Mary Shelley

Since I teach the novel Frankenstein to my seniors every year I felt that Mary Shelley was required viewing.  Unfortunately, for being a biopic about such an interesting and unconventional woman, I found it to be rather boring and conventional.  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Elle Fanning) feels overshadowed by her famous parents, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft who died shortly after she was born and the philosopher William Godwin (Stephen Dillane), and struggles to find her own literary voice.  Soon she meets the dashing poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth) and, despite the fact that he has a wife and daughter, she decides to run away with him.  They live a tumultuous life together, plagued by creditors, Shelley's infidelity (possibly with her own step-sister Claire Claremont played by Bel Powley), and the death of her infant daughter.  She also feels overshadowed by Shelley's literary success.  Eventually the couple meets the poet Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge) and are invited to his mansion on Lake Geneva.  Byron issues the fateful challenge for everyone to write a ghost story to pass the time during a stormy evening.  Mary channels her feelings of loneliness and despair into the creation of Frankenstein's monster.  Once the novel is finished, she struggles to get it published because she is a woman.  She settles for having it published anonymously with a foreword written by Shelley, causing everyone to think that he wrote it.  These events are blandly portrayed as if the filmmakers were simply ticking boxes to get all of the biographical information included without taking any risks.  It is more like a made-for-TV movie than a theatrical release (how could they not mention her losing her virginity on her mother's grave?).  Furthermore, I found the narrative to be very disjointed.  Is she a feminist living an unconventional life or is she a victim of all the men around her?  Fanning gives an almost listless performance but even more maddening is the fact that there is very little chemistry between her and Booth.  In contrast, Sturridge and Powley are electrifying (pun intended) together and I was far more interested in them.  This was a little bit disappointing for me and I would recommend giving it a miss.

First Reformed

Last night my friend Angela and I went to see First Reformed and I can honestly say that this film left me completely shattered.  It is a brutal portrayal of a man in torment with an incredible performance by Ethan Hawke.  Reverend Toller (Hawke) is the head of the First Reformed church, which is more of a tourist stop rather than a thriving religious community.  It is administered by a megachurch called Abundant Life and its leader, Pastor Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer), is concerned that the 250th anniversary celebration of First Reformed go off without a hitch.  He has reason to be concerned.  Toller is struggling physically (from a stomach ailment), emotionally (his son was killed in Iraq), and spiritually (he no longer feels that God listens to his prayers).  A pregnant parishioner named Mary (Amanda Seyfried) requests that he speak with her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), a radical environmentalist, because he is distraught at the thought of bringing a child into a world facing the cataclysmic effects of climate change.  This encounter further challenges Toller's faith, especially when he discovers that a major contributor to Abundant Life owns a company known for environmental violations.  This film was deeply upsetting to me because it grapples with ideas of despair and hope (I really struggle with the darkness in the world right now and sometimes I lose hope) but the ambiguous ending can be interpreted as either damnation or salvation.  My friend and I had different reactions but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it and, for that reason, I believe it is one of the best films of the year.  It is not easy to watch but I recommend it.

Note:  Just give Ethan Hawke the Oscar right now.

On Chesil Beach

I am a huge fan of Ian McEwan in general and of his novella On Chesil Beach in particular so I have been impatiently waiting for the film adaptation of it to hit SLC theaters.  It has finally been released here so I saw it yesterday afternoon and I found it to be beautiful and incredibly moving.  Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle play Florence and Edward, a young couple recently married spending their honeymoon at a hotel by the sea.  They are both inexperienced and woefully uniformed about intimacy and as they awkwardly work up to doing the deed there are flashbacks of the two of them meeting and falling in love.  The tragedy is that they are incredibly passionate people and love each other deeply but in the build up to their wedding night he is embarrassed about his inexperience and she is terrified.  The repressive society in which they live (England in the early 1960s) does little to help their situation.  After a disastrous encounter Florence flees in horror and they have an epic confrontation on the beach which is fraught with emotion and causes Edward to make an impetuous decision.  It is only in retrospect, many years later, that Edward realizes that they could have been happy if they had only been able to talk about it without shame.  The final scene where Florence walks away from Edward as the camera pans out is so heartbreaking.  Ronan is absolutely luminous and gives yet another brilliant performance.  Howle, who plays the young Tony in The Sense of an Ending, is also outstanding (the two roles are very similar).  Usually flashbacks take the tension away from the narrative but here the juxtaposition of seeing Florence and Edward so happy and free with each other in the flashbacks and seeing them so tense and closed off on their wedding night is incredibly poignant.  This movie may not be for everyone because it is quite melancholy but I recommend it for the compelling story and strong lead performances.

