Although most of the photographs I show here are family-oriented, I have always had a deep connection with landscapes. I grew up in one of the most naturally beautiful places in the world, a place people come to visit from all over the world just to see the hills and trees and rocky shoreline. The few times a year I get the chance to go back home, I always end up taking a bunch of landscape shots. And, indeed, the most landscape-heavy work I've shown is centered there, in my home town.

But although I do take a lot of photos around San Diego, none of them are what I'd really consider straight landscapes. There's some street work, a lot of urban/suburban architectural stuff, a smattering of still life, but nothing really of the land as land. I remember once when Juliette and I were talking about our life in Southern California, I talked about how, as much as I like having friends and having a job, I don't really feel connected to the place. "Back home," I said, "the land sings. I can feel it in my bones. There's no song here, no soul to the land."

Now, I do think it's true that things here are different, and a lot of it has to do with living in a city—something I'm never really going to be cut out for. But, more and more, I'm realizing that every place has some kind of spirit, and if I'm not feeling it, it's got more to do with me than with the place.

I recently signed up to participate in Stuart Pilkington's 100 Mile Radius project, the prompt for which is simply to "document the land using [my] unique voice." I think it's time I learned how to listen to this place, and hopefully this project will be just the kick in the pants that I need.

Thinking about this movie, it really feels like it’s got just about everything you’d come up with if you were making an awards checklist. Beautiful food? Check. Award-winning female lead? Check. Danceable, Bollywood-style music behind a “we can do it” montage? Check. “Quirky,” ethnic side characters? Check. A rags-to-riches story about a lone genius who has to overcome the odds? Check. The Hundred-Foot Journey really seems like a bat upside the head of potential Academy voters. And, like a lot of awards-bait movies, it never rises above the level of feel-good schlock.

The Hundred-Foot Journey opens with a young Indian man named Hassan (Manish Dayal) telling his backstory to a European immigrations officer. After his family’s home and restaurant in India are destroyed during a political upheaval, they have come to the Continent (after a short stint in England) to try to make a new life. They are grudgingly admitted, and when their brakes serendipitously fail just outside of a small, picturesque French town, they decide to start again there. Unfortunately, the building they buy for their restaurant is just across the street from a Michelin-starred French restaurant, run by the aloof, driven Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). A rivalry ensues, during which the culinary genius of young Hassan is revealed.

The story of a young genius’s rise from poverty to fame is pretty standard fare, and there just isn’t much in this version to elevate it into something interesting. Om Puri gives a fine performance as Hassan’s father, and, as I mentioned, the food is beautiful. Helen Mirren was good in her performance, although I did find myself wishing they’d hired someone more convincingly French—accents are far from the be-all, end-all of good acting, but at the end of the day it’s very hard to accept a performance as real when the accent is wrong.

Mostly, though, it was just trite. The most interesting female character and performance was, in my opinion, Charlotte Le Bon as Marguerite, but while she starts out as both a friend and mentor to Hassan, she winds up being nearly dropped by the film once Hassan’s ascent begins. It’s so predictable and disappointing, having a woman be presented as interesting but ultimately only be used to prop up the leading man.

It’s not a terrible movie, but, for me, The Hundred-Foot Journey ends up being conventional and treacly. And as can happen with things that are overly sweet, it leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

Viewed: 2015-01-30 | Released: 2014-08-08 | Score: C-

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This book is not going to be for everyone. I don’t say that to take anything away from the author, Patrick Rothfuss—indeed, he’s quite aware of it, as he spent the entire afterword discussing his acute awareness of how “not for everyone” it was. To begin with, The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a side story from Rothfuss’s best-selling (and as yet unfinished) trilogy The Kingkiller Chronicle, and it requires familiarity with the main story to make any sense. The bigger obstacle, though, is that not much happens in this book. As Rothfuss himself admits, this is the type of book where he spends eight pages describing the protagonist making soap. Put those together and you have a bit of a problem, since my feeling is that most epic fantasy readers will expect a more plot-heavy story.

So, as I said, it’s not going to be for everyone. And yet, it certainly was for me. I loved it.

Slow Regard is a week in the life of one of the more eccentric—if that’s the right word—side characters in The Kingkiller Chronicle, Auri. Auri is a young (or perhaps young-seeming) woman who lives in the catacombs beneath the wizard school featured in the main trilogy. She’s an odd character, of the type you often see in epic fantasies: ostensibly insane (in a quirky, mostly benign way) but also possessed of a deep wisdom, as though she sees truths about the world to which mundane folk are blind.

