Lilly didn’t want to go to the movies by herself on Saturday. Her mother and younger sister were going to one picture she didn’t want to see, and I was going to another, and we each offered to take her to our respective multiplexes to see something else of her choosing. Hastily texted friends couldn’t make it, so she stayed home.

Maybe it’s a function of being a 15-year-old girl. I don’t ever remember being reluctant to park myself alone in a movie theater. If I’d never gone to the movies by myself, particularly in my early 20s, there’s a lot of worthwhile ones I might never have seen. One of my early experiences along those lines was seeing a revival of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Broadway Theatre in Alamo Heights when I was younger than her — too young to really appreciate it, but I was wowed by the spaceships. Of course, going alone would defeat the purpose at some movies, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I went to see Lincoln. Been meaning to for a while. Aside from a few quibbles, such as (especially) the business about the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg Address and the stretcher that had Mrs. Lincoln and her black servant attending the debate in the House regarding the 13th Amendment, along with some lesser odd details, it’s rousing good historical fiction, about as good as you’re going to get in a movie.