Ocean's 8

Last week I saw a Thursday preview of Ocean's 8 and I really enjoyed this stylish and entertaining heist movie.  Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) has just been released from prison after five long years during which she has planned the ultimate heist.  She meets up with her former partner in crime, Lou (Cate Blanchett), and they begin forming a crew to steal a $150 million necklace which will be worn by actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) at the Met Gala.  Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter) is a down on her luck designer recruited to dress Daphne, Tammy (Sarah Paulson) is a suburban mom who comes out of retirement to fence the stolen diamonds, Anita (Mindy Kaling) is a jewelry maker who agrees to break down the necklace into smaller pieces, Nine Ball (Rihanna) is a hacker who can infiltrate the security system at the Met, and Constance (Awkwafina) is a street hustler needed to create a commotion at the gala.  All of these actresses are outstanding and they all have individual moments to shine in this movie.  I especially enjoyed Bonham Carter in the kind of eccentric role with which she excels and Anne Hathaway is clearly having a blast with her role as an insecure celebrity (the way they get her to choose Weil as her designer is hilarious). They look amazing with one fabulous costume after another, especially at the Met Gala which is so much fun (I loved the celebrity cameos).  However, these individual moments don't really add up to a great whole.  I found the heist to be rather bland because the stakes weren't that high.  They use high-tech gadgets for everything and actual problems (which are few and far between) are solved very conveniently.  Also, the references to Danny Ocean, from the original trilogy, seem shoehorned in and are not really necessary.  This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it because there is definitely a lot of fun to be had.  It provides exactly what you would expect from the franchise and I recommend it for the cast and the clothes!

Rugby!

Sean is playing rugby again this summer and he has already had a few games but I haven't been able to go to any of them.  Yesterday I was on aunt detail and one of my responsibilities was to get him to his games so I finally got to see him in action.  It is so fun to watch him play, even though rugby is absolutely incomprehensible!  His team has struggled a little bit this season and they lost their first two games.  In their third game against Olympus, however, they were on fire and got five tries!  This is the first game that South Davis has won and I'm choosing to believe that it was because I was there cheering so loudly!  I sure do love this kid and I love getting to spend time with him!

Summer Reading: We Were the Lucky Ones

The next selection on my summer reading list, We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter, was actually recommended to me by one of my students so you can imagine how eager I was to read it! Hunter, while interviewing her grandmother for a school project about her family history, discovered a heretofore unknown story about how her grandfather's entire family survived the Holocaust in Poland. This led to a decade-long quest to find out the details of his story and these details became the basis of her novel. At the start of the war the Kurcs are a comfortably well off and loving Jewish family living in Radom, Poland. Sol and Nechuma preside over three generations of their family including five children, their spouses, and a granddaughter. They try to ignore the horrors overtaking Europe but soon they are all separated as they try to escape the Nazis and they go to extraordinary lengths to survive and be reunited at the end of the war. Any novel about the Holocaust is going to be incredibly poignant and I had an emotional response to much of it, especially when one of the siblings and his family end up in a gulag in Siberia and when another sibling is looking for her daughter after the bombing of Warsaw, but there was both too little and too much going on for me to truly connect with it. The narrative is very episodic, jumping from character to character and location to location spanning long periods of time. It seemed as if the focus was to catch the reader up on what had happened since the last time we were with each character and then there would be a small vignette about what was currently happening. I would have liked a more in-depth exploration rather than a chronicle of events. I never really had the chance to connect with the characters because there were so many of them. It was often very confusing and I felt like I needed to keep notes on who was married to whom (some spouses were separated) and to have a map of where everyone was currently located. Also, there was very little dramatic tension because, although characters go through some incredibly harrowing experiences, I knew going in that everyone survives (they were the lucky ones, after all). I know that this is a story that many people will enjoy (my student thought it was the best book she had ever read) so I recommend it even though it didn't particularly appeal to me.

Note:  Have you read We Were the Lucky Ones?  What did you think?  Once again, I am in the minority with my response.