Now, a character like that makes for an interesting foil to a typical protagonist, and, indeed, that’s how she’s used in Rothfuss’s main novels. Here, though, she is the focus of the story. Showing things from her perspective is tricky, and requires a light touch. Too weird and you lose the audience, but too normal and you lose the magic and mystery that made her interesting to start with. I think Rothfuss strikes just the right balance, his lyrical prose and tight viewpoint making her both relatable and alien.

Not a whole lot happens, it’s true, but Slow Regard is compelling and beautiful nonetheless. Hauntingly so. Rothfuss somehow manages to make cleaning a room and making soap into something like poetry, all the while hinting at both the events of the trilogy and Auri’s own past. It’s really quite a remarkable book.

I don’t know whether or not you will enjoy this book. But I absolutely loved it.

Started: 2015-01-15 | Finished: 2015-01-19

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I’m told that the novel this movie was based on is hilarious. I took the liberty of looking up the 2009 New York Times review, in which critic Janet Maslin called it “smartly comic.” Some of that carries over to the film adaptation, but mostly when I was watching it, I kept thinking “This would be better as a book.”

This Is Where I Leave You is a movie that comes tantalizingly close to being good, but ultimately winds up just being OK. The bulk of the story deals with the four Altman siblings—Judd (Jason Bateman), Wendy (Tina Fey), Paul (Corey Stoll), and Phillip (Adam Driver)—as they return home in the wake of their father’s death. Now, you look at a cast like that, which is rounded out by the addition of Jane Fonda as the mother of the family, and Kathryn Hahn, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepherd, and Rose Byrne in supporting roles, and give them a premise like that, and what you’d imagine—what I’d imagine, at least—is a witty, heartfelt, observant ensemble movie. And at times that’s exactly what This Is Where I Leave You feels like, but it can’t hold onto it.

I think the main problem has to do with the fact that, rather than being truly an ensemble piece, the movie begins with Jason Bateman’s character, Judd, and follows his thread the most closely throughout. As the film opens, Judd appears to be a successful radio producer with a good life, but that gets upended when he walks in on his wife having sex with his boss. That this is shortly followed by the news that his father has died seems a bit piled on, but perhaps not unworkably so. No, the problem for me is that I’ve just seen too many movies about sad dudes who have to overcome some personal or emotional obstacle, mostly with the help of some Manic Pixie Dream Girl. That kind of story felt fresh when I was 25. At 35, I want to see something different. (At one point while watching this movie, I wondered aloud whether there were even any interesting stories left to tell about men. Perhaps that’s taking things a bit far, but certainly the shine has come off of this particular story.)

Still, if the main plotline fell flat for me, This Is Where I Leave You does get some things right, mainly in its portrayal of the Altmans as a family. There are little sprinkles of insight and realness here and there, bits of amicable dysfunction and the closeness that can only come from a shared history, which rang true to me. There are ways that, for many of us, family brings out both the best and worst of ourselves, and this movie understands that, and shows it in a way that doesn’t feel contrived or heavy-handed. Or, rather, it doesn’t feel any more heavy-handed than real families can be.

Still, those moments of connection only serve to make me all the more frustrated that the whole thing is so mediocre. And that’s especially true given the collective talent of the cast. I can’t say that this is really a bad movie, but it’s not one that I’m going to be coming back to often.

Viewed: 2015-01-17 | Released: 2014-09-19 | Score: C+

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In one of the year-end episodes of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, panelist Glen Weldon picked out Obvious Child as a counterexample to the claim that 2014 was a bad year for film. The movie had already been on my list for a while at that point, but Weldon’s recommendation was another reminder to move it up in the queue, especially now that the movie is on Netflix. I’m glad I did.

Obvious Child takes its name from a 1990 Paul Simon song, one with the light, airy melody and propulsive rhythms I think of when I think of Simon’s music during that era. And, as was so common with a Paul Simon song, the lightness and danceability of the music belied the complexity of the lyrics. “The Obvious Child” is a wistful song, one about the necessity of growing up, and of facing who you turn out to be when you get there. In a lot of ways, it’s an apt title for this movie.

