Here’s a lovely track from Brandy Clark’s excellent 2013 album 12 Stories. It’s about a woman and her man running into his ex-girlfriend.
As in all of Clark’s songs, the writing here is subtle and evocative. I love the key line of the chorus (“this would be a real good time to hold my hand”), which reads a bit jokey but Clark sings with nervous resignation.
English author Nick Hornby’s writing has proved particularly film-worthy. Six of his books have been made into movies, including one (Fever Pitch) that was made into two different movies.
Juliet, Naked, based on Hornby’s 2009 novel, is the latest film adaptation and for my money the best yet. A romantic comedy dealing — like so many Hornby works — with popular music and obsessive fandom, this is another strong entry in what’s turning into the year of the rom-com.
I hadn’t exactly written off Spike Lee as a relevant filmmaker, but it has been 12 years since Inside Man, the last “joint” of his I truly enjoyed. And that film was atypical for Lee, a pretty straight-forward heist film. You have to go back to 2002’s 25th Hour for something really meaty and thought-provoking.
In fairness, I missed 2015’s Chi-Raq, which divided critics but was generally regarded as a return to form for the filmmaker.
If you drew a venn diagram of the first two movies I wrote about this week, with Crazy Rich Asians in the “romantic comedies with an Asian-American lead actress” circle and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in the “NetFlix Original films with long titles” circle, the overlap is where you’d find today’s featured film: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
NetFlix has stepped up its game in the rom-com genre, with Set It Up earning strong reviews earlier this year, The Kissing Booth emerging as an unexpected favorite, and now this adaptation of a 2014 YA novel by Jenny Han, easily the best of the bunch.
In case anybody thinks my lavish praise for Crazy Rich Asians means my affection for Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again has waned, rest assured that is not the case. My heart has room enough for two crowd-pleasing entertainments.
While counting the days to Mamma Mia‘s DVD release, I have sought out other work by the incomparable Lily James. That includes The Darkest Hour, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and a new NetFlix release with a mouthful of a title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
Meet Me In Montauk 