The Producers

Last night I went to a screening of The Producers (which is celebrating its 50th Anniversary) as part of the TCM Big Screen Classics series.  I have seen the stage musical many times but not the movie so I was excited to see it on the big screen.  Zero Mostel plays Max Bialystock, a once great theatrical producer down on his luck, and Gene Wilder plays Leo Bloom, his neurotic accountant.  When Bloom mentions that Bialystock would make more money with a flop, they become partners and come up with the perfect plan: find the worst play ever written, Springtime for Hitler written by ex-Nazi Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars), hire the worst director on Broadway, the flamboyant Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewitt), and hire the worst actor, a hippie named Lorenzo Saint DuBois (Dick Shawn).  Of course the show becomes the toast of Broadway so Bialystock and Bloom produce Prisoners of Love while serving their sentence at the state penitentiary.  This was so much fun because there is nothing better than an overwrought Gene Wilder!  He is particularly funny in this movie and the scene with his blue blankie had everyone in the theater laughing out loud!  Mars is also hilarious, especially when he watches Springtime for Hitler performed, and Andreas Voutsinas is an absolute hoot as Roger’s assistant Carmen Ghia.  While I really enjoyed seeing this on the big screen, I think I prefer the stage musical.  I can appreciate how groundbreaking this was for 1968 but, to me, the musical is much more irreverent!

Upgrade

Last night I went to see Upgrade, a movie that I wouldn't normally see but one I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would.  In a dystopian future where houses, cars, and even soldiers are automated, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) and his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo) are attacked by cyborgs.  Asha is killed and Grey is paralyzed in the attack but a reclusive CEO of a tech company (Harrison Gilbertson) offers to implant a computer chip in Grey's spine to give him back the use of his limbs.  This computer chip, called STEM, is sentient and has the ability to talk to Grey and take over his body when the need arises (this provides many comedic moments).  Grey uses his enhanced abilities to track down his wife's killers and unravels a conspiracy with a wild twist at the end.  The characterization is completely over the top and the acting is laughably bad but I really enjoyed this movie.  The premise is really interesting and, if you think about it, it gives a subtle message about the role of technology in our lives and how we become slaves to it rather than vice versa.  But, honestly, don't think about it too much!  What makes this movie so much fun is the action.  There are some great fight sequences and a fantastic car chase.  This movie has a kind of Blade Runner and Terminator vibe to it that I really dug.  My fifteen year old self would have loved sneaking into the basement to watch this movie on HBO at 2:00 am (I watched Blade Runner and Terminator countless times on HBO at 2:00 am) and I think it will eventually became a cult classic just like those movies!

Beast

A friend of mine recommended Beast to me so, of course, I had to see it yesterday.  It is a fascinating and intense psychological thriller that I will be thinking about for a long time to come.  Moll (Jessie Buckley) is a young woman with a troubled past and a domineering mother (Geraldine James).  She begins a relationship with Pascal (Johnny Flynn), a young man deemed unsuitable by her family and a suspect in a series of unsolved murders, which causes a scandal in the close-knit community of Jersey.  During the course of their relationship she begins to wonder if he is guilty and the action takes a really interesting turn.  Both Buckley and Flynn give absolutely riveting performances and you cannot take your eyes off of them when they are onscreen together.  You really cannot tell which one is the hunter and which is the prey.  James gives a chilling performance which is somewhat baffling until some information about Moll comes to light.  What makes this film so suspenseful is that information about the characters is revealed very slowly so you are always kept guessing about both Moll and Pascal's motivations and I had all kinds of wild theories running through my mind.  The visuals in this film also contribute to the menace with a dark and foreboding forest juxtaposed with waves crashing against the shore.  I found the tension to be almost unbearable and I would highly recommend it to fans of psychological thrillers.

Colorado Rockies Road Trip

My dear friend Tony took me to my first Colorado Rockies game (he also took me to my first Denver Broncos game and I took him to his first Colorado Avalanche game) and since then I always try to catch a game whenever I am in Denver during the season but it has been a while.  I've been missing Tony lately (he died of colon cancer several years ago) so I decided that it would be fun to go on a road trip to see a few games this summer.  Over the weekend I saw two games in the homestand against the Los Angeles Dodgers and, even though the Rockies lost both games, they were really exciting.  The first game on Friday night was a lot of fun because there were so many runs (the final score was 11-8) and I got to see my favorite player, Nolan Arenado, get a home run!  The game on Saturday was also fun, until the seventh inning when the Dodgers got eight runs (the final score was 12-4)!  I really love the atmosphere at Coors Field and it was a lot of fun to be in Denver for the weekend!

