Reflections and Refractions: 'Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents'

The contributors to Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents identify nuance; frequently framing themselves and their parents through multiple lenses.

                                      
Film
    
        In Defense of Enjoying Tom Hooper's 'Cats'
    
​Ashley  Seaman

    13 Jan 2020

Television
    
        In Nickelodeon's 'Rocko's Modern Life', Corporations Steal Our Souls to Enchant Their Commodities
    
David Golding

    06 Nov 2019

Television
    
        BBC's 'Fleabag' and the Inescapable Awkward Family
    
Adrian Manuel

    29 Jul 2019

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The contributors to Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents identify nuance; frequently framing themselves and their parents through multiple lenses.

Whatever the plot lines of a work of fiction, if it features siblings as important characters, various rich themes are mined. This issue of Short Stories brings forth the sibling-inspired works of Martha Bátiz, K Anis Ahmed, Jenny Zhang, Lidudumalingani, and Kseniya Melnik.

HBO's My Brilliant Friend feels almost radical for its raw and un-romanticized depiction of female friendship and resistance in all its emotional complexities.

Tense, unflinching, and completely self-aware, Pet Sematary veers away from its source material in satisfying ways, yet remains true to Stephen King's uncompromising vision.

Over 90 years later, silent film The Kid Brother works well as entertainment for modern audiences, for whom its calculated old-fashioned corn and apparent simplicity aren't a problem but par for the course.

In graphic novel Belonging, Nora Krug takes a single idea – her family's involvement in the Second World War and Nazi Germany – and pursues it with relentless, forensic determination.

Even with few truly catchy numbers and a cumbersome plot, Mary Poppins Returns has enough bright-eyed optimism to almost escape the shadow of the toe-tapping original.

Tessa Fontaine's memoir will dazzle.

Tim Story's film should have been a smash. So why did it fail in its adaptation of the groundbreaking Marvel comic book?

This documentary about a Japanese Immigrant in America during and after WWII dances with history, memory, and friendship.

South Pole Station is an unflinching yet loving look at family in all its forms.

Director Jonathan Olshefski has made a stirring call for the placement of low-income, inner-city families into our collective consciousness.

Sarah Healy's The Sisters Chase introduces a flawed heroine for the ages in its breezy, affecting narrative.

Annabelle Gurwitch's humorous memoir, Wherever You Go, There They Are, captures how one is forever in the thralls of the family -- no matter the form that family takes.

An average day at Ben Cash's commune -- at least in his mind -- would make Iron Man competitions look like intermediate intramural fluff.

The journey in Housebreaking is gripping even though the payoff is light.

This is the kind of book Erma Bombeck would have written if she was on heroin or had just watched The Grave of the Fireflies while listening to Jeff Buckley.

Moving and emotionally complex, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming is a book about nothing less than the human condition.

Jim and Carol's story is at once mundane and creepy-cute, wound up around the core fact of the child Timothy, who arrives following a thunderstorm out of their garden

Like her previous memoir about her father -- the acclaimed and prismatic Fun Home -- Are You My Mother? blends textbook academia, beautifully emotive drawings, and generous confessions to find some familial recovery after years of discord.

Although The Other Woman has the potential to be socially relevant given today’s blended families, it doesn’t present anything new.

Here was an opportunity to delve deep into a study of the modern American family, and its subsequent breakdown upon entering the 21st century -- an opportunity missed.

The perils of putting out a record of “Family Favourites” or cover songs that two people in love enjoy singing together reveals this can be a dangerous prospect.

Christina combines intense vulnerability with a survivor's furious poise; on any given day, she can swing from gushing about Geri Halliwell to carving up her arm with a kitchen knife, but throughout it all we sense in her a miraculous core of resilience and insight.

Though Family deserves credit for pioneering risky subject matter on network television, its legacy is found in clichéd after school specials, the very-special-episodes of '80s TV shows, and prime time teen melodramas.

Desperate for a symbol other than Fight Club's Tyler Durden to help 'realign your perceptions' on life? Look no further than Walt Disney's 1964 family classic, and a certain subversive nanny who understands rebellion all too well.