Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

I'll just say upfront that I loved this contemporary literature book about (sort of) a messy non-binary clash between ideals and money solely because I absolutely loved the writing. I'm noting this because it means if you don't love the writing the way I did, you might have a different response to the book, i.e. you might be bored. While the plot threads definitely pick up for the latter third, both the way the plot unfolds and the way the book ends (no spoilers don't worry) tell you that the author's interest is primarily in people and ideas and is using the plot as a means to propel both. I'll put it this way: not a ton happens at the beginning which is then followed by a meeting in which one of the lead characters goes on a rant about capitalism for what may have been 5 or 10% of the book length (I don't really know actually but that was the feel). I loved it. You may not. That's what I mean by this book is about the writing for me and the immersion in the writing and ideas. Which isn't to say it doesn't have a plot. It definitively does, one involving a mashup of capitalism and principled liberalism in the form of a non-violent guerilla environmental group, a billionaire, and a remote piece of property near a national park. I'm not really going to say more about the plot, in part because of spoilers, but mostly because the plot is driven by the characters, their interactions, and the top-level ideas about how they believe the world should operate and their efforts, thwarted or otherwise, to impose that on everyone else. The author takes the plot right to the edge of absurdism and what makes it interesting is that it never quite gets there, i.e. the plot seems both ridiculously OTT and reasonably plausible at the same time, which is I think what the author was going for. She was laying out her characters not only on opposite(ish) sides of a political spectrum but showing how their intertwined efforts to use each other took everything to an extreme. Plus, and this is definitely part of the pleasure too, the book isn't really just people in principled opposition to one another, but rather also about how those principles collide with personality and relationships, like two of the central characters are splintering friends and the way that splintering happens in the context of the plot and where it all goes adds a whole other level. I'm not going to discuss the ending at all but I'll just say the book takes you where you need to go, which I realize isn't saying much but is also saying, if you're in the headspace I was where you were just enjoying all the great and very amusing - the author has a really dry sense of humor - writing and the larger interplay of intellectual ideas, you will be totally satisfied with where it winds up. Let me put it this way: if you start the book and find it draggy and get to the big rant - you'll know when you're there trust me - and are still feeling that way, I'd say stop because that's really the book; if on the other hand you note the dragginess and then just kind of inhale everything the author puts on the page, well you have a big beefy piece of fiction ahead of you and go enjoy.

TV/Streaming:

Legendary (Season 3):

I've said it before and I will say it again, sadly for the last time I think because the lunatics who run HBO MAX (or whatever they’ve renamed it) cancelled this show and, to my knowledge, it hasn't wound up anywhere else, but, if you are a competition reality-show lover, then this show is your peak entertainment. It has everything one could look for in a competition reality show beyond the obvious of being amused nonstop: you can actually judge it for yourself. Over time, having watched seemingly endless competition reality series, I've concluded that the ability to self-judge is key to making a show top tier. For example, you don't need to be an interior designer to know if you think one design contestant’s room is better than another and you can, even if you live in a place with nothing on the walls and utterly mismatched furniture (cough), make taste and execution judgments, and, heck, even learn a little something from the judges (assuming they're clear in their criticism rather than just rah-rah supportive or trying to be the Simon Cowell like so many on these shows) about why something does or doesn't work. When the competition requires an understanding of the nuance of the craft in order to pass judgment - I'm looking at you All That Glitters (well at least the first half of each episode) - I, as a viewer, feel kinda judged myself for not knowing what I'm at looking at and like screw that! This show, while having an extremely detailed dance, attitude, and presentation/costume language, doesn't require a lick of understanding for you to be able to watch an outcome and determine if you thought it was better than another team's outcome. That isn't why I love it so much but it's what puts it into the top tier of this genre. The thing that puts it over the top tier and which I've mentioned in reviews of prior seasons (here and here) is the combination of athleticism, costumes, dance story, and, above all, joy. This dance form was designed from the ground up to entertain, like waaaaaaaaaay back in the day when gay/drag/trans was forming its identity politics (they've separated now but IJHO they were linked in the '80s due to culture lumping them together as some form of must-be-stamped-out-but-I-guess-we-legally-have-to-tolerate-it-ugh oppression), the purpose was really for people to amuse each other. Like vogueing was not invented for any reason other than showboating for and entertaining one's friends in a club and along the road, as with all art, other people took it to an entirely new level of skill but the underlying raison d'etre was to entertain. And that's why I truly love this show. Even when some routines aren't as polished or when you can see there are problems or where some contestants simply aren't as good as others, the show is nonstop entertainment. I'm sad it’s gone, hope it makes a return somewhere, and hats off to all involved because they managed to combine real competition in a best-party-ever package and what an achievement.

The Magicians (Season 5):

As noted previously (here and here) I didn't love then ended up totally loving this series based on books I entirely loved (here, here, and I thought there’d be a third “here” but once again I forgot to publish the review - oops, tl;dr of the third book: loved!) and, because I knew it had been cancelled, I delayed watching this final season for years because I knew I'd be sad when it ended and, while that's true, it also reiterated why and that I loved this series. Having now watched the whole thing, I can tell you that Season 1 is definitely different and not in a good but also not in a terrible way. It feels as if, for that first season, the writers tried to hew really closely to the books and were more concerned with making sure all the book plot beats were present than with creating real characters in real - well yeah magical but underlying real - circumstances. From Season 2 onward, the writers tossed the bulk of that and instead captured the spirit of the books which was this particular, snarky, blase jargon that everyone speaks with but which masks genuine comprehensible feelings and motivations. In other words, the writers adhered to what made the books really fun without being super concerned about the book plots or character interactions, i.e. they made it a TV/Streaming show. And from that point on I really loved it. Every season there's a big bad which forces all the leads to work together even when they're really pissed at each other or hurt by each other and this necessity of being jammed in with people who are driving you batshit makes not only for some very entertaining viewing but also some unexpected plot twists because the leads end up behaving based on their feelings rather than merely being heroes which in turn leads to more drama and problems, i.e. they’re heroes by circumstance rather than personality, like all of them have a kind of teenage fantasy-novel sense of quest as heroism but all overlaid with adult problems and the real issues that come from knowing you're different and not necessarily in a good way but maybe in a way you find paralyzing and here's this group of people who are just like you and, well, the alternative is going it alone so you just have to deal with them even though they often suck. This very human problem, along with the dialogue, is what makes the show work. I mean the plots are ridiculous and that's not an insult; they're there to drive character forward which is, I think, how shows like this operate at their best. This is what made Buffy pop and, as with that show, the humor also really works here. It's pretty much nonstop snappy quips and, while as noted in my prior reviews, that really didn't function as well in the first season because the underlying human element wasn't present, it totally does as the show continues. Whether the characters are succeeding or failing - and they fail a lot - it's always amusing. It's pretty amazing, really, that right to the end, the writers managed to keep it all going without making it feel repetitive (other than the plots which in some ways were repetitive since they're basically all saving the/a world from a big bad each season more or less). And they allowed the characters to grow. I mean, the leads were definitely impacted by what happened to them over the course of the show and the writers let that come through, meaning your investment in the series and these people really goes somewhere. Well enough of my waxing rhapsodic. If you're a Buffy fan or like series of that ilk and haven't seen this one - or, like me, were turned off by the first season - I promise delights await.

Movies:

Hardcore Henry - While I can't say I'm 100% clear on the plot of this nonstop action movie, I was definitely thoroughly entertained by it. Basically - and I refuse to Wikipedia this so I may be totally wrong - there's some guy (Henry) who has all kinds of body mods - the movie is set in the near-future (I think) - and there are good guys and bad guys and in order for something to occur (and that's not me being vague for spoiler reasons but rather me having no understanding of what was going on), Henry needs to go places where he's in danger from other supermodded bad guys and... do things. Look the plot 100% does not matter as you can tell from my lack of understanding of anything. What will make this movie work or not for you is the following: it's basically a low-budget John Wick done entirely as a gaming-type first-person shooter. In other words it's nonstop murder and explosion and kicking and shooting and running and beating the crap out of people but you never see Henry because the camera IS Henry. Honestly I was a little nervous when the movie started because actual FPS videogames give me simulation sickness and I can't play them at all. But I was fine throughout this film so I'm thinking if you suffer the same nausea thing you'll likely be fine too. Part of what makes this movie so much fun, aside from the nonstop punching, heads being blown off, camera being shot at, beaten up, kicked, dragged then responding to all that with more explosions, running, and violence, is the POV. You, the viewer, only see exactly what the lead sees meaning you never have more information than he does which may in part explain my lack of understanding of the plot since the character doesn't understand it either (or, alternatively, it's just me). You never see Henry the entire film, though you do sometimes see his legs kicking or some blood splatter and, because he's mostly on the run breaking into things and trying to get something for the aforementioned not-understood plot reasons, it has the feel of a real-time thing where you're just in it with someone the whole time. John Wick is a decent example of the same thing - though obviously done third person and with a massively higher budget - where it's huge extended action sequences broken up by bits of stuff with other characters to give a basic underlying plot reason for all the action. This movie has the same and even if I didn't understand much beyond "there's a bad guy" it didn't matter; I was in it for the violent fun and directorial style and, as action movies go, this one totally delivered for me.

March Violets (Bernie Gunther #1) by Phillip Kerr

This is a well-written noir set in 1930s pre-war Berlin which I'm somewhat on the fence about. The basic plot: a grizzled PI, a rich guy, murders, theft, police, politics, Gestapo. It's not that the plot is mundane really; it's that the distinguishing features of this book are the setting and the writing and your enjoyment of it will be based on whether you find those plus a very cliche noir lead (and I can't tell if that was deliberate like was it an homage to the style?) to be engaging. I did and didn't. On the one hand the Berlin pre-war stuff was somewhat interesting though had also been covered in my media brain by Babylon Berlin which is very similar in terms of plotting and time period; on the other, the book didn't really make use of any of it - I mean you could've plugged in "local cops" for "Gestapo" at any point and not noticed - until the end and that felt jammed in, weird, and contrived to me with a total deus ex machina resolution that, as with all deus ex machina endings, only served to detract from the lead character rather than add since if he needed blind luck to succeed then why am I bothering to follow him? The writing is definitely snazzy and in that dry, gallows-humor noir style and that worked for me the whole time but what really didn't work was the lead who, also in that noir style, is beaten-up nonstop, a womanizer, a drinker, never seems to have any money, etc. etc. It all felt very imposed, like the author was ticking off genre boxes and, yep, got 'em all without really adding a spin or having a modern take on it in any way. Like you knew any time a woman showed up that there was going to a lot of writing about the ogling of her ass and her breasts all in that Sam Spade style but still it just got tiresome and, at a basic level, told me nothing about character. In other words, "this is how men of the time behaved" really isn't enough for a first-person lead because I want to know why this particular man is behaving this way. Is he lonely? Running from something? Depressed? Empty? Afraid of connection? i.e. the underlying character meat that allows you, the reader, to engage with someone who, through modern eyes, is basically a total pig. I'm good with a total pig and sexism and people being of their time but all of that absent the character work to craft a real person - again, this is a first-person novel so we're in the lead's head the entire time - becomes boring after a while because you don't understand the character's motivations or why he's doing what he's doing. Like at some point he tells us - I promise, not a spoiler - that he's "in love" with one of the women I thought he was just casually banging and, yeah, that statement really isn't enough. Look, the writing is good and if you like noirs in general and find the setting appealing you'll probably like this book no matter what because it's your thing, but I need more from a lead, regardless of what style the author is trying to capture, and this book just didn't have that. This is the first in a series and it's difficult to imagine, based on this one, picking up any more of them as an in-the-style-of, Berlin-based, fast-talking, and womanizing gumshoe really just isn't enough.

The Secret Speech (Leo Demidov #2) by Tom Rob Smith

Ugh. I didn't have that reaction at first to this second in a mystery/crime series set in post-Stalinist Russia - foreign-set mysteries apparently being a theme in this week’s Media Report I’m discovering - about a former KGB (well MGB but close enough) agent who starts the country's first homicide division. The first book was decent enough, even if the mystery itself (a serial killer on the loose in a country that denies the possibility that comrades can murder) wasn't great, because the setting was interesting and the author showed how the Russian state compelled people to behave in ways that impacted every relationship they had and the lead's - Leo's - halting efforts to make things different despite the dire consequences for speaking up. I anticipated more of the same with this book but in a new era, i.e. now the possibility of crime is out in the open and Russia is changing in other ways and there'd be a new crime and a deepening of the relationships/family stuff that was in the first book (being vague to avoid spoilering). And, with the relationship stuff at least, that was more or less the case. The problem with this book and the reason I ughed and the meaning behind the ugh is that the mystery component was such a trainwreck and so completely impossibly absurd that I ended up DNFing 80% in. I mean that's how bad the book was by that point, that despite only having 20% to go, I couldn't bear having my time wasted for one second longer. When I say "absurd" I mean our lead, who's nothing, a zero, no one special, no particular skills or training, just some guy who tortured people in the first book and tried to investigate a serial killer, and yet somehow he's now an action-movie level superhero, surviving impossible events, breaking in and out of gulags, being beaten to within an inch of his life yet somehow winning the day anyway, that kind of thing. And not just him, his entire family really. It was unbearable over time because the main thing - setting up the first homicide division in Russia - was utterly ignored. He didn't investigate a single murder, nothing, nothing about an interaction with the state, nothing other than this not-particularly-fit schlub tossing himself into an impossible circumstance for plot reasons and overcoming planes, bullets, thugs, starvation, cold, storms, and shipwreck, and, along with his schoolteacher wife, outwitting literally everyone, criminal or otherwise, and winning. I couldn't handle it. What I liked about the first book was the particular specific lens on a specific historical time. This was just, after the first say 1/3rd, absurd and, yeah, it took me a while to realize that the absurdity was in fact the meat of the book and not just a passing sequence and I just couldn't handle it anymore. I like the author's writing - his book The Farm was much more interesting to me - but I'm done with this series.

