Finishing up 2015 (finally) - Monday, January 11, 2016

Christmas Day we slept in, then checked to see what was in our stockings. There was a new luggage tag for our new luggage, movie candy, gift card to the Red Lobster, lottery tickets, tangerines, apples, and chocolate. As I was finding the gifts in my stocking, I asked "Here's a luggage tag, where are we going?" and when I found the movie candy I asked where the gift cards were for the movie theaters. LOL. I knew the answer. We didn't have room for a tree and our big gift this year was the cruise to Cozumel, Belize and Honduras.

I cooked yams for our RV park's Christmas Dinner, and we took a can of jellied cranberry sauce. The park provided turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, coffee, iced tea and water. The rest of the meal was potluck. Everything was wonderful. There was an abundance of food and fellowship.

The Christmas dinner buffet line

Lydia, Pam and Paul

Sue, Dick, Clari, Tony, Lyle, Norena, and Shirley

My dinner! Mmm.

Bob was ready to dig in.

Margaret, Steve, John, Pat, Stan, Lanora, Fran

The Neville's

Peter and Rene

A very Merry Christmas, indeed.

Sunday, December 27, we went to see "Spotlight," a movie about the Boston Globe's Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative journalism team known as Spotlight. Stars are: Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci, and Billy Crudup.

The movie starts with the team trying to decide what their next major exposé should be. As they toss around ideas, a new editor starts working there. The new editor (Liev Schreiber) suggests re-opening a story from years before about Roman Catholic priests abusing young children in Boston. Much ado is made about how the Catholic Church will sue the Boston Globe if they try to publish the story.

As the reporters on the team look into prior allegations against priests, they find more and more priests who had been involved only to have their transgressions covered up by the Catholic Church. Priests were being re-assigned and their records showed they were on leave, sick, and other vague classifications of their status.

As the reporters delved deeper into the investigation, they interviewed some of the victims, searched archives and met many dead ends in trying to get information from the Church, lawyers and government officials. Public records were missing. The Spotlight team suspected the Cardinal knew what was happening but did nothing to punish the priests.

We loved this movie. The acting was excellent. The story was maddening. The facts during the closing credits were appalling. How could these atrocious acts go on for so long? Why did the Catholic Church cover up/hide the abuse of power against children? Very good movie.

Thursday, December 31: We both worked today. For New Year's Eve we decided to listen to Arrowhead, our favorite rock 'n' roll band in San Antonio. They were playing at Tonic the Bar, a place we hadn't been before. The vibe was odd there. There weren't many tables but there was a huge dance floor. As the band played, we sat and listened, loved the music, but no one was dancing. I think one couple danced. Then a lady danced by herself. We finally got up and danced one dance by ourselves, but mostly people just drank and listened.

One lady who had been sitting at the bar was totally drunk and decided we were her best friends. She came over and was talking to us. We could barely hear a word she said because of the band. She came over on our side of the table and was hugging on me.

We left the bar at 11:50 p.m. As we were driving home, we saw so many fireworks all throughout San Antonio. The big fireworks show was going on over the Tower of the Americas. We pulled over on the side of the freeway to watch with a bunch of other people until a police cruiser went by blasting something on their loudspeaker. We couldn't hear what they were saying, but figured we'd better move on. We were up on an elevated freeway so we had a great view of thousands of neighborhood fireworks. Wow!

Happy New Year!

Movie Review: The Company You Keep - Sun., Apr. 28

The movie matinee we saw was The Company You Keep. Top name actors help us re-live the consequences of their fictional characters' roles from the 1970s-era Vietnam War protests. We follow the lives of members of the Weather Underground Organization, also known as the Weathermen.

In 1969 the Weathermen first organized at the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan, a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The group declared war on the government of the United States and through the mid-1970s conducted bombings of banks and government buildings, most preceded by evacuation warnings. In the movie, the Weathermen rob a bank (in real life it was an armored car) and kill a guard.

Opening credits show real and made-up protest scenes from 1969 through 1981. With credits over, we visit the home of Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon), 30 years after the heist. She lives in suburbia with her husband and two teen-agers. You can tell she is mentally wrestling with an issue in her life. After her kids head to school, she knowingly nods at her husband and heads out the door. When she gets to a gas station to fuel up, she makes the conscious decision to use a credit card with her real name. Within minutes, the FBI has her car surrounded and she is in custody. Her life as a fugitive hiding in plain sight is over.

Shia LaBeouf plays Ben, a reporter at a small newspaper who yearns to be an investigative reporter and "get the story." I must say, Shia certainly holds his own on screen with all the big-name movie stars he plays opposite.

So starts the story of a group of Weathermen who had been living normal lives for 30 years. Each of them has an alias and have blended into society with new careers.

Robert Redford plays Jim Grant, an attorney in New York, with an 11-year-old daughter (Jackie Evancho of America's Got Talent fame). We follow Jim Grant as he tries to find the one person who can help absolve him of the murder charge, hooking up with other former Weathermen along the way. The reporter and the FBI are hot on his tail.

The movie's pace and tone kept our interest. Chase scenes, subterfuge, and staying one step ahead of the law kept us riveted to the screen.

We wanted to find out what would happen to each of the people we met along the way. In some instances we learned the outcome and in other cases we did not. Did the lack of resolution of items detract from the movie? Somewhat. The movie was interesting and informative, it kept an air of mystery as to what would happen.

There was one unanswered question at the end. I guess as movie-goers our imagination or sense of ethics was called into play to figure out what happened to the characters concerned. It definitely led to conversation after the movie as to what we thought happened.

I give the movie 3-1/2 out of five stars.