Jenny Slate plays a young stand-up comedienne, Donna Stern, stuck in that phase of your early twenties where you’re out in the world but don’t yet feel like an adult. After a break-up and a casual (if adorable) fling, she finds out she’s pregnant, and then decides to have an abortion. Now, this summary sounds fairly trite and simple, possibly even didactic, but Obvious Child is anything but. Rather, it’s a surprisingly nuanced and honest portrait of the mess and struggle of early adulthood. Slate is, by turns, funny and poignant, juvenile and mature, brash and vulnerable. So much of the movie hinges on her ability to give a good performance, and she more than lives up to the challenge. You’re left with something that sounds almost like an oxymoron: an abortion story that somehow manages to be a feel-good movie.

It’s not going to be for everyone, this movie. Clearly, some people will find the central tension and its resolution distasteful. But I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie before that deals with abortion so honestly. It’s never heavy-handed or even particularly partisan, focusing instead on the people involved and what they go through. It’s a story, not a lesson. And, in any case, there’s so much more going on: Donna’s relationship with her parents, her place in her community of friends, and, most importantly, her relationship to her own life. The real climax of the film doesn’t take place in a clinic, but in a comedy club where Donna’s stand-up becomes the vehicle for her accepting her situation and her decisions, and that those decisions are hers to make.

I can’t say for sure how you will feel about this movie, but I can say that I really enjoyed it.

Viewed: 2015-01-16 | Released: 2014-08-29 | Score: A-

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I made up my mind to read Ancillary Justice when I saw Kameron Hurley tweet that her book The Mirror Empire (which I read and loved last year) would never have gotten published if not for the success of Ancillary Justice. The author of the weirdest and most innovative fantasy of the past decade is tipping her hat to this book? I’m in.

One of the first things that anybody will mention about Ancillary Justice—at least, the first thing that everyone has mentioned to me about it—is the way gender is treated. Or rather, the way it isn’t treated; throughout the book, the narrator simply refers to everyone using feminine pronouns. As becomes clear fairly quickly, this is because she is an artificial intelligence, and moreover one that was created by a society where gender differences aren’t recognized. It makes for an interesting tension in spots where she has to interact with people who do care about gender, but the most impressive thing about this choice is how little it ends up mattering for most of the story. That is, I was forced to look at how my biases color my perceptions when everyone in the book is a “she,” but in terms of the arc of the story, it mostly doesn’t factor.

Ancillary Justice is a far-future space opera and revenge tale, told from the perspective of a person who used to be a spaceship. Now, that sounds completely bonkers, and I suppose in some ways it is, but accepting an AI as a protagonist turns out to be a lot less mind-bending than dealing with the central premise, which deals with the concept of a consciousness being spread out over many individuals. In this universe, you see, a huge space empire (reminiscent of Rome in many ways) has been conquered using sentient spaceships who control large groups of “ancillaries,” which are essentially human bodies whose brains have been connected to the ship’s AI. But the ancillaries are not only controlled by the ship, rather, the ship’s awareness and “self” is spread across all of those bodies simultaneously. This leads to a few scenes—including some of the most tense and exciting ones in the whole book—that become a little difficult to track, as the narrator speaks of an “I” that is both singular and multiple.

Indeed, the whole motive force behind Ancillary Justice’s plot comes from this idea of multiplicity, and author Ann Leckie explores some really intriguing ideas about identity and consciousness over the course of the story. Moreover, she does it in a way that’s not only intelligent, but also highly entertaining. The whole thing is just really well done, which ought to be obvious of a novel that won both the Hugo and the Nebula in its year. Despite the fact that the pile of books on my nightstand is still quite tall from my Christmas haul, I couldn’t resist running out and picking up the sequel, Ancillary Sword. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

Started: 2014-12-17 | Finished: 2015-01-14

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“I’m sorry I left you up on that ridge, Mike. I’ve always regretted losing your friendship.”

Several years ago, I opened up Facebook to find a friend request and a message from a guy I’d known since fourth grade, but whom I hadn’t seen in years. He apologized profusely and sincerely, clearly having carried guilt over abandoning me, and wanting to make amends. The only thing was, I didn’t know what he was talking about.