TV/Streaming:

Umbrella Academy (Season 3):

Well as with prior seasons (which I guess I forgot to write about - oops) I thoroughly enjoyed this season of a series about disinterested superheroes in a sort-of family who are forced, with more and more resentment, to keep saving the world over and over primarily by destroying parts of it. I mean that's not it 100% but it's kind of the gist and forms the thematic backbone of most of this season, like if you just want to live your life but, for world-saving time-travelly reasons, your siblings-by-circumstance destroy it well, yeah you'd understand why and you've even probably done the exact same thing but that doesn't change the fact that these people took everything you cared about from you and left you bereft. That's kind of what this season is about along with a whole other huge plot or two but it's what makes the show something other than just a goofy spectacle. In some ways maybe it leaned too much into its character theme this season but for the most part I thought it added some heft. This is a show more in the Doom Patrol vein (though less goofy (though there are a few goofy or at least comic relief characters in this show)) in that there's a lot of angst and family drama played out against a backdrop of huge battles. I won't spoiler anything but there's some backstory reveals that add drive as does some stuff around a sort of rivalry. But mostly this season is about the characters being exhausted with their task of constantly saving the world from total destruction and the price that wreaks. That's been more or less the series from the start but it's really driven home this season. There's a lot going on in the show, and the effects are fun, but it's this kind of sour tone the leads have about their lives that makes this different from other superhero shows. We are deep in the antiherosuperhero era where it's regular totally messed-up people dealing, often badly, with their lives and their powers but what I think makes this show a bit better than others (like The Boys) is that it has a pretty good blend of angsty character stuff, deception, bigass FX sequences, and plots that interweave enough by the end that it feels like each season is a well-designed whole, something I did feel with season 1 of Doom Patrol and definitely not with season 3 of The Boys. In other words, if you like your superhero shows with character drama, action, and some bleak humor and you haven't seen this one, well I think it's been consistently entertaining for three seasons, and I certainly hope they're making a fourth.

Unstable (Season 1):

This is a barely-okay very networky even though it's on Netflix sitcom about Rob Lowe as the head of a tech company reconnecting with his son. It's definitely not good in that it's super broad and none of the characters seem remotely credible - they're basically there for the quips - but perhaps knowing the actor who plays the son is Rob Lowe's actual son gave it just enough vague interest to make it watchable. Setting aside that humor is really subjective, there were definitely a few quips each episode that were amusing; Fred Armisen is in it and does his thing and there's a British actor who plays the CFO who I thought was pretty funny. But the plots are so bad that it makes it difficult to invest in this series in any meaningful way. As in: Fred Armisen plays a therapist hired by the company board to keep a/n (stated though never really actually shown) erratic Rob Lowe in check and Rob Lowe... kidnaps Fred Armisen and keeps him in a basement and then they become roommates and then that idiotic plot becomes the basis for the big board showdown in the final episode. It felt like the writers were devoted to making this show wacky on wacky and really it needed at a least a vaguely reasonable plot underlying it because otherwise it feels not only really contrived but just difficult to invest in. And it was asking you to invest because the episodes aren't one-offs like an actual network sitcom but rather hazy season-long relationships/conflicts that were meant to build week to week but really just didn't because the writers weren't able to do that thing where you combine total absurdity with underlying character realness - Veep is a show that did that pretty well I'd say, like for the most part that series was ridiculous but when the characters had issues, they were written in such a way that you bought it within the context of all the quips. This show didn't have that. I think it's more in the Ted Lasso (season one since the other seasons were so awful vein in that there's a gentleness around it and you know nothing's really going to go wrong so I'd say check out an episode and see how the humor works for you. All my panning aside, I watched the whole thing and will likely watch season 2 if there is one, though I can't say I didn't get bored at points because of the draggy character stuff, but that's what a tablet's sitting next to me for, so I can't 100% complain though I have a feeling I just did.

Magic Burns (Kate Daniels #2) by Ilona Andrews

Well I found this second book in an urban fantasy series - a genre I don't normally love - to be as entertaining as the first and I'm knocking wood that the whole series ends up being as good. There are two components that put this book above others of its ilk. First, to a large extent the top-level plot is standalone combined with, second, ongoing and building underlying character and world stuff. It's like, well pick your TV/Streaming series that you loved that did that; for me it's The Good Wife where there were multi-season plots, a few recurring characters, and largely new cases each episode. This series so far is the same in that regard. Our hero is a super tough mercenary with a past that's still only been hinted at in modern-day Atlanta but really not urban fantasy in a traditional sense. The overarching idea - not a spoiler btw - is that something's happening where the world is flip-flopping between tech being dominant and magic being dominant with one negating the other. When tech is dominant, it's our normal world; when magic's up, it's, well, some familiar stuff (vampires, werewolves) plus some more obscure stuff drawn from myths. So what this book has is a brooding lonerish lead with all kinds of spoilerable things going on that she needs to hide but with her only real skill being that of a for-hire magic-PI (kind of) and thus stuck in situations where she's both highly invested on a human level - this book centers around a young girl needing protection - while also needing to pull her punches due to the still-unrevealed backstory. This is combined with a set of other characters and constructs and rules around how all the magic stuff is supposed to work plus what looks like the start of a combative romance tossed in for good measure. But what really makes these books work for me, aside from everything I just mentioned, is the nonstop action. Basically they're just fun. There's enough downtime for character and world building but then it's back into the thick of an investigation that's ultimately going to lead to some kind of chase/battle/whatever and it makes it all pretty addictive. The basic plot of this one involves the aforementioned young girl who's tangentially wrapped up in a much more massive plot issue that leads to the big ending of this book (being vague to avoid spoilering). You know, I think because I don't love urban fantasy and the covers of these books make them look like romances, I avoided them but, having read two, I gotta say: if the genre's not a total turnoff and you can ignore the covers, there's a really entertaining and well-done series here which I plan to inhale and you may want to as well.

Slippery Adventures (Will Darling Adventures #1) by KJ Charles

This was an okay 1920s adventure/mystery about a WWI vet who inherits a bookstore only to discover himself in danger with a bunch of people who are chasing him to get something hidden somewhere in the store. The style of the book is pretty breezy and I'd say in keeping with my (admittedly vague) sense of these types of books. The plot and overall tone has a kind of Peaky Blinders vibe in that there’s no real good guy/bad guy but rather people ill-intentioned towards our lead (that would be the eponymous Will Darling) and his efforts to escape them. And that's my first issue with this book. Will was really there more or less to be the recipient of mystery and violence but didn't seem to have any skills himself beyond some occasional knife-pointing and the like. I mean he's facing two gangs, one criminal and one government, and doesn't really do all that much beyond getting swept up in and complaining about it and get swept up in it all. This made the story pretty turgid because there's a lot of action happening around and to the main character but no real action generated by the main character. I mean it's a mystery as in he initially doesn't know what anyone's after or why, but his unraveling of that mystery comes to, more or less, waiting around long enough for other people to explain it to him as opposed to taking action to unravel it himself. It makes the read overall pretty flat because he's basically Nell tied to the train tracks the whole time and I mean don't you want to read about an active hero rather than a passive victim? So that's my main issue, it's a writing issue, and it's something that makes me not want to continue this series because I'm not interested in seeing that character do nothing in subsequent books like he did in this one. My second issue is a personal taste thing and not some flaw or anything with the writing which is that there are a TON of sex scenes, long long long sex scenes, and I just find sex scenes to be crazy dull. That may not be you in which case enjoy. But it's me, though honestly it was the first issue, the character one, that kills this book for me because if that problem weren't there I'd have just skipped the sex scenes and enjoyed the book. That wasn't the case and bummer cause I liked the writing overall, but I just can't read an adventure series with a cipher as the lead.

TV/Streaming:

The Crown (Season 3):

Well this show continues to astound, primarily in terms of it story-to-runtime ratio which, in this season, continues its trend of under 1 story beat per hour of programming. To give you my mathematical proof of the absolutely amazing utter lack of anything whatsoever happening at any point in this show, Exhibit A (wait - did this just become a legal proof?) is an entire episode devoted to people, by which I mean people who do absolutely nothing but sit around in their rich prison wearing rich people clothes and being waited on but doing, as noted, nothing, watching television. Maybe that episode was like a meta thing, where I'm having the exact same experience as the characters, i.e. watching them on my screen watching something on their screen. Very very powerful. But for real: what do you think of an hour of viewing in which the characters do nothing more than gather around a TV to watch the moon landing? The writer(s) tried to infuse it with meaning as the main rich dude in some earlier era/season was, for one hot second if that, a fighter pilot of sorts and felt his horrific rich life (as opposed to his total idiocy for being the wealthiest person on the planet yet deciding not to do whatever the fuck he wants to with all that money) had constrained his dreams. So we're watching someone, for an hour, watch something... yearningly. I mean is it just me? Look I get it, this story is hewing to truth or somesuch but guess what, writer? It's your job to make that truth interesting! I'm aware, by which I mean Netflix's unaudited marketing would have us all believe, that lots of other people have a totally different reaction to this show. And, yes, if you're a British royals fan then I'm sure this series is a whole other experience. But if you're just, you know, watching something then… um... As I mentioned my prior reviews (here and here), my primary amazement with this series is how little it makes of not much, like it's incapable of infusing anything with even the barest hint of character but instead substitutes the same quote unquote character beat over and over and over and over and over with every single person in the show and calls it a day. That beat - "I have something on the inside but I can't let it out due to duty" - is insanely passive and interior. When literally anything a character wants or aspires to is instantly squashed by both his/her/their (I know there's a royal "we" but are there any royal theys?) family members or staff, what are you watching!??! 200 million hours of the plot of Waiting for Godot but without any of the humor or ironic (or not) existentialist commentary. In many ways, I wish they had done this series as a brutal examination of existentialism, of how waiting around for your capital-L Life to happen but never allowing it to happen is, for better or worse, your life. Like show me how people, due solely to statements around needing to conform and not stick out, instead delude themselves that their busywork of doing nothing is doing something with glimpses of their emptiness and a sense that, well, that's life. To pick Beckett again, he had an entire play which was one long monologue performed entirely with the character's head coming out of a pile of garbage and that static nature, where she was stuck but talking talking talking nonstop, was also somehow a life but not a life (go watch the play not series Happy Days (maybe the series too who knows?) if you haven't already and you'll see what I mean). But there's nothing writerly beneath this show at all, no artistic need to talk about people spending their entire lives spawning in a rich prison or whatever. Like no idea, just docudrama but without the drama part and, come to think of it, without the docu part either because it's hard to imagine any documentarian worth their salt just dropping these factual bits which all end in "and then nothing happened and life went on" in a row and proudly releasing their final product. So this show is actually nothing. Are people watching it for this same reason I am, i.e. to rip it apart, or am I all alone? Well onto season 4 at some point.

Movies:

Emily the Criminal - I swear I'm not damning with faint praise, but this was a not-bad crime drama about a woman, trapped by societal circumstances, who turns to crime as her only realistic option to survive. Her basic backstory, which you know instantly so not a spoiler, is that she did time for felony assault and a DUI when she was younger and is now trapped with that being permanently part of her resume and thus, despite having skills as an artist and a strong willingness to do hard work, really can't get anything other than low-paying unskilled jobs where she's powerless against bad bosses and really has no hope of getting anywhere else in her life. This social trap where, essentially, you're never really released from prison and no amount of paying your societal debt will ever undo your younger self's mistake, infuses the whole movie without actually taking over the movie and that's a compliment. I mean it's there and it's why the character does what she does, like you can see she just wants to have some kind of life and pay her bills and has no interest in being a criminal or doing anything of that kind but actually has no choice in the end despite every effort to make other choices. Beyond that, it was a relatively interesting crime movie but more about someone being drawn into crime - credit card fraud specifically - and then being forced, without spoilering, to escalate in some ways. This is what made the movie interesting on a basic movie-watching level to me. First, it was kind of cool to see the inner workings of credit card fraud and how that happens and second, Emily, our lead, really isn't some hardened criminal but rather just someone whose determination to get out of her hole overcomes, to a certain extent, her fear. This became interesting as the movie progressed and she inevitably got pulled deeper in with the lead criminal guy because, well, it's probably how crime happens. I'm not going to spoiler where it winds up, but she makes plot choices driven by character and circumstance, like she's not a criminal at heart but then again she grew up in a tough neighborhood and did prison time and is determined to have something better for herself, as in a good job not a life of crime, and is forced to find a sort of inner steel in order to get what she needs. I know I'm being vague but in the end this does have a crime/thriller plot to it and I don't want to spoiler anything. I enjoyed it and, while I wouldn't say the social stuff is anything I didn't know already, I also hadn't seen it played out like this in a movie before. Like yeah we've seen movies with desperate people driven to crime, but this was more of a not-desperate person who, by the trap we put ex-cons in, became more and more desperate and hopeless and was then compelled to grab at the only shot for a future she really had. It clocks in at around 90 minutes and I'd say it has enough interest in terms of theme and enough plot to drive it all forward that it’s probably worth a watch if this sounds up your alley.

A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic #2) by V.E. Schwab

Aaargh. Well in case you weren't gathering the tl:dr from that, this book was, bummer, total DNF suckage. The bummer is that I actually enjoyed the first book in this series because, while the world-building/magic-system didn't make a ton of sense, it was still kind of fun as there was enough going on and the characters were enjoyable enough plus enough - key word here - mysteries that it was an easy read. As a reminder, this is a series set, uselessly I might add, in four Londons, but really two non-Londons. Honestly I don't know why the author bothered as, other than for part of the first book where someone from 1800s normal London crosses over to one of the others, it's an irrelevancy and never of any meaning at all. But basically the first book set up some characters - scrappy orphan female, mysterious-backgrounded magician-y type male who's an adoptee (of sorts) of the royal family - and a kind of generic monarchy world but with magic and had all that clash with an outside force looking to destroy and/or take everything over. Fine, nothing breakthrough in the genre, but as noted fun enough to read. This second book, on the other hand, was a DNF'ed disappointing snooze. Basically it split up the two leads and transformed them, not through anything the author actually had the characters do but rather by the author just telling us this over and over as if it would matter or as if a reader would care, that they were pining for each other. So first off, "pining" believe it or not, author, doesn't translate into "thrilling plot." Also since there was zero romantic interest set up between them - in fact, they were both pretty asexual in the first book (I actually thought the scrappy orphan was a lesbian) and seemed to have zero interest in any form of physical or emotional contact with anyone (which was fine because it made sense given their backgrounds) - it was just BORING to read page after page after page of thoughts. I mean honestly that's not exciting even when the two characters are legit pining for each other but these two barely knew each and really only came to be friends (kinda) in the first book due to plot circumstances. But whatever, I could've lived with that if literally ANYTHING had happened. I mean by around 25% in, which is where I DNFed, nothing had happened in one of the plots (beyond pining) and a bare step above nothing happening was all that'd occurred in the other. I felt as if the author had only thought through one book then decided to make it a series without actually plotting books two and, I'm gathering from a mountain of negative reviews, three. Really this is the worst part of this particular genre. Writing a trilogy is hard because, yeah, you have to think through not just one book but a whoooolllle buncha books before you can really start writing. The best in the fantasy-trilogy genre (I think it's its own genre at this point) feel really coherent with characters and plot all driving forward towards a third book conclusion but with each individual book also having a driving plot and character transformations that in and of themselves are engaging to read. Robin Hobb for example. Steven Erikson, Stephen R. Donaldson, Josiah Bancroft, Holly Black, even J.R.R. Tolkien whose type of epic fantasy isn't my speed to hardly mention JK Rowling whose Potterverse REALLY wasn’t my speed. Fine, enough. I guess I should've read the non-spoiler reviews of the second and third books of this series before starting the first and, well, hopefully you out there in Media Report land who read my review of the first book will do the same.

