for the evil and injustice of Rome to be made right, unable to wait any longer to be freed of the weight of his perceived failure to protect or avenge his sister. And so, Judas betrays Jesus, believing that this will force God’s hand, that he can checkmate God into letting justice run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream, NOW.

As we all know, God does not let that happen. At least, not in the way Judas imagined and hoped for. And instead, Judas is left wracked with guilt once again, only this time it was not his inaction to be mourned, but his intentional actions. James imagines Andrew seeing Judas mourning, grieving at the cross and running, then learning from Peter that Judas betrayed their master and friend, Jesus. Peter is angry ready to right Judas off forever, but Andrew still feels kinship with Judas, knows that Judas must be hurting, insisting that Judas is his “friend”. As Peter and John and others race to the tomb, Andrew searches for Judas, desperately. But, as we can anticipate knowing the ending of the story, he is too late. He finds Judas’ body and holds him weeping before praying over him and burying him.

I wept reading James’ telling here. And I wept again writing a little email to James about it. And then I wept one more time as I talked about reading this and bore testimony in front of my congregation the next day of the power and beauty of imagination for our souls and charity for one another.

incredible book. and lucky for you, you can read it serialized online! and then you can buy a copy because you want to hold it in your hands and read it again.

Living Oracles: Law and the Latter-day Saint Tradition (2026), Nathan B. Oman

Nate Oman continues to demonstrate that he’s one of Mormonism’s best thinkers, taking seriously elements of Mormon history, teaching, and practice that no one else is engaging with and offering sensitive, careful close readings of those elements. this book is in many ways related to Nate’s two volumes with Greg Kofford books released in 2025 about Law and Latter-day Saint History and Theology. yet here, the focus is slightly different thinking about what Mormonism might have to say in light of some of the major areas of interest for the Law as a discipline (natural law, contracts, property, etc.) and then what legal approaches have actually been pursued by the Church as an institution looking at marriage, including same-sex marriage, religious liberty, and other areas.

the book, like all of nate’s work, is packed full of all sorts of fascinating tidbits and asides that could serve as fruitful jumping off points for further thinking and research. perhaps the most interesting and well-developed vein of these throughout the book is nate’s research and commentary about the church court system, which is illuminating for current discussions about church discipline and relationships between the church and outside legal authorities, as well as intra-community pressures and relationships.

reviewed for AML

The Liars’ Gospel (2012), Naomi Alderman

Torn on this one—but it’s definitely interesting, which is more than a lot of Jesus novels can say! The structure and shifting point of view allows it to do quite a bit thematically and to demonstrate its interest in the period as a time of revolution and empire and all the messiness that comes with that. It feels like its flavored a bit by the sorta grim-dark-era take on adapting stories for adults in a way that I ultimately find not that compelling—it’s not overwhelmingly that by any means, just seasoned a bit too heavily with it for my tastes.

Will definitely be mulling over some of the choices and ideas here though—and perhaps upon reflection it’ll climb the ranks of my heart! only time will tell.

Dayspring (2024), Anthony Oliveira

still incredible. all about devotion and love and the cost/experience of that, but specifically for jesus in a very queer way. tailor written for me, specifically haha

perhaps the best representation of why someone would love and devote themselves to jesus—like you just buy the bond between john the beloved (our narrator) and jesus.

this is also the funniest, most surprising jesus in any of the novelizations i’ve read, which, unsurprisingly, makes him my personal favorite

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FILM and TV

Fair Game (2010)

apparently i had watched this before, which i did not remember when i suggested it as the next link in cece and i’s movie chain. it’s pretty good! not as thriller-y as i’d like and a bit torn between genres and focuses in a way that ultimately hampers it, but not a bad time overall

link: noah emmerich

The Lion King (1994)

still so good

movie night with the fam

The Bride! (2026)

aw yeah! a bonkers, gonzo, wild ride of a movie. a bit unnerving and unsettling in its violence and its wild genre and tonal gyrations, but overall, love to see something so committed to what it is and uncompromising in that existence! just something you watch and know that it required these particular people to bring it into being.

bale and buckley are outstanding as the two leads and their chemistry and bond really serves to anchor the audience as you go on the roller-coaster the movie has to offer.

OH, also love love love that “bartelby, the scrivener” is such a big deal here. one of my favorite weirdo short stories. lots of interesting thematic potential to mine with that particular allusion, and the story’s ideas about agency and choice and resistance and how that can be layered onto the work of the film and its thinking about those same ideas, but in a gendered way that differs from the main manifestation in “bartleby”

may maggie gyllenhaal bless us with bonkers, gonzo, wild movies for a good long while

at the local non-profit indie cinema

The Count of Monte Cristo (2025)

there is something particularly satisfying about seeing the count’s revenge play out so slowly and methodically across the eight episodes that none of the film versions has really captured

and yet. there’s a bit of a emotional flatness to claflin’s dantes, which works against some of that satisfaction.

a solid, very book-ish feeling take that lacks the swashbuckling energy of the 2002 and 2024 films, but has its own delights in the score and scope of the threads pulled by the count and the sheer number of accents at work

was hoping this would be my new favorite definitive take on the story and it’s not that, but it’s certainly worth watching if you’re a fan of the story and its possibilities

A Bug’s Life (1998)

something particularly moving here in the way that the ants are only motivated to see and overthrow the oppressive grasshopper regime when things are dire and almost beyond hope

may our imagination and hope and will arrive before such dire straits are visited upon us if they aren’t already

movie night with the fam

The Pelican Brief (1993)

sleepily watched the second half and got interrupted by a feverish child about 20-30min from the end who sadly couldn’t settle down so didn’t finish

but was digging it up until then

oddly comforting to watch something where all the politicians are corrupt but need to go to great lengths to hide their corruption rather than openly flaunting it

link: sam shepherd

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

finally watched this. absolutely convinced me i have made the right career choices lol

link: stanley tucci

Call The Midwife, Season Seven (2018)

Ends with a bit of a downer (though it results in one of the few characters I don’t really find interesting at all finally leaving the show…), but there’s a lot of interesting, good, compelling stuff here and even mixed in with the heartbreak there’s one of the most beautiful, compelling scenes of the show’s fantastic modeling of a pluralistic religious community supporting each other (even across lines of belief and non-belief in God).

Gentlemen Broncos (2009)

the Hesses at their weirdest [complimentary]

Robin Hood (1973)

the sheriff is an embodiment of the ways that the institution of the police rots individual’s moral and artistic impulses, evidenced by the way he theatrically bursts in on the Rabbits’ birthday song and sings “phony king of england” to hiss. in this essay i will…

movie night with the fam

Ocean’s Eight (2018)

still aspiring to cate blanchett as lou’s aesthetic

link: anne hathaway

Project Hail Mary (2026)

THEMATIC/VAGUE SPOILERS BELOW

*********************************************************************************

had a blast. love ryan gosling. love sandra huller. love all the practical FX (rocky! puppets! sets!)

an especially great theater movie

it’s probably too long and the structure is kinda wonky (the emotional high point is like 2/3 through with an hour left and it kinda coasts after that? idk—basically too many endings!), and i’m torn on the timeline stuff (though leaning towards it being quite effective but maybe needing a bit more grappling with the final “past” reveal/twist?)

but even with all that, still got me moved to tears at the hail mary/sacrifice/love/friendship/hope of it all

AND gotta shoutout the sandra huller karaoke scene which is just absolutely incredible

so a great time at the movies

at the local non-profit cinema

The Farewell (2019)

very sleepily watched the second half, but that final scene and cut is just SO GOOD

link: awkwafina

my reading goals for the month were about LOVE stories, which i think the four books i finished all qualify as. i am close to done with The Song of Achilles which was intended to be part of the informal syllabus for the month and will soon start Dayspring, which i am thrilled to be returning to to help kickoff my jesus novelizations for march.

anyway, real winner of the month is The Pairing, which confirms 1) that romance novels can be GREAT, and 2) cece can give me, specifically, top tier recommendations in that space. The Pairing became an immediate entry on my draft “Top 100 Books” list, which doesn’t happen that often.

movies are all over the place, ending the month with miracle (2004), in honor of the olympics, which is going to be the launching point of cec and i’s march-movie-watching-project of connecting every movie we see to the previous one with at least one recurring actor! we’ve accidentally done this a few times and always been delighted by the serendipity and have joked about intentionally doing a series of watches built around it, and now that joke is becoming a reality! i’ll report back in a month on the results.

