2015 in Review: Books

This is the second in a series looking back on 2015.  Other entries will include movies, music, food, TV, and more.

Compared to the year previous, my reading totals took a severe hit in 2015.  Of course, 2014 was a remarkable year in which I read 58 books and nearly 14,000 pages.  For 2015, my total (according to Goodreads) was 31 books and 8,468 pages.  Yikes!  I’m not sure what happened, to be honest.  I was going strong during the first half of the year, but I feel like things slowed down dramatically after I returned from my summer stint in Nauvoo.  August and September won’t so bad, but I completed only two total books between September 22^nd and December 31^st, one of which was rather small.  I’m appalled.

Moving on, let’s take a look at what kinds of books I was reading in 2015.  Of the 31 books I read, half (15 of them) were fiction.  Of the 16 non-fiction books I read, 9 were books on Mormonism, broadly construed.  I say “broadly construed” because one such book was on RLDS / Community of Christ history, and these people do not view themselves as Mormon.  But you get the idea.  This reveals yet another drastic shift in my reading habits—only 29% of the total books I read, or 56% of my non-fiction selections, were on Mormonism.  This may have something to do with my conversion to Community of Christ, but was likely further influenced by my participation in a book club during some months of 2015.  I wasn’t always choosing, in an explicit sense, the books I was reading.

10 of the books on my list are books that I read with my children, not including picture books.  This also represents a slowdown in reading to my kids, which is sad.  After reading the Bunnicula series and some of its spin-offs in 2014, we’ve struggled to know what to read together.  For 2015, we latched onto the Fudge series by Judy Blume.  The boys quite enjoyed the books, but Mom and Dad did not relish them nearly as much as we did the Bunnicula series.  In fact, I gave two of the four Fudge books we read just two stars, and the other two I gave three stars.  (Bear in mind that, unlike movies, I rate books on a five-star system so as to coincide with Goodreads).  The best of the bunch was Superfudge, which we finished back in April.  I had the impression Blume is supposed to be a great author, but I didn’t think her writing was all that great.  Sometimes it was even on the poorer side.  This is certainly true when it comes to narrative flow.  One problem I had with the books was how episodic each of them felt.  It may be that Blume captures something about child psychology, and captures it well, but the characters themselves are rather flat.  I deem them fluffy entertainment.  My kids seemed to enjoy them, which is great, but I wouldn’t recommend them per se.

Aside from Blume, only two authors showed up on my annual reading list more than once.  One of them is another author of juvenile fiction, Louis Sachar.  With Melanie and the boys, I read both Holes and Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  Both were quite good.  We read the latter, which featured some very off-the-wall humor, while in Nauvoo.  I associate the book with sitting in the upstairs loft / bedroom of the Sidney Rigdon house, all three boys nestled into a single bed.  Sigh.  The other author to appear twice is Samuel Morris Brown.  He wrote one of three books I read last year to which I would give a superlative five-star rating.  That book is In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death.  Published by Oxford University Press, In Heaven as It Is on Earth explores the influence of death on founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith’s developing theology.  Brown argues that many developments in early Mormonism arose as the prophet Joseph both responded to and sought to overcome the prevalence of death around him—his brother, his own children, and so on.  It’s a captivating read.  Impressed by Brown’s earlier work, I excitedly picked up a copy of First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple.  Even having left the LDS Church, I continue to find LDS temple theology and the development thereof to be quite fascinating.  Thus, I was quite disappointed by Brown’s book, to which I gave a low three stars.  My main beef was that the concepts Brown presented were not fleshed out enough to appreciate or make complete sense of.  As I said in my Goodreads review, “Brown draws some broad strokes with this book. They are intriguing enough that I want to stop and look at the picture he is painting, but I also wish he would come back and paint a bit more.”

Continuing with the theme of Mormonism, three of my favorite reads from the year dealt heavily with the issue of polygamy.  Richard S. Van Wagoner’s Mormon Polygamy: A History was originally published in 1986 but remains an excellent and extensive overview of Mormonism’s most infamous spiritual practice.  The book had quite an impact on me.  Prior to reading the book, I knew that Joseph Smith himself had practiced and yet publicly denied polygamy.  I knew he was, sadly, rather deceptive to his legal wife Emma regarding his polygamous relationships.  But I was shocked to learn just how pervasive and long-lasting the dishonesty surrounding polygamy was.  Extensively lying to the public, and even to their own church members, about polygamy continued with several of the LDS Church Presidents that followed Joseph.  I was also surprised to realize just how much of LDS culture today is influenced by its polygamous past.  Several times during my reading of the book, I saw connections between the behaviors being encouraged in the polygamous heyday of the 1800s and the modern Mormon mindset.  To cite just one example, the perpetuation of polygamy relied on convincing prospective plural wives that they should obey a church leader’s counsel no matter what, even if it didn’t sit well with them or they couldn’t understand why such a thing would be required.  I find it interesting that such a mentality continues quite strongly in the LDS tradition and yet is starkly absent from Community of Christ, which has always decried, and in fact owes its existence in large part to its denunciation of, polygamy.

Another great read is Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippets Avery’s Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith.  Also written in the 1980s, Mormon Enigma remains the preeminent biography of Joseph Smith’s only legal wife, Emma.  As one would expect, polygamy factors heavily into the book.  I’d deem the book a must-read, even though the writing sometimes annoyed me.  The content itself is excellent, but things aren’t always communicated clearly, and sometimes stories are thrown into the mix that seem like asides and not entirely relevant to the discussion at hand.  On very rare occasions, the authors also appear biased toward a pro-LDS interpretation of events that isn’t adequately supported by the text.  You may also find it interesting to know that, if you go to Nauvoo and take a tour of the historic sites owned by Community of Christ, a great deal of what you’ll hear can be found in Mormon Enigma.