TV/Streaming:

Mood:

Well this is going to be a mixed review and I really can't say whether you should watch or not - my inclination for most people is no but frankly there's a decent argument for yes too. First though, this is a miniseries about an aimless 25-year-old woman who's an aspiring singer - Sasha - and her descent/ascent into a mashup between influencer and sex worker and, thematically(ish), about her journey to her self. Look the "no" for me really outweighs the "yes" so I'm mostly going to focus on what didn't work but frankly there's definite talent there or at least someone with something to say plus some interesting inside info (or it felt inside - I have no idea about whether the writer (who also plays Sasha) did this herself, intensively researched the topic, or just made it up but plausibly so) about becoming an influencer and how that world intersects with sex work and money. So if you're someone who's interested in new voices - or new at least as of this writing - and the basic topic interests you, then this might be worth a watch. But there are caveats, the main three being: first, Sasha is little more than a gussied-up-with-vague-backstory cipher to take us into the world which renders the 6 episodes of this series somewhat flaccid because you don't really understand why she's doing anything she's doing and then late in the game someone must've noticed and kind of tried to tack on some character logic/arc but honestly she never made much sense as a character. I didn't understand why she was so okay with going from a 10-year-relationship, presumably monogamous, to being a sex worker nor did I understand what she was hoping to get out of any of it, like she was always being paid but it was never clear what she did with all the money because she never seemed to have any and didn't even articulate a vague plan of what she was doing or why. This meant that, as noted, she wasn't really a person so much as a lens into a world meaning you're either interested in the world she's in in a particular episode or you're bored (or both on and off each episode which was my reaction across the series). There was nothing carrying you across the 6 episodes and really each of them could've been a one-off and you wouldn't have noticed. Second, and this is kind of a consequence of the first problem, there's no plot. She meets up randomly with some influencer who, for no reason other than that the plot needs it, talks her into being her roommate and that's how everything happens. But, while that character is somewhat interesting, there's really nothing between them, meaning the central relationship is static across the series and that combined with the lack of any plot-glue - I mean really nothing A to B to C happens, you just get A for one episode, B for another, C for the next and there you go - made this show feel pretty flaccid. Finally, Sasha, as noted, wants to be a singer so there are all these musical interludes where you're in her head hearing her sung thoughts and, unfortunately, the thoughts were dull, didn't even come close to rhyming or sticking to a beat - and isn't scansion, even more so with hip-hop/rap actually part of what makes a song work, like aren't the best rap artists the ones with the clever-enough lyrics to get their thoughts in an least half-rhymes and to the beat and that's why they're good? - plus the music itself was super drab and stylistically very repetitive. I'm guessing, though I don't know, that that lead writer/actress also wrote all the music and really she should've brought some more people in to help. Even if you like her style of music, it's an entire series and a fair number of songs each episodes and it's just tiresome to hear the same music and frankly pretty weak lyrics over and over. So yeah a lot of negativity but I didn't DNF because I could see there was some real talent underneath it all, enough that I'd be curious to watch the next thing this person does and see if they're able to grow that talent into something better. But it's not there now so if you watch, you've been warned.

Movies:

Predestination - This is a pretty interesting if, in the end, utterly incomprehensible timeloop-type movie. I'm going to give only top-level plot, partly for spoiler reasons, but mostly because I'm not entirely sure what was going on, though it wasn't boring which is an odd feat in and of itself I'd say. The movie is more or less a two-hander between Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook (I think this must've been the movie that put her on the map because it came out maybe a decade ago and you can see her talent throughout) in which we know, from the opening, that Ethan Hawke is some kind of government-endorsed time traveler who's been trying, unsuccessfully, to stop a terrorist in 1975 from blowing up 10,000 people in NYC. He encounters Sarah Snook at some point and the movie is a combo of extended flashbacks to her history combined with a present-tense story (and future tense? past/future? I never know with these movies) involving her, the government time-travel agency, and stopping the bomber. The story, especially the backstory, is interesting and well-told and is definitely all adding up to something major in the minds of the filmmakers and, again to their credit, despite having no idea whatsoever what the ending meant, I was into figuring out where it was all going to go. I think it's a thing in general with timeloop movies where you can hear the writers talking about the minuscule details of why everything makes sense, but the reality is we watch movies in a broader way, as in character, tone, etc. while trying to grasp the main story and relationships and plot as well. In other words, we're not students of the film when just sitting through it and so, while I'm sure (well I think) that the movie adds up to a big clever this-thing-in-that-time-was-really-that-thing-then-and-the-now-of-the-movie-is-the-future-then huge payoff, that level of tracking detail is something that requires notecards not a one-off viewing. But again I liked the movie. I was engaged by it the whole time and I wouldn't say I saw everything coming meaning, despite the tiny cast in a mystery setup, it still wasn't clear who did what when and that's a compliment. I feel like this would be a fun group-watch - assuming people are actually watching rather than playing on their tablets because it would honestly be an incredibly irritating group watch if a group member isn't paying attention then interrupts by constantly asking what's going on, yeah don't watch with that person. I liked it; it started off slow and somewhat confusing but that was all of a piece and, as it got going into Sarah Snook's backstory, it became more and more engrossing and, while it's certainly not the pinnacle of anything, honestly just keeping me entertained for 100 someodd minutes is an achievement in my book and so I'd say if this sort of genre is your thing and you haven't seen this one, you may want to check it out.

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan

So first off there's a big spoiler that appears roughly in the first third of the book which I'm not going to reveal and which I didn't know going in, and, if you read this book, I advise you do the same because the spoiler, for me at least, made me rethink a bit about what I'd read to that point and added some intellectual interest to the book. The book itself - and this is not really a spoiler because you know it's present but I'm going to be vague in the details just in case - is about a trial and is told from the POVs of both the mother of the accused and the victim of the crime. It's not a mystery per se though the courtrooms scenes were interesting; rather it's about two people in very different ways coming to terms with their pasts. Again, not saying more for spoiler reasons. And to be clear: this book is firmly in the contemporary fiction world not the crime/mystery world but it traffics in a lot of current social issues meaning the particular social issues each character faces have certain reveal-worthy components, and part of what I liked about the book was that I didn't know anything going in so just experienced the characters as their stories were written which then, as more backstory came out, caused me to look at them from a different angle. This is why I was glad I didn’t know everything going in as I wouldn't have had the chance to make that comparison. I liked the book okay but, as you can probably tell from this review, it was of an intellectual interest rather than being inhaled by a story. For example, I thought the mom character was pretty flat and a bit of a textual meat sack for authorial interests and ideas rather than feeling like a real person. I'm not saying those interests/ideas were boring; I mean there was a lot of stuff around the history of honey-making plus some well fleshed-out ideation around the struggle to back one's child while not really knowing 100% whether or not they're innocent and how that internal battle might play out in reality. I haven't read Jodi Picoult before but I gather this is what she enjoys writing, i.e. taking some current topic and playing it out against a plot backdrop primarily as a means of looking at people's thoughts and behaviors around the given issue. It was interesting enough but in part the reason I haven't read her before is because that kind of thing isn't my bag; no shade to Jodi Picoult but in the same way I'm not into historical fiction I'm also not into contemporary social-issue fiction. That being said, I was still interested in reading this book to the end though I was also okay putting it down for stretches. If it's been spoilered for you already, you probably have a sense of whether or not you want to read it and there are definitely insights into both lead characters that are of interest; if you don't know the spoiler and you like the general genre then I'd say it's worth giving it a go because, as noted, while I wasn't inhaled by it or anything, I'm still glad I read it.

TV/Streaming:

Ted Lasso (Season 3):

This show, never good then even worse, has degenerated into a full-on chore to watch by which I mean I left it on in the background and despised it the whole time and sat through it solely for the point of, well I don't know, my own completion issues maybe? I believe the show is cancelled but it's definitely cancelled for this Janice. Its plotless pablum was okay and even charming in its aw-shucks American charms first season, but let's also remember that that first season was around 30 mins per episode as opposed to the 60 mins episodic bloat of this season. Additionally, season 1 at least had some kind of vague conflict for the lead characters: fish-out-of-water non-soccer coach struggling to win; vengeful/saddened divorcee owner struggling to lose; lead soccer players in combat with each other all within a shaggy dog sports story package. Those characters actually COULD have gone somewhere but instead the show decided the best tactic was to make itself into a kind of live-action Davey and Goliath where people are just really nice to each other all the time, no conflict of any kind exists, and all relationship issues are worked out with just a heartfelt conversation and some ownership or hurting someone’s feelings. For season 3, that became every single episode nonstop. All conflicts arose just long enough for our lead characters to be really adult about them then move on to a new conflict ad infinitum. The soccer was there solely to show us what big goofy man-children sports stars are and how they can evolve, conflict by tossed-away conflict by yet another tossed-away conflict, into meaningful adults, making this show less about soccer players and more about The Forum attendees in tube socks. The awfulness of this show borders on contempt. I mean, it's about a soccer coach so, like, 3 seasons in we're still doing a thing where he doesn't know how to coach and this is having no consequences for what reason exactly? Despite the fact that it's set in a somewhat unseen world - the business of sports and its marketing - and therefore could have shown us some interesting actual stories and conflicts, instead it does things like spend 80% of an episode with the soccer players debating whether to go to a sex show while in Amsterdam or a party. Or devote an entire endless multi-episode subplot to one lead dating her firm's financier - only she had no idea that person - spoiler alert! - was a woman. I mean that's how dumb this show is aside from the overarching question of what idiotic venture capitalist puts money into a random sports PR firm run by the PR person of the worst team in the league. And, um, wouldn't you know who was financing your company because, like, you had to meet with them at some point to get their money? Ugh, why am I bothering? But I guess I am! I mean it's that level of lazy awful writing. It's so lazy there's even a sex tape and not handled in a remotely modern way (whatever that might be) but rather like it's 2011. Oh and also just FYI for the writing squad: no one even knows who runs a PR firm let alone cares about their sex life let alone needs to have them make a Twitter (or X now I guess) statement about said sex tape. Literally no one. This show is just an abomination. It was hanging on by a thread from the beginning but the abject lack of skill by the writing team to overcome the press it generated in season 1 about its being this throwback sweet breath of fresh air during COVID lockdown (air that didn’t seem so sweet but rather downright hostile at that point as we all recall) and evolve the show into a substantive if still down-homey comedic take on sports relegates this to the trashbin of Media Report, the ultimate insult! AVOID!

Movies:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Marvel Universe #toolazytogoogle) - This is another delving into the most visually boring environment of all time - trippy purple! swirly things! - with - and my expertise in this arena is nothing more than watching 50 bajillion movies - the worst green-screening I've ever seen in a $200 million dollar or whatever this cost film to date. For real, I've seen TikTok shorts that do it better by which I mean there isn't one second in this movie where you're not aware the actor is standing in front of something rather than being in something, i.e. it looks like all the actors are cosplaying at Comic-con while standing in front of one of those industrial-sized OLEDs which is playing "futuristic aquarium" on a loop. Not only is this movie incredibly stupid - though in fairness that's totally in keeping with its prior iterations (here and here) - it's also crazy dull because none of it makes sense, meaning nothing that's happening plotwise even at the base level of hero v. villain is remotely engaging. Look, I don't need a lot here as you can tell from my willingness to watch more or less anything, but this movie bordered on being a filmed theater piece, as in there's a cast of like 5 people all against a similar backdrop but in different locations - "purple squiggly here" and "purple squiggly there" - and they do a lot of proscenium-style scenework talking at each other and, come to think of it, perhaps this movie should be viewed by the Tony nominating committee. Okay, you're thinking, it's a play with actors against a fake background, but surely there something exciting happening, right? I mean it's called "quantumania" after all so surely the quantum should be something marginally interesting and there should be nonstop mania right? RIGHT?!?! Here's what makes this plot so bad by which I mean boring because I'm fine with a ridiculous plot as long as the movie is overall entertaining: there are zero stakes. I mean you're in a swirly environment of the quantum realm and someone - Jonathan Majors - is a quantum villain and honestly it's possible that someone monologued at some point during this theater piece that if Jonathan Majors wins it will have devastating consequences for human existence or somesuch but it's all super who cares. Not-who-cares (meaning actually writing a plot) might look like Jonathan Majors breaking out of the quantum realm and doing all kinds of bad quantum stuff on Earth and our lead squad having to stop that. But with this movie there's none of that. The whole thing is set in that purply swirly space meaning your level of investment is essentially that of picking up a dropped sliver of hotdog from the pavement, sticking it under a microscope, and watching one bacteria attempting to eat all of it while another tries to stop it. Exciting!

