Elio

Contrary to the harsh reviews, Disney-Pixar's Elio doesn't suck. I've seen it, and I can bear witness that it is a perfectly lovely movie, if a bit inconveniently similar in certain respects to Lilo & Stitch – most inconveniently, indeed, as the recent live-action remake of that Disney animated feature just recently made the rounds, to remind us. Yes, both hero kids (Elio and Lilu) are being raised by a relative (an aunt in the one case, a sister in the other) after their parents were killed – a loved one who doesn't seem quite up to the job. Yes, chaos breaks loose following an encounter with visitors from other planets. Yes, both hero kids, despite their struggles to socialize appropriately with kids of their own species and age, get along swimmingly with someone completely unknown to them. There's even a plot thread tied around the concept of deciding, like the Iron Giant, that you Don't Want To Be A Gun. But ...

But Elio isn't adopting an alien war machine as a pet; he's looking to be adopted by aliens, and the unwilling war machine becomes his best friend. Their heartfelt friendship, defying strange appearances and vast differences between them, first creates a potentially disastrous conflict, then heals it. And Elio goes from lying, avoidance and selfishness to being capable of, and receptive to, love and kindness. It's a visually beautiful, thrilling and heartwarming story against which I can find nothing to quibble.

The voice cast features recent Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña as Elio's Aunt Olga, Brad Garrett as Glorgon's warlord father, Shirley Henderson ("Moaning Myrtle" from the Harry Potter films) as a liquid computer, Kate Mulgrew as the voice of the Voyager 1 exhibit, and the late Carl Sagan (via archival recordings) as himself. OK, so maybe the movie could have done without repeating Sagan's spiel twice.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Elio blows a chance to make friends with another ham radio kid. Payoff: Later, the kid forgives him and comes to his aid at a time of need. (2) Elio thinks Olga has chosen the clone he sent to cover for his absence over him. Payoff: When he realizes she has actually enlisted the clone's help to ask the aliens to send him back. (3) The clone times his liquefaction to provide a distraction when Elio and Olga need one. Gross but effective. And hilarious!

Another thing that low-key made it for me was the all-but-endless succession of trailers for upcoming animated features, before this movie started, that all looked unwatchably awful. I'd much rather see this movie again than any of them. So don't be sucked into the hype. Not every step Disney takes is a stumble; not every ball in play ends in a fumble. Elio is all right.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries
by Heather Fawcett
Recommended Ages: 14+

In the wee years of the 20th century, Emily Wilde, Ph.D., etc. is a professor of dryadology at Cambridge University, still awaiting tenure, but full of ambition and scientific curiosity. Her aims are modest enough: to collect evidence of the existence of fairies – excuse me; faeries – into a comprehensive tome, and bring world folklore onto a scientific footing. To that end, she travels to the remote, Nordic island of Ljosland (I'm sure you've heard of it) to beard the Hidden Ones in their den.

But a perilous outing it proves to be! First, she receives the undesired assistance of a fellow professor whose academic bona fides aren't equal to his charm. Second, she struggles to ingratiate herself to the local villagers. Third, there are the fair folk themselves: capricious, cruel and breathtakingly dangerous, from a changeling who brings misery to his supposed parents to a vicious Winter King whose subjects betrayed him and sealed him up inside a tree. And in between, more and more young villagers are being taken by the faeries, some of them coming home hollowed out. A nasty business all around.

Emily is a prickly heroine, but an honest one: openly admitting her own character flaws, including her cold-blooded curiosity in the face of the villagers' very personal hurts and dangers. But she has the perfect sounding board in Wendell Bambleby, a perhaps rival scholar who proves to be both less and oh, so much more than he appears to be. She also enjoys the company of a dog whose Grim nature is well concealed (alert Harry Potter fans may spot some other Care of Magical Creatures subjects as well).

I'll put out an Adult Content Advisory in consideration of Christian families, who may not find the book's lesbian romance (involving two supporting characters) particularly heartwarming, and of course an Occult Content Advisory because, like, magic, dude. The Hidden Ones of Ljosland could easily be mistaken for the animating spirits of nature and the environment, especially viewed out of the corner of your eye. Having salt in your pockets, or an old coin in the palm of your hand, seems to be a good idea when you venture into the highlands above Hrafnsvik, rather as though one were dealing with djinni or demons. And as pretty as the Tall Ones are, they have a mean streak that'll chill you to the bone.