The final book on polygamy that I read is The Polygamous Wives Writing Club by Paula Kelly Harline.  Harline’s book, published in 2014, offers a fascinating peek into polygamy as it was lived among the average—that is to say, non-elite—members of the early LDS Church.  The book is comprised largely of diary entries and the like from the plural wives of rank-and-file LDS men.  These are not the women who were married to apostles and prophets, but those married to normal folk.  By reading this book, you get an idea of what it was like for those women who practiced “celestial marriage” as part of an otherwise very normal, very routine life—which is not to suggest that these women were content in their situations.  Despite being published by Oxford University Press, The Polygamous Wives Writing Club is a very approachable read, suitable for non-scholastics as well as those with a more academic bent.  Early in the book, I feared a little too much speculation was creeping into the commentary supplied by the author, but it’s easy enough to overlook such things as one wishes.  It’s a very worthwhile read.

I mentioned above that I was part of a book club in 2015.  More specifically, it was the Salt Lake City congregation of Community of Christ book club (not an official title).  I haven’t read every month’s selection, and I’m uncertain I’ll continue with the club at this point in time, but book club accounts for four of last year’s reads, plus one book that I read most of during December but didn’t officially complete until after the new year (disqualifying it from this list).   The first such book I read was Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber.  I got the impression that everyone else in book club had gone goo-goo ga-ga over this book, but I found it rather middle of the road—for the same reason, I think, that two other hugely popular book club selections didn’t really resonate with me.  They feel like fluff pieces to me.  There really isn’t much depth to them at all.  They might contain a handful of quotes worth remembering, although even those are often only the caliber of something you’d see on a motivational poster or passed around on Facebook as part of some feel-good meme.  And that seems to be the aim of these books: to make you feel good and motivated.  Problem is, they seem to rehash their own ideas over and over and over again without ever diving too deeply below the surface.  The other books that fall into this category are The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown (which I enjoyed even less than Pastrix) and the book I finished last week and so can’t officially count (Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor).

Two of the book club selections I read were actually pretty good.  I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb, which tells the story of The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (as the subtitle reminds you) is undeniably engaging.  How can you not be pulled into such a story?  And yet the writing itself is not particularly memorable.  There were moments when it seemed obvious the reader was getting much more of Lamb’s journalistic voice than Malala’s own.  There were also moments when the things being said felt obligatory, motivated by public relations, and/or otherwise mildly contrived.  You can’t go wrong reading it, but it’s not a story that’s worthwhile because of the way it’s told.

My favorite book club selection of 2015 turned out to be Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who argues that, at their core, Buddhism and Christianity are really teaching the same things.  I’m very much drawn toward ecumenical and interfaith types of ideas, and I’m a universalist at heart.  It’s easy to see why I would like this book better than some of the others.  There is also a great deal more wisdom—honest-to-goodness wisdom, folks—packed into this book, gems like:

To “love our enemy” is impossible, because the moment we love him, he is no longer our enemy.

And here is, I believe, an excellent and beautiful defense of religious pluralism:

It is good that an orange is an orange and a mango is a mango.  The colors, the smells, and the tastes are different, but looking deeply, we see that they are both authentic fruits.  Looking more deeply, we can see the sunshine, the rain, the minerals, and the earth in both of them.  Only their manifestations are different.  Authentic experience makes a religion a true tradition.  Religious experience is, above all, human experience.  If religions are authentic, they contain the same elements of stability, joy, peace, understanding, and love.  The similarities as well as the differences are there.  They differ only in terms of emphasis.  Glucose and acid are in all fruits, but their degrees differ.  We cannot say that one is a real fruit and the other is not.

Now let’s move on to the best of the best, from both fiction and non-fiction.

My absolute favorite read of the year, which also happens to be non-fiction, is Joseph Smith III: Pragmatic Prophet by Roger D. Launius.  I finished Pragmatic Prophet in early May, shortly after I had officially become a member of Community of Christ.  I wanted to learn more about the first president of the church after the death of founding prophet, Joseph Smith (Jr.).  I had grown up accepting Brigham Young as Smith’s rightful successor, but the more I’ve learned about Young over the years, the more horrified I’ve become.  Reading Pragmatic Prophet was an eye-opening experience, not only because I knew next to nothing about the so-called succession crisis or the early days of what became known as the RLDS Church, but because Joseph Smith III provides such an astoundingly stark contrast to the man I had always believed rightfully held the title of prophet and president after Joseph Smith’s death.  The difference between the two men is truly astonishing.  I fell in love with Joseph Smith III while reading this scholarly work, published by University of Illinois Press.  He was a humble and sincere man who sought to do only what he truly felt God wanted him to do.  Especially powerful to me were the dreams and/or visions of Joseph Smith III that seem so clearly to foretell of the two distinct paths that the LDS and the RLDS churches would take.  Pragmatic Prophet solidified for me the notion that God is and always has been a part of the RLDS / Community of Christ tradition, no matter how much God has also been involved in LDS history.  I’m not the type of person that would want to limit God’s influence to only one of the two churches, but not everyone would be as generous as I.

Other highly recommendable works of non-fiction:

• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
• Yes Please by Amy Poehler
•  Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy by Miranda Wilcox and John D. Young, Editors

The best work of fiction I read in 2015 is Brady Udall’s 2001 novel The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint.  It’s a quirky, depressively humorous book that features a catchy story and an even catchier voice in main character and narrator, Edgar Mint.  Edgar is the perpetual victim who never sees himself as such, even when a mailman accidentally runs over his head with a mail truck at the age of seven.  Edgar is, understandably, a little odd from that point forward, but he’s someone you’ll love spending time with.  Now, it’s true that Edgar spends some of his time in a Mormon foster-family, but I promise that’s not the only reason I liked this book.

Other highly recommendable works of fiction:

• The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donahue  (One of the most genuinely creepy “scary” books I’ve ever read!)
• Heroes of the Dustbin by Tyler Whitesides
• Finders Keepers by Stephen King

2015 in Review: Movies

This is the first in a series looking back on 2015.  Other entries will include books, music, food, TV, and more.

In 2014, I saw 147 movies I hadn’t seen before.  In 2015, I saw a whopping 182.  Here is a breakdown of how many movies would receive how many stars, if I were to rate them using a standard four-star system where four stars is the best and zero stars is the worst:

**** = 9

***½ = 20

*** = 41

**½ = 40

** = 42

*½ = 14

* = 10

Zero = 5
(Unreviewed = 1)

Average movie rating:  **½

Despite watching nearly 24% more movies this year than last, I saw 25% fewer four-star movies.  On the other hand, I saw 400% more zero-star movies.  Perhaps I was being extra judgmental.  More likely, I was not being picky enough in what I watched.

