Adventures in Words

  Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in “May December.”  Photo by Francois Duhamel / courtesy of Netflix via IMDB.com Walking a thin line between elegant and creepy, Todd Haynes' “May December” is a suspenseful psychological maze that leaves you knowing less than you did when you started. Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman star, playing two versions of the same person. She's Gracie Atherton-Yoo, who made tabloid and People Magazine covers years earlier when she seduced a coworker in the pet store where they both had jobs. She was in her mid-30s at the time; her co-worker, Joe Yoo, was 13. She gave birth to their child in jail. After her release she wed the boy, and they're still married with more kids a quarter-century later. Julianne plays the real Gracie. Natalie is TV star Elizabeth Berry, who will be playing Gracie in an upcoming movie. She has come to Gracie's beachfront home in scenic Savannah to research the role. Charles Melton plays hunky husband Joe, who's

  Dominic Sessa, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti in “The Holdovers.”  Focus Features photo via IMDB. Considering that it's billed as a feel-good movie for the holidays, there's something slightly Scroogelike in admitting I didn't love “The Holdovers” as much as I expected to. There's lots to like though. It reunites award-winning director Alexander Payne with his “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti in a bittersweet coming-of-age dramedy set in a New England prep school in the last week of 1970. Giamatti plays priggish classics teacher Paul Hunham, convinced that civilization hit its zenith with ancient Greece and has been in a downward slide ever since. He treats his students accordingly, referring to them as troglodytes and reprobates. Although he bullies his students with his intellectual rigor, Mr. Hunham is hard to take too seriously. His corduroy wardrobe is stodgy, he smells, and his eyes go in different directions. “Walleye” is the hardly affectionate nickna

  Ana Carballosa/Prime Video photo via IMDB.com.   Matt Damon in “Air.” Warner Bros. photo via IMDB Ryan Gosling and Margot Robie in “Barbie.”   Matt Damon is fat and Ben Affleck is clueless. That's most of what you need to know about “Air,” the comic flashback to the 1980s when Nike landed a sponsorship deal with young basketball phenom Michael Jordan and created a shoe for him. They named the shoe Air Jordan. It would go on to revolutionize sports, marketing, the American economy and, just for good measure, American culture itself. The film premiered last April; now Amazon Studios is putting screeners in reviewers' hands hoping to get it into the awards-season hunt. Its cast has plenty of Oscar cred to inspire such hopes. Good buds Matt and Ben won Oscars for writing “Good Will Hunting” a quarter-century ago, before going on to create two of the most stellar careers in Hollywood. Then there's another past Oscar winner, Viola Davis. She plays Michael Jordan's mother De

Jodie Foster and Annette Bening in “Nyad.”  Netflix photo via IMDB Besides the nearly suicidal demands it places on the body, long-distance open-ocean swimming isn't a sport for the faint of mind or weak of character. Along with the continuous threat of vomiting, the cold-from-the-inside-out sensation of hypothermia and the lactic acid build-ups that reduce chiseled muscle to jelly, there are the hallucinations and visits to the dark side of your psyche that accompany the lonely hours in endless expanses of ocean. Welcome to the world where Diana Nyad set out to stake her claim. “Nyad,” now playing on Netflix, tells the true story of the champion marathon open-water swimmer who, after a long stint as an ABC Wide World of Sports commentator, returned to the water when she turned 60 to complete her dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida. There's no surprise ending. Everyone already knows how the story turned out in 2013. Plus, swimming long distances is nothing if not methodicall