This is the first book of a trilogy and, you bet, I've already picked up Book 2: Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands. Book 3 is Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales. Canadian author Fawcett has also put out the novels Even the Darkest Stars and its sequel, All the Wandering Light, as well as such titles as Ember and the Ice Dragons, The Language of Ghosts, The Grace of Wild Things, The Islands of Elsewhere and A Galaxy of Whales; a further title, Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter, is due out in February 2026.

How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

This year's live-action-plus-CGI remake of 2010's How to Train Your Dragon understandably bears a notable resemblance to the earlier film, though neither is particularly similar to the children's book by Cressida Cowell on which they are vaguely based. Both movies have the same producer-writer-director, Dean DeBlois; the same composer, John Powell; and even the same actor playing Stoick the Vast, Gerard Butler. As far as recollection serves, the new film is practically a beat-by-beat copy of the old, only with live actors inserted into the more photorealistic animation.

Hiccup, the forward-thinking Viking who's a great disappointment to his Stoick, Vast father and all the hardy folk of the island of Berk, is played by Mason Thomas, who headlined the terrific movie The Black Phone. As a not very Nordic-looking Astrid, his fierce love interest, we have Nico Parker of Dumbo. Alert viewers might also recognize Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead) as the local blacksmith and dragon-slaying instructor and Peter Serafinowicz (a.k.a. Darth Maul in the Star Wars prequel trilogy) as the inattentive father of overcompensating Viking brat Snotlout.

I'll make this brief, because I have to. This is how you do a live-action remake of a beloved animated feature. Save this reference for later and, cough Disney cough, refer to it. It should bother no one that the ethnicity of the Vikings of Berk has been broadened to include people groups from all over the world, wherever dragons have been making a pest of themselves. Meanwhile, the live-action version hits the heart in all the same ways as the original, with laughs, thrills, chills and lumps in one's throat.

I liked this movie well enough to go see it twice in one day, and it didn't suffer from a second viewing. Even on the repeat, I got the same lump in my throat and the same urge to shout something (I don't know what) at one or two points. It was painful to hold it back. There is a limit to how young a child should be dragged into the theater to see this movie, as the audience at my second viewing demonstrated. It isn't for tiny little ones. But it's beautiful to look at and, with the previous point understood, solid, family-friendly fun.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The awkward, father-son bonding moment when Stoick gives Hiccup his mother's "breast hat." (2) Astrid's first ride on Toothless, a turning point for her character. (3) The moment Stoick realizes he's been mistaken about his son. Yes, for all the flying-on-dragonback thrills and boss-battle badassery, the movie at bottom is a very small, family drama, but totally sells it. While I don't think it will ever fully eclipse the animated original, I think it will stand beside it and become a classic that people will go back to over and over.

Three Movies

Sometime during the past three or four weeks, I went to see three movies. And now I'm finally catching up on my reviews of them.

The first one was The Accountant 2, in blatant violation of my personal policy not to watch sequels when I never saw the original film. However, it beat whatever else was on offer at the time. It stars Ben Affleck as a guy with some kind of savant syndrome, which seems to mean he's a violent sociopath with genius-level math skills, and Jon Bernthal as his brother, a world-class killer for hire. A Treasury Department investigator, perhaps foolishly, involves them in her search for a missing family after some guy, played by J.K. Simmons, gets murdered to death while looking for them. Also, a nameless female assassin is involved for some reason – though, counterintuitively, she kills not J.K. but most of the kill squad sent to get him. The guy she doesn't get, gets J.K., but now the case he's on reaches out and grabs Affleck because he can somehow tell – from one faded photograph and a strange remark by a call girl – that the kid has the same condition he has, and he's being held hostage by some very bad guys.

Well, yes, the kid is being held by some very bad guys – guys so bad that they decide to kill all the hostage kids to cut their losses. But this just means that Bernthal and Affleck have to move faster and hit harder. Meanwhile, the kid's surviving parent is also involved in a way that'll raise your blood pressure, if you watch this movie. It's a brutal, ultra-violent story, slightly redeemed by an interesting relationship between the two brothers, a bizarre school/family populated by brainiac kids who somehow reminded me of Sherlock Holmes' Baker Street Irregulars, and a kitty cat. I didn't not enjoy it, which perhaps reveals something awful about me.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Affleck and Bernthal bond (-ish) on the roof of the camper where Affleck maintains his home and personal arsenal. (2) How the irregulars hack the information Affleck needs off a computer practically under the nose of the person using it. (3) The climactic race and rolling battle.