BOOKS

The Knight and the Moth (2025), Rachel Gillig

A fun start to my month of intentionally reading love stories. I was not quite as wow’d as I had hoped from some of the particular praise I’d read for this, but it was fun. I liked the fantasy stuff more than the romance, which felt a bit eye-rolly in its integration, particularly the interiority and inner monologue/narration of it, which can be the strength of a especially well-written romance. anyway, it didn’t ruin the book by any means, just bugged me a bit haha.

not sure if i’ll pick up the next installment(s) when they are published, we’ll just have to wait and see

The Pairing (2024), Casey McQuiston

absolutely fell in love with this—a funny, charming, tender, achingly romantic, deeply sexy, moving, wonderful love story. the writing is engaging and beautiful, the POV switch is structurally so smart and literarily executed practically perfectly, and everything just works together so well to tell kit and theo’s story.

i laughed, i gasped, i cried, i cheered—and that’s ROMANCE, baby!

Many Waters (1986), Madeleine L’Engle

love the way L’Engle mixes biblical narrative with all sorts of other stuff—unicorns that only appear and persist when believed in? manticores that are cowardly and shout “hungry!” all the time? fascinating shapeshifting seraphim and nephilim? awesome.

the overall narrative arc here and being stuck in noah’s time was a little underwhelming for me, but love the imaginative, syncretic worldbuilding and possibilities suggested by it!

Stories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Courage, and Grace (2020), Carey Wallace and Nick Thornborrow

I flipped through this reading a good handful of entries carefully, but wanted to include it for posterity—and to help me remember to return to it! a beautifully illustrated book (style is reminiscent of the irish folklore trilogy from cartoon saloon), with some weird wild stories, which is just what i wanted! perhaps more devotional than my ideal-ideal, but not in a way that takes away from the weirdness in a lot of these stories, especially the early ones.

FILMS & TV

The Swan Princess (1994)

increasingly love this little movie

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018)

now THIS is how you use your medium to maximum effect! just breathtaking and awe-inducing animation here. a fantastic ride.

top 100

Noah (2014)

so weird! love it.

Toy Story (1995)

a classic peppered with incredible one-liners. thrilled the kids dig it.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

any movie featuring a live ska band in the diagesis gets an immediate 10/10 trombones from me

About Time (2013)

what is there to say about this? it’s perfect. an incredible example of a movie that starts off with you thinking it’s going to be one thing and then quietly leads you along until all of a sudden you’re hit with a shocking emotional gut punch, wondering how this silly time travel rom-com ended up teaching you something profound and beautiful about love and mortality and grief

incredible film.

top 100

“Wuthering Heights” (2026)

BIG DUMB [non-derogatory] FUN

honestly wish it had gone even farther in its melodrama and angst and over-the-top aesthetics but had fun as is—the movie is [insert professor bhaer from Little Women (2019) voice] uh not good but watching and reacting along with a sold out crowd was a DELIGHT

production and set designers (and margot’s costume designers) were deliciously unwell

Mulan (1998)

Lunar New Year Watch with the kids. a classic.

Red Cliff Parts One & Two (2008/2009)

adopted this Lunar New Year tradition from the great Chris Wei and it is so rewarding! Just a delight to revel in and luxuriate in John Woo’s epic in its fullest form (the original two part, 286min total version, 2hr 25min and 2hr 21min respectively), after filling ourselves with homemade dumplings and Chinese takeout.

we were joined this year by one of my brothers, and it was great to be able to introduce him to these. so much to love here—the slow mo, the birds, the trickery, the cleverness, tony leung, etc etc etc.

top 100

Train Dreams (2025)

an aesthetically beautiful film. lots to love here, particularly joel edgerton’s quiet, contemplative performance. there’s a malickian energy, which, unfortunately, mostly made me want to watch a hidden life or the thin red line instead. not that this film is thematically or narratively much like those, but there’s a cinematic similarity.

for whatever reason, this one didn’t quite hit for me, which is not to say that i think it’s bad or anything like that, just sits in that quite accomplished, good all around, but didn’t speak to me for unknown reasons.

yet, i’ll try to articulate some of what didn’t land—the voiceover felt too on the nose and not quite earned, the overall vibe was almost a bit too calm/meditative in a way that was perhaps a bit distanced from the emotions being portrayed, but no doubt a significant portion is tied to watching with my very awake, lively, playful not quite two-year-old, who definitely prevented me from quietly taking in what the movie had to offer.

Toy Story 2 (1999)

one of the all-time best sequels for sure

Eddie the Eagle (2015)

evidence that olympians are bonkers. has the same kind of plucky, absurd, committed to the bit british energy as perhaps my favorite story from the moth of all time. the movie probably could have leaned even more into this tbh

Miracle (2004)

peak sports movie

the least kurt russell could do for patricia clarkson after practically abandoning her to pursue olympic gold is be present at the goshdarn costume party

BOOKS

Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025), Sarah Stein Lubrano

I’ve been waiting to read this book for ages and for unknown reasons it took forever for my library to get their copy, but it’s great. An insightful and persuasive account of the ways we need to reorient ourselves if we want to change people’s minds—essentially, to be friends, widely and deeply. And that that friendship needs to ask something of us and those we’re friends with to really be transformative. A book that further pushes me to actually live out my commitment to community and friendship and the neighborhood—and to justice as love in the public sphere.

Women’s Hotel (2024), Daniel M. Lavery

Fun! A structurally kinda funky book, but with some truly delightful details, as one would expect from Daniel, longtime supreme ruler of truly delightful details.

Men at Arms (1993), Terry Pratchett

I’m pretty sure I read this one in my teenage discovery of Discworld and it is even better upon revisiting now. Love the Watch.

A Wind in the Door (1973), Madeleine L’Engle

This book slaps. A CHERUBIM? That they thought was a flock of dragons?!?!? The cosmic power of love to help us remember the radically interdependent nature of the universe from the tiniest parts of ourselves to the stars?

a fantastic sequel to A Wrinkle in Time. Another love unlocked.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Madeleine L’Engle

And Madeleine L’Engle does it again! so wild so weird so good.

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FILMS AND TV

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

Continues to be my favorite of the trilogy, by a smidge. Just a sucker for the hope-against-hope, impossible odds but we fight anyway stuff that this has in spades. Oh, and of course, Howard Shore’s incredible Rohan motif that is filled with yearning and longing for better days and the twinge of hope at the end that glory might be ahead.

Inside Out (2015)

This one’s grown on me quite a bit since my first viewing at my aunt and uncle’s house in the Bay Area, surrounded by largely disinterested cousins.

The Secret Agent (2025)

what a fun weird ride! not sure everything came together for me, but enjoyed the ride nonetheless

Pacific Rim (2013)

annual grieving ritual watch—love this big dumb movie.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

a rousing, stirring, perfect conclusion to the trilogy. the army of the dead stuff and prelude is some of my favorite sequences in the whole trilogy—and, of course, aragorn’s coronation and “my friends, you bow to no one” always makes me weep.

Robin Hood (1973)

continue to be delighted that this is one of the kids’ favorites.

Heated Rivalry (2025)

so gay! so sexy! so much yearning! and just top to bottom a thing clearly crafted with such love and care and devotion and passion and you can tell. incredible.

Anne of Green Gables (1985)

been ages since i last watched this and it’s fun! a very different side of canada than heated rivalry haha

Finding Nemo (2003)

a good time

Human (2025)

very sleepily watched this as part of our familial learn the history of the world project. lots of interesting stuff!

Bull Durham (1988)

what a weird little movie!

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

remains so good.

Call the Midwife, Season 6

what a great show! this season features the introduction of one of my all-time favorite characters in the show—Val Dyer—in a fantastic episode of the series. so, lots to love here.