A short conversation jogged my memory. On a school camping trip, back when we were sophomores in high school, we had climbed—off-trail—to the top of a ridgeline above our campsite. We’d gone the long way around on the ascent, coming up the shallower slope on the back side, but now the sun was setting and we needed to get back before the evening campfire. We started down the steep face together, but I froze halfway down, overcome with vertigo. He shouted for me to hurry up and went on without me, assuming I’d make it on my own. But I didn’t; three or four other campers ended up guiding me down, inch by inch. I was shaken, and angry with my friend for leaving me, but I got over it.

Over the next few years we remained friends, but as so often happens we drifted apart. He joined the football team; I joined the drama club. We both made other friends. There was never any particular rancor between us, other relationships just became more important. Senior year, we were on the yearbook staff together, and I remember having a few laughs. We lost touch after graduation, but I always remembered him fondly.

This was how I remembered it. But as I discovered when he messaged me, his version of the story was very different: I had been angry and hurt that he abandoned me, and I never forgave him for doing so. Our friendship ended that night, because of his actions, and the regret over the incident changed his life. From then on, he made it a point never to let anyone down, especially if they needed his help.

So, for him, that night on the ridge was a foundational experience. For me it wasn’t even remarkable enough for me to remember it without being reminded. That disparity has been on my mind a lot lately due to an interesting coincidence. Earlier this month, I received an invitation to a Facebook group for alums of the Monterey Gaming System BBS. As it happened, that was the same week that I finally started listening to Serial.

It’s a little strange to think about these days when social networking sites are so central to most people’s daily lives, but back in the pre-Internet days the closest thing was the local bulletin-board system, or BBS. Monterey Gaming System (or, as it was known to its regulars, “MGS”) was the largest of the local BBSes back in the area where I grew up. Boasting dozens of dial-up lines and an active user base in the hundreds, the MGS chat rooms were the place to be for the computer nerd of the early 90’s Monterey Peninsula.

I was introduced to MGS around 1990 or ’91 by the friend from the story above, and for about three years it was my main social outlet. Most of my good memories from the first two years of high school—which were generally terrible for me—come from the time I spent in those chat rooms or hanging out at the local bowling alley during one of the “get-togethers.” My first steps toward understanding myself as an individual came during experiences I had with that group. I even met my first girlfriend there. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I stopped going, though by the time I left for college it was mostly a thing of the past.

The thing that has been the most striking to me about reconnecting with the group after twenty years is how poor my own memory of that time is. In the past two weeks, dozens of threads have popped up in the Facebook group, people sharing stories about the old days. And it’s been shocking to me how few have sounded even a little bit familiar to me. With just a few exceptions, I can’t even remember people’s names. Somehow, despite this being a formative period in my life that I think about regularly, the people and places have mostly slipped my mind. The question that I keep coming back to is: why don’t I remember this better?

And this brings me to Serial, the wildly popular spin-off podcast of This American Life. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Serial debuted last year with a twelve-episode arc examining the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, an 18-year-old high school student from Baltimore. There’s a lot covered in those twelve episodes, and the series is well worth a listen if you haven’t already done so, but what intrigued me the most was the way in which the people involved in the case remember the people and events so differently. The series is largely an attempt to understand whether the man who was convicted of the murder—Lee’s ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed—was guilty or innocent, but depending on which present-day interview you give the most weight, Syed is either a golden boy or a manipulative liar. And the same discrepancies pop up in people’s descriptions of nearly every facet of the case. In some ways, this isn’t so surprising given that the interviews happened some fifteen years after Lee’s murder, but the huge variations in how people remember Syed, Lee, and what happened that day is striking. What’s more, even the contemporary accounts vary wildly, and not all of it can be explained by the possibility that some people are lying.

Being the sort of introspective person I am, I have a definite picture of who I am now, and who I was at many points in my past. This sense of myself, of awareness and understanding—in many ways this is fundamental to my experience of life. I know that my identity and my ways of being have changed over the years, but even that process is something that I have thought of as comprehensible. Or at least known. More and more, though, I’m coming to the realization that that understanding is flawed.

And that stands even though my conception of my past has changed over time. Leaving high school, I saw myself at 14 as a victim, pushed around and bullied by people stronger and cooler than I was. Ten years later, I looked back with what I thought was clarity and saw the self-absorption, the arrogance and cruelty I displayed at that age, and I admitted that what I endured was at least partially my own fault. Another ten years have gone by, and neither story seems to stick on its own.