Oh sigh. It's strange because while most of the Marvel movies have a political message as reiterated over and over here on Media Report - that the world is better off with a White fascist whimsical male dictator around to make moral decisions about who lives and dies - these Ant-Man movies, which are basically extended Saturday morning cartoons, are somehow even worse. Like absent the (admittedly likely unintended) political commentary, what am I even watching? Because the writing is awful in both. I find it so strange that a successful franchise which makes gobs of money can't even be bothered to hire writers who can craft a meaningful world and characters. I mean they're spending a ton, but not on that? Or, more likely, it's the executives who read these awful scripts (i.e. send them out for coverage) and then just greenlight them because it doesn't matter they'll make money regardless so who cares. And that's the part that's so bothersome. Don't you, executive, writer, Marvel, care? I mean, yeah you're guaranteed a billion no matter what, but you're still sitting there for years developing and shooting and editing and watching cuts and all the visual effects; during that time, the two or so years of your life that will never never never get back, don't you want it to be filled with something you personally think is awesome and that you're proud to be a part of? I'm not dissing the commercial part of commercial art but I am saying that the art part, meaning the part where everyone involved is self-expressing via the commercial vehicle, doesn't need to be nonexistent. You can actually have both! You can, and plenty of people have, make something big and entertaining and also coherent and occasionally even thoughtful. Top Gun: Maverick was certainly the height of nothing other than being exactly the sequel everyone thought it would be with Tom Cruise doing zero more than Tom Cruising his way through the film and with a not-so-great plot and not-so-great characters but with coherence and an overarching sense that it wanted to say exactly what it ended up saying. Like whether you enjoyed the movie or not, everyone knew what they were making and why and actually seemed to care about the final product and that was apparent on every frame.

This movie? Let's start with something obvious: Why is Paul Rudd even an ant? It has nothing to do with anything. I get the ant=small thing but if you're calling your shrinking character Ant-Man to hardly mention putting it in the title, well wouldn't coherence mean doing something, ya know, ant-y? I know this seems like a dumb point but really think about: why?!?! I mean call him Quantum-Guy if that's what you want him to be, but you called him Ant-Man and then did nothing ant-related at all other than randomly have some ants show up at some point. Same with Wasp - why?!?! Why all the insect stuff then they're in quantum mechanics with Michelle Pfeiffer (not an ant or wasp), Michael Douglas (ditto), and Jonathan Majors (tritto) and that's that. Do you see what I mean by lack of caring or coherence? At a basic level, wasn't there anyone in the entire non-ant aka human food chain who cared enough to say, "Hmm, we have insect-y leads so let's come up with something where their insectness will be embedded in the plot." I mean didn't they see their own equally insect-y Spider-Man movies where, ya know, it's not super spidery in all honesty but his prime thing at least is shooting out webbing? This movie? This is just sticking random stars in costumes in a totally unthought-out world (there is no world, no rules, no nothing - but there are purply swirls for those who love them) and shoving them in a generic plot where each of them has to to do something meaningless and nothing tied to who they are as people or superheroes because they're so ill-defined that they can't really be classed as either of those, all in order to stave off a generic statement of the-world-will-end-if-we-don't-intervene then slap that in plot-beat order, pad it with quips rather than relationships, and rake in your money. Which you could have done while also writing something that shows anyone cared but no one there did and that's this movie. Enjoy!

Blood of the Chosen (Burningblade & Silvereye #2) by Django Wexler

Well this second book in a fun fantasy series was as good as the first which gives me hope for the third. As a reminder: this is a fantasy series about an estranged brother and sister on sort of opposite sides of both politics and magic systems who are brought, via plot, into each other's spheres after being separated in childhood and the uneasy alliance that results. I call it an uneasy alliance but both books keep the characters separate for a satisfyingly long time and craft essentially two worlds and magic systems, meaning the books are interweaving plots that eventually come together and hats off to the writer because I found both storylines to be equally strong and never minded going back and forth between the two as I do in some books with a similar structure. The author's also been pretty good about filling in side characters in both plotlines and giving some decent reasoning for why these two are on opposite sides of the political spectrum without anyone being so doctrinaire that it seems impossible they could see each other's POVs. In some ways, these books are Robin Hobb lite - not an insult - in that they intertwine character, politics and relationship minutiae with a larger story that leads up to some huge action set pieces. In fact the last, I don't know, 20% maybe of this book pulls all the plot threads together for a big screen-tapping (or page-turning if you're going old school) bang with a setup for the final book which, while I could kind of see it coming, was also earned, meaning the characters weren't fools but rather behaved the way did for comprehensible reasons (vague to avoid spoilering). I think fantasy's a tough genre to write because it can all feel very same-y to other fantasy books and characters often seem more like cipherish plot conveniences than people, and I think the author has managed to rise above that for two books so far and present a world and characters that, yes, have a somewhat same-y and blunt feel to them, but are written in such a way that the whole thing is really engaging. For me, the author has now delivered some solid entertaining fun across two books - I did not feel any middle-book-sag here at all (well maybe with one of the main romantic relationships but it wasn't significant enough to matter) - and am looking forward to the third.

TV/Streaming:

Atlanta (Season 4):

The tl:dr on this season despite the promise of the first and to an extent the second season is: awful. This show is bad at a level that makes me kinda, well, not angry but yeah maybe a little angry because it initially acted like it would deliver something interesting but instead was just a boring time waster. The third season definitely had elements of this for huge chunks of it, but it also had several episodes - maybe it felt like half? - that were interesting enough little seen perspectives on race, the commercialization of race, and a lens on a certain kind of rags-to-riches story which was not at all about that journey but rather the somewhat mundane aftermath of simply having money but being unsure what to do next. Isn't that all interesting? Sadly, the incompetence of the writing staff, or, no, maybe that's the wrong phrase (but I'm not deleting it because it's also the right phrase), the refusal/inability of the writing staff to tackle the hard part of writing is what sunk this show. Here's what I mean. The entire season, and this was absolutely present previously but here it was nonstop, is more or less absurdist sketches about nothing. For example, there's an entire episode devoted to the lead character - he's a talent manager now - trying to sign the artist D'Angelo and the only way to do that is... to enter a fast-food restaurant which turns out to be a cement room with a guard and sit there for 4 days where there are prison-like scratches denoting other people who'd done the same then eventually crawl through a tunnel in the wall to meet a D'Angelo impersonator or somesuch and then talk to that person and then eventually leave. Or how about the episode where the lead rapper character spends the entire time on his country farm trying to drive a tractor and prevent a feral pig from eating all his weed. I could go on but it's all just so boring. Absurdity is SO EASY to write because you don't have to make it make sense. You don't have to have character, it doesn't need to relate to anything that came before or after, and it has the added bonus of being able to pretend it's about something substantive, like the D'Angelo thing is a metaphor right? For, I don't know, I honestly don't know, but I'm sure someone made something up that made it sound like that episode was about something and same with the tractor episode and every other episode, all of which were about zero and written by people who were incapable of doing actual writing. "Actual writing" means a coherent story with consistent coherent characters who are in an ongoing drama across the season and which thematically pays off in some way. That's hard. That is actually really really hard to do and, frankly, it's even harder to do while keeping a show light or maintaining network TV standards or the like. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but go watch ER or The Good Wife if you want to see a show with actually competent writers even when constrained by length, format, and censorship. That's writing. Anyone can come up with an absurdist sketch and drag it out for the required show length or intercut it with another absurdist sketch with some other character and then call it a day. This is neither writing nor even, per Truman Capote, typing but rather is something akin to falling asleep on your keyboard, proclaiming the resulting gibberish as a potent and hilarious statement on whatever dropped out of your mouth in the moment of speaking, then just shooting that.

Movies:

Upgrade - This is a surprisingly entertaining near-future action movie about, without spoilering, a guy who winds up with a computer chip implanted in his brain and what happens as a result. Yes I know incredibly vague, but I knew nothing about the movie before watching and seeing it unfold probably added more interest than I might otherwise have had thus I'm leaving it the same way for you. It's not that there are massive surprises or anything like that but rather I wasn't totally sure where the film was going and I liked finding out in real-time as opposed to knowing up front (though if you read a description somewhere it'll still be fine for you). It's a small movie so even though there are some fun fight scenes and whatnot, it's all pretty low-budget meaning a lot of the drive comes (vague to avoid spoilering again) from the interior state of the character and how that all's played out and that was the surprising part to me - it worked. I mean there are fairly long stretches without a ton of action and with the lead character trying to figure out what to do next and those were engaging because of the way the filmmaker introduced certain plot components. Is this the vaguest review of all time? Really it's not that these points are crazy spoilerable; I mean I could mention them all and you wouldn't feel that something had been taken away from the film. Rather, it's that not knowing upfront allowed me to appreciate some of the craft in the writing and directing which I might not otherwise have noticed. For example, there's a longish setup, then some action, then some more setup and, because I didn't know where the movie was headed, that second chunk of setup was interesting because I understood the lead's internal state and what was happening in the outside world but wasn't really sure how those two things were going to meld. This is largely why I try to avoid spoilers in these reviews and why, when reading non-Janice reviews, I skim the plot description. I mean it only seems fair, right? The film was made under the presumption that you were experiencing the plot in the real-time of the movie and shouldn't that be what I'm judging? By that metric, this was a pretty fun action movie. You have a guy in a particular circumstance trying to unpack what happened to him when something else comes along and then those two components intersect and drive the movie forward. For me, all that worked and it would definitely fit the bill for a fun movie night or group-watch and is the kind of film where you actually won't be playing on your phone/tablet the entire time because, if you're like me and didn't read much about the film beforehand, you'll be interested to see where it all goes and honestly what more could one ask for in an action movie, indie or otherwise?

Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

This is an okay mystery about a woman excavating the past in an effort to prevent her son from committing a murder in the present. While this is definitely not sci-fi and is firmly within the mystery genre, there's a time-travel device where the lead keeps going backwards to random days to learn more about the past in the hopes of ultimately unraveling why everything happened and consequently stave it off. Frankly, the time travel bit was a total turnoff for me but in the end the author used it more as a first-person investigation than as time travel per se, i.e. it's sort of what happens in mysteries anyway with the lead finding clues or interviewing people or whatnot in order to achieve the same end - figure out why something happened and what was really going on. With this book, the lead is simply sent to those bits of exposition rather than constructing a story where she finds them in the present. I liked the book overall and it read very quickly, though it was really more a book about unpacking reveals - which the author did pretty well I thought - with some fairly generic characters and relationships or at least nothing particularly exciting in that regard, the combo of which made me fly through the pages but at a certain level of my brain I was skimming (though not in reality) because there wasn't much of interest there beyond the structure. For example, there was an extended bit where the lead, back in the past a few years, has an encounter with her now-dead father (not a spoiler) which all felt very blah because the present-tense story had no relationship with her father (he'd been dead for 18 months at that point) so you're just kind of reading a big feelings/regret/resolution-dump that could be about anyone. And then the author just sort of leaves it by which I mean the lead continues going back in time but never bothers to even try to establish a relationship with her father even though there's nothing stopping her since she’s traveling back in time where he’s alive and so, well, that’s why it felt kind of generic in that the author wanted a resolution scene between father and daughter and was then done with that relationship. I'm noting this not because it bothered me per se but because it's what gave the book a skimmy feel and, if you're not into the plot reveals and/or are struggling with the time travel concept, there's really nothing else in the book to grip as I'd say the writing was fine but nothing standout. So if you're looking for something where you're idly flicking through pages to see what reveals are coming next, this book is a good timekiller. Really while I know much of this review was criticism, it's so you can be clear going in if you're in the mood for this kind of book because, if you're looking for something fast to breeze through and don't mind the time travel element, you'll probably rip right through this.

TV/Streaming:

The Beef:

Hmmm. That's the tl;dr on this, I don't know, comedic social commentary about a road rage incident (well kinda) that spirals out of control. It's the latter part that's the source of the hmmm because the writer(s), too, seemed to lose all control of their plot and, to a degree, their characters, but more on that in a minute. The basic plot setup is poor, stressed construction worker Danny almost backs his car into that of rich, overstressed-but-faking-being-fine Amy and they both snap and road-rage out at each other then start infiltrating each other's lives for even more revenge. The thin connective line here is that these people have financial and family responsibilities that are overwhelming them - Amy has a loser husband and Danny supports his brother and parents - and this thing between them grows because it's a displacement of their rage, i.e. they can take it out on each other because they're strangers whereas they have to hold it all in for their families. So the positive of this show, and the positive in the end for me maybe just barely outweighed the ultimate negatives, is that it's really well-written and acted. While the reasoning behind the revenge stuff honestly remains kind of hazy as in it doesn't really seem to be in either of their characters but you sort of go with it, the rest of it is fairly nicely, if often somewhat broadly, etched. The broad part is stuff like Amy's husband is a self-absorbed artist who makes ugly vases that don't sell and which she pretends to like while also making all the money and running the household. The show gives the characters some self-awareness of their behavior while also leaving them unable to control it. So I'd say the overall positive and the reason I watched the whole thing - aside from being only around 30 mins per episode - was at least it's something different, there's some character texture and, in many ways, it was an interesting lens on how these very different people struggled in similar ways and how money didn't solve any of their problems.

There were two main issues however in addition to the spiraling out of control issue. First, the show really struggled to make its main selling point - the road rage revenge thing - integrate by which I mean the show didn't need it because many of the episodes focused on either Amy or Danny independently and then all of a sudden there'd be a weird jammed-in road-rage escalation moment and then it would go back to being about these two people in their separate lives. Second, the show really didn't make the fight all that fair which detracted from its being satisfying; Amy always had the upper hand if for no reason other than that her wealth and privilege afforded her the ability to wreak revenge in ways Danny simply couldn't afford. In these kinds of things, you want an even tug of war and this really never was. So the spiraling out of control thing. Yeah, the writer(s) clearly had no idea how to wrap up their story and had boxed themselves into this thing where the raging-out part needed to get more and more extreme so they could end with some form of resolution or the like between the leads. I'm not going to spoiler, but the series went from a swallowable plot point in its setup, to such extremes that all of a sudden I started wondering what show I was in (and wondering why no one involved in the writing or development process had the same thought). Without giving away anything that actually happened, what would you think of a show that started with a parking lot incident with no car damage and ended with the lead characters bombing each other's neighborhoods? That's not what happens, but you get the gist. It just raises issues about what reality we're supposed to be in. However, again good writing, the writer(s) devoted the final episode mostly to character stuff and, while I wouldn't say the ending made a lick of sense to me nor did I think the setup for the episode was anything other than absurd, there was enough interesting conversation (vague to avoid spoilering) to elevate it from "skip" to "hmmm"; so there you go. You may have more tolerance for this kind of thing than I do in which case I think you'll genuinely like the show because it's well done. If you're like me and begin to get bothered by a small situation becoming very extreme but in a context that's supposed to be real-life drama, then know going on in that this one's on the edge.