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)

WOW. theres so much here. obviously, lots of stuff i’m predisposed to love and damn did this deliver for me.

amanda seyfried is soooooo good. just an alltimer of a performance from her anchoring the film. the design—costumes, production design, etc, and the way that design juxtaposes with the choreography of the worship songs/musical numbers is just *chef’s kiss*

loved the sincere depiction of the shakers, just taking them and their spiritual experiences at their word and portraying them to us, the audience, without feeling the need to interpret or undermine or modernize, just letting the story and their experiences speak for themselves

the musical numbers are a big win! the way they, for me, captured the emotional reasons for conversion and otherwise depicted this transcendent, incredible, ecstatic spiritual experience, is truly remarkable. there’s a haunting quality too which is interesting but seems to be a part of ann lee’s spiritual worldview/landscape

definitely some mormon persecution trauma pulled up in one of the final scenes. so some particular religious heritage sympathy there

i want to sit down and here all about all the choreography and design choices and what’s going on there, such a richness that’s begging to be broken down and analyzed. ALSO love the inter titles and all the engravings/line drawings in the opening and closing credits. such cool design work there.

the eclipse/apocalypse scene? with the electric guitar? CMON! incredible. filled with delight.

also SO MUCH queer energy to these shakers (not just william and his ultimately forsaken lover/partner), but like the whole celibate project has a queerness to it that is quite compelling, and appropriately implicit throughout the film, but there nonetheless (especially within an ace/queer lens)

dug it. a movie for me for sure

ADDENDUM: i can’t stop thinking about this, now almost a month out from seeing it. AND gotta say, i was pretty sold once they showed the alternate, long, unwieldy title The Woman Clothed By the Sun With The Moon Beneath Her Feet. the film, it’s music, images, and ideas are rattling around and around my brain!

Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

still repenting of my years of dislike towards this movie, which is actually weird and wonderful

Chicken Run (2000)

Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

showed this to cec and confirmed that it’s great. probably my favorite of the three, even if i would likely concede that knives out is a technically better, tighter, film (and also a fav, to be clear)

Relay (2024)

really pleasantly surprised by this little paranoid thriller! riz ahmed is great! put him in more things! let him be james bond!

the sorta movie that would’ve really hit on cable reruns, i think. hope it can find its people—if you liked Hell or High Water or last year’s Black Bag or even Eastwood’s Juror No. 2, i think you’d find things to appreciate here.

A great month of reading and watching! A fair bit of revisiting books and movies—with seasonal watching and reading and kickstarting my commitment to reread more throughout 2026, but more on that in another place at another time.

Started and ended the month with real strong reads that are new favorites—a brand new book and revisiting a classic that I’d liked in the past but never LOVED, until this read. i’m halfway through my post-phd year of rehabilitative reading! i’ve read 50 books so far and am having a great time. (i also finally concluded all my outstanding review obligations for AML and am committing to only volunteer for/request review copies for things that I absolutely want to read instead of anything that seems mildly interesting—we’ll see how well i keep that commitment!)

movie-wise things were great too, with at least two joining the top tier of my “new to me in 2025” list (precise placement will be revealed in due course in the forthcoming 2025 in review and 2026 hopes/aspirations/intentions/anticipations post).

BOOKS

Katabasis (2025), R. F. Kuang

This book RULES. Written for me. Read it at the perfect time too. About a grad student who journeys into hell to rescue the soul of her dissertation advisor so that she can finish her degree and defend her dissertation. And then is a delightful, pleasantly haunting exploration of self, desires, graduate school, and more. A cathartic read in this post-PhD season.

courtesy of the local public library

Agency (2024), Terryl Givens

Decent! Lots of provocative little nuggets in here, but was a little frustrated that all they are is little nuggets—feels like a sampler rather than really delving into some of the most compelling possibilities! More at AML.

review copy for AML

Take Me With You (2018), Andrea Gibson

Some great stuff here—always struggle a bit reviewing/responding to poetry. This isn’t totally my style to read, but I bet would be great to listen to read aloud. but even still some striking images and juxtapositions and lots of heart here on the page, which is worth quite a lot

courtesy of the local public library

The Three Nephites: Saints, Service and Supernatural Legend (2025), Julie Swallow, Christopher James Blythe, Eric A. Eliason, and Jill Terry Rudy

Just what you’d hope for from an academic folklore book on the Three Nephites—insightful, contextualizing essays followed by collections of stories themselves. An interesting and fun book!

review copy for AML

The Tragicall History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1599-1601), William Shakespeare

So good. Been quite some time since I’ve read the whole play—despite invoking it as part of the framing of my dissertation. Glad to revisit it on this side of the PhD and at this time of year as part of the Christmas ghost story tradition!

from the local library

Prince Caspian (1951), C. S. Lewis

A good time! Still not totally sold on Lewis’s prose, but continues to make Narnia an inviting imaginative landscape.

home library

To Be A Friend of Christ: The Life of Marion D. Hanks (2024), Richard D. Hanks

The final book I needed to read and review to complete all my outstanding AML review obligations that piled up during the final year or so of dissertation revisions! I’m free! You can read my longer form thoughts here for AML. But the essence is that the book is exhaustive in its portrayal of Marion D. Hanks and primarily interested in, successfully, demonstrating that he did indeed live a life as a friend of Christ. Unfortunately for me, I am most interested in the inner workings of the church bureaucracy and Duff’s experiences there and what that reveals about the church, mormonism, and religion more broadly. There are some nuggets along these lines in the book, but not its focus. If, however, you want a book that might inspire you to be kinder to others and better engage in pastoral care to your friends, neighbors, and co-religionists, then this might just do that.

review copy for AML

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), C. S. Lewis

Wild how distorted my recollection of this was! The monopods were center stage in my memory and they barely feature at all in the book as a whole! Some fun stuff for sure.

home library

A Christmas Carol (1843), Charles Dickens

My annual re-read. Love this little book so much. Fun to read it just for kicks after working with it in my dissertation over the last few years.

home library, top 100? (i don’t have a real, existing Top 100 Books list like I do for films, but i’d like to—i have various efforts in progress but it’s proven much more difficult! but regardless this would/should certainly be on such a list)

The Silver Chair (1953), C. S. Lewis

this was one of my favorites when i read the series in elementary school and i liked it this time around too, but probably not quite as much.

home library

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (1972), Barbara Robinson

a proffit family favorite that i’m not sure i had ever actually read in its entirety? read the first chapter and a bit out loud to the kids but it didn’t quite stick (also lots of extended fat camp/fatphobia-esque stuff in that first chapter), so i finished on my own. fun, sweet, heartwarming.

home library

The Horse and His Boy (1954), C. S. Lewis

way better than i remember! which doesn’t take much haha. a bit of an outlier in some ways, but still definitely apart of Lewis’ theological project (all the bits from earlier books about being terrified of Aslan but in a good, nice way really crystallized for me here). anyway, enjoyed it.

home library

The Magician’s Nephew (1955), C. S. Lewis

also way better than I remembered! was probably my least favorite of the series as a kid. definitely maintain that it’s much better to read here, as the penultimate book in the series, instead of as the first one. intrigued by greta gerwig’s decision to adapt this as the first narnia movie in the latest effort to adapt the series, but i’ll definitely see it!

interesting to think about this as a reimagining of The Fall (and that could be a fun reading project to explore different reimaginings! but probably not one i’m interested in embarking on in the near future).

home library

Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship (2025), Jonathan A. Stapley

great stuff. I think Stapley’s previous book, The Power of Godliness, is like a top ten, maybe top five, essential mormon studies book for me, so i have awaited this with great anticipation! for a variety of reasons, i don’t think this one quite hits the heights of The Power of Godliness, but it is certainly an incredibly well-researched, dense, yet readable, exploration of temple worship that is absolutely worth your time if you are interested in the topic, academically.

definitely one i’m glad to have on hand to return to for checking little tidbits and nuggets, which it is chockful of.

home library, birthday present

The Last Battle (1956), C. S. Lewis

probably my favorite of the series? takes a bit of a left turn right upfront but then the action gets going and is close to nonstop until the wacky awesome extended conclusion.

A Wrinkle in Time (1962), Madeleine L’Engle

I read this as a kid and it didn’t really click for whatever reason, re-read it before Ava Duvernay’s film adaptation in 2018 and liked it, but this readthrough I LOVED it. Not sure why it didn’t click before but wow, this is so incredibly my jam! love the wild, bonkers way that L’Engle weaves together theology and science and imagination to create this earnest, delightful adventure. thrilled to have discovered a love for this classic and to continue roaming through L’Engle’s imagination as I read the rest of the series. Wept quietly reading the final chapter as I snuggled my older two kids to sleep. Powerful, moving, fun, tense, timely, incredible stuff. love love love.

there’s a particular pleasure that I don’t often experience of loving something that I’ve already read but didn’t love previously. delighted to have that experience here.