Who was I when I knew the people I’ve been reconnecting with? I can tell you about the length of my hair (long), the music I listened to (mostly metal), and the awful poetry I wrote (self-indulgent, but not atypically so for someone going through puberty). I can chuckle about how seriously I took myself, how simple my views of the world were. But is that right? Was I so silly then? Am I so much more advanced now?

What does it mean for my friend if a lifelong regret—one that influenced all of his subsequent relationships—is based on something that didn’t happen? What does it mean for my understanding of myself if it did? Is identity nothing more than a story we tell ourselves in the present? And can we ever really know what our own story really was?

Memory is such a tricky thing. It’s so susceptible to being influenced by our present state of mind, and not just in color but in the details, which can disappear or even change as the story we want or need changes. In Serial, Koenig often butts up against the fact that the narrative she gets changes based on who’s telling it, or that people have no memory of the day at all. It’s a frequent refrain that we don’t pay attention to what happens on a normal day; it just doesn’t stick. But it’s hard to know at the time which days end up being normal and which become important, and how, and to whom. And if life is mostly a sequence of normal days, what are the implications for our conception of that life if we can’t remember those days?

As I’m writing this post, my son and older daughter are in the other room playing. I don’t know exactly what they’re doing, what’s causing the laughter and shrieks. I can’t help but wonder what they will take away from this time, what they will remember in twenty years and what they will forget, and how that will differ from what I remember and forget. Time will tell, I suppose.

In the years since the 2008 crisis, we’ve all heard a lot of stories about Wall Street and its excesses, so it makes sense that a movie like this one would get a lot of attention, especially given the enduring popularity of the Scorsese-DiCaprio partnership. But, coming away from The Wolf of Wall Street, it’s a little difficult for me to put my finger on what I think about the film and what it’s saying.

In a lot of ways this movie has a lot in common with another Scorsese classic, Goodfellas. Both follow a charismatic but unstable (and unlikeable) character’s rise and fall, charting his journey into a secretive subculture that is defined by power and corruption. Both are stories of hubris, entitlement, misogyny, and violence. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Goodfellas, but as I recall it, this one doesn’t quite measure up.

Perhaps it’s just that the structures of the two stories are so similar that this one feels like it’s already been done. Or maybe it’s just that this one is newer, rather than being the “classic” that Goodfellas has become. But I think perhaps it has to do with the nature of the transgressions in each movie, and the moral tones of each.

The thing is, however much organized crime has fascinated the moviegoing public for much of the history of film, the mafia are in many ways small potatoes compared to Wall Street. To be sure, the criminals we see in movies like Goodfellas or The Godfather are ruthless and powerful, but even at the height of their influence, the mafia could never cause the sort of global meltdown we saw in 2008. So, when you consider the way that both movies dance right on the line between condemning and condoning their main characters, Goodfellas seems a bit more harmless than The Wolf of Wall Street.

Like any Scorsese film, this one is well made and has some good performances. Unlike his best movies, though, this one felt very long. At one point Juliette and I turned to each other, both about to complain about how it felt like we’d been watching a long time, only to realize that the film was only about halfway through. And, at that, The Wolf of Wall Street is a minute shorter than Goodfellas, though I don’t remember the latter dragging in the same way this one did.

Not a bad movie, at the end of the day, but in many ways problematic. And in that, perhaps it’d be easier for me if it had been bad, because it would be easier to write off. What I’m left with as it is, is a movie that I’m uncomfortable with, and not in a way that feels purposeful.

Viewed: 2015-01-10 | Released: 2013-12-25 | Score: B

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I’m not a big fan of resolutions for a new year. They’re too easy to abandon, and too much of a cliche. Nevertheless, I find that my life and my sense of self tend to be the most stable and satisfying when I have goals. The distinction may be fine, and despite having thought about it for a few days I’m not able to articulate the difference. But goals are something I need. Attainable, concrete, measurable goals.

Here is my list of goals for 2015:

• Read 25 books in any genre. (I read 23 in 2014.)
• Run 600 miles. (I ran 319 in 2014, having started running seriously over the summer.)
• Write 24 non-review, non-photo blog posts of at least 1000 words.
• Post 52 photos to this blog.
• Get accepted into at least 2 juried exhibitions or competitions. (I was accepted into 1 in 2014.)
• Spend at least 1 day shooting for my “It Forgets You” project.
• Finish writing the text for the “It Forgets You” book.
• Shoot at least 500 frames for my Mira Mesa project.
• Complete a rough draft of a photo book for my “All Good Things” series.
• Shoot at least 12 self-portraits for the new series I’m working on.