My next pick was The Last Rodeo, directed by Jon Avnet, who also directed Fried Green Tomatoes. It stars Neal McDonough as a former rodeo bull rider who takes a last-minute run at the Professional Bull Riders world championship when his grandson needs money for brain surgery. Also appearing are Mykelti Williamson as his longtime bullfighter, Christopher McDonald as a rodeo promoter and Sally Jones (For All Mankind) as McDonough's daughter. Also, McDonough's actual wife, Ruvé McDonough, appears in flashbacks (and, I guess, a hallucination) as the cowboy's late wife.

The story has a heartwarming component, and the actors put a lot of emotion into their scenes, and of course, the man vs. bull combat is pretty impressive. The themes of fighting back against incredible odds, healing the consequences of your past mistakes and risking complete obliteration for someone you love add up to a powerful movie. Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Williamson calls McDonough to account for falling off the world after his wife died. (2) The young rodeo star eats crow after McDonough proves himself in the arena. (3) McDonough thinks he sees his dead wife in the stands.

Most recently, and against another personal policy of mine, I went to see Disney's live-action remake of one of their animated features: Lilo and Stitch. This time, however, I wasn't weighed down by a keen memory of the original movie. In fact, I'm not sure I've actually sat through the whole thing. So, I was able to judge this movie on its own merits, which I reckon are pretty good.

The movie features, in addition to some attractive young people whose names I forget, old familiar faces such as Courtney B. Vance, Tia Carrere and Jason Scott Lee, plus medium-range familiar face Zach Galifianakis, or whatever his name is. It involves aliens landing on earth, a creature genetically engineered as a force of destruction becoming a family pet, and two sisters struggling to make a go of things after their parents' death. In Hawaii, which lends it a certain cultural and scenic color. So it combines tender family drama with rip-roaring action, sci-fi weirdness and fast-paced comedy.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Stitch realizes he's hurting his human found family and goes back to the animal shelter where they found him. Awww. (2) Lilo's sister saves Stitch from drowning in the ocean, a remarkable rescue both under the water and on land. (3) The villain stalks his creation through the sisters' home, trashing it with his sci-fi weapons. Bonus scene: When the villain gets caught in a spacetime portal loop, and how he gets out of it. Comedy gold!

An Unexpected Love

An Unexpected Love
by Debbie Macomber
Recommended Ages: 12+

This book is actually two short novels in one: The Man You'll Marry, which is a sequel to The First Man You Meet; and Bride on the Loose, book 5 of the seven-book "Manning Family" series. More on Debbie Macomber's vast and complex oeuvre later.

In The Man You'll Marry, Jill's friend mails her the family heirloom wedding dress that she believes brought her and her newly-wed husband together. It arrives in Jill's hotel room in Hawaii, just after she's spent hours on an airplane next to a grumpy businessman. Suddenly, despite her doubts about the dress, something seems to be drawing the couple together. But the question remains, can they be happy together? The book explores that question further than consumers of cookie-cutter romances may expect.

In Bride on the Loose, a desperate teenager wants her mother to let her go to the ninth-grade dance with the boy she likes. So, she tries to bribe their landlord, Jason, to sweep her mother, Charlotte, off her feet. Jason turns down the bribe, but the encounter sparks a flame between the two adults anyway and pretty soon, the only thing standing in the way of their shared happiness is the buried trauma from Charlotte's first marriage. This leads them on a surprising odyssey in the realm of mental health.

This list of Debbie Macomber's romance novels from 1983 to present, including standalone books as well as numerous series of various sizes, may give you an idea of how many books she has written and some of the ways they've been organized; I'm not going to try counting them now, but I'd say "hundreds" would be a fair estimate. I believe some of them have inspired made-for-the-Hallmark Channel movies. Even if that isn't the case, the "magic wedding dress" concept isn't far off a recent Hallmark series of "magic wedding veil" films, and the general tone of untrashy romance – with couples who don't fall into bed together until after they're married and, even then, the details are tastefully concealed – would work perfectly in that format. Except.

Except that they go further and deeper than "the hero couple overcome that one last obstacle to getting together and live happily ever after" formula so often seen in the TV movies, depicting a final threat to their shared happiness after the wedding bells fade. I only have these two novels to judge by, so I'm not sure whether that's generally the case with her work, but if it is, Macomber's romances have more to recommend them than mere chastity: they take care to test love's strength against the harsh reality of when the honeymoon is over. And in my opinion, that puts her in the company of such great novelists as Georgette Heyer.