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FILMS and TELEVSION

Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

spoilers ahead!!!

a movie tailor made for me?!?!?

riffing on golden age classic detective fiction? some poppy cultural commentary? pretty interesting and compelling blockbuster treatment of religion/spirituality?

sold.

not quite as tight as knives out but still top notch work. can definitely see myself revisiting this one with some regularity (gotta rewatch with cec to see how it holds up/settles upon a rewatch but since my initial viewing and drafting of this response it has grown more favorably in my reflection)

love all the performances and the way you can tell that everyone is having a blast on set. really like the way benoit’s rant against religion is enriched by the almost blip of a scene from glass onion making him canonically gay.

love the way the genre works here to interrogate questions of guilt and grace and all that—and JUSTICE—and uses the twists and turns of the genre to dramatize the life of faith and father jud’s own personal journey. really great stuff

also the couple of light coming through the window scenes are so fun

and the emotional climax had me in tears.

a delightful time at the movies!

at my local independent cinema

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Using my fairly recently acquired credentials to authoritatively say that this is the definitive adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Thrilled my kids love it too.

movie night with the fam; top 100; dvd at home

Love Actually (2003)

there are about a million reasons to dislike this movie, and yet, it somehow manages to be incredibly delightful and rewatchable, transforming those reasons into strengths. but, uh, you are either sold on it or not, and i have no rational, logical case to make for this—just the simple recognition that every year, cec and i end up watching it, baffled and delighted, mocking it good-naturedly, basking in its utter absurdity.

on dvd at home with cec

Joyeux Noel (2005)

I LOVE this movie—a deeply meaningful, touching, rich, tragic look at making peace in the midst of war. it’s so so so good. there’s a lot of ways this could’ve ended up saccharine or melodramatic or just bad, but somehow it threads the needle just right (probably helps significantly that it’s not an American/Hollywood production).

at home on dvd with cec; top 100

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024)

very sleepily watched and dozed through this--seemed fine? pete holmes was really phoning it in, not channeling any of his usual energy and stage presence

could radically alter my thoughts (for better or for worse!) if i was fully awake watching the whole thing

on dvd courtesy of the local public library with cec

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)

love this one. a true classic.

movie night with the fam, on dvd

Frosty the Snowman (1969)

probably my least favorite of the classic specials? but the kids like it, so watch it i will.

movie night with the fam, on dvd

Hamnet (2025)

SPOILERY THOUGHTS BELOW

opened me up, shattered me completely, and somehow knit me back together again

never have i sobbed with my entire body in a movie theater like i did watching this

everything works together for a stunning, moving, devastating, beautiful cinematic experience—the performances are incredible, as you’ve no doubt heard, the score enhances and compliments everything, and the cinematography is just sooo good. the way nature is wrapped up in the themes and narrative and woven throughout is poetic and emotionally evocative.

i’ll be feeling this one for a long time. theres also something powerful and i couldn’t help but read mormonly about that final hand clasp and veil-rending that speaks to embodiment and its place in mourning and grieving for others—clasping hands with the dead by proxy and allowing the dead to move beyond, to another place, tearing down the gaps between this world and the next, our ghosts living all around us

also just the power of art and literature to communicate across gaps that can’t otherwise be crossed and facilitate mourning and grieving and catharsis and connections

breathtaking work

at the local, beloved independent cinema

The Holiday (2006)

a fun classic to revisit with cec every year.

on dvd

While You Were Sleeping (1995)

a delightful, lovely time with a truly unhinged premise. like god intended rom-coms to be.

on dvd

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

always a delight to watch and have the kids, especially E—, quote and sing-a-long!

on dvd, movie night with the fam, featuring most of my hilton fam of origin

A House of Dynamite (2025)

hmmmmmm

really wanted to LOVE this and it was fine?

gotta rewatch fail safe for some of what’s going on here but much better

streamed

One Battle After Another (2025)

what a great time! a radical blast!

long live sensei benicio!!!

¡Viva la Revolución!

also a surprise christmas movie!

streamed

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

gender-swapped jason bourne by way of the nice guys with a few splashes of just wild bonkers stuff

in other words, loved it

streamed

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

only one more sleep ‘til Christmas!

movie night with the fam, featuring some of the proffit clan

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

the beginning of our annual journey to middle-earth post-christmas. always a rich, nourishing delight

extended edition on bluray with cec and company, top 100

Reading involved catching up on some long languishing AML review obligations and a smattering of leftover spooky reads and a few books from friends (old and new). Watching was autumnal and the early stages of our pretty packed advent/Christmas cinematic liturgical calendar. A good month.

BOOKS

And Then There Were None (1939), Agatha Christie

Haven’t read this since 7th grade or something when subsequently ploughed through a bunch of Christie’s books (and then got really into John Grisham). Anyway, it’s great. Really holds up. A fantastic end of October, early November read.

courtesy of the local library

Redeeming the Dead (2024), Amy Harris

Liked it! Some interesting stuff. You can read my full review for AML if you want more of my thoughts.

review copy for AML

Seeing (2024), Mason Kamana Allred

Dug it! Lots of cool, interesting insights and readings (including of my favorite weirdo section of the Doctrine & Covenants 129) that also in Mason’s telling have meaningful theological weight.

review copy for AML

The Desert Prophet (2025), Camilla Stark

Awesome. Weird. Hopeful. Long live weird Mormon literature! A quick read, but with a pleasant haunting effect that I’m still thinking about.

gold-foil hardcover, from the kickstarter

A Thin Black Veil (2025), Henrik Sorensen

Spooky! Grim! Gruesome! Had a good time with this—fun if you’re into mormon folklore rooted gruesome haunted stories. And a couple of these stories are top notch that I’ll be thinking about for a LONG time.

ebook to review for AML

Reading the Bible on Turtle Island: An Invitation to North American Indigenous Interpretation (2025), H. Daniel Zacharias and T. Christopher Hoklotubbe

This is great. Highly recommend if you’re a reader of the Bible, especially if you’re interested in some new ways of looking at the Bible that derive from North American Indigenous culture/beliefs/practices/people. Lots to apply and think about and transform you here. (I wrote more for AML here.)

advance ebook after pre-ordering at my local indie bookstore; book club with one of the co-authors

Time (2024), Philip L. Barlow

This one is fine! Some interesting ideas but I just didn’t quite vibe with it. More with AML soon.

review copy for AML

Divine Law (2024), Justin Collings

okay the prose here is BONKERS. just so effusive and descriptive and melodramatic and ya know, i dug it. i’m not sure i’ve ever read an academic-adjacent book written with language like this. it was fun! and some nice ideas in there too.

review copy for AML

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (1950), C. S. Lewis

Read this aloud to the kids, which was mostly a success, I think? I don’t usually record books I read aloud, but this was long enough and substantial enough that I thought it should make it. pretty delightful! I don’t think I’ve read this since I was 10 or so, and I’m not totally sold on Lewis as a prose stylist, but the ideas and imagination here and possible as a response to is pretty great.

read aloud with the kids

FILMS and TELEVISION

Coco (2017)

Happy All Saints Day/Day of the Dead! what a tear-jerker.

dvd with the whole fam courtesy of the local library

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

this adaptation has really grown on me and i think it does a lot of good work and it is importantly beautiful to look at. with top notch autumnal vibes.

on a thrifted dvd with cec

Call the Midwife (2016), Season Five

A good season with many favorite characters arriving. Long live Nurse Crane!

on dvd with cece, our regularly sabbath evening entertainment

Brother Bear (2003)

hit harder this time than past watches—probably because i was actually sitting and watching the opening band ending not bustling around doing dinner prep

anyway what a solid interspecies solidarity, violence inevitably hurts the perpetrator of it story!

on dvd for movie night with the fam

The Unknown Country (2022)

lily gladstone is great and magnetic and i was far too sleepy to pickup on much of anything else

on dvd from the local library with cec

It Was Just an Accident (2025)

some spoilers below!

i’ll be thinking about this one for a long time!

love the absurdity and the escalation until it backs off a tad and then sits in that uneasy place for awhile, letting loose, and ultimately using that artificial leg squeak to be one of the most unsettling threatening cinematic noises since kill bill’s whistle turning all the emotions and morals and ethics of the film on its head again

at my beloved local independent cinema!