Movies:

Cypher - This is an utterly confusing yet somehow I watched it anyway early 2000s mindbender-in-its-mind thriller about some near future where corporations are spying on each other by manipulating brains via, I don't know drugs and hypnosis (we're getting into the confusing part here), and each corporation's efforts to weed out the spies and some overall plot about something I'd say is spoilerable though that would require me to say I understood anything and I'm not willing to make that statement at this point. Basically, nothing happens in the movie other than the reveal of all the mind manipulation stuff which is, spoiler alert to the filmmakers, not a plot. I think it was trying to be a cheapie Christopher Nolan movie or something but just wound up being dull. The gist of how it all goes down: our lead guy is being inspected for brain manipulation and is then sent off to go do... something - go to a conference and record it? - where he begins to get flashes of something else going on then Lucy Liu shows up, vanishes, returns, some more conferences and corporate brain stuff then something involving getting a CD then the end. And BTW the movie was set in some nearish future with all kinds of Stanley Kubrick-y white elevators that go down 300 floors and some high-tech helicopter yet, yeah, CD-ROMs were still the only imaginable storage unit. Anyway it's that kind of the movie. What was so bad about it is you'd think the companies are spying on each other for, ya know, a reason and that those conferences would reveal that reason. But, no. I'm loath to call what I'm about to say a spoiler because it's so stupid but if you're even contemplating watching this idiocy feel free to skip the following: so the lead guy keeps getting sent nonstop to these conferences all over the country where, it turns out, everyone at the conference is also a brainwashed corporate spy. Only the entire point of the conference... is just to do more brainwashing. In other words, in filmic terms, we're watching a corporate spy get brainwashed then get brainwashed more then maybe unbrainwashing followed by more brainwashing all in the service of... of... yeah. Like literally, for 90 minutes, we're watching people be brainwashed for never-stated reasons and go from place to place where, rather than plot occurring, there's more brainwashing with an occasional appearance by Lucy Liu and uh that's the movie. Sound good to you? My response exactly upon finishing.

The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club #2) by Richard Osman

While this second book in a series about British seniors solving crimes retains the charm and humor of the first, to me this one dragged a bit as it got caught up in a lot of not-particularly-dramatic character plotlines. Not enough to stop reading (there's a third that I'm aware of that I'll be reading it at some point), but enough to make me think that the characters really only had enough juice for one book. I'm not going into the plot of this one as there's little point - there are stolen diamonds, some bad guys, an ex-husband floating around - because, as with the first book, the plot, while fine, isn't what this book is about; rather it's about senior citizens and interacting with current culture but in a Murder She Wrote package. The problem with this second book is you begin to see the thinness of the leads. There are four, two male, two female, and the two guys are either on the periphery the whole time or are simply handed a plot role and that’s that as in they aren't really characters and in fact it feels in some areas that the author realized these characters had been off the page for way too long and he kind of invented some unrelated plot just so they'd have something to do. Also there's a certain outlandishness to the series, present in the first book for sure, but spiraling out of control in this one where the cops and MI-5 all cede total control of a massive investigation to the two female leads for no reason other than that the author - understandably - wants his leads to solve the crimes and do the investigating only, in this book, it meant huge swaths of non-reality in which the cops were in cahoots with the two elderly ladies to essentially commit crimes on their behalf (vague to avoid spoilering) and the MI-5 was more or less reduced to being their, I don't know, patsies in a way as well. In the first book, you could sort of suspend disbelief because the crime that had been committed actually involved the leads in a way plus the cops were doing their own investigation and crossing paths with and often deceived by the leads but you could go with it because there was a semblance of reality and the charming writing smoothed over the rest. Here, that semblance is gone and in fact some of the fun left with it because what was pleasureable in the first book was that the leads were manipulating and to a degree suborning (and genuinely befriending) the cops - think crime books involving the often uneasy relationship between the police and PIs where they're working on the same investigation but in very different ways and often in opposition to each other - versus in this book where, basically, it's as if the police report directly to the PIs. Additionally, because the investigation was in some ways very easy (like when the leads needed CCTV footage, they just asked the cops to go get it for them and problem solved - not good for a mystery, right?) there was an enormous amount of space devoted to talking about people and relationships. However, the author, not really looking to break up the foursome I guess nor having crafted much more than amusing cardboard cutouts, simply wrote a spluge of what read like backstory or idle thoughts rather than actual story. In other words, there was nothing happening in the present tense of anyone's personal life that was generating any drama, like this person falling in love with that one and that one reciprocating is, you know, nice but it's not dramatic and, in this book, it was a LOT of pages of just talking about internal feelings but nothing happening in the story. It was all filler, tons of it, because the main plot offered the leads no meaningful activity other than "figuring it out" which isn't the same as investigating or manipulating or being thwarted and having to come up with a new plan, etc. The author is an entertaining writer and that's literally the only thing that allowed me to get to the end because, were it not for that, this would've been a DNF for sure because there's almost nothing else here but that. If the charm is enough for you, you'll enjoy this book, but if you liked the first one, I'd say it's a definite step down so fair warning.

TV/Streaming:

My Mister:

I absolutely totally ended up loving this drama about people at bad spots in their lives who, by helping others, end up helping themselves. Just to note before you go rushing off to find this series as one does when I recommend something (clearly!): it's slow, so if slow drama isn't your thing, this won't be your thing. Slow doesn't meant plotless; in fact, the underlying plot is pretty good and keeps building; rather slow means there's a focus on people and moods and reactions and talking rather than anything super dramatic going on. I did not love this show for the first episode because I couldn't understand the tone - it seemed to vacillate between serious and goofy - and all the characters were introduced more or less at once and it was difficult to sort out what was going on. Plus the show is Korean meaning I'm certain there was underlying cultural logic to certain behavior and choices which I simply didn't get (though that’s really always present when watching shows outside of one's own culture). Like office culture in Korea, at least as represented in this show, has a hierarchical and political thing going that I absolutely understood enough to enjoy the show while also knowing I was missing subtextual character stuff. Regardless, by the end of the second episode a plot beat occurs that drives the entire series and each subsequent episode ramped up my enjoyment of the show. It was odd, actually, because I liked each one better than the last but didn't think I'd end up enjoying it so much until like episode 10 (out of 16 total).

So the basic plot is about a guy in a quiet midlife crisis which manifests as just a lack of interest in life and, seeing something similar in a young office temp half his age, haltingly tries to do for her what he has been unable to do for himself. The office temp has her own reasons for being so numbed and deadened by life at 21 and what she does about it and where it goes form the basis for the plot. There's a lot of spoilerable office politics going on between the guy and the higher-ups, the guy and his wife, and stories extending to the guy's two brothers who are much more patently stuck and depressed in where they are in their lives. The office guy and the young temp are the main thread, but the brothers and another friend plus the office guy's wife also have their own thematic throughlines. This is why you might find it to be slow - it's people drifting through their lives who, through interactions with each other and without really knowing it's happening, wake up. The reason I ended up loving it was twofold. First, I thought the characters were really well-etched though honestly the brothers were kinda too broad for me and I think were meant to serve as a sort of comic relief though that wasn’t my reaction to them; in the end, though, they had their own arcs as well. But the two main characters were interesting and it was thoroughly satisfying to watch their bond develop and witness them, through their actions, discover their true selves. Second, the plot was actually pretty good! I mean there was a ton of office politics that spilled over in the character relationships - I'm being vague to avoid spoilering - but the kind of thing where you knew one person had an impure motive with regard to the other and you could see the conflict within them and weren't sure how they were going to deal with, like would they screw the other person over and, if not, how would they save themselves from the situation that made them need to screw over that person to begin with? If this life drama with some humor to it is up your alley - if you've seen the Danish drama The Legacy and enjoyed it you'll definitely enjoy this (and vice versa btw - go hunt that up if you end up loving this show) - this series is just really good and ends exactly the way it should. And if you're like me and start watching and are meh on the first few episodes, all I can say is stick it out because it genuinely goes somewhere interesting with all the major characters and I thought it was just a great show overall.

Movies:

Copshop - The tl;dr review on this actionish movie where an on-the-run-mob-guy deliberately gets arrested in order to hide out from his killer only the killer does the same is oof. It's so dumb! And I don't mean fun dumb. I mean boring dumb but also, well hang on first more about the plot so you can understand what I disliked about this movie. The entire thing takes place over one night in an isolated police station and we have our lead cop and a bunch of side cops but essentially the first half the film is... absolutely nothing happening. The lead cop arrests the bad guys; there's another corrupt cop who does nothing; everyone then either sits in their cells talking - and, in one case, randomly getting out for no discernible reason other than literally nothing would be happening if he didn't and then getting back in (only, btw, to magically undo his handcuffs down the road with zero explanation of how that could have happened, like not even a beat of him, I don't know, picking up a paperclip or something - just pure magic and not fun movie magic but bad movie crappy plotting magic) - or sits upstairs looking at computers and talking. So about 45 minutes in, there's some action which was at least entertaining, which is the mob really really wants to kill one of the guys so another hitman shows up, murders everyone except the corrupt and lead cops and then... lead cop - and I refuse to call this a spoiler but forewarned I guess - locks herself in the prison area where she's bleeding because she accidentally shot herself. Do you think anything satisfying is going to emerge from (a) a lead who's injured not because of the crazy bad guy but due to her own ricochet and (b) everyone being locked in together where nothing can happen? Let me put it this way: no. The best the writer(s) could do after backing themselves into this corner - which honestly how did no one notice this was a total forward-momentum killer - is to have the corrupt cop try to sledgehammer through 3 feet of concrete (are we supposed to believe that's a viable means of breaking into the prison area?) and compel the lead cop to release the bad guy(s) - I promise no spoiler since literally that’s the sole reason the writer(s) injured her and you knew it instantly - and then, moronically, trust them to go save her. I mean is this not completely dumb? The only reason I could think of why this was in the script to hardly mention like 20 minutes of the movie with the cop lying there bleeding and the two prisoners trying to convince her to give them her keys, was budget as in there was zero budget and three people in a room talking was all the production could afford. Anyway - and I guess if you don't see the ending coming at this point (well I mean other than the last shot which was so beyond stupid that I almost DNFed a minute before credits rolled but stuck it out for this sake of this review (I know, you're all very grateful)) then you should move along because spoilers - everyone gets out and the lead cop, who was, we were told, mere moments from bleeding out somehow magically, as with the handcuffs above, isn't that anymore and there's a big shootout thing with everyone, one of those where there are an impossible number of bullets flying and no one is hit. So essentially the best the writer(s) could come up with in order to get their bad guys out of prison was having their lead cop accidentally shoot herself and put herself in a position where releasing them was her only hope of survival only, the writer(s) eventually realized, they needed a big action ender and so just erased all of that and made her fine to go shoot everyone, dive between floors, roll behind desks, etc etc before an ambulance shows up and she discovers - more spoiler alert! - one of the bad guys stole a cop car to get away, and she somehow and for no reason I could understand, kicks the two EMTs out of the ambulance, leaves them stranded in the desert, turns on her radio to the same station the bad guy is listening to then, in split screen, we see them both moving steering wheels on what are clearly parked cars, and hear them sing along to the same song together. Mmm hmm, that’s the ending. Do you feel spoilered? So, yeah, this movie was both financed and released, and actually the plot of how any of that happened in some ways might be far more interesting than anything that occurred onscreen.

Fuzz by Mary Roach

This is a breezy - as with all Mary Roach books - nonfiction book about the processes we (that would be humans) have put in place to deal with wildlife encroachment. It's a deep dive into an issue I really hadn't given much thought to, like, beyond scarecrows, what exactly is the history of and how are we currently dealing with birds eating crops? Or things like coyotes, bears, and mountain lions near urban areas or trying to get rid of invasive species without creating even more problems in the process. If you've read Mary Roach before and have an opinion about her, this book will not change that, so either stop reading the review and go get it or, if you know you dislike her, then well same thing in reverse I guess because nothing here's going to change your mind. (No wait - read the review regardless, it's genius clearly!) The book is broken up into easily digestible chapters which read like longish magazine articles, i.e. perfect for this kind of book because it's all very informative and links to what came before and what comes after while also having each chapter be complete within itself. What I like about Mary Roach is that you can tell she's a journalist at heart and, because all her books are first-person accounts of her own investigations, she has an amusing doggedness about her in her efforts to dig for more information which adds to a bit of the fun beyond the mere facts. In other words, she learns something, gets a little sidetracked, digs deeper, does (or doesn't) get more answers, then goes about her way, and this mini insight into her process is a lot of what makes her books appealing because there's a personality behind all the science facts and an inquisitive mind that's either asking the same questions you are or asking questions that never occurred to you but which you want to know the answers to once they're posed. As you can see, this review is primarily about the vibe of the writing rather than describing the details of the topic since I'm guessing you're either curious about how we’re dealing with human stuff butting up against nature or you're not. But if you are, this is an engaging look at all that and, if you haven't read her before, a good starting point as all of her books are focused around one particular science topic which is covered from various angles and if you're looking for something informative and easy to read well look no further.

TV/Streaming:

Manifest (Season 3):

I've said it before (here and here) and I will no doubt say it again when I watch the final season of the Lost-alike (kinda): I know it's dumb; I know the characters are blunt; I know there are gaping plot holes; I'm not super confident the writers will be able to pay it off. And I don't care! I find this show to be entertaining despite all that and that's the way that is. As a reminder: this is a series about an airplane incident where, when the passengers emerge from a storm, it's five years later and people, in addition to having moved on with their lives, are freaking out about this change in reality. To hardly mention the passengers all have these "callings" where they find themselves compelled to unwrap local mysteries and do moral good for reasons that become much clearer this season. Look, this show is hanging on by a thread in terms of its dumbness by which I mean I totally get how for some people it's simply too ridiculous and takes itself too seriously to invest in. I see that, I really do, I get the character network-TV-ness and how the various pieces - being vague to avoid spoilering - are coming together in a, I don't know, not super creative way, but I still like it. I mean in every episode there's a mystery, some tension, some family and/or interpersonal drama, conflicts between the passengers, stuff with the callings, the police, the NSA, and, as with Lost, some larger thing being played out and which will all hopefully be wrapped up in an at least marginally satisfying way next season. Having watched three seasons now and enjoyed every single one of them despite noticing all the not-great stuff, I’ve come to the conclusion that this show hits the right balance for me of absorbing mystery and utter mindlessness. Like I am not a procedural person, but I imagine this is exactly what people love about the L&Os, CSIs, and NCISs of the world - they're puzzles and not super complicated ones and ones where you generally know the basic outcome but where the fun is in seeing how all pieces are going to come together and how the characters will make it all happen. That's this show for me; it has more drama to it than straight procedurals - there's a lot of family and relationship stuff around the passengers returning and loved ones or bf/gfs having moved on etc. plus new relationships forming - but I think it's the same basic thing. I'm invested in it enough to enjoy the puzzles each week, the relationship stuff, and the overall big-picture puzzle and action-y obstacles without being so invested that I'm going to wind up disappointed if it doesn't all pay off in an amazing way. Very much like an actual jigsaw puzzle come to think of it, it's about the process meaning if you can get into the basic spirit of this show the, I don't know, 39ish episodes or so I've watched plus I think there are maybe 20 left, all make for a very easygoing and entertaining series and if the finale turns out not to be awesome well, as with Lost for those of us who watched it after all the hullabaloo about the bad ending came out so we knew upfront what we were getting into, it won't take away from having been entertained for all those prior episodes and that's fine with me.

