Plane Movie #2. I fell asleep for half an hour early on so I’m not sure whether a crucial plot point was meant to be ambiguous or not. Great depiction of the particular way New Haven is strange.

Very very hard to watch but I urge all to do so. Sort of unbelievably affecting. Reveals the absolute Worst of our Country in all its naked horror. True Evil—it’s real, ongoing, and paid for by our tax dollars. I watched it on a plane which is a bit deranged but it chose me as all plane movies do.

Was reflecting that while When Harry Met Sally is my most watched movie as an adult, Princess Bride was likely my most watched movie as a child. Maybe the movie I’ve seen the most times, period. I know every line but somehow forgot that it ends with Grandpa promising his grandson he’ll read the story again tomorrow (“As you wish,” he says—a line that we’ve been taught to hear as “I love you.”) Rob Reiner’s movies have given me a place to return to, which is to say they’ve given me a home. What is more meaningful than that?

So genuine and unrestrained and open-hearted and, at times, totally savage. Like cozy Bergman, it exposes the sometimes parasitic relationship between art and life, but ultimately softens, showing us the ways that our art so often knows more than we do. In the end, a movie powered by grace and radical empathy—a gentle urging to let people love you imperfectly, even insufficiently, in whatever way they are capable.

Ah family. Ah life. Ah the movies.