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

a movie that only gets more and more perfect every time i watch it.

with cec on bluray; top 100

Toy Story (1995)

an extra delight on the big screen with a full theater!

at the local independent cinema for movie night with the fam

Dan in Real Life (2007)

traditional fall season watch, brought into our cinematic liturgical calendar by cec. a welcome addition and a great example of a family movie, that is a movie that depicts a family that actually largely behaves like a family—or rather a family that feels familiar and familial.

also, “you are a MURDERER of LOVE” is an all-timer of a line.

with cec on dvd

The Angel (2024)

wowowow. LOVE this. all the choices production and narrative wise really work together to create something cohesive and compelling

dig the folkloric touches and the way this feels old and timeless and new all at once. AND really really love the way the first wife stops the second from shaking the angel’s hand coupled with the very ending which create just such delicious ambiguity

incredible work here. and that ambiguity really opens the film up to all sorts of readings which is just rich and rewarding. love love love it.

streaming for a bit, access via barrett

Encanto (2021)

emotionally destroyed seeing this on the big screen

really good stuff but something holds it back from being a top tier all-timer for me (might just be not growing up with it and having all sorts of memories built up, or that there’s like a smidgeon too much of self-aware, winky stuff that just undercuts the film’s emotion a tad, or just something that i haven’t figured out)

“surface pressure” will be playing on loop in my head for the next week at least

special mid-week no school movie time with the fam at the local independent cinema!

The Incredibles (2004)

always a delight

on dvd for movie night with the fam

Little Women (2019)

really found the structure with its rhymes and echoes throughout compelling and rich this watch. another part of our advent/christmas season cinematic liturgical calendar. practically perfect.

with cec on bluray; top 100

Wicked: For Good (2025)

fun on the big screen! still astounded at ariana’s acting chops. this is carried on ariana and cynthia’s backs with some assistance from jonathan bailey, though he is mostly wasted here

had a delightful time even with its narrative messiness and fairly standard head-scratching stage musical to movie adaptation plot troubles. and the memes coming out of the film are great. i think this is a great example of a fantastic special features movie, that is a movie that you watch all the special features for on all sorts of practical effects details and other juicy behind-the-scenes tidbits, and then you watch with friends and can all revel in sharing fun special features details (the Lord of the Rings trilogy functions similarly, though those are also great movies in their own right)

with cec at the beloved local independent cinema!

White Collar, Season 3 (2011-12)

the best season of the show so far. a great season long arc that builds on plot and emotion from previous seasons, especially the end of season two, and just really delves into neal and peter’s relationship and what trust means for them in compelling ways

(realized that the show is essentially structured like a “will they/won’t they” romance except it’s about the brotherly/familial love and trust between peter and neal, and it WORKS)

on dvd with cec

When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

there are so many reasons this movie shouldn’t work, but it just does. perfect. so economical, but still feels like you’ve lived with and known these people for years. incredible. moving and laugh out loud funny. delighted this is also part of our cinematic liturgical calendar

on dvd with cec; top 100

October! What a month. Keeping on top of writing my reviews during the month got away from me, so I’m putting this all together now, in not quite mid-November, which means in my haste and need to get this wrapped and out in the world, there will be no images (breaking from the usual format), so apologies if you came here for some standard, average pics of book and film covers. Try again next month!

Tried to lean in some to seasonal reading and watching, which was fun. Also dabbled in a bit of non-fiction (partially to actually finally maybe before the end of 2025 be free of pre-existing book review obligations…though I seem to be accumulating more and more despite my goal to NOT gather new commitments! but ya know, who am I to resist a “free” book….)

BOOKS

We Could Be So Good (2023), Cat Sebastian: Delightful. Outside my usual genre reading, but it’s one of Cece’s favorite romance novels, and she explicitly recommended it to me, so read it for love (haha). It’s great! Uses its historical setting well to draw out the themes of the book and it really captures a particular type of romantic longing and internal struggles with love and all that.

Checked out from my local public library.

Still Life (2005), Louise Penny: A great murder mystery! An excellent way to begin October seasonal reading. Will almost certainly be checking out more of Penny’s novels featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.

Courtesy of my local public library.

Death Comes to Pemberley (2011), P. D. James: Honestly, a bit disappointed in this one. It’s not bad at all, even good probably, but it did not feel Austen-esque or like a natural progression/extension of the characters—you could probably write something interesting or have engaging discussions for a course on Austen Afterlives that looked at this alongside Austenland and other post-Austen riffs on her characters/world. Anyway. Fine.

Courtesy of a local free little library.

Angels and Demons (2000), Dan Brown: I’ve been meaning to read this since my uncle Ster told me he liked it better than The Da Vinci Code way back when The Da Vinci Code was the bee’s knees (and I was my utmost contrarian self — disappointed in it for being less exciting and engaging than Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity). And it is probably better than that. But, still, I don’t know. Brown’s prose is kinda flat and the book is WAY too long in a way that really destroys the sense of urgency that should be created by the countdown approach and imminent destruction of the Vatican. Still too good for Dan Brown, I guess, haha.

Courtesy of a local free little library, to where it will shortly return.

The Exorcist (1971), William Peter Blatty: Read this on my brother-in-law’s recommendation (since I still haven’t and may never actually take up his rec to watch The Soprano's, sorry Keaton). It’s good! Got some great spooky vibes and some Gothic energy, but definitely more horror than pure Gothic. Explores some compelling religion vs science, different ways of knowing, sorts of questions, and has a fantastic complicated priest near the center, which is a favorite trope of mine. Stuff with haunted/possessed kids is a bit heavy and fraught for me, but it’s central to the sorts of questions that the book is interested in and reading is unsettling but in a pleasant way haha. Anyway, good stuff.

Thank you local public library!

Divine Aid (2024), Amy Easton: Part of the Maxwell Institute’s Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants series, which I am quite overdue in reviewing. It’s good! I have a full review up at AML, if you’re interested. Amy’s great.

The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto (2025), Leah Libresco Sargeant: A really fascinating book! I’ve followed Leah’s work for some time now and find it quite engaging and productive to think alongside and against, given the ways our thinking and assumptions overlap and diverge. Really really love the way Leah highlights the power and necessity of seeing dependence and vulnerability at the center of true human existence, and how she draws out the ways that seeing women as fully, deeply human can illuminate the harms and shortcomings of much of how our modern industrialized, late-stage capitalist life is set-up.

I’ll be thinking about much of what she writes for a long time and I hope to see thinkers across a broad ideological spectrum engage with her thought here! Particularly interested in fellow trans and queer affirming people to take up some of her ideas and challenge or push on the more gender essentialist parts of her thinking.

Anyway. Lots of rich, compelling stuff here from Leah, a compassionate, rigorous thinker that I admire, while disagreeing with her pretty substantively in some key instances.

Courtesy of my beloved local public library.

FILMS and TELEVISION

Some spoilers ahead so read with care!

Gianmarco Soresi: Thief of Joy (2025): had a delightful time! always good to hang with a frenetic gesticulator 😂

on youtube with cec

A Bug’s Life (1998): don’t mind me just getting teary at all the ants realizing their collective power, locking arms in solidarity and resistance to the grasshoppers’ oppression…

on dvd for movie night with the fam

20th Century Women (2016): always a bit jarring to rewatch something after almost a decade (or more!) and find yourself suddenly having a very different emotional read on the parent-child relationships

on dvd from the local library with cec

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989): a halloween houshold kids classic

on dvd from the local library for movie night with the fam

Agatha and the Truth of Murder (2018): the first of a recurring theme of me very sleepily watching things and thus not being able to say much of substance about them!

via kanopy with cec

White Collar (2010-11), Season Two: LOVE the way this season wraps up and really compellingly leans into the questions of trust between Peter and Neil, twisting and turning how those questions manifest and wrinkle through their relationship as it shifts and turns and deepens. all while seeing fun heist-y hijinks! a delight. aside from the really atrocious green screen with El for the first part of the season.

