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Films of Endearment: A Mother, a Son and the ’80s Films That Defined Us
Maybe someday
31
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
25/100Critics
37/100Scholars
Author:
Michael Koresky
Publisher:
Hanover Square Press
Date:
May 4, 2021
Approaching his 40th birthday, a film critic embarks upon a project with his motherâwhom he credits with his love of the mediumâto watch influential movies starring women from their shared cinematic past. 1980s films like 9 to 5, Terms of Endearment, The Color Purple and Working Girl are explored alongside childhood memories, including his developing consciousness as a gay man.
What The Reviewers Say
Koresky, a writer accustomed to turning his critical eye outward, professes discomfort at turning it inward to write about himself. That discomfort doesn’t show in Koresky’s tender depiction of a loving mother-son relationship and the passion for film it fostered. Koresky’s film writing is incisive and confidant but always approachable, never so academic that it loses its heart.
... [a] charming and moving mix of memoir and movie appreciation.
Koresky’s complicated relationship with age and mortality inflects much of Films of Endearment, as the absence of his father—who passed away years ago—leads him to reflect on ideas of home and permanence. He enters the decade of his 40s while working on the book, and he discusses his and his husband’s decision not to have children—a newly relevant question in the queer community that he lingers on in illuminating ways.
A skilled film critic, Koresky guides readers through salient plot points instead of rehashing entire films, but his real talent is using cinema as a starting point for conversation. This intimate, probing work will appeal to hard-core cinephiles, lovers of memoirs, and many other readers..