There’s a lot to do on this list, and the year will go by quickly. But I think I’m up to the task.

I saw 11 movies in the theater in 2014. Up to this point—with a few exceptions—new theatrical releases are the only movies I've reviewed on this blog. But it occurred to me that, 1.) I don't see all that many movies these days in any venue, and 2.) I've been reviewing all of the books I read regardless of format or publication date. Thus, I decided to include rentals and streaming as candidates for review, bringing my total for the year to a whopping 13. Once again, in chronological order:

Walking With Dinosaurs: Oh, the things we do for our kids. Looking over my notes, this is probably the worst movie I've seen in the past five years. Maybe longer. Imagine if you took The Land Before Time but made the voice acting terrible, gave it a stupid modern-day framing story, switched from charismatic hand-drawn animation to sleek but soulless CGI, and weighed the whole thing down with a veneer of edutainment (which fails at being either educational or entertaining). That's pretty much what you have here. My six-year-old liked it, but fortunately not so much that it's likely I'll have to see it again. (IMDb)

Her: Of the two heavily nominated movies of 2013 that are included in this list, this is certainly the one I liked better. I'm hot-and-cold with Joaquin Phoenix, finding him sometimes wonderfully nuanced and sometimes overly self-conscious as an actor. His performance in Her was definitely the former, just a wonderful portrayal of a buttoned-up sad sack in an alienating world. And, of course, I was impressed by how much of a presence and personality Scarlett Johansson projected using just her voice. Amy Adams was great in her supporting role, too, the first I can think of where she wasn't stuck in her former cute-as-a-button pigeonhole. (IMDb)

American Hustle: Walking out of the theater after this movie, Juliette and I turned to each other to ask whether either of us understood why American Hustle had garnered such high praise from so many corners. It's not that it was a bad movie—really, it was a perfectly adequate little caper story. But the hype leading up to the awards season had been so high, we both expected something that ultimately the movie didn't deliver. The performances were fine, but mostly a bit over-the-top for our taste. The story was fine, but nothing special. There were some funny parts and some tense moments, but in the end nothing really stood out to either of us. I have a feeling that this isn't going to be one that enters the canon, but so far I've been in the minority with this movie, so I wouldn't be too surprised to be wrong. (IMDb)

The Lego Movie: One of the things that having a six-year-old has given me the opportunity to do is revisit a lot of the pop culture of my youth. And although much of it still holds my interest via nostalgia, I have to admit that it's made me realize how great kids these days have it. Really, a whole lot of the children's entertainment from my youth is just crap. Meanwhile, my kids get to grow up with stuff like The Lego Movie, which I not only loved when I took my son to see it in the theater, but I've been more than happy to re-watch several times since we bought the Blu-Ray. It's funny, smart, and just completely entertaining. (IMDb)

Muppets Most Wanted: As I recall, I really enjoyed The Muppets when it came out back in 2011. I wasn't expecting much from this sequel but, if anything, I think I liked it even more than the last one. The songs were better, the plot more in line with the sort of capers I remember from the old Muppet movies, and the jokes were just as good. Heck, I even liked Ricky Gervais, so something must have been going right. (IMDb)

The Grand Budapest Hotel: As far as I can tell, most people tend to fall into one of two camps with Wes Anderson: you either think he's a genius or he's pretentious and twee. Given that The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou are two of my favorite films, you can guess where I land with respect to Mr. Anderson. And The Grand Budapest Hotel may be his best work yet. It's visually gorgeous, with all the cinematographic hallmarks of a Wes Anderson movie but in a way that felt—to me, at least—more organic and heartfelt. It's never as emotionally raw as the climax of The Darjeeling Limited, possibly not quite as funny as The Royal Tenenbaums (though my opinion there may change with more viewings), but it all comes together just so, a perfect balance of affectation and emotion. (IMDb)