Note:  Sometimes thinking about Tony makes me sad but being in Denver brought back so many happy memories of all the Broncos, Rockies, and Avalanche games and concerts we went to.  I am lucky to have had such a great friend in my life!

Adrift

I went to see Adrift during a Thursday preview and I thought it was a pretty good, if typical, survival story.  Tami Oldham (Shailene Woodley) is a free spirit who is working odd jobs in order to travel the world.  While working at a marina in Tahiti she meets and falls in love with Richard Sharp (Sam Claflin), a yacht owner sailing around the world.  He asks her to join him but first the two of them take a job sailing a luxury yacht from Tahiti to San Diego and on the way they run into Hurricane Raymond.  The movie begins when Tami wakes up in the wreckage of the yacht after the storm and can't find Richard.  When she sees him floating, severely injured, on a dinghy in the distance, she makes repairs to the yacht as best she can and sails towards him to rescue him.  The action moves back and forth between their romance on Tahiti and their intense struggle to survive with a plot twist that I didn't see coming but should have.  The cinematography is stunning and the wide shots of the tiny yacht in the middle of the ocean are incredibly effective in conveying their isolation and the camera work is very immersive, so much so that there were many times when I found myself holding my head up to keep above the water.  The storm sequences are absolutely thrilling.  Shailene Woodley is hit or miss with me but she gives a fantastic and believable physical performance here as a woman determined to survive and Claflin is always nice to look at.  I think the flashbacks in the narrative take away the tension and the sense of peril at times but I liked this movie and would recommend it.

Summer Reading: Everyone Brave is Forgiven

The first selection on my summer reading list was Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave and I was eagerly anticipating this novel (hence the reason I began with it).  Unfortunately, it fell a little flat for me (as did Little Bee, another novel by Cleave). Mary North is an eighteen year old London socialite who signs up for a job at the War Office on the day that war is declared in 1939. She wishes to be useful but she is also motivated by a need to rebel against her wealthy family. When she is assigned to be a teacher of students left behind in the evacuation, she meets and falls in love with Tom Shaw, a school administrator. She also meets Alistair Heath, Tom's roommate, and her feelings for him complicate her relationship with Tom, especially when Alistair is stationed on Malta during a brutal blockade. A romance set in war-torn London seems like it would be right up my alley but, honestly, I had a hard time engaging with the story. I would pick it up for a few minutes and then set it down again and it was a struggle just to finish it. The story felt very episodic rather than a cohesive narrative. It was mostly vignettes about Mary in London and Alistair in Malta with lots of secondary characters and secondary plots that seemed to go nowhere. The romance seemed like an afterthought rather than the focus and the reunion between Mary and Alistair (which is why I kept reading, to be honest) was disappointingly anticlimactic. While Cleave's prose is incredibly beautiful and descriptive, the dialogue between the characters is unrealistic.  They engage in witty banter rather than heartfelt communication and that made the characters rather one-dimensional and kept them at a distance. I suppose Cleave's motivation for this device was to show the British stiff upper lip in the face of adversity but it backfired with me because I didn't really care about what happened to the characters. In the end, this novel didn't really appeal to me and I wouldn't recommend it.

Note:  Have you read Everyone Brave is Forgiven?  What did you think?  I seem to be in the minority on this one.

Solo

It was really hard for me to wait so long to see Solo: A Star Wars Story (particularly since so many of my friends were seeing it before me) but my Dad made me promise him that I wouldn't see it without him!  I'm glad that I kept my promise because he took my family to see it on Memorial Day and we had such a good time together!  We all loved it because it is such a fun and entertaining movie, perfect for the holiday weekend!  The galaxy is ruled by competing crime syndicates and a young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) teams up with Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) to procure a valuable resource, coaxium, for Crimson Dawn, a syndicate run by the ruthless Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).  Along the way he meets the wookie Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), wins the Millennium Falcon in a card game from Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), and makes the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs!  The story gave me everything I was looking for and I think it does a good job explaining how Han Solo got to be the rakish smuggler we meet in the original trilogy.  Ehrenreich is more than up for the challenge of playing such an iconic character but Glover steals the show as Lando Calrissian.  I laughed and laughed at the scene where he records the "Calrissian Chronicles."  The action sequences and special effects are really what make this movie so much fun, particularly a spectacular high speed train robbery and the infamous Kessel Run!  I still think that Rogue One has more depth and pathos but this addition to the Star Wars Anthology is well worth a visit to the theater!  Go see it!