Movies:

Black Panther: Wakanada Forever - "Forever,” presumably, referring to how long it took me to finish this movie, not because it was exactly boring (it wasn’t exactly not-boring either btw) but because I kept forgetting I was watching it at all, as in I'd watch a bit, stop to go do something else, and then like 2 weeks would go by and it would occur to me that I was in the middle of the movie at which point I'd go back and watch and then repeat the cycle. Alternatively, that’s the very definition of a boring movie. Regardless, as I mentioned it my rant/review of Black Panther, I think this entire series - sequence? I don’t know - is unbelievably racist in the name of being progressive, and while I wouldn't say this movie has exactly changed my opinion on that as you’ll see, I would say it was dazzlingly confusing in terms of its plot logic (normal for Marvel) and character motivations (also normal for Marvel but a bit prevalent here and more on that in a minute). My belief is that a large part of the reason for the non-Janice lauding of this film had to with the final few minutes. In case you're not aware, the lead actor of the original Black Panther died of cancer someone between that movie and this one and the final minutes of the film are essentially a eulogy to him done in the context of the film, meaning the filmic character had - spoiler alert I guess - also died and the movie ended with the character's sister - the new Black Panther and film lead - mourning her brother’s death alone in an extended scene. Honestly, it was pretty moving even though I had no connection whatsoever either to the film creatively nor to any of the people involved, but I know that lead actor's a real person who, whatever her relationship with the deceased actor may have been, it must have been brutally awful for her in real life and I thought what they did in that last sequence was, within the context of the film, essentially show us someone grieving in character but you also knew she was probably grieving in her real life and I thought that blurriness was genuinely moving. And I'm saying this as someone who would be hard-pressed to name either of those actors and didn't like the first movie nor, particularly, this one. But, for that moment, it definitely made me think about the sad real-world reality of loss and for all my Janice shade I have to acknowledge it and particularly that actor because I imagine shooting that sequence must've been brutal for her on a human level. Okay now onto the insults!

The plot, and if you've read my prior Marvel reviews (and if not what is wrong with you?!? start here and then just keep going sequentially because I watched them all in release order) you'll already know I'm convinced these scripts are basically, not even first drafts, but what writers call the vomit-draft where you're just spewing out ideas and characters and dialogue to get it on a page in order to have something to work from. But Marvel just shoots those unedited I'm pretty sure. Anyway, Wakanada is now out-of-the-closet in terms of being basically the sole source of mega-superhero-metal vibranium and there's all kinds of worldwide political pressure for them to share it though, I mean, if you were basically the only source of this thing would that even be a remote issue for you? Lest we forget, Iron Man's suit is entirely vibranium and he could destroy the planet with nobody being able to do anything in response so, like, why would you care? Would any leader of literally any country care? Well Angela Bassett does care and, to make matters worse for her, the CIA (or something) has invented a vibranium detector in an effort to find other sources and, oopsie, they do with some underwater community of superheros who aren't happy about the whole thing - read: they kill everyone and Wakanada is blamed - and then the underwater superheroes get really mad at Wakanada over the existence of the vibranium detector (as if that makes a lick of sense) and tell them they better take care of that shit and by "tell them" I mean try to kill them all. Wakanada's dealing with a LOT, and - and yeah I didn't think I was going to talk about the racist shit but I can't stop myself - it's simply implicit that, as noted in my Black Panther review, Black skin = Africa (as opposed to, say, White skin which is related to nothing or whatever skintones exist in the Middle East and Asia and are associated with racial characteristics rather than some vague quote unquote Asian culture - like remember when "Oriental" was a thing before everyone realized it was incredibly racist? Guess what? "African" is the same thing because an entire continent of people all with varied, rich, different and historical cultures being lumped together based on solely on a collection of visible phenotypes is, well, racist!). Anyway, since if it's Black, it's Africa and if it's Africa well White people are coming for its resources... actually this will be easier to show you the other direction.

China has basically all the lithium in the world; are countries attacking China and trying to force China to share its lithium? No, because everyone realizes attacking - colonizing - China would be a bad idea because China is powerful and there will be really unpleasant consequences. Thus it's not even on the table. But because it's Black thus Africa, it is. Despite the fact that Wakanada's a country of Iron Men (Iron Mans? Iron Thems?) and - and this was an issue in the first film that I found to be really racist too - instead of these mega-powered people who happen to have dark skin being like, "Fuck you, world" they're instead locked into the same systemic shit that we have in this country where Black people are forced to make themselves smaller because, well, cops will shoot them for no reason and without consequences so better lie low. This movie did the exact same thing to these people! Only with zero social commentary! Or sense! Exclamation point! Like how about showing a bunch superpowered people who, regardless of skin tone, would behave exactly like non-Black people in that position. Here: if vibranium were solely found in the US or Russia or England or Iran or Thailand or literally, like, anywhere but the source of the people who are the victims of ongoing systemic racism, would there be even a single question of whether or not those other countries would contemplate negotiating sharing their resource? No! And you know what else they would do? Get all war-like and tell the world to stay the fuck away or they're gonna wipe that everyone out. Admittedly, the world wouldn't be thrilled and would likely attempt to pry it out of the - do countries have fingers? I'm going with it - fingers of whatever country had it (which would’ve made a perfectly serviceable plot for this film btw), but that's not the same as the country making itself small and trying to get world approval from the start and we don't want to rock the boat here because... because we're Black and because Marvel cannot show Black people in a way in which they're empowered and just like everyone else.

And that, to me, is totally racist. Instead, this movie had the most powerful country on the planet bow its head and try to appease the White people who wanted its resources unlike what would've happened if the filmmakers weren't so enmeshed in racism that they couldn't even see that, rather than allowing their leads to be same militant assholes they would've been if they were from anywhere else... OMG I was gonna end the sentence and review here until I remembered an even more racist thing. So the underwater superheroes are also Black and, instead of attacking the White people who invented the detector and attacked them, they instead blamed the Black Wakanadans because the underwater Black superheroes just... want... to... HIDE! You, Black Wakanada, made yourself visible and as a result we’re now visible and now we’re mad at you for allowing the White people to see us! I mean, is it just me!? How is a movie in which the lead characters and country to hardly mention the antagonists believe they need to keep themselves small and not upset anyone (meaning White people) and only attack each other - because, what Marvel, Black on Black crime, like in, say, the Bronx drug wars, is totally fine but because God forbid they attack the White people who are actually the source of the problem because OMG we can't do that and instead better be accommodating and yessir and of course you might colonize me and take my resources but let me try to be diplomatic and talk you out of that and look for peace and maybe share and keep my head fucking low all the time and their behavior is written that way solely because they’re Black and they therefore can't risk being accused of being what... “uppity”?, the national equivalent of an “angry Black woman” who are worried about being Karened by White America? How is writing a movie entirely starring people with dark skintone but not allowing them to experience the fullness of empowered humans behaving in whatever manner, good or bad, self-serving or generous, whatever they choose for whatever reasons - you know, just like everyone else in every other Marvel movie - anything other than racist?

Magic Bites (Kate Daniels #1) by Ilona Andrews

While I am not the hugest fan of urban fantasy - I mean I liked the Harry Dresden books okay but petered out on them eventually - I enjoyed this first in a series about a magic mercenary in a mutated Atlanta hired to hunt down her magical mentor/brother-figure's murderer. What I liked about it was that, unlike with most urban fantasy where the idea is that we're in the real world but there's a subset of hidden magical people and elements and rules there as well, this book posits a world where tech and magic shift in long-term waves and where the transition is from tech to magic in book’s present tense. In other words, nothing's hidden, this is just the way the world is, kind of like in Game of Thrones where winter is coming but in this case it's magic is coming. In this book at least that's all mostly implied and I assume future books flesh it all out, but what I liked is that the author clearly thought about world-building and a longer-term story even though this book (and I'm assuming the sequels) had a primary story that wrapped up at the end. That's definitely a format I like, i.e. some bigger mysteries and longer-term relationships and problems that will (knock wood) grow across all the books with a satisfying wrapup to the main story in each book, i.e. i.e. they're standalone but you also have to read them in order. I'm not going into too many plot details about this book because it's not really what made me like it. I mean the plot was fine and made sense and, big plus, there were a lot of huge-ass action sequences which made it all pretty fun, but what I really liked were all the main characters and the way the author set up relationships and backstories while being in no rush to reveal everything all at once which, assuming the sequels are good, will likely wind up being very satisfying. The main character - Kate - is tough, competent, and more someone who isolates herself without actually being a loner because there are some things about her that she needs to keep hidden and I can't tell you exactly what or why because the author didn't reveal either in this book but rather hinted around stuff and made it clear that she's this way for a reason. And that combo - tough but emotionally vulnerable but self-protective thus isolated - makes for a pretty interesting character as she makes her way through this world where she's clearly a pro at dealing with the issues that arise around the tech/magic shifts and where she connects and disconnects from the people who appear in her life. The mercenary story was fun, there was some good action/violence, while I wouldn't say I understood the entire world layout I feel like the author does which is fine for a first book, and the people all behaved in ways that made sense for who they were and what they were up to (being vague to avoid spoilering). For a subgenre that generally isn't my thing, I was totally hooked and will definitely be reading the sequels.

TV/Streaming:

A Cut Above (Season 1):

This is a deeply mediocre background-noise-only competition reality show in which chainsaw artists compete for a prize. It's that last part that kept me from DNFing because in many ways the final art products were super cool. Also it's a show where you don't need to be an expert in the craft to assess the final product, like you can look at it yourself and judge whether it's creative or things are in proportion or whatnot. The reason for the mediocrity isn't so much the production stuff - I mean it's no better or worse than an HGTV show - but rather that the process is really obtuse. With, by contrast, something like Project Runway, you can kind of see the shape of a designer's vision as you go, like you see they chose those colors and that fabric and it looks like that on the mannequin and in the model fitting etc. With chainsaw carving, there's kind of a big block of wood, a lot of looking like not much while things are being hacked at and then a final product. This means that for much of the show you're not looking at a lot. I mean the producers try to make up for it by having the judges question certain decisions along the way or point out that, for instance, rotten wood is just part of the game and explain the options the carvers have to deal with it. But it's just very difficult with carving to track the progression of a creation which isn't an insult to this show really - I imagine it was equally dull to watch Michelangelo carve David - but just kind of the nature of the beast. I stuck with it because the outcomes really ran a range from wow to awful and one of the carvers was really into abstract which, because all the challenges were theme-based, allowed for some genuinely surprising reveals; abstract is that thing where you either get it/feel it when you see it or you don't and it was interesting to see what that particular carver came up with. So, yeah, the show isn't a total waste of time and there are people with real talent in there but it is what it is. If you're into this kind of thing or cast a wide competition reality show net as I do, then yeah it's perfectly fine to watch while playing on your tablet and focusing on it more towards the end of each episode. But if this isn't really in your wheelhouse, it's not good enough to be worth seeking out.

Pennyworth (Season 3):

This surprisingly - to me because I always expect to be bored but never am - entertaining '60ish Batman's butler origin series maintains the high quality of the prior seasons (here and here) meaning if you already know you like this well more pleasure awaits and, if you're unsure, just know its been solidly good for three seasons. The series is set in a Gothamized version of London where, across Britain, there's a fascist party on the rise and Alfie - the butler - along with his crew of ex-Army guys are sort of hired out by the government to go deal, not only with the fascists, but with the burgeoning (though also coolly mod) technology that allows people to have superpowers, especially in this season. What makes the show fun is its tone. It definitely has a snazzy amusing wit to it combined with some solid plotting and action and genuinely memorable characters by which I mean you really don't need a previously-on even if you go years between seasons because everyone's clear and consistent enough that you instantly know who they are. Each season has its own plotline but also builds on prior seasons so you need to watch in order. I'm not a Batman person - as mentioned in prior reviews, I don't really get what he is - but I can assure you that doesn't matter for this show. Yes the Waynes are present but really the focus is on a relentlessly self-assured and highly competent kinda PI/fixer who's hired to handle dangerous situations while also dealing with all sorts of drama in his personal life. The show is also good about splitting time between all the main characters meaning it's not really just the butler story (though it was more so in earlier seasons) but rather expands outwards in satisfying ways. As you can see, I'm giving you zero plot details because it's all spoilerable and the plotting is really good and built in ways I didn't see coming. For a show with a superhero-origin backbone, which I normally think of as pretty morally binary in a good/evil bland way, this show has a fair amount of texture. Like there are some horrible people on the good guys side and some morally interesting people within the villains. This really adds to the overall vibe of the show because, while of course we're on the side of our leads, they're not perfect and, yeah, while some of the bad guys are kind of pure evil, some transform in ways that make it all more interesting. 'Nuff said. I didn't start this show thinking I'd enjoy it this much, but it's been carried along by really good characters, snappy dialogue, interesting plotting, and an overall vibe and look that's very appealing. If you think it's even vaguely up your alley, I'd say give it a go because it's a significant step above other shows of its ilk.

