Crying at Movies

November 10, 2008
In this series of loosely connected reminiscences, Manderino (Reasons for Leaving
) attempts to craft an autobiography from snapshots of himself as a movie watcher, with uneven results. Each chapter focuses on a particular film, from Manderino’s childhood memories of being frightened by Death of the Dinosaurs
to debating the merits of Jane Fonda’s performance in Coming Home
with a date. The most evocative are those where the film in question either influences or mirrors the author’s life: he gets up the courage to confront a man in a bar after watching Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver
and recreates a swooning fan letter he once wrote to Debbie Reynolds after seeing her in Singin’ in the Rain
. The collection falters when Manderino strains for a connection between his own life and the lives depicted on screen, such as his “role” in a friend’s wedding video or the unoriginal parallels he draws between himself as a depressed high school senior and Laurence Olivier’s portrayal of Hamlet
. Yet despite these missteps, Manderino’s love and respect for the medium is undeniable.

November 15, 2008
Although this sounds like the autobiography of a film critic, its actually a clever twist on the traditional memoir. In 38 brief chapters, Manderino links episodes from his real life to the movies he was watching at the time (each chapter bears the title of a movie). In High Noon, for example, he describes a showdown with an unfriendly barber. Manderino doesnt overstress the sometimes insubstantial parallels between movies and his personal life; on the other hand, the movie connections suggest a kind of self-deprecating commentary on the ordinariness of life. Some chapters are written in the style of the movie theyre named after; in La Dolce Vita, for example, Manderino and a girlfriend have a postcoital existential argument that is nothing if not Felliniesque. This is a slight book, a kind of anecdotal ramble, but it has quite a few clever things to say about the way our lives, either by design or through coincidence, mirror the movies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)