Like last year, I will now revisit the highs and lows (and a few in-betweens) of my 2015 movie-watching experience, based on genre.

Drama

One of the top five films I saw in 2014 was Short Term 12 starring Brie Larson.  The best 2015 film I saw (although not necessarily the best film that I saw in 2015) also stars Brie Larson and is called Room.  Room is the story of a mother and her young son (played by Jacob Tremblay), who have spent the last several years—the entirety of the boy’s life, in fact—locked in a kidnapper’s shed.  The boy doesn’t even know that a world beyond the interior walls of the shed exists.  While elements of Room may strain credibility, Larson’s and Tremblay’s performances are mesmerizing and the film grew more impressive and nuanced upon reflection than I first gave it credit.  What initially struck me as shortcomings of the film I now believe were purposeful and brilliant.  Without giving too much away, I believe the filmmakers wanted the viewers, like the boy at the center of the film, to have a confined experience of the world within the film.

I was also captivated by The Stanford Prison Experiment, a dramatization of the infamous psychological experiment of the early 1970s.  Critics weren’t wild about the film, but I found it harrowing and engrossing.  Some might complain that, given the subject matter, this movie doesn’t plumb the psychology of its characters enough.  But I thought the objective, empirical—call it cold if you like—approach was very effective.  This is a story that doesn’t require a heavy-handed musical score or an eloquent speech in order to convey the gravitas of the situation it portrays.  The facts speak for themselves.

Love & Mercy is another 2015 release, a biopic about Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson.  Calling the film a biopic may be a bit misleading, since the film revolves around two fairly limited timeframes in Wilson’s life: the writing, recording, and release of Pet Sounds, and Brian’s romance with Melinda Ledbetter in the 1980s, a relationship nearly suffocated by Brian’s abusive psychiatric caretaker, Dr. Eugene Landy.  The filmmakers chose to cast two different actors to portray Brian in these different eras: Paul Dano as 1960s Brian, and John Cusack as 1980s Brian.  Dano is brilliant, but Cusack—whom I once considered a favorite actor but who has starred mostly in duds over the last couple of decades—is also commendable.  I’ve now seen the film twice, and while I worried Cusack’s version of Brian was too opaque upon my first viewing, my second viewing convinced me that this is one of the best films of 2015.

When it comes to more mainstream filmmakers—those whose films have broad appeal and tend to be released by the big studios—Robert Zemeckis has long been a favorite of mine.  He’s the man behind such classics as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Contact, Cast Away, and the Back to the Future trilogy.  In 2015, Zemeckis gave us The Walk, a dramatization of high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s unauthorized tightrope walk between the newly opened World Trade Center towers.  This stunt was the topic of the excellent 2008 documentary Man on Wire, where Petit himself told the majority of his own story.  Zemeckis attempts to replicate the documentary feel by having Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s version of Petit narrate the film, often speaking directly to the camera.  In the case of The Walk, it is a hindrance.  I found the constant interruptions and shifts in narrative tone distracting as they repeatedly pulled you out of the story.  As a result, the film was less dramatic than it should have been.  That being said, I have never experienced so much anxiety watching a movie as I did during the final act of The Walk.  It was almost unbearable, and credit must be given to Zemeckis.  In the end, I gave it a very hesitant ***½.

Some of the very best dramas I saw in 2015 were released in previous years.  Per usual, I spent the early part of the year catching up on the critically acclaimed and awards-nominated films of the previous year.  I was not disappointed.  2014 Best Picture nominees Boyhood, Whiplash, and American Sniper were all four-star movies in my book.  Foxcatcher was an eerily despondent film that garnered Steve Carell a Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of real-life multimillionaire John E. DuPont.  As powerful as Foxcatcher was, I think the Best Actor nomination should have gone to Jake Gyllenhaal for his performance in the superior film Nightcrawler.

2014 also gave us Wild and Calvary.  Critics weren’t as unanimously impressed with these two films, but they were among the top 10 or so films I saw within the last year.  Meanwhile, I wasn’t quite as enamored of 2014 Best Picture nominee The Imitation Game as my fellow moviegoers seemed to be.  I thought it was very good, but didn’t strike an appropriate balance between what became the two central plots of the film.  The ending felt, to me, as though the movie veered off in an entirely different direction, and not in a surprising or good way.

Comedy

The best comedy of 2015 was Spy.  I was shocked at how much I enjoyed the film, which received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Comedy.  It is the only straight-up comedy that I saw in 2015 to which I would give more than three stars.  However, I found myself smitten by several comedy-blends, as I shall call them—comedies that quailed just as much to fit into other categories, such as action or horror.  Kingsman: The Secret Service struck me as James Bond meets Kick-Ass, and it was only after I made this comparison that I learned Kick-Ass was brought to you by the same writers and director as Kingsman.  The film contains rampant and comically gratuitous violence, with Samuel L. Jackson as the lisping super villain who projectile vomits at the sight of blood.  How can you not love it?  In a similar vein, American Ultra is essentially a hard-R, stoner version of the NBC series Chuck.  In the lead roles are two of the most one-note actors in existence, Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, and yet they seemed perfectly cast here.  (This is probably the only time I’ve enjoyed Eisenberg outside of The Social Network, in fact.)  Neither Kingsman nor American Ultra received much love from critics, especially the latter, but I loved them.  Slightly more mediocre was the horror comedy Cooties, the joint creative effort of Ian Brennan, writer for TVs Glee, and Leigh Whannell, who wrote several of the Saw films.  Cooties is everything you’d expect from such a whacky combination of writers, and it provides persistent campy fun.  I wouldn’t give Cooties more than three stars, but something tells me it has a high replay value.

If you’re looking for something a little more cerebral and kooky, might I recommend Frank.  I gave Frank three stars, but there is something surprisingly deep and poignant about this bizarre film.  It is the story of Jon, a keyboardist who joins a band headed by lead singer Frank, a man who wears a giant papier-mâché head almost 24 hours per day.  Like I said, it’s kooky.  But Frank speaks to more issues than meets the eye—it is an examination of celebrity, of creativity, of self-esteem and self-doubt, and maybe even of religion.  It’s a very engaging piece of independent film.