Movies:

The Covenant - While I'm of course going to talk about the plot and moi opinion of this Guy Ritchie Afghanistan making-it-out-of-enemy-territory action movie, the first thing I need to discuss is that this is the first movie I've been to - as in I saw it in an actual movie theater - with subtitles. And I don't mean subtitling a foreign language; I mean the thing I - and I believe basically the entirety of GenZ - do at home when watching on my screen where I just leave English subtitles running the whole time on everything I watch just 'cause. I've become so accustomed to it that, when subtitles showed up in this movie, for a few minutes I didn't even realize it was strange because it's just how I watch everything. But, in a movie theater… weird! Like are English subtitles running the whole time in American movie theaters a thing now? So the plot: Jake Gyllenhaal is an army Sergeant on a squad that tries to hunt down Taliban weapons manufacturing plants (or whatever they're called) and teams up with an interpreter who hates the Taliban and, when things go to shit during an operation, the interpreter saves Jake and, later, when the interpreter needs saving, Jake does that. In case you can't tell from the plot description, I was meh on this movie. "Character" meant macho quipping while being shot at and the first like 25% of the movie was a fair amount of swaggering and attempting to set Jake up as being a maverick - oh why oh why is everyone who’s both (a) in the military and (b) a movie star a maverick yawn when we already have an uber-maverick I mean really that's all the Hollywood writer hive mind can come up with? - plus establishing the interpreter as knowing a lot because, like, he lives there and therefore probably... knows a lot and he and Jake getting into some male-ish authority battle/bonding thing. Then the next chunk is a huge sequence where everything goes to hell and Jake and the interpreter are stranded alone and running through the dry scrub with a nonstop stream of Talibani with really just awful awful aim with their machine guns coming after them. Eventually Jake is injured and it's up to the interpreter to save them both. So that's, say, 2/3 of the movie maybe. The next what felt like 50% but I'm gathering from my own math was around 1/6 of the movie was Jake at home on the phone trying to get visas for the interpreter and his fam who were now in hiding. We all knew where this was going - Jake returning to save him - but we just watched endless streams of Jake on hold, Jake yelling at a customer service person, Jake on hold drunk, Jake yelling drunk. I mean honestly I get it - and Jake maybe you should've thought about using the online chat which I assure you is a lot less frustrating - customer service is the worst because even when you're a highly decorated military person you still get hung up on by a supervisor. Anyway, Jake eventually mortgages the house because no one in the military will help rescue the guy who rescued Jake. And look, maybe this was based on something totally true - there sure were front and end crawls about Afghani translators - but the movie didn't bother to make it make any sense. I mean, why WOULDN'T the government offer visas to these people? Why wouldn't they help? I'm sure there were wonderful red tape reasons for that, and it would've been great to hear why the only option was Jake spending $150k of his own cash (he had a nice house in Santa Clarita so maybe he came from money? Or earned a ton in his car mechanic business? And btw: the movie made a real point about the interpreter being a mechanic in his real life but never bothered to mention that Jake was one as well and doesn't that seem strange as in maybe the writer totally forgot s/h/they’d made that choice?) to enlist a team to go back to Afghanistan to save everyone who needed saving. Here's the thing: this movie was asking us to take itself seriously. It was presenting itself like Hurt Locker not a The Rock franchise. Meaning what would otherwise be ignorable quibbles became actual issues because when you're presenting something as drama with action, you actually need something more than five years of someone being on hold drunk as character motivation. In any event, Jake eventually gets off hold, hooks up with Homelander from The Boys (kind of, and not in a sexy way though that definitely would’ve been an interesting twist), learns he has the deepest most beautiful blue eyes ever seen in the entirety of Afghanistan (there's a scene devoted to another character telling him this in which I wondered if Jake and the guy he was talking to were about to make out (which, as with Homelander above, would've been fine actually), in case you think I'm making it up) and it all works out in the most expected and also completely unsatisfying way, which is - and no spoiler here unless you've literally never seen a movie of this ilk in your entire existence in which case go ahead and skip the next bit - Jake is trapped and out of bullets and it's seemingly the end, like those 500 trillion Talibani machine gun bullets which never seem hit anything other than cement will finally reach their targets, and Homelander shows up. Yeah, that's what happens in these types of movies, but our ostensible hero being saved isn't exactly the same as our hero saving anyone. But whatever, that's this movie, it was fine I was definitely into that middle chunk where action was happening but beyond that zoned in and out - but at least there were subtitles for when I spaced - and it feels like if you’re at home and in the mood for something actiony and this is on your streaming somewhere, you'll be perfectly fine.

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

I couldn't do it. Despite never wanting to pick it up, I really kind of loved the author's prior book A Little Life as she's not only a talented writer but, in that book at least, there was a compulsiveness to her writing like she had to tell this particular story in this (somewhat) wildly overwritten way and I had to read it that way. That book was a big chewy piece of lit focusing on tragedy and friendship and an enormous amount of backstory and interior character stuff all of which made up for what was a fairly simple plot; the book was about immersing the reader in the minutiae of the people and their behavior which gave real vibrancy to the mundanity of the characters' existence. Meaning I understood, going into this most recent novel of hers, that this book would likely not be super plotty but rather more of the same as the prior book but in a different context, i.e. I expected it to be something I never wanted to pick but something I couldn't put down when I did which sounded fine to me as I was in the mood for some meaty writing. And, for the first section of the book, it was that. The book is broken up into three time periods, more or less 1890s, 1990s, and 2090s and honestly that was a huge turnoff from the beginning because I wasn't interested in reading her for sci-fi and I really dislike multigenerational books in general (this isn't one but same idea) because I don't want to get into a bunch of characters then have to start all over again.

But whatever I liked her writing and got into the first chunk which posited some alternative America - yeah, I was not into that either but it was more in the background - which was essentially like a Henry James novel but with gay people. And I liked it; it’s about a guy and an inheritance and a fixup with an older wealthier guy and then a torrid affair with some impoverished younger guy and, you know, a decent turn-of-the-century story about society and New York and people being trapped by circumstance and the choices they make and the consequences they suffer for those choices. It was a story. Then section two showed up and that was about... absolutely nothing. Nothing. NOTH. ING. The section was broken into two parts. The first was about a young paralegal dating an older lawyer at the same firm and a party they’re throwing for a friend of the older lawyer who’s going off to die (from AIDS presumably). The lead character is a zero who is nothing and wants nothing and does nothing other than recount what’s going on around him for pages and pages and pages. Nothing happens. He just unhappily sits at a party telling us what everyone else is doing which is so crazy boring and I kept hoping some plot would arise but, no, it got even worse because the second half of that section is a letter from the young guy's father explaining his life. So to be clear: we have a character - more a lens - doing nothing for hundreds of pages followed by another character doing nothing for hundreds of pages. There's no present-tense story, unlike in the first section, just all these boring boring words. I started skipping ahead because none of these sections are connected in any meaningful way meaning they’re kind of short/long stories. So section three, which is where I DNF'ed because I just couldn't for one second longer, is set in some post-pandemic NYC where, again, there's zero character with zero present-tense story, as in zero happening once again which then cuts to a bunch of backstory where even less happens. Yeah, maybe it all adds up to something later - apparently for some non-Janices this was their favorite section - but you know what? The author, by writing so many pages of boring drivel, had lost all rights to my time by that point and that was end. The reading experience in general is to some extent a trust exercise in that the author needs to give the reader enough to make them think their time investment will be worth it in whatever way each individual defines that. And she lost that for me. I honestly don't know how this book was published, like who in the entire process read this and thought any of it was remotely engaging? I'd like the names to avoid all future books that they've edited because they either have drastically different taste than I do or they just don't care and either way, I can't and advise, if this book is on your list, that you don't either.

TV/Streaming:

Alice In Borderland (Season 2):

This second season of a series about people trapped in a bunch of life or death games for reasons they don't understand is even better than the first and, I think, somehow got lost due in the shuffle to Squid Game which doesn't even come close to this show if you like this kind of genre. The reason this show is better is threefold. First, unlike with Squid Game, the characters in this show have no idea why they're in this situation and, when not competing for their lives, are also trying to unravel what's really going on and that mystery gives the show some drive. Second, the show is heavily focused on characters and relationships and the consequences of one's decisions in a way that plays out across both seasons. Not spoilering, but the nature of the games forces total strangers to band up and trust each other or double-cross each other or things of that nature and then those relationships continue in the downtime between the games. Thus you can have romance or friendships which grow or dissolve or betray then redeem (or not) which also keeps the show interesting since people's motives shift across the series and, in life or death games, they end up making more interesting choices than in the simplistic non-relationship non-character world of Squid Game (yeah, being vague to avoid spoilering) where the games seemed to be there primarily to display gore and not much else. Finally, the games in this show not only have a kind of logic-puzzle component to them beyond all the violent action - and there's plenty of that - meaning the solution isn't necessarily obvious from the start, but they also, especially in this season, start to play into moral choices and psychology and manipulation in a way that's interesting and makes it even less clear how exactly the games will play out. Since the show is in part based around the leads trying to figure out what's going on, I'm not going into much plot for spoiler reasons, but I was totally into this season, even more so than season 1 which, while good, didn't have as much texture and ended in a way that left me somewhat blargh. But that's not the case in this season. In fact, I'd say the final episode was really pretty interesting and managed to completely wrap up in the series or, if it gets picked up for a third season (knock wood), leave a minuscule something in place to make that viable. In other words, the mysteries are all explained in a satisfying way with a final shot that manages to allow for another season without detracting from any of the satisfaction of what you just watched, which is a pretty nice feat I'd say. The show is definitely in the combat tradition of martial arts movies (there's some actual martial arts but also a lot of gaming-type weaponry and explosions and the like) in that it's somewhat heightened - think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - with people surviving impossible amounts of bodily harm which also makes for some really good fight sequences. If you like this genre and haven't seen this show or were meh on season 1, I'd say give it (another) shot because this season really amped it up and I think this is just a flat-out solid piece of entertainment.

Mrs. Fazilet & Her Daughters:

Yeah, Turkish soap operas - think: somewhere between Guiding Light and Knots Landing (and, as with those shows, promoting some unbelievably sexist morality from a prior era) - are dumb. And long. And repetitive. And yet... I'm hooked! I've talked about them before (like here for example) but basically they're designed to tap into some lowest-common-denominator of our emotional brainstem where, no matter how absurd the plot, how repetitive which I'm repeating to underscore the repetitiveness, how utterly ridiculous the character behavior is, and how long they go on, somehow a kind of primal human-relationship-centric neurotransmitter gets released in mass quantities and I find myself sitting there outraged at this person interfering with those other two, hoping those other two finally realize they're in love, nervous that that one is going to get caught doing that thing to the other one, and on and on for an insanely large episode count all while knowing I'm being completely manipulated and yet I just don't care. Turkish soap operas are, for me, the absolute perfect last-thing-before-bed shows because they're utterly engaging while watching yet so stupid you can fall asleep on them without losing a plot beat. All that said, this one was total core in that regard. The basic plot is a poor but determined woman with two beautiful daughters schemes and plots to get them all into the mansion of one of the richest families in the country. See how primal that is? To this show's credit - and honestly no matter how dumb a show is, don't you kind of have to tip a hat to something that goes on for 166 45 minutes episodes without ever being boring? - it's a little different than other Turkish soap operas I've seen. Most of them are thwarted love stories, usually rich/poor, where big plot issues, usually crimes or shady behavior or things of that ilk, force the unlikely couple to eventually, 9 million episodes later, hook up at which point a whole series of obstacles gets thrown in their way. This show has that but what it also has and which was a kind of objectively interesting choice, is zero likeability. I mean every single person in the show lies, blackmails, betrays, and emotionally wrecks the very people they love over and over and over. All for comprehensible, if really idiotic, reasons; everyone's a lead while also being someone else's villain so you're watching people do awful things while also understanding why. What this meant was right to the very end, it really wasn't clear how the show was going to resolve. For the first chunk of it, it wasn't even clear who the main love relationship was (the one that's inevitably thwarted nonstop later); even after that solidified, it still wasn't clear whether or not it would all work out. Also - and really I'm giving credit where credit's due but this still remains an absurd soap opera no matter what - the characters genuinely shifted across the series which also gave it some interest. I mean people grew and changed as a result of their circumstances which also meant their motives and subsequent actions changed which, in turn, kept the show interesting even though when you really get down to it, you're looking at the same 10-12ish characters the whole time. Enough. If you like soap opera-y things, something addictive but put-down-able, I'd hunt this one up (it's all over the internets and, believe me, it shows in the subtitles where there's a lot of confusion around gender pronouns and not in a way that's trying to be current but in a way where it looks like each episode was churned through Google Translate followed by a 10 minute skim by a Turkish student practicing their English). Just to be 100% clear: it's not good, but it is entertaining and heck isn't that enough right before falling asleep?

Movies:

The Immortal - This is a movie about what happens between Seasons 4 and 5 of the CRAZY AWESOME Italian series Gomorrah and there's literally no point in watching it if you haven't seen that show nor, if you have seen that show, should you watch this movie until you've completed Season 4 because otherwise things will definitely be spoilered for you, but clearly you should read this review NO MATTER WHAT. Thus I'm not going into plot at all because there's no way to discuss it without spoilering but to give you an overview: the film runs in two tracks, one picking up in a chunk of time right after Season 4 and one in the childhood past of the lead character, and these two tracks eventually come together in an interesting way. Look the writers of this show/movie are so great especially at long-game plots (to hardly mention insane amounts of violence) as well as characters who are constantly scheming in unexpected ways that the movie is just entertaining on that level and sort of plays like an extended episode of the series. I'd say it took around 20 or 30 minutes for the thing to pick up - I was kinda worried it was going to be a disappointment prior to that - because it wasn't clear how or if the past/present stories would glue together plus there was a lot of necessary setup, i.e. lots of new characters and whatnot. The writers don't do exposition in a traditional way of just telling you everything; rather they put people in places and kind of make you figure it out which is really a strength of the show and to an extent of the movie though, with a series, you know you're investing some time sorting out early confusion for a much longer payoff whereas with a movie it's a fair amount of investment for something much shorter. It didn't matter though. The backstory and present-tense story were both interesting in their own rights and, as with this entire series, it all feels like an incredibly modern, vicious, and non-goombah non-red-sauce take on the Mafia and a look at true, awful criminals operating ruthlessly on behalf of their businesses. Also, as always with this writer/producer team, they cast interesting actors so even though there's a fair amount of silence in the movie (part of what's happening with the lead is very interior) the acting tells you what you need to know. If you're a fan of the series, while your mind won't be blown away by the film, you'll be perfectly satisfied with it and glad you watched it and it will serve as a kind of appetizer before watching the final season; if you're not a fan of the series and you can stomach a ton of violence well stop reading this and go watch immediately!