Monster’s Inc. (2001): another fantastic pixar classic stuffed to the gills with laugh-out-loud lines, delightful 2d credit animations, and a touching message about solidarity, the power (ha!) of mutually beneficial economic arrangements, and a dose of anti capitalism as a treat

on dvd for movie night with the fam

The Skeleton Twins (2014): ‎wiig and hader have fantastic sibling energy here—the dentist office and lip synch scenes are stand outs in that regard

overall a lot more, uh, troubling themes and relationship dynamics and plot details than i expected from the trailer and all the “great fall vibes!” commentary that returned it to my attention. not sure if it’s all worth it ultimately but we’ll see how it settles (note: not settling much better!)

via kanopy with cec

Death on the Nile (2022): this movie got A LOT of hate when it was released so i skipped it, but finally got around to it and ya know, it’s fun! a perfectly fine enjoyable movie with some truly outlandish baffling accent work but that’s what we come to these for haha

love kenneth’s poirot and mustache and all of it

a truly fascinating time capsule tho of how you could put so many “problematic” stars for the 2022 micro-era especially in one film

on dvd from the local public library with cec

Truth and Treason (2025): wow. really solid, good work all around.

deeply moved by this—no doubt partially because of my own affinity for helmuth and our shared mormonism. rare to see an explicitly, unapologetically mormon character on screen like this and damn it is moving and powerful to see your community represented!

performances are good, the structure is solid, dialogue is good (a couple of kinda awkward, stilted line readings and a few plot beats that felt more forced or trope-y rather than fully organic to the story), and there’s some lovely hymn flourishes to the score (unless my ear deceived me).

the characterization and humanizing of figures all throughout the story, without sacrificing moral clarity is pretty remarkable and part of the film’s power (though in at least one instance will likely be a controversial decision!).

i wish we’d seen the conclusion of the bishop’s arc (excommunicating helmuth!), but the fraught, emotional complexity of the scene where he almost turns helmuth in is pretty great to conclude his arc in the film.

the lower lights’ “poor wayfaring stranger” over the closing credits had me weeping

just great great work here

the use of violence, on and off screen, is fascinating and largely works to serve the moral and thematic work of the film, but is probably worth a bit more pondering

“do what is right, let the consequence follow!”

at my local movie theater with some friends from my local congregation

The Lion King (1994): just one of the many things this has going for it is the sheer number of delightful weird little guys—timon, pumba, zazu, the hyenas, rafiki

a real selling point for this weird little guy

thrilled at the ascendance of this among the kids favorites

on dvd for movie night with the fam

Good Will Hunting (1997): great fall boston vibes, which are among the best fall vibes

on dvd from the local public library with cec

Frankenstein (2025): this is a bit messy and overstuffed thematically with probably too much of victor’s early story where more of victor and the creature post-wedding confrontation could’ve fleshed out some of the dynamics and themes

BUT it rules. just a gothic wonderland top to bottom, the sorta messy flawed film that is more loved because of the flaws than a more pristinely executed film (which there’s gotta be a productive beautiful essay about the construction of the film echoing the building of the creature himself and the flawed, sutured together constructedness is actually the beauty)

design-wise it’s great. just awesome to look at and feel the love and delight GDT and co imbued every set and creature and piece of clothing with. you can always count on GDT for that

the changes to victor’s backstory certainly strengthen the gothic nature of the story, cementing it in the broader gothic context and some of mary shelley’s biography. interested in the arms dealing element paying for victor’s science and all that—along with the collapse of slavery stripping their family fortune.

the grief/forgiveness/reconciliation(?) between victor and the creature is compelling—lots to play with thematically here (again, a bit in an excess of meaning in the film, messiness sorta way)

oscar isaac, mia goth, christoph waltz, and felix kammerer are all solid. but jacob elordi is the true standout performer here doing great work in a challenging role

on the big screen opening day thank you to my local indie cinema

Knives Out (2019): just an absolute delight. perfect fall mystery vibes. happy halloween.

i think this watch finally purged cec of the terrible memory of seeing this in theaters back during thanksgiving 2019, with lil’ H—, who was a bit noisy, resulting in cec taking her out and some man a few rows back yelling, “thank you! finally!” as she did. booo to that man. and hip hip hooray for rian johnson and benoit blanc. cannot wait for Wake Up Dead Man!

on dvd from the local public library with cec

September has come and gone! Towards the end of the month Cec was out of town so I tried to sneak some spooky season watching in to get in the mood for October. Had a couple of great reads, including reading my new favorite book of ALL TIME?!?!? I read it pretty early in the month and haven’t stopped thinking about it. I’m always a bit reticent to claim something as a new top tier all time favorite, since part of how I think about that status is longevity, but sometimes a thing hits just right and you gotta trust your gut. It will certainly NOT be a favorite of everyone, but that should become obvious when you read the entry itself haha.

Watched some great stuff too, including at least one thing that will likely enter my personal film canon. And without further ado, read away!

BOOKS

Lady Knight (2002), Tamora Pierce

the conclusion to the protector of the small quartet! and it’s so good. just a powerful, wonderful, hopeful, rousing conclusion to the series. really draws together everything in satisfying and moving ways. exactly what you want a conclusion to this sort of series to do.

excited for my kids to get a bit older so they can enjoy this

borrowed from ICPL

Dayspring (2024), Anthony Oliveira

this is my new favorite book of all time?!?!?!?

it is not for everyone, so you know, proceed appropriately, but it should be pretty apparent whether it is for you or not.

it’s a deeply, explicitly queer reimagining of the gospel of john that warps time and bends genre, spanning the first century to 80s canada and all sorts of in-between and beyond, mixing scripture, poetry, memoir, essay, and more.

i devoured the book in like 3 sittings across 2-3 days (no mean feat while being the primary care provider for three young children!) and i haven’t been able to get it out of my head. it’s put me in a bit of reading funk since, just stuck working over passages and scenes and ideas from it again and again, the book just took root deep inside me.

one of the best, most compelling artistic portrayals of jesus i’ve encountered (a side hobby of mine is watching and reading jesus adaptations and i have lots of opinions about them haha), and a rich, complex portrayal of a life of faithfulness and fidelity and what it might mean to love god in every sense of the word and what is asked of those of us that love god, what it gives and what it takes.

there’s so much more to talk about! this, if it wasn’t already obvious, is the thing i mentioned in the august review installment that i hope to write about in a more sustained, close reading, analysis sorta way—in particular there’s an adaptation, a twist in the third act that rocked me emotionally, just gut-punched me, and i gotta dig into it.

i laughed out loud, i gasped, i wept.

if this is also a book for you, i need you to read it and talk to me about it!

courtesy of interlibrary loan, coming from the university of minnesota

Revelation (Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants) (2024), Janiece Johnson

a nice, short, readable little book! packed with all sorts of insights about how to approach “revelation” from a distinctly mormon/LDS perspective. i’m still not totally sold on the approach to the series as a whole, but maybe reading more volumes will convince me!

review copy for the association of mormon letters

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), Douglas Adams

Haven’t read this in probably close to two decades and it is still delightful. Didn’t LOVE it quite as much as I remember, but still—a fun romp. Glad I revisited it.

at home, courtesy of a local non-profit lending library

Princess Academy (2005), Shannon Hale

snuck this one in at the midnight hour, cruising through the last hundred or so pages hours before October arrived. delightful! a nice bookend to opening the month with lady knight. cec has talked to me about this book (particularly the quarry-speech and her religious/spiritual reading of that) periodically our whole marriage, so fun to finally read it for myself.