1945

Yesterday I spent a rainy afternoon at the Broadway seeing a compelling foreign film called 1945.  In a rural village in Hungary just after World War II, two Orthodox Jews get off a train and arrange for two large trunks to be taken into the town by wagon.  News immediately spreads throughout the village and everyone reacts with alarm, wondering who they are and what they want.  We slowly learn that many of the villagers were complicit in denouncing a prominent Jewish family before the war and that many profited, unethically, from their arrest.  Intermingled with these frantic scenes of chaos are long shots of the two men slowly following the wagon into town which is a bit menacing as the villagers await their arrival.  As guilt plagues the villagers, with catastrophic results for many of them, we learn the innocuous reason for their visit.  It reminded me a lot of High Noon because the town is anticipating, not gunslingers, but two strangers walking into the town while nervously peering out from behind lace curtains as events unfold in real time.  This is, ultimately, a profound portrayal of guilt and how you cannot escape from the consequences of your actions forever and I am sure that I will be thinking about it for some time to come.  The cinematography effectively uses high contrast black and white to create unbearably beautiful images and the jarring score does much to add to the tension.  It is in Hungarian, and some Russian, with English subtitles and many of the characters look and dress alike (particularly the women) so I had a difficult time following the action at first but I found the images on the screen to be riveting.  I would definitely recommend this film.

Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2

Last night my friend Angela and I went to the final Utah Symphony performance of the 2017-2018 season and it was such an amazing concert!  In my opinion a performance featuring Rachmaninoff was a great way to end what has been a fantastic season!  The orchestra began with a piece commissioned by the Utah Symphony called Reflections by Tristan Murail.  It is very modern but, as explained by Thierry Fischer, it is a contemplative piece where the instruments mimic the tides and the wind and their ability to withstand adversity.  I found it to be very soothing.  Next Concertmaster Madeleine Adkins was the featured soloist in a performance of Korngold's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.  I had never heard this piece before and I thought it was beautiful.  I especially loved the third movement because it was very lively and the violin sounded a lot like a fiddle.  Adkins gave a spectacular performance (I really like her and I like the fact that the Concertmaster is a woman) and she received a thunderous standing ovation.  After the intermission the orchestra played Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2.  Rachmaninoff is one of my favorite composers so I enjoyed this immensely.  I think that the fanfare played by the horns in the second movement is so quintessentially Russian and I think that the main theme played in the third movement is especially romantic.  It was such a lovely concert and it was a great way to celebrate the end of the school year!

Note:  I am really looking forward to seeing the Utah Symphony perform in some outdoor venues this summer, particularly a performance with Sutton Foster at Deer Valley!

The Rider

Last night I saw The Rider, a film I have been anticipating for weeks, and it is so good!  Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) has suffered a catastrophic brain injury from being trampled after riding a bucking bronco at a rodeo.  Riding broncos is the only thing he knows how to do and it is his sole source of identity.  When he is told that he can never ride again he struggles to find himself again.  It is a beautiful and powerful exploration of what it means to let go of a dream.  What makes this film so remarkable is that it is based on actual events in the life of rodeo star Brady Jandreau, who plays a fictionalized version of himself, and stars his father Tim, his sister Lilly, several of his friends, and a former bull rider named Lane Scott who was paralyzed in a similar accident.  This device lends a certain authenticity to the film.  Footage from Jandreau's accident is used in the film and scenes where he actually trains wild horses are absolutely spellbinding.  Because he lived through these events, his pain and frustration are palpable and I found Brady to be an incredibly sympathetic character.  When he breaks down after visiting Lane in the rehabilitation center, knowing that this could be his fate if he continues, it is one of the most powerful moments I've seen on film.  The scene where he rides his horse for the first time after the accident is also beautiful and the look on his face does much to establish his motivation for wanting to continue in the face of insurmountable obstacles.  It is a remarkable performance.  The film takes place in the South Dakota badlands and the cinematography is stunning.  The beautiful, yet harsh, environment is the perfect backdrop for a character-driven film that is ultimately hopeful but tinged with melancholy.  I loved The Rider (it is now one of my very favorites of 2018) and I highly recommend it!