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

The is a very amusing logic-puzzle-book mystery. I'm noting (and perhaps inventing) that subgenre because the context of the book is that a partner at a law firm is asking two of his associates to review a series of texts and emails between various people, one of whom ends up murdered, i.e. the lawyers are in the same position as the reader and they're trying to pick apart what happened and why, neither of which is really all that clear. The book is fun for several reasons. First, because of the setup you're immediately reading for clues (and, in my case, not finding any) and trying to figure out what's really going on from all these missives between various characters. Second, the writing is amusing because the characters are pretty particular and, after a while, you can easily tell from the writing who's doing the speaking plus there’s the entertaining literary schadenfreude of hearing people talk about each other behind their backs. Third, the author has a sense of humor and that infuses many of the characters. I wouldn't say there's a huge story per se but rather a series of milestone events with a lot of drama leading up to them. I'm being somewhat obtuse for spoiler reasons, not that much of the driving plot could really be spoilered, but rather because part of the enjoyment for me was kind of not knowing anything about the book and thinking it was about one thing and slowly realizing it was turning into something else. Also while I was initially turned off by all the email and text headers, after a while my brain kind of tuned them out and I found myself zipping right along. As noted, it's a big logic puzzle, in the vein of the Sarah Cauldwell books though more modern and less arch. The book is structured such that the bulk of it is the email/texts to/from the people involved but the last quarter or so are the emails/texts to/from the lawyers trying to theorize what happened as well and using everything we've just read as their evidence and that, too, was very pleasurable to read because, even though I didn't see anything the lawyers saw when I was reading it, once they talked it out, it made total sense. I thought this was a solidly entertaining book and will definitely be checking out this author's other books.

TV/Streaming:

ER (Season 8):

Well I continue to love this series which was definitely not a given despite its popularity (or it was popular enough to last 15 seasons at any rate). I've reviewed previous seasons (here and here for example) and noted that while there was a dip around season threeish or so, they've otherwise all been very solid and this season is no exception. And BTW the reason I review this show at all, to hardly mention each season (or most - I’m sure I forgot to post some reviews along the way) is that sometimes you just want something where you know what it is and you know it’s consistent and there’s a lot of it. This is mostly what I like about Turkish soap operas (like this one for example) - I know what I’m gonna get and because the episode count is so huge I’m basically guaranteed something I’ll like for a loooong time. Starting a new show or not knowing if a series is worth your time investment because future seasons may tank can be annoying thus all these ER reviews because I think it’s worth knowing, with a show this long, whether or not it sustains. Anyway, what this show does so well is craft ongoing drama not only within a season but across multiple seasons, i.e. a plot point introduced three seasons prior might rear its head in an unexpected way once again, and allow the characters to grow and change - sometimes for the better but often into a kind of season-long tailspin - in ways that make total sense while also allowing for uncertainty as to where it's all going to wind up. Like is the alcoholic who fell off the wagon going to wind up in rehab? or work it out on their own? or get into some messy co-dependent relationship? or drag someone else down with them? etc - the show is pretty open to sending the characters anywhere interesting as long as it's logical and grounded in reality. To me its closest analogue is The Good Wife, a show that did something similar character/plot-wise but in law rather than medicine, and I think it's pretty impressive how the writing staff has managed to sustain drama at this level for so many seasons. And let's be real: much of this show is standard (or standard now because I think this show established a new standard for the genre when it originally aired) medical stuff - medical mysteries, recurring medical problems, medical issues that become thorny ethical or social issues which often span multiple episodes, traumas, stuff like that - so what makes the show work is the investment in the character drama. And there's plenty of that plus the series is unafraid to have its leads be abrasive and unlikeable which also makes this show work because it sets up a lot of natural character clashes and unpleasant behavior but all within the context of reality (think: you're going through a crisis but your dick boss whom you've known for years just doesn't care and won't cut you any slack with your work which then causes you (and I don't why it's you but it's you now!) to have to readjust things at home which, because you're not home enough, causes more drama there which pulls you away from work and where you try to get others to cover so your dick boss won't know but one of your co-workers makes a mistake that’s really your fault... etc. etc.). In any event, if you like character drama and don't mind a hospital setting I really don't see how you can do better than this. Of course it could all go south somewhere in the remaining 7 seasons - and I will natch report back either way - but this far in I have enough confidence in the standards of the writing team to feel like they'll see it through all the way to the end. (Teaser note from future me: famous last words!)

Gentleman Jack (Season 2):

As with the first season of this period drama based on the life of an 18th century lesbian who lived as a "man" (quotes referring to the gendered notions of the time), so with this second, i.e. whatever you thought of Season 1 you'll think of Season 2. Without spoilering, the plot of this season picks up more or less on the heels of the last but with more family and relationship issues tossed in. What's interesting about the show is the way the lead character - Anne Lister - dresses as a man all the time and does very admirably brave "mannish" things such as being totally in control of her business and money and speculating on other businesses and running a coal mine etc. and yet also manages to be hideously inconsiderate, totally self-absorbed, somewhat self-oblivious, and in general highly manipulative. In other words, the writer crafted a real character meaning, in addition to seeing how she butts up against the sexism of the time, there's a ton of other interest in the way she treats her relationships and business and what then happens as a result (yes, vague to avoid spoilering). The show is pretty dialogue-heavy rather than plot-heavy meaning most of the interest is in how the characters behave in particular circumstances rather than those circumstances themselves. For example, there's a whole subplot involving a division of property in a will but it's primarily about one of the characters finding the inner resolve to fight for what she wants and how the sexist attitudes towards women and the attendant social pressures created emotional difficulties, i.e. it's not some major courtroom drama but rather a lot of scenes of people sitting on couches being politely berated by sexist aunts. This is not an insult - I loved it - but rather just a means for you determine whether or not this show is your bag. The other component, beyond its interest in character interactions and social issues, is it has a kind of jaunty tone with random fourth-wall-breaking, something that was annoyingly present in season 1 and still equally annoyingly present here. The tone I didn't mind really but the asides to camera were very strange because they seemed to be from an entirely different show plus they were used so infrequently as in episodes would go by then someone would make a face to camera for a second then that would vanish for a few more episodes that it begged the question of what this device was actually meant to serve since the show basically got along fine without it. Again I'm noting it because I was annoyed by it but it really doesn't get in the way. If you're into slowish period drama with a sense of humor and a character and situations that are pretty unlike any period dramas out there, then this is well worth checking out.

Movies:

The Tribe - This movie about a brutal gang of deaf Ukrainian schoolkids told entirely in sign language and with no subtitles is not the kind of thing I'd normally choose to watch and was, in fact, imposed on me by a fellow Janice who absolutely despised a book I loved and told me I had to watch this movie as a form a media-recommendation revenge. And, fine, it took me a few years to get around to it - revenge is a dish best served cold (and hopefully not too moldy or maybe that doesn't matter given the circumstances) after all - but I made it through and it was... weird. I'd like to be able to tell you the basic plot and I'll do my best but in all honesty, given that the whole thing, as noted, was in sign language, I'm really more inferring the plot (and maybe I Wikipediaed a little) which I think was the point. Plot aside, the idea of the movie, I believe, is to capture the feeling of watching a silent film but in a much more modern, seedy way. I think what went on is this: a new kid goes to a high school or maybe college for the deaf where there are gang guys there stealing stuff from locals and pimping out the girls to truckers (though the girls seem like willing participants so maybe they were pimping themselves out and brought in the guys for protection - it didn't seem coercive though then again I don't really know), and the new kid is indoctrinated into the gang where he starts a relationship of sorts - I thought it was just sex but I don't know - with one of the hookers who, according to Wikipedia, is the girlfriend of the gang head honcho though I had no idea that was the case from watching, in part because I couldn't tell who the head honcho was but also because when you're seeing people together like, yeah, you can infer two are dating from the way they hang on each other, but beyond that it's difficult to tell the true nature of the relationship just via body language and facial expression. There's also a transactional relationship between the new kid and the hooker/gang-leader’s-GF in that he keeps throwing money at her though it isn't clear if the money is specifically for the sex or if the money is a show of some larger interest on his part, like he's demonstrating to her that he's really really into her - I think that's what it was, that the money served to display the depth of his interest though again not 100% sure. I think she was interested in both him and the money though perhaps it was just about the cash? It will come as no surprise by this point in the review that I don't know because I couldn't really tell how she felt about her relationship with the honcho guy and thus wasn't clear on what was happening in her mind with this relationship. In any event, the gang guys eventually come after the new kid and the new kid does something spoilerable (and pretty creepy to watch actually, especially so because, while we, the audience, could hear certain things, no one in the movie could and that juxtaposition was especially discomfiting in the spoilerable finale circumstances) in return and it ends. I can't say this was a total waste of time - thanks (kind of), Janice! - but I also can't say I really enjoyed it. I mean it was a filmic experience I guess in that the movie just sort of tosses you in and leaves you to find your own way through it and on the one hand isn't super interested in making sure you understand anything but on the other has a top-level story where you can easily figure out the basic shape so the act of watching it is this strange combo of knowing you're watching a familiar story - gang, new kid, girlfriend - while also knowing there are non-generic details all of which you're missing but which you're still trying to parse. And just to clarify filmic, I don’t mean arty really but rather it used the medium and its relationship with the audience to put you, the viewer, in an uncomfortable place in a way only film can I think in that it made me feel kind of like an eavesdropper on a half-overheard, half-understood conversation between strangers the whole time and then somewhat like a silent and powerless observer by the end. That's the experience of watching this movie, and so if you're in the mood for something cryptic and filmic, then you might like this, and fair play, Janice, because it was definitely an equal response to the book experience you were avenging and golf claps all around!

The Magpie Lord (A Charm of Magpies #1) by KJ Charles

This was a flew-through-it-in-one-hot-second Regency (or something along those lines) first in a fantasy series about a rich guy who hires a magician to investigate and undo some magical problems all of which turns into a bit of romance. It's fluff, but very enjoyable fluff. It's basically a big opposites-attract story with an underlying magic/power/curse plot. The book reads like a one-off, though I see there are more in the series, so I'm guessing future books will pick up with the same characters but a different mystery which sounds delightful to me. The plot is that the ne'er do well (or is he...) rich guy's son - Lucien - along with his factotum, both of whom where sent off to China when Lucien was young because he was despised by his father and brother, returns as the sole heir to his family fortune only to discover someone's magically trying to kill him, and he hires snarly poor magician, Stephen, to undo that all of which in turn leads to the discovery of a larger magic conspiracy and said romance. The pleasure of the book is twofold. First, as mentioned, it's breezy. Second, I liked the world. It had a kind of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell vibe to it in the sense that that book normalized magicians in an otherwise typically stiff and manored English world, meaning you get the enjoyable Anthony Trollope societal trappings and the microaggressions of that era along with a mystery as to what's really going on plus some magic tossed in for good measure. As I said, this is a big goblet of fluff, which isn't an insult to the author as I think that's what she intended to write and frankly writing something absorbing isn't all that easy even if it reads easy. I think if there was one area I could've done less with, it was the romance. I'm not into sex scenes in books but that really isn't a critique since they're just not to my taste but there were a few of them in this book and I just skimmed right on by. Though this is (sadly) not how I ended up reading this, the book has the feel of a something you'd read curled up under a blanket on a cold day in winter in two sittings with a nap in between and if this Regency-(Edwardian?)-or-something-snobby-and-English-and-countryside with some romance and magicians is up your alley, I'd say grab a copy and enjoy.

TV/Streaming:

Rock the Block (Season 3):

Why do I keep both watching and writing about this idiotic overproduced HGTV show in which four teams of their quote unquote stars (read: people I've never seen or heard of in my entire life but who somehow all manage to speak in that weird overenthusiastic sassy-not-edgy hyper-explanatory HGTVese that has the feel of a nascent religious sect but one where everyone loves working together and the leaders just want to help you rather than have sex with you and wouldn't redoing your kitchen cabinets in teal really just make them pop and up the appraisal value BIGGEST EXCLAMATION POINT EVER!) each design a neighboring cookie-cutter home with the one with the highest appraised value at the end being the winner. It's entirely about seemingly all of HGTV’s conceptions of real estate and design, i.e. never about living in a place but rather how much can you get for it which is fine I guess - nothing wrong with wanting to make money - but also pretty weird. Like if design can really add that much value to a house, why didn't the home developers just do that upfront? I'll tell you why (and I kind of can't believe I'm wasting my time typing about this but I am!): okay so the designers are given a $250k budget... which doesn't include designer fee which I have zero idea about, like is, for an entire house plus garage plus yard plus exterior, uh $100k right? Is that too low? Too high? And many of the designers were also contractors so they did their own construction so should we say another $40k in the real world for the additional labor? Too low? After all, this was a whole home redone in 6 weeks rather than a more typical 90 days or longer so, I mean overtime anyone? And we'll add another $5k-$10k for staging? So by my utterly uninformed math, each house is $500k plus $250k for the HGTV budget plus the stuff that HGTV didn't count worth, say, at least $150k if not a bit more. And, according to the experts (meaning other HGTV people I'd never heard of), the highest appraised value added only around $200k. Are you seeing the math if my numbers are even vaguely right? Plus of course design is always a risk since people might hate it or, you know, you the designer added a nursery but the buyer doesn't have infants and now have to pay to redesign that. Or you put in a fancy grill instead of a fence in the backyard and now they want a price reduction. Okay I'm bored, mostly because I have no idea what I'm talking but also because I just don't care. Oh, the show. Yeah it's dumb and screamy and fake like all HGTV shows but (and this was true in prior seasons and remains true now), it's the sort of thing you can have on in the background and just glance up in the last 5 minutes to see the reveal - they do one house section per week - and for that, it's perfectly fine.

Happy Valley (Seasons 1-3):

I started watching this extremely well-written character-driven cop (but so much more than that) show when it first came out maybe a decade ago then there was a second season a year or so later then a big gap between that season and the series finale. I'm noting this because I didn't go back and rewatch so if you're binging all in a row you might have a different experience than I did. But regardless of how you watch, this is a great show. The basic plot - and no spoilering here as this is all backstory and the first season takes place like 8 or so years later - is the daughter of a cop in a Northern England medium-sized town gives birth then kills herself due to the abusiveness of her psychopathic criminal boyfriend; this event, aside from its obvious grief, splinters the cop's family, and she, not without qualms, decides to raise her grandchild. The