"Maya Angelou’s final work, published a year before her death, in 2013, when she was 85 years old. It was the first book to focus on her mother, Vivian Baxter, who abandoned Angelou when she was a child and it portrays their complicated relationship. The story is about the special connection between mother and child; both women found a way to move on and form a profound and enduring bond of love and support."

"For years I regarded Alf Sjöberg as the best director ever on the basis of this film. A stunning adaptation of a short play that is all set in a kitchen. Quite amazing, the way Sjöberg opens out and strengthens all the tensions and relationships in the story. Superb visuals. I’d love to see his Barabbas . . . a film of his I’ve never been able to track down, even when I went to Stockholm."

"Life is Beautiful was a very big deal for me. Coming from a Jewish intellectual family, and also a family who was in love with the arts — and my sister’s an artist, and I’m an actor. Just mixing your brilliance with your imagination — just blew my mind, and I was fully swept up in the fantasy of Roberto Benigni and what he was able to accomplish in that story. I thought it was beautiful."

"A beauty supply store owner of a certain age loses her husband, and thinks that’s the end – but her friends rally around her, and various members of her complicated family (her sister, her daughter, the stepson who’s come into her life as an adult) still need her love and competence. A funny, moving story with some smart things to say about aging, mental illness, and how a mother’s work is never done."