Don Jon: It's funny, the more I think about this movie, the less I like it. In general, I like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, both as an actor and as a general creative force. And I always have a soft spot for Tony Danza, and I thought Julianne Moore was quite good. But the sexual politics portrayed in the movie were problematic, to say the least. On the one hand, the movie is a sharp criticism of porn addiction and the sort of bro-y, meat-headed, overt chauvenism of the "guido" type, of which the title character is a member. And that's fine. But it also finds an equal problem with the rom-com-fueled, "a real man would do anything for his woman" sort of objectification that a woman can do to a man. And while the latter is certainly problematic on a personal level, it just doesn't have the same structural ramifications of the former. So, despite a certain amount of charm, I'm left feeling kind of uncomfortable with this movie. (IMDb)

Sleepwalk With Me: Mike Birbiglia is one of my favorite recurring contributors to This American Life, and I was quite excited when I heard that he and Ira Glass had teamed up to make this movie. Sadly, 2012 just wasn't a year where I managed to get out to see a lot of small, independent movies. Or any, actually. But when I saw that it was available via Netflix, I added it to my queue immediately, and while it was shaky in the ways that movies from first-time writer/directors often are, I really enjoyed it. It was funny, heartfelt, and painfully honest in just the way I love about Birbiglia's stand-up, and more than any other movie that I've seen, it really focused in on the life of a young road comedian, which is something I've always found fascinating. (IMDb)

Chef: It's an odd coincidence that I'd happen to see two movies in a row that I heard about via a podcast. I became aware of Chef when its writer, director, and star, Jon Favreau, appeared on Marc Maron's WTF podcast. In that interview, Maron described the movie as sweet, and Favreau talked about how it wasn't the kind of movie that would have gotten made if he hadn't done it himself. I'm glad that he did, because it was one of the most heartwarming movies I've seen in recent years. Favreau really hit all the right notes to appeal to someone like me, with beautiful food, self-deprecating humor, a great cast, and a feel-good story that would make Frank Capra proud. It's an unabashedly sweet and earnest movie that yet manages to avoid becoming overly saccharine. Thinking about it now, I can't help but smile. (IMDb)

How to Train Your Dragon 2: Dreamworks has really had a great run of animated films over the past several years. That's not news to anyone who watches animated films, of course, but it's still striking to me how quickly and strongly they switched from being a mere "not Pixar" to an animation studio to be reckoned with. I absolutely adored the first movie, and even though I'm on record as being tired of sequels and movie franchises, for some reason animation tends to slip around those reservations of mine; I was quite excited to see this one. And, boy, it delivered, maintaining the laughs and thrills of the original while broadening the scope of both the setting and the characters' personal histories. I just loved it. (IMDb)

Planes: Fire and Rescue: This one, though, I didn't love. Here's the thing: it's basically the exact same movie as the first Planes, which while visually exhilarating was completely flat and boring in just about every other way. The first one was just a cheap knock-off of Cars, which, itself, was not one of Pixar's better movies. This one is an even cheaper knock-off of the first one, so if you're above elementary-school age, it's probably not going to do a whole lot for you. (IMDb)

Big Hero 6: For the past two months since we went and saw Big Hero 6, my son has been talking about the main characters, drawing them, pretending to be them, and asking for toys of them at least every other day. Suffice it to say, this was probably his favorite movie of the year. I liked it quite a lot, too. It's gotten to the point where I'm no longer surprised when a kids' animated movie makes me both laugh and get choked up—indeed, the stinkers like Walking With Dinosaurs and Planes: Fire and Rescue have become the ones that feel like outliers. Children's entertainment has just gotten so great, and I'm just happy that I get to be a parent now that that's the case. (IMDb)

Annie: The last movie of our year was the remake of the classic musical Annie. Juliette and I, of course, grew up with the 1982 version, which Jason has also seen and enjoyed. We weren't sure how this one would measure up, especially since we'd heard that much of the music was going to be different. (I'm also just generally skeptical of remakes.) But both Juliette and I agreed that this new version of Annie was pretty great. Many of the songs were almost unrecognizably different, and there were several new ones added, as well. But it all just worked. There were a number of character and plot updates as well. The most notable of these was the changing of the two main characters from Caucasian to African American, but there were a lot of others, too: having Will Stacks (the Daddy Warbucks character) be running for mayor; replacing Miss Hannigan's dastardly brother, Rooster, with Bobby Cannavale's political consultant; giving Will more overtly humble origins; making Annie a foster child instead of an orphan. From what I've read, some purists have protested the changes, but for me they all added up to a story that felt more organic and plausible, as well as more relevant. At the end of the day, both Juliette and I and our kids thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and it was a great way to close out our cinematic year. (IMDb)