Animated Films

It used to be that animated films were often among the best films of the year.  That just isn’t the case anymore.  I saw several animated films in 2015, but only two garner a solid recommendation from me.  One solid three-star film is Shaun the Sheep Movie, a big-screen adaptation of the stop-motion animation TV series, brought to us by the same folks who did Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run.  While it may not be the funniest film these people have done, it was an improvement over 2012’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits.  The other animated film I gave three stars, though barely so, was The Book of Life.  It had a few solid jokes, and its unique animation style was both captivating and fun—albeit at times it was visually much too busy.

I saw a bunch of animated films I’d give two-and-a-half stars, which makes them minimally recommendable.  They include The Boxtrolls, Hotel Transylvania 2 (which I slept through much of, so take my recommendation very lightly), the CGI/real-life hybrid Paddington, and Home, which was much less annoying than I expected it to be.  I was disappointed with The Peanuts Movie, to which I gave two stars.  The film was simple and sweet, which is refreshing in this day and age, and I loved the blend of computer animation and what appeared to be hand-drawn facial features of the Peanuts gang.  But the sweet simplicity and classic Peanuts feel were largely accomplished by recycling old bits from past TV specials and consistently failing to tread new ground.  There wasn’t much to the film at all, really, and so it was kind of boring.

Documentaries

I didn’t see any absolutely outstanding documentaries in 2015, but I saw some good ones.  One of the best is I Am Chris Farley, about the rise and fall of the beloved comedian and Saturday Night Live alumnus.  One could argue that the film is more of a eulogy than a documentary, but it’s a touching and sensitive one, and fans of Farley are sure to appreciate it.  To be fair, the film must be faulted as a documentary for not veering into the dark side of Farley’s life.  The movie practically avoids saying what Farley’s actual problem was, relying (it seems) on viewers to bring that basic understanding with them.  Questions are raised and things alluded to, but the film fails to explore them.

My favorite documentary that I saw in 2015 was 2007’s Young@Heart.  It follows the Young at Heart Chorus in Northampton, MA, a group of enthusiastic, geriatric crooners whose average age is 81.  But these folks aren’t singing show tunes.  They’re singing punk rock songs from The Ramones and The Clash, belting out James Brown, and doing their best to wrap their minds, ears, and vocal chords around the weirdness of Sonic Youth.  It’s a must-see.

Other recommendable documentaries include 2014’s An Honest Liar and 2015’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.  The latter is biased and not a terrific documentary, but it is eye-opening and compelling.

Thrillers

Nightcrawler, which I already mentioned in the drama section above, is the only thriller I saw in 2015 to which I would give four stars.  However, there were some superb thrillers that came just half-a-star shy of a perfect score.  Blue Ruin is an exercise in patient intensity, the story of a man who seeks revenge for the murder of his parents and ends up at war with another family.  The film is both powerful and original, if not a bit light on actual story.  I also found The Drop—featuring one of James Gandolfini’s final screen roles—to be a very strong film, though critics found it only mildly recommendable on the whole.  Locke is another great thriller.  Actually, I’m not sure it is a thriller in the proper sense.  Pretty much the entire film takes place inside a car with only one character visible onscreen, Ivan Locke, who receives phone call after phone call after phone call that fuels his anxiety and ours.  The tension that mounts is palpable, and given the film’s narrative monotony, it is surprising just how effective, gripping, and poignant it turns out to be.

Foreign Film

The Swedish film We Are the Best! finished in the top ten of movies I saw in 2015.  The story is set in 1980s Stockholm, where a trio of teen—maybe even preteen?—girls decide to form a punk band.  The film is do damned earnest and the characters so genuine, you’ll think you’re watching a documentary half the time.  It’s a great coming of age story, far from the typical fare, and well worth your time.  I implore you to check it out.  You’ll find yourself cheering for the would-be anarchists by the end of the movie.

Also hailing from Sweden, 2014’s Force Majeure is a deft, hard-hitting examination of human psychology.  On a ski trip to the French Alps, Ebba, her husband Tomas, and their children are nearly swept away by an avalanche.  When the near-disaster subsides, Ebba and Tomas remember the incident differently—and are haunted by the potential ramifications.  It may not sound like much, but Force Majeure is in the top 6% of movies I saw in 2015.  Pensive, if not a bit slow, the film is so realistic in its exchanges and humanity that you’ll fear what it reveals about you.  It also features some powerful cinematography.  Check it out.

Sci-fi, Superheroes, and the Like

Maybe my memory is faulty, but science fiction seemed to have greater representation among movies I watched in 2015 than it has in many years previous.  Thankfully, many of those films were quite good.  Ex Machina is one of the top two or three films of 2015 that I saw and is within the top ten films of any year that I watched during the past twelve months.  The basic storyline is nothing new, centering on the possibility of human-like consciousness in androids run on artificial intelligence.  But writer and director Alex Garland manages to give this familiar motif a very fresh coat of paint.  It is a subdued, engrossing, stylish, and thought-provoking film.

The Martian was among 2015’s strongest Hollywood movies, meaning a movie with big-name celebrities, a large production budget, and that thrives on mass appeal.  While I gave the film three-and-a-half stars and ranked it among the top five 2015 films and top fifteen overall films that I saw last year, I must admit I am surprised by its slew of award nominations, including three for the Golden Globes.  Many scenes felt pandering, and there was one moment in particular that struck me as so absurd and unbelievable that it almost ruined the whole movie.  Nevertheless, it is a highly entertaining flick.

Just a notch below The Martian, I ranked 2014’s Interstellar.  While it isn’t my favorite Christopher Nolan flick, I was impressed.  Further down the list you’ll find I Origins and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, two solidly commendable three-star films from 2014.  2015’s Chappie warranted only two-and-a-half stars from me, but it leaves a lasting impression.  It was Short Circuit meets Robocop, and everything good and bad that you can imagine of such a thing.  The plot and supporting characters could’ve been more richly developed, but Chappie himself was a well-developed and engaging character.

