Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)

Judy Blume's classic was one of my favorite assigned reads in junior high. My sister probably liked it better still, and my mom has looked forward to seeing the movie. As it stands, I remembered enough to notice a few minor deviations, mostly to save screen time.

Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is unhappy to move from New York City to New Jersey right before sixth grade begins, partly because it puts distance between her and her favorite grandma (Kathy Bates). In no time, classmate Nancy (Elle Graham) inducts her into a secret club with two other members (Amari Alexis Price and Katherine Kupferer). They mostly talk about matters of puberty, whether bodily changes or a growing interest in boys. Margaret also has a growing interest in religion, having been raised without one by a lapsed Christian mom (Rachel McAdams) and a lapsed Jewish dad (Benny Safdie). But it's hard for her to keep praying civilly when things don't go her way.

Richard Jewell (2019)

When the key events of this story happened, I was 14 and still only so attentive to news sources. I took a little more interest in the story when it came up at the Newseum as an example of controversial reporting. Incidentally, my parents had noticed the problem pretty much right away.

The title character (Paul Walter Hauser) is the 1996 Atlanta Olympics security guard who reports a terrorist's bomb in time to reduce the carnage to two dead and 111 injured. This makes him a celebrity overnight, but the FBI has an obligation to investigate him as a suspect. After Agent Tom Shaw (a composite character played by Jon Hamm) injudiciously leaks this to Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the story spins out of control, making Jewell out to be more and more certain to have planted the bomb for fake heroism. Apparently in response, the FBI regards the prospect all too seriously.

Dolores Claiborne (1995)

Of the nine movies I've seen based on Stephen King stories, Misery is in my personal top two. When I learned that Kathy Bates had starred in another King adaptation five years later, I took interest.

As is common for King, the action occurs primarily in backwater Maine. Selena St. George (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a young reporter in New York, gets wind that her mother, Dolores, is the prime suspect in the violent death of Vera (Judy Parfitt), a wealthy yet stingy, fussy old curmudgeon who hired her as a maid. Selena and Dolores have been out of touch for so long that Dolores does not recognize her daughter by sight, but Selena sticks around because she doesn't share her mom's seeming confidence in an acquittal, not least because the lead detective (Christopher Plummer) thinks Dolores got away with murder 20 years ago -- that of her abusive husband (David Strathairn). Between numerous flashbacks and reports, we and Selena gradually learn which allegations are true and which aren't.

When Marnie Was There (2014)

I make a point to watch more than half the Academy Best Animated Feature nominees in any given year. I had seen two from 2015 already and may add Boy & the World, but Anomalisa sounds disturbing. Coming on the heels of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and The Wind Rises, WMWT marks the first time that Studio Ghibli got three back-to-back nominations, tho still no Oscar since Spirited Away.

The setting appears to be '60s Japan. Twelve-year-old Anna starts the movie as a self-loathing loner, stressed enough to compound her asthma. Her foster parents send her on a wellness trip to the country home of...let's call them her aunt and uncle. At first she's still depressed, but she takes interest in a reportedly abandoned mansion that somehow seems familiar -- and meets a same-age girl living there, eager to take a break from an oppressive home life. The two form a strong if secret bond in no time, but something seems off about Marnie's appearances and disappearances, as well as Anna's tendency to wake up a ways from where she thought she was. Anna starts to question Marnie's reality, and the plot gets a little more complicated....