FILMS and TELEVISION

Robin Hood (1973)

the kids adore this one, and that, is a parenting victory!

movie night with the fam on dvd

The Big Sick (2017)

funny and devastating and touching. not quite as incredible as i remembered, but still great.

with cec via prime

American Animals (2018)

kinda the anti-heist movie, at least in terms of what cec turns to heist movies for, which made it something of a misfire for her, which in turn made it a bit of a misfire for my efforts to select something she’d enjoy.

also we checked it out from the library and the disc was scratched, so it skipped pretty horrifically during the climax, which certainly didn’t help the viewing experience

with cec thanks to the local public library

Hard Boiled (1992)

now this is an action movie! just firing on all cylinders from top to bottom. would certainly be even better if i could watch it uninterrupted.

over 5 or 6 nights in chunks of varying sizes via kanopy

Testament of Youth (2014)

a new favorite film. blown away by this by the conclusion. i wasn’t totally sold even until about the start of the third act, but the way it all pulls together in the end devastated me, in the best way.

the poster under-sells the movie, in my opinion. so much more going on here than a romance, which is mostly an inciting incident and framing device, while the film is structurally more of a moral/ethical dilemma film, or a coming-of-age film, but in moral/ethical terms.

the way the film presents the anti-war/pacifist message is, i think, quite engaging and compelling, and the arc of vera throughout the film is moving and helps bring the audience along, where they may not otherwise be want to go.

thrilled i picked it up thrifting, unopened! the universe smiled down upon me.

watch it please.

with cec at home

Logan Lucky (2017)

love this first entry in the daniel craig does a bonkers incredible american accent cinematic universe

it would appear that cec and i are on a bit of a soderbergh kick [now if i can just get her to watch black bag… (which, dear reader, i was successful at accomplishing just a couple of weeks later)]

with cec at home, via kanopy

White Collar Season One (2009-10)

a (near) perfect show. the pilot is great and i LOVE that they just get right to it, showing us neal and peter doing their respective things. no elaborate, protracted, slow burn origin story, where we have a whole season of set-up before there are actually any heist/investigation shenanigans (which is almost certainly how this show would play out today), just right to it, with the back story and history revealed in bits and pieces here and there and, most importantly, the evolving texture of their relationship.

fun and interesting and the perfect show for watching after the kids are asleep and the time is short

with cec at home, dvd

Mulan (1998)

another top tier favorite of the kids, and another parenting victory.

the scene where mulan prays/weeps in the rain curled on the great stone dragon statue and then gathers her father’s armor and cuts her hair and rides into the night with those driving synths and muted flourishes of motifs from the orchestral score? now that’s cinema.

movie night with the kids on dvd courtesy of the public library

On Swift Horses (2024)

this one didn’t quite sing for me—would be a great fit for a lit analysis sorta class, where it might be elevated by engaging in close reading of it (you can tell that it’s a novel adaptation, both in the sorta novelistic structure and rhythms that it has and the semi-novelistic/literary way it rhymes and pairs motifs and things that feels sometimes a bit too obvious in the film, but would be more fitting on the page).

it’s not bad by any means, a good time even if you’re in the mood for some sad, melancholy gays. particularly if you want to chew on themes of liberation and freedom and the west and relationships and queerness and gambling/risk and being bound or not by relationships and the tangle of those ideas.

with cec at home on dvd courtesy of the public library

Black Bag (2025)

love this one. a great spy mystery thriller with fun twists and turns. a great marriage movie. a great beautiful people looking beautiful movie. soderbergh does it again!

at home with cec, public library provided dvd

The Craft (1996)

a classic actually deeply gay but not textually gay movie. it’s got some solid buffy vibes, which i dug. had i encountered this at a different stage of life with the right crowd, it could have entered my personal canon, but alas, wasn’t meant to be.

still, had a fun time.

across a couple of sittings via prime

Mystic River (2003)

love me a boston-set morally complex mystery/thriller/neo-noir

and love eastwood’s intensity about interrogating these sorts of ethical/moral quandaries wrapped up in questions of masculinity and violence

good stuff

at home on dvd courtesy of our local library

Crimson Peak (2015)

an atmospheric gothic tragic capital-R Romance ghost story

which is to say classic del toro

would be fun to watch this alongside the devil’s backbone (not just because they both feature bleeding ghosts and a framing voiceover that gets much longer at the conclusion) and pan’s labyrinth

the production design is awesome and the whole absurd over the top melodrama of the crimson peak set design is incredible. love it.

had a great time.

at home courtesy of the local public library

The Lion King (1994)

matthew broderick for an angsty entitled prince filled with guilt and self-doubt who embraces a hedonistic lifestyle to cope is actually perfect casting

also the restoration of pride rock post-fascistic desolation sure hits different today

at home with the fam minus cece who was traveling for work

The Princess Bride (1987)

i’ve seen this countless times, can quote it almost in its entirety, and still, love and adore it. been awhile since i’ve watched it (around four years unless my letterboxd log is wrong, and it is never wrong…).

underrated line: “and if she is otherwise when i find her, i shall be very put out.”

can anything be as satisfying as inigo stabbing count rugen and saying “i want my father back you son of a bitch”?

that mark knopfler score is *chef’s kiss*

at home on the criterion blu-ray

august! a delightful time reading and watching—caught a couple new theatrical releases and have three titles featuring exclamation points, which is always a delight. have some great stuff to talk about in september (including at least one title that i already want to write a longer form piece about, but who knows when i’ll actually get to that)

without further ado, here are the reviews!

BOOKS

Guards! Guards! (1989), Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett rules. I can’t remember if I read this one when I first discovered Discworld at like 15, but (re)visiting it now is a delight. Loved it. Such a rich cast of characters and just delicious world-building, packed with all sorts of silliness and references and yet a big heart and deep down belief in like goodness/kindness even in the face of great evil/chaos/despair/meaninglessness. Loved it.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (2015), Elizabeth Gilbert

I don’t usually enjoy books about creativity and that sort of thing, but this hit at perhaps just the right time with the right perspective to be quite motivating to me to fully embrace and lean into a creative life (decidedly NOT in a try to financially support myself and my family by becoming the next great american novelist way, but in a infuse creativity and curiosity into the quotidian existence that i already have sort of way).

Anyway. dug it.

Between Shades of Grey (2011), Ruta Sepetys

Devastating and beautiful. Obviously, my experiences in and love for Lithuania colored my response to this, but wow. Incredible work.

Martyr! (2024), Kaveh Akbar

Really love the way this all comes together with some provocative/moving revelations and stylistic/generic play in the final scenes. The writing is certainly compelling and as I’ve sat with it over the last couple of weeks, it’s grown on me. I wasn’t totally blown away by it like many people, but there’s lots to love and engage with here for sure. Worth your time. And, obviously, a sucker for titles with exclamation marks, and other playful, intensifying punctuation.

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FILMS and TELEVISION

Toy Story (1995)

The kids have been into this one lately and I’m just continually impressed by the pacing and how packed to the brim it is with jokes and gags. A triumph.

Endurance (2024)

Very sleepily watched this so not much to say! Except that the story is wild and that I had hoped for a bit more from the braided narrative.

Robin Hood (1973)

One of my lifelong favorites that is shaping up to be a favorite of my kids, which is a true parenting victory, I’d say. Oooh de lally!

Brave (2012)

Hadn’t seen this since theaters, where I was relatively unimpressed, but rewatching (in small chunks over a week) I think there’s some great stuff here worth passing on! The mother-daughter conflict and dynamic is pretty compelling and drives the narrative in fitting and satisfying ways, the music is delightful, the scottishness is fun, the animation of Merida’s hair is truly remarkable. A good time!

The Mummy (1999)

A fun time that for whatever reason didn’t sing quite as much for me as it does for many of my generation.

The Incredibles (2004)

Peak Pixar and certainly among the top tier of superhero films.

The Three Musketeers: Milady (2023)

not quite as swashbuckling as part one but still action-packed and thrilling and twisty and french!

The Bear, Season 4 (2025)

This show continues to blow me away. Just stellar production value across the board and a devotion to using the medium of tv, particularly with the flexibility opened up by streaming services, to the fullest extent to tell the story they’re telling.

Some really moving stuff here about grief that’s been building since the first episode of the series that hits harder and more richly because of the journeys we’ve been on with these characters. A great show.

Call the Midwife, Season 4

Wrapped up Season Four this month! Cec and I watch an episode most Sunday evenings, and have for years. This is my second time through the series, and it’s just such a lovely, rich portrayal of womanhood in London in the late 50s early 60s. You have some excellent characters that come in here that really do great things for the dynamics of the show (especially Nurse Crane and her interactions with the nuns and other more religious characters, laying the groundwork for some really moving stuff that comes later in the series).

Anyway. It’s great.

Paddington 2 (2017)

A great time! kids were a bit less scared this time through, though still reckoning with the injustices of the operations of the carceral state (to which i say, good!).

hooray for paddington.

Group Therapy (2024)

Some interesting moments and not a waste of time, but I wish it’d had a stronger interventionist hand shaping the narrative and weaving things together. Neil Patrick Harris is a weird pseudo-host here and I’m not really sure what he’s doing. Probably the more familiar you are with the careers and lives of the comedians featured, the more you’d get out of this. More of a miss than a hit.