A lot of big films fell disappointingly flat in this category.  Most of them were mildly enjoyable but far from being the epic films we’ve come to expect of superhero and franchise films.  I’m thinking here of Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Ant-Man.  All of these were decent, but that’s about as enthusiastic as I can get.  Fortunately, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 proved an exception and brought its franchise back to form after a very disappointing Part 1.  I still gave the second Mockingjay installment only three stars, but it provided a satisfactory conclusion to the immensely popular series.

Classics

I branched out a bit more in 2015 than I typically do in terms of seeing older films.  It’s not that I purposely avoid older films, but it’s true that I see them only somewhat rarely.  Several of the classics I saw were very good or better.  Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver is deserving of its four-star reputation.  From 1957, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal was interesting.  I thought it was extremely good, but I’d like to see it again to see if I can appreciate it even more.  It wasn’t quite what I thought it would be.  1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors was just one of several Woody Allen films I saw this year, and certainly the best of the lot.

Another well-reviewed classic I saw for the first time in 2015 was 1958’s Vertigo.  I have to say, as good a film as it was, it is undeniably dated.  And by “dated,” I mean there are elements of it that simply are not holding up well.  This doesn’t happen with every old movie.  It isn’t unavoidable.  Another Hitchcock film, Psycho, remains one of my favorite films of all time, and I think it is one of the most perfectly made films I’ve ever seen.  In contrast, I felt very iffy about Vertigo, which at times is downright melodramatic.  This is another one I wouldn’t mind re-watching and seeing if I find it any better.

I also saw a couple of “second tier classics,” as I’ll call them.  They weren’t as strong as the films above, but they were good.  Included here is 1971’s The French Connection.  It wasn’t all that strong on plot or character development, but you can see in retrospect how it was influential.  I think that’s why it’s so critically acclaimed, but watching it in 2015, it’s nothing amazing.  There is something very organically gritty about it, but the machismo feels passé.

The other good but not terrific classic I saw was the 1960 version of The Little Shop of Horrors.  It was both clever and funny, and I was impressed by how much I enjoyed it, considering it is 55 years old.  I guess I don’t expect comedies to hold up nearly so well over time.

The Overrated, The Underrated

There are always several movies per year that I watch only to be baffled by the critical reception those movies received.  Sometimes I cannot understand why a movie was given such high praise, and sometimes I don’t understand why a movie went so unappreciated.  As a policy, I look at the critical reviews only after I’ve assessed and rated the film according to my own standards.  Usually, I am not too wildly out of synch with the critical consensus—which, for the record, I am basing on the website Metacritic, which provides an aggregate score between 1 and 100 that averages the major critic’s reviews.  If a movie receives a Metascore of 50, that means that on average, movie critics placed the film right in the middle of whatever their ranking system happens to be: two out of four stars, two-and-a-half out of five stars, 5 out of 10, etc.  The films I discuss below were overrated or underrated based on comparing my review to the film’s Metascore.  It’s worth noting that I do not mention in this section any movie that I gave one star or fewer, since pretty much all of those were overrated in my book.  I’ll discuss those movies in the next section of this post.

The Disney musical Into the Woods received a Metascore of 69, suggesting a consensus of mildly favorable reviews.  I gave the film one-and-a-half stars.  I didn’t know it was based on an actual stage play until after I watched the movie, but that’s where the troubles begin.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, stage plays turned into movies all too easily suck.  That’s because there is a difference in style between a stage play and a movie, and if your movie feels too much like an actual stage play, it comes across terribly.  Into the Woods is a great example.  You can tell they got nothing extra out of it by turning it into a movie—in which case, why bother?  The onscreen scenery is mostly just people surrounded by trees, looking at each other as they sing.  Pretty boring.  And the songs were both incessant and meandering.  Not a memorable melody in the bunch.  It sounded like songs that someone with modest talent might improvise on the spot.

Also overrated was the film sci-fi action thriller Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson who turns into something like the Bionic Woman when a bag of strange drugs inadvertently gets into her system.  Though the film featured some interesting philosophical elements, it was embarrassingly ridiculous at many parts.  I gave the film one-and-a-half stars, a far cry from its Metascore of 61.

One of the most baffling movies to make this list is Snowpiercer.  This futuristic, dark, dystopian film where the planet’s only remaining human beings live and die in a caste system society housed entirely on a continuously moving train—no joke—has a Metascore of 84.  This means the film averages nearly a three-and-a-half star rating on a four-star rating scale.  This means that many critics gave the film four stars, finding it excellent.  I thought it barely warranted two stars, noting that it is “stylistically melodramatic” and “often rather ridiculous.”  This one is a head-scratcher for sure.

Listen Up Phillip has a solid Metascore of 76.  It is the story of a bitter, self-absorbed writer.  It is extremely dull and tedious, and I couldn’t give it more than two stars.  I struggle to articulate why it is that some movies that excel in realism and don’t have much going on can be so damn good while others seem like pretentious BS.  Listen Up Phillip is more the latter, unfortunately.  I’m sure it didn’t help that the film had a very dry tone, complete with bland, matter-of-fact narration, all too reminiscent of 1970s educational filmstrips that people my age had to endure in elementary school.

Yet another highly overrated movie is Two Days, One Night, which received a whole slew of awards nominations (and wins), including a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for Marion Cotillard.  The film centers on the character of Sandra (Cotillard), a woman who has lost her job to a vote.  It seems her coworkers would prefer a pay raise to keeping Sandra around.  With limited time to reverse the decision, Two Days, One Night follows Sandra as she goes about town, hunting down her coworkers and begging them to reconsider.  It is quite literally as interesting a movie as watching someone go door-to-door trying to get people to sign a petition—because that’s almost literally what the movie is.  Were there good performances?  Sure.  But it’s not as if there’s enough character development for us to care or even feel all that invested in Sandra’s campaign.  She doesn’t even seem that passionate about it herself.  And the interactions she has quickly feel like a broken record, with almost every conversation going through the exact same routine and pattern of comments.  I don’t get the hype.  At all.  Somehow this movie has a Metascore of 89.