Summer Reading 2018

There is nothing that I enjoy more than spending an afternoon reading and, now that the school year has officially concluded, I have some uninterrupted time to do just that!  Once again I am sharing my summer reading list and inviting you to read along with me.  This year my list includes popular historical fiction, my very favorite genre, including Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave, We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter, Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline, The Alice Network by Kate Quinn, Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate, To Capture What We Cannot Keep by Beatrice Colin, The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck, Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir by Jennifer Ryan, and Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly.  I am so excited to get started!  Once again I will review each selection here every Friday and I hope you will join me and tell me what you think in the comments.  Yay for summer reading!

Mamma Mia at PTC

I have seen the Broadway touring production of Mamma Mia several times and I've even seen it in London's West End twice (once on a theater trip with PTC and once with my Mom who danced in the aisle) so I was really curious to see what a regional theater like PTC would do with it.  I am happy to report that I loved their version and I think some of the choreography, especially in "Lay All Your Love On Me" (more about that in a minute) and "Voulez-Vous," even surpassed the Broadway version.  This musical features some of Abba's best known songs, such as "Dancing Queen," "Money, Money, Money," "S.O.S.," "Knowing Me, Knowing You," and, of course, "Mamma Mia."  Sophie Sheridan (Kathryn Brunner) wants her father to walk her down the aisle at her wedding but she doesn't know who he is.  When she reads her mother's diary, she discovers three possibilities:  Sam Carmichael (Brian Sutherland), Bill Austin (Dan Sharkey), and Harry Bright (Paul Castree).  Without telling her mother Donna (Coleen Sexton), she invites all three of them to the wedding and chaos ensues!  The cast is incredible in this show, especially Sexton!  During the fourth performance she broke her foot but decided to continue the run, wearing a boot and occasionally using crutches.  When I heard about this, I worried that this might take me out of the illusion of the show.  But the production team did such a great job of adjusting the costumes, choreography, and lighting (in just 24 hours) that, after her initial entrance on stage, I really didn't notice at all.  Sexton is definitely a trooper (a super trouper?) for continuing to perform with such a severe injury!  As great as the main cast is, I think the male ensemble steal the show with their scuba gear in "Lay All Your Love On Me" and their acrobatics in "Does Your Mother Know?"  This show is so much fun and I absolutely recommend that you take a chance (too much?) on PTC and see one of the remaining performances (go here for tickets).

Note:  I have really enjoyed the 2017-2018 season at PTC!  Highlights have been The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Bright Star.

RBG

Yesterday I saw RBG, an inspiring documentary about a truly remarkable woman.  I happen to agree with her on a number of issues but no matter where you fall on the political spectrum you have to admire Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her tireless dedication to the notion that everyone deserves equal protection under the law.  This documentary portrays her as a trailblazer but it also humanizes her.  We learn that she was asked by the dean of Harvard Law School why she was sitting in a seat that could have been occupied by a male and that, upon graduation, no law firm in New York City would hire her despite the fact that she made Law Review.  This fueled her desire for equal rights for women but she was too shy and retiring to march with other protesters so she joined the ACLU and quietly and methodically argued cases for equality before the Supreme Court.  Of course there is an interview with Bill Clinton on her appointment to the Supreme Court and footage of her confirmation hearings.  Of course there are interviews with friends and colleagues about her incredible work ethic.  However, I loved learning about her relationship with her husband Marty and how he respected and supported her throughout her career.  I loved learning about her friendship with fellow Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia despite having vastly differing opinions.  It is hilarious when she watches Kate McKinnon's impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live and laughs out loud, when she mentions that she enjoys the comparison with the rapper Notorious B.I.G. because they are both from Brooklyn, and when she shows us all of her signature jabots (including the rhinestone encrusted one she wears when delivering a dissenting opinion).  She is a rock star and I really enjoyed this entertaining portrait of her life.

Note:  I leaned that I have two things in common with her:  a love of opera and the inability to cook!