The Catcher was a Spy (2018)

a “that guy!” movie that provides a somewhat engaging take on a true story I’d never heard, but unfortunately leaves quite a bit to be desired. falls into the all-too common “great story, weirdly or poorly constructed, and kinda flatly told” group of movies based on historical people and events. paul rudd is kinda interesting and kinda baffling as the protagonist.

Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

enjoyed this when it came out but wasn’t quite as thrilled as some of my friends, so i wanted to revisit it in light of the second installment in ethan and tricia’s informal lesbian b-movie trilogy hitting theaters. and that was a great choice. a lot of the plotting that felt off-the-wall and took me by surprise the first time through seemed far more clearly signaled from the jump (perhaps watching it while sleep-deprived in the days or weeks after Z— was born influenced that haha).

anyway, this is a great, very gay, pulpy, campy, over-the-top time.

Honey Don’t! (2025)

another exclamation point featuring title!

a pulpy delightful gay time at the movies. excited to rewatch it when it hits DVD (my recent rewatch elevated drive away dolls a bit)

the cast is great here (chris evans is having a great time and used to great effect—margaret and aubrey are obviously great, and the supporting folks are fun)

love the aesthetic and vibe and this lazy meandering hazy aimless weirdo queer pulpy time

Highest 2 Lowest (2025)

denzel is one of the greats. love watching him on screen.

really dug this. a fun moral/ethical dilemma movie with crime/heist-y vibes. great supporting characters (except dean winters who is just always his “mayhem” insurance commercial character now). the score is really interesting and fun, would love to read something about how it connects to the way music is part of the narrative thematic threads.

spike’s bombastic style really works well with the material here and brings an emotional heft which is somewhat surprising.

dug it. really gotta finally watch kurasowa’s now huh

The Lion King (1994)

one of the all-time greats. just an astounding achievement—the animation is beautiful and clever, the soundtrack has no skips (is “be prepared” the greatest villain song of all time?), and the whole thing makes its emotions and plot beats legible to kids even if they don’t pick up on the specific wordplay, nuances, subtexts, etc of the dialogue and lyrics (like uh how fascistic/nazi-coded scar and the hyenas are).

watching as an adult, and parent, is quite a different experience. sobbed when mufasa died.

kids were locked in. hope they want to watch it again soon.

Erin Brockovich (2000)

dig this one more and more every time i watch it. julia roberts is obviously magnetic and charismatic and incredible as the lead, and i always enjoy seeing aaron eckhart show up places. the score is great, the way everything comes together is satisfying, and the ways different types of knowledge and working (divided along class, gender, and other lines) are valued or devalued is worth further reflection

BOOKS

Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet (2025), John Turner

A page turner! Really interesting stuff, not a ton of new information per say, but always interesting, to me, to get a sense of how people synthesize all the info that’s out there about Brother Joseph. I wrote more thoughts for AML, which you can read if you desire!

Parable of the Sower (1993), Octavia E. Butler

Incredible. Really powerful and compelling stuff here. Wonder if I would have LOVED or just not quite got this had I read it as a teen. Deserves its place in the canon alongside 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Experiments in the Fading Light (2025), Steven L. Peck

Love Steve and enjoyed these poems!

First Test (1999), Tamora Pierce

This is SO GOOD. Just great stuff. Apologies to my sisters for not reading this sooner. Excited to share it with my kids in the not-too-distant future.

Page (2000), Tamora Pierce

And Kel continues to be great!

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (2009), Philip Pullman

Pretty underwhelmed by this, tbh. I just don’t think Pullman’s imagination of Jesus is that compelling? I don’t know, it felt kinda obvious and contrived and like it didn’t really have the stakes of someone really grappling with the story and meaning of Jesus.

Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus (2025), Elaine Pagels

An interesting book! Especially as a contrast with Pullman (which is totally unfair in about a million ways but hey, I read them next to each other so that’s what happened). Pagels is clearly deeply invested in the story and mystery of Jesus and in working to figure out why that story, that mystery, is so compelling for so many people across time and space. And, while I differ from Pagels in a bunch of theological points, reading this is a fascinating, quick, accessible overview to scholarship on lots of complicated questions about the historicity of Jesus, the Gospels, early Christianity, etc. Worth your while if you’re interested in those conversations or want a primer on them to share with someone else, from a sorta sympathetic agnostic, compelled by the story, perspective.

Squire (2001), Tamora Pierce

Ooooo. Perhaps my fav of the series so far. We’ll see how the fourth stacks up. Just lots of great intrigue and twists and action and heroics and Kel being a fierce defender of people in need. Great.

Future Home of the Living God (2017), Louise Erdrich

This would be fascinating to discuss alongside Parable of the Sower. Would love to have a rich conversation putting those two together. Felt eerily prescient reading in July 2025. Interesting stuff, though I think I wanted a bit more firmly, undeniably transcendent/magical/fantastic/mystical stuff going on.

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FILMS

Richard Jewell (2019)

happy fourth of july! $*&@ the fbi, long live true legal innocence until proven guilty!

Moana (2016)

Soooooo good. Great songs, a solid narrative, engaging characters, and a moving message. love it.

The Duellists (1977)

watched over a few viewings, with a big ol’ two week break between the penultimate chunk and the final chunk, but overall enjoyed this! the last bit really clinched it for me.

more artsy than i anticipated which is kinda fun but did make it less swashbuckling than i had hoped. once i settled in i dug it but it took some adjusting of expectations

120 battements par minute (2017); trans. BPM (Beats per Minute)

One of my all-time favorites. Just a stunning, incredible, riotous, musical, devastating, joyous depiction of AIDS-crisis era queer (mostly gay) life and resistance. the final sequence always blows me away.

The Swan Princess (1994)

now this is cultural mormonism.

Pride (2014)

confirmed to be another all-time favorite on this rewatch. cried like seven times. this type of funny, moving, british exploration of true radical solidarity among unlikely folks is absolutely my scene. love love love love it.

The Devil’s Backbone (2001) x2

Rewatched in preparation for a post-screening panel discussion I was participating in and then rewatched again at the screening pre-discussion. So good. So GOTHIC. Love del Toro and really dig the gothic vibes here and the way, like he often does, the film weaves together the personal, the political, the supernatural. lots of powerful, intriguing images here.

The Wedding Banquet (2025)

cute! more drama than I’d anticipated and appropriately very very gay.

Alex Edelman: Just for Us (2024)

I’m not a huge comedy special person and somewhat relatedly am often fairly easily pleased, so do with that what you will, but thought this was sooooooo funny. and worth it for the christmas story (which i knew from a this american life episode and is somewhat of traditional listening for cec and i).

Argo (2012)

perhaps part of entering my “dad era” of movie taste, but this rules. ben just knows how to make a good, thrilling, engaging movie, okay? yeah yeah it’s CIA propaganda, but it’s a great time at the movies, so i’ll allow it.

Mulan (1998)

One of the kids’ favs, which is a pretty good parenting win, I’ll say.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

perhaps simply hyped too much, but was a bit underwhelmed here. it’s certainly good and fun and even decent swashbuckling, but didn’t quite rise above that for me.

Superman (2025)

had a great time with this one! lots of great stuff already said by folks about the sense of hope here and the great way it presents hope as punk rock and like actually builds that theme and sense of who superman is into the whole movie, narratively and aesthetically.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

the textual elements here are SO GOOD. really struck by what an ingenious and successful adaptation this is

also it’s SO funny. lots of laugh out loud moments. a delight on the big screen surrounded by folks digging it

The Sound of Music (1965)

the second act turn of this nun/governess rom-com musical into a defiant anti-fascist political thriller musical is BONKERS [non-derogatory]

Robin Hood (1973)

this is an appreciation for the animators that made Hiss shrug, cower and shield himself, and bounce up and down like a pogo stick—incredible anthropomorphization

A Nice Indian Boy (2024)

there’s a lot of ways this could’ve ended up saccharine or undercut itself with irony or whatever but it just really really works! a great rom-com and gay to boot! also richer and deeper than i expected.

LOVE LOVE LOVE

Lee (2023)

kate winslet is at the top of her game

The Awful Truth (1937)

cary grant behind a door tickling irene dunn while she listens to awful poetry is an all-timer in a movie filled with hilarious all-timer scenes

The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan (2023)

SWASHBUCKLING

a great time throughout ending with quite the cliff hanger.

between this and the count of monte cristo french cinema is in a great swashbuckling adventure renaissance and i am here for it!