And of course, I must mention Mad Max: Fury Road.  It has become one of the most acclaimed films of 2015, with award nominations aplenty and an impressive Metascore of 89.  I concur that the film had some absolutely spectacular visuals—but that’s where my praise ends.  Fury Road is a lobotomizing film that made me question the consistency of the movie critics who sung its praises with such enthusiasm.  I could easily see a movie just like this being absolutely panned if it came from a director critics weren’t too keen on.  Stylistically, I saw Fury Road as a cross between the films of Baz Luhrmann and Rob Zombie.  Curious, I looked up old reviews of Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, and some of the complaints lodged against it seemed entirely fitting of Fury Road.  Why certain things are ingenious in one movie but dead weight in another, I shall never know.  I give Fury Road a very high two-star rating, but can’t say I’d recommend it.

When it comes to underrated movies, Jason Reitman’s 2014 film Men, Women & Children carries a Metascore of 38, suggesting it warrants one-and-a-half stars on a four-star rating system.  I gave the film three stars.  As a cautionary tale about the dangers of social media, the movie is perhaps a bit too bleak and pessimistic.  I could see some depressing plot developments coming from a mile away.  And yet, despite its depressive myopia, Men, Women & Children remains believable and features very strong performances from its large ensemble cast.

Including Men, Women & Children, I saw more Adam Sandler movies this year than I probably ever have.  I’ll discuss several of them throughout this blog post.  One such movie is The Cobbler, with Sandler as a shoe repairman who discovers a magical relic that allows him to take on the appearance of any other human—provided he is wearing the other person’s shoes.  (Deep stuff, man!)  It’s a bit hokey, and for being a fairytale, it’s a bit dark and amoral.  But all things considered, Sandler gave a decent performance and the movie was surprisingly enjoyable.  I can only assume critics were all too eager to dump on anything involving Sandler, and I can understand why that would be a matter of habit for them.  But for all this film’s flaws—and I admit that the weak yet overdone ending was a major one—it wasn’t that bad.

I promise I didn’t realize when I started writing this that the first three underrated films of the year would star Adam Sandler.  But the next film on my underrated list is Pixels.  Now, I didn’t think Pixels was a cinematic masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.  But a Metascore of 27 suggests the film is outright bad from start to finish.  And it was better than that.  For those of us with a soft spot for 1980s arcade games, it could even be sort of fun.  Dumb, yes, but fun.

Moving away from Adam Sandler, I thought Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was an okay popcorn flick.  Sometimes I think it helps when you go into a movie with very low expectations, as I did with this one.  Could it have been better?  Undoubtedly.  Could the turtles have had more personality?  For sure.  But goodness gracious, what can you really expect of a movie like this?  I think critics had already decided it was a piece of crap before they watched it, which explains the movie’s low Metascore of 31.

Quality wise, the 2014 version of Annie was pretty much on par with TMNT.  Thus, I considered it mildly recommendable, while critical reviews resulted in a Metascore in the low 30s.  As a kid, I was quite a fan of the 1982 film starring Albert Finney and Carol Burnett.  I honestly don’t believe any of that carried over into my lukewarm appreciation of the 21^st-century reboot, however.  This latest big screen adaptation is Annie for the auto-tune generation, featuring new, modern-sounding songs (that I could have done without) in addition to the slightly hip-hop-ified classics.  The biggest problem for me was that neither Annie nor Will Stacks (re: Daddy Warbucks) were as lovable as they could’ve been, and Annie’s time with Stacks didn’t come off as being as magical or significant to her as it should have.  All of that being said, I think the film is bound to resonate with younger audiences—and maybe even a few adults.

The Worst of the Worst

If you’re an avid movie watcher, seeing a bad film now and again comes with the territory.  But there’s a difference between a bad movie and an absolutely terrible one.  Every year, I see one or two movies that leave me sincerely baffled as to how something so awful can exist.  2015 was no exception.  I saw five total films that I gave zero stars, which is a 400% increase over my 2014 viewings.  Not good.  Sadly, I also saw ten one-star films, which is one more than 2014.  That’s a lot more crap than I’d prefer, but at least it gives me something to say at this point in my blog post.  In the interest of time, I will limit my discussion to five films: the worst film of 2015, and the four worst films I saw in addition to that (regardless of year).

Based on the limited number of 2015 releases that I saw, my vote for the absolute worst film of 2015 is Vacation.  I have to admit, I was kind of excited at the idea of a Vacation reboot, and I appreciated that the reboot wasn’t actually a remake but a legitimate sequel focusing on an adult Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) taking his own family on a road trip to Walley World.  Sadly, the film was awful.  It was vulgar, offensive, and unfunny.  It felt like a collection of brainstormed skits held together by the thinnest of plots.  I don’t know if it made enough money to warrant a continuation of the series, but at this point, I’m sincerely hoping not.

The absolute worst films I saw were not released in 2015.  I gave Vacation one star, but the remaining films in my list were given zero stars.  They are as follows:

Brother’s Justice.  Dax Shepard tries his hand at making a mockumentary, and he does a terrible, terrible job.  This movie was extremely, extremely boring.  It follows Shepard as himself, shopping around the idea for an action movie (also titled Brother’s Justice) wherein he will be the star.  And that’s the joke, folks.  If you’re not laughing already, seeing the movie won’t help.  Shephard apparently finds the idea that he could be an action star quite hilarious, since that is pretty much the only joke this movie makes.  Again and again and again.  Too much of the film is spent talking in earnest about making Brother’s Justice (the one you’re not actually watching), as though that idea alone is supposed to entertain us.  There aren’t jokes being made, per se, which means Shepard honestly thought the proposed film within the film, and the very thought of him starring in it, was hilarious enough on its own—which it absolutely isn’t.

Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights.  You knew Adam Sandler would have to show up again, didn’t you?  Well, here he is.  Sort of.  Eight Crazy Nights is an animated holiday film from 2002, a film that exists presumably only because Sandler was quite the box office success at the time.  And what do you do when you’re a box office success and can do whatever you want?  Make an animated movie, I guess.  All I know is the movie doesn’t exist because it had a funny script or a clever plot.  Anyone capable of writing a screenplay could’ve written this.  It is all so obvious and easy and unimaginative and juvenile.  Rare, if ever, is the humor not scatological or offensive and at the expense of some group of people—fat people, epileptics, the transgendered, etc.  Per usual, we’ve got chauvinism, with female characters being incredibly flat (except for their breasts).  We’ve got scenes of deer defecating, explicitly and with a straight-on view of stools exiting the body.  We’ve got scenes of people covered in feces, or farting, or with snot all over their faces, or peeing their pants, or literally eating jock straps.  It’s a smorgasbord of weak, adolescent humor that I’m not sure even adolescents would find all that amusing.

Maps to the Stars.  Strictly speaking, this one is actually the most overrated movie I saw in 2015.  While I give it zero stars, it has a Metascore of 67.  Now that’s some batshit craziness right there.  I don’t even know what to say about this movie.  An anonymous person summarizes the movie at IMDb as follows: “A tour into the heart of a Hollywood family chasing celebrity, one another and the relentless ghosts of their pasts.”  Great, I have nothing more to add.  This is one of those weird independent films that seems so pretentious and full of crap, and yet many critics eat it up and beg for more.  I don’t know what to make of it.  I honestly think some critics think something is brilliant if it just doesn’t make much sense.  That’s what we’ve got here.

And the absolute worst movie I’ve seen in the last twelve months is Open Windows.  The thriller stars Elijah Wood as Nick, a devoted fan of movie starlet Jill Goddard (Sasha Grey).  Nick wins a contest that is supposed to result in having dinner with Jill, but while getting ready in his hotel room, the dinner plans are canceled via phone call by Chord, a man identifying himself as Jill’s manager. As a consolation prize, the questionable Chord explains that he can hack into Nick’s laptop computer and livestream footage of Jill in her own hotel room.  Nick is unsure at first, but eventually accepts the offer.  And from there, things spiral out of control, with Nick becoming a pawn in a game of life-and-death.  It sounds much more promising than it is.  It’s incomprehensible to me that anyone would give this film more than one star.  It’s truly one of the absolute shittiest films I’ve ever seen.  It is so unbelievably outrageous and absurd, and the acting is atrocious.  I felt like I was watching a video game from the early 1990s, one that was really high-tech at the time (with real actors and everything!) but is just embarrassing now.  Everything about the movie seemed so incredibly staged and choreographed and, in the case of dialogue, pre-recorded.  Rarely did anyone sound like they were really talking to another person rather than reading something off of a piece of paper, alone in some isolated sound booth somewhere.  It was just unbelievable.  And so excruciatingly convoluted.  Like I said, it’s one of the worst films I have ever seen.  Ever.  I’m in disbelief.  Utter and total disbelief.

Here’s to the hope of good movie watching in 2016!

Happy, But Sorta Crappy, New Year

The whole week leading up to 2016, Melanie, the boys, and I have had the house to ourselves. Melanie’s parents and brother Tom went to visit her brother Brent in Seattle. With Melanie and the boys out of school, it felt like a vacation to us. We could do whatever, whenever, and didn’t ever feel like we were stepping on anyone else’s toes. Melanie and I could watch our favorite vulgar and profane TV shows in the living room at 1 AM and it didn’t matter. That sort of thing. Unfortunately, much of the fun has been ruined by persistent illness. I mentioned the roller coaster of health we’ve all been riding in my previous post, but since then, I’ve gone back downhill. Yet again. It’s unbelievable. I feel like crap. I don’t know if the Utah climate is to blame or not, but I feel like I’m giving serious reconsideration to living here. The winter sucks. It hasn’t been that snowy this year, which is great, but the cold, dry air wreaks plenty of havoc. My skin dries out and cracks. Even if it doesn’t snow, you have to get up 30 minutes early to go stand in the cold and scrape the frost off of your windshield. Melanie has developed asthma since returning to this elevation. Creegan gets nosebleeds all the time, which used to be a very common problem for me living in Utah. And now this never-ending carousel of sickness. I don’t think we spent so much time sick in Florida. Maybe I’m glorifying the past, because I know I wrote blog posts in Florida about being sick all the time. But I don’t know if it was such long stretches. I’m hacking my lungs out. I feel like my insides are being torn apart, and like I have a blister on the back of my throat. Even when I did get sick in Florida, I don’t think it was this vicious. (The voice inside my head says, “Um, did you forget all the trips to the hospital?” Okay, okay. Fair point.)

December 2015 saw me canceling many plans due to illness. It happened again on New Year’s Eve. My family had been invited to a friend’s house, and we were looking forward to it. My health kept swinging around, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I thought I was on the mend, but Creegan and I were both feeling pretty crappy once New Year’s Eve arrived. Canceling plans is one of my least favorite things, so I always hold out until the last minute in case something can work out after all. As a result, I canceled on my friends rather last minute. I wasn’t the only person invited to their house, so it’s not like I completely ruined their evening. And I don’t pretend I’m so special that my not being around would ruin their evening. But you get the point. I think it was the right decision. I seemed to feel worse and worse as the night went on, and I tossed and turned all night, grunting and wheezing in that pre-cough dance that your throat often does when you have a really bad cold. I feel like poo balls today. I’m getting really tired of it.

Anyway, I’ll stop complaining and focus on the fun we had last night. Because we did manage to have some fun as a family. We ended up ordering Chinese takeout and picking up a movie (a family-friendly drama called Max, about a military dog) from Redbox. We also had some snacks on hand. After eating Chinese food and watching the movie, we played TENZI, a game that Melanie’s parents had given me for Christmas. In the game, up to four people are given 10 dice. Everybody starts at the same time, rolling their dice, putting to the side any dice that they wish, and then rerolling whatever’s left. The winner is whichever player first gets all 10 of his/her dice to be the same number. There are also several variations you can play, such as one where you not only have to get all 10 dice to the same number, but you then have to stack them up in a tower in order to win. It’s more fun, and less grueling, than I thought it would be. I think Eddie and Peter liked it. Creegan played a couple of rounds but then lost interest.

After game time, Eddie wanted to watch another movie. Even thought I doubt we’ve ever watched more than three movies on a New Year’s Eve during Eddie’s lifetime, the boy had it in his head that we were supposed to watch four or five. He found something on Netflix and started it, before anyone else really gave any input. I was fine with that. I hardly watched any of this second movie, the title of which I don’t even know. I did a little bit of reading. Creegan came up to me around this time and said he was going to go to sleep in Melanie’s and my bed. And he did just that. Peter and Eddie, however, remained alert and attentive all the way until midnight. As did Melanie—I think. She might have dozed off a little bit during the second movie, I’m not sure. Regardless, all of us except for Creegan were conscious as midnight approached. We turned over to ABC and watched the pre-recorded excitement of all those thousands of people crammed into New York’s Times Square as they welcomed 2016. When the ball dropped, or at least when it was broadcast to us here in the Mountain Time Zone, Eddie was the first to grab a pot and a wooden spoon and head bravely into the cold, making all the clatter he could. I had no interest in going outside. Melanie and Peter did. I was the party pooper, but I stand behind my decision.

And that’s pretty much that. We got Eddie and Peter to bed soon after, then Melanie and I went and watched a show on the living room couch. I fell asleep before the episode was over, benefiting no doubt from being in an upright position. Once the show ended and I officially went to bed, I was wheezing and hacking away. Thankfully, I eventually was getting more sleep than not, and I stayed in bed until nearly 11:30 AM.

I haven’t wanted to do much today. I’ve watched some TV, I’ve eaten. I’m proud to say I did a fair amount of cleaning in preparation for the return of Melanie’s parents. Melanie, the boys, and I played another game tonight—Gubs, which Peter received in his stocking. I honestly don’t think there’s anything else to say about the day. It’s been a non-eventful 2016 thus far, which is probably what I would’ve hoped for on New Year’s Day, but in this case I wish it had been on better terms. I’ve coughed up more snot and boogers than I care to admit, but not nearly as much as I wish. I bet you’re glad you didn’t stop reading before you learned that.

And now, some photos from our New Year’s Eve. Enjoy.

My dinner plate.  Yum.

Creegan's eyes look slightly demonic here, all because he's sick.  His eyes were quite pink and cloudy.

Looks like somebody got TENZI!

This one should probably be filed under "photos that should never see the light of day," but I'll bravely share it with you.  Peter thought my pajama joke was pretty funny and wanted to copy me.  You know what they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Christmas 2015

It will be much easier to recap the holiday season via photos than trying to explain everything in detail. It’s been a good few weeks, except for the fact that illness has been a persistent presence in our home. Melanie got strep, I got strep, I got bitten by a bug of some sort that made my head swell up quite a bit behind my ear and gave me very itchy extremities, and now we’re all back to having terrible colds. So, health wise, December has been a crappy month. But we’re trying to have some fun anyway. Below are some of the things we’ve been up to.

December 8, 2015 – Rudolph Pancakes

December 9, 2015 – Ugly Sweater Sugar Cookie Decorating

December 19, 2015 – Christmas Program at Church

Creegan as a wise man.

Peter as Caesar Augustus.  Needless to say, the costumes available at church were not of ancient Hebrew fashion.

Eddie as the angel.

Acting is hard work.

Eddie as an angel, announcing to Mary that she is going to have a baby.  He really captured the "wowzers!" factor.

December 20, 2015 – Snowmen Pizza

December 24, 2015 – Christmas Eve

The Christmas Eve tradition of opening one present from Mom and Dad continued this year.  This year's gift: body pillows.

Creegan wasn't entirely sure how to use a body pillow.

We also continued our Christmas Eve tradition of driving around looking at Christmas lights just before bed.  Eddie and Creegan could scarcely tolerate the flash of the camera.  And don't worry, the kids had hot chocolate, not coffee.  Melanie and I had the coffee: our first caramel macchiatos.  I added some half and half to mine, as well as a couple of pumps of Irish Creme.  It was muy bueno.

December 25, 2015 – Christmas Day

Where we currently live, we had one Christmas tree upstairs and another one downstairs.  Like last year, Eddie left a note for Santa to leave all of his gifts downstairs.  The upstairs tree was used primarily for gifts from family members, although I think Santa left some gifts that were NOT for Eddie, Peter, and Creegan upstairs.  This is the upstairs tree, and so only about half of the Christmas booty.

Checking to see that Santa ate his cookies.  This year, we also left out baby carrots for the reindeer and some cookies for Bernadette.  Melanie was determined to teach our kids that Mrs. Claus has a first name and does more than sit at home on Christmas Eve.  She comes along to help.

Let the unwrapping begin.

Nerf guns were a very popular item.  All three boys asked for some, and all three received more than one as a gift.

These cups are called Snackeez Duos.  Apparently, the boys have wanted one very much ever since seeing them in use early in the school year.  There is a compartment for snacks at the top, and the beverage goes in the area beneath.  A straw then extends through the snack section and into the drink.  You can then pop open the top and snack on whatever.

As Christmas approached, Creegan suddenly took a strong interest in the one and only Perplexus game that we own.  He started asking if there were other Perplexus games and what were they called, etc.  It was clear that getting a new Perplexus for Creegan was a must.  Here, he examines his newly opened Perplexus Twist.

Peter and Creegan each received a "Chubby Puppy" from Melanie's parents.  They found them quite adorable.

The last few years, the boys have each received a card game with their stocking.  This year, Eddie received Guillotine.

Eddie brought up last minute that he hoped to receive Diet Coke in his stocking.  It was so last minute that I'm sure Santa must have already planned that.  What a coincidence.  Usually, our kids aren't permitted caffeinated beverages.

One of several packages of nuts I received for Christmas.  In addition to the toasted coconut cashews you see here, I also received pumpkin spice almonds, regular cashews, macadamia nuts, and others.

Christmas Part II: The Downstairs Tree

Creegan finds one of several unwrapped movies mixed in with the gifts.  Santa often leaves a few unwrapped items that are meant for the whole family.

This CD received near constant play in our family car while we had it checked out from the library.  All three boys absolutely love it.  Since Santa brought us our own copy, it has again gone into permanent play on our car stereo.

When Peter sent his letter to Santa, he asked for only five things.  One of those things was a purse.  Santa delivered this peppermint purse, which Peter dons proudly.

A ghost-shooting game courtesy of Uncle Tom.

I’ll conclude with some photos of Peter enjoying his new keyboard. It took a couple of days for him to open it and actually start using it, but since then, he’s been quite enthusiastic about it. He loves playing the demos and dancing along, as you’ll see below, but he also likes experimenting with his own playing. It’s been very fun for a music fanatic such as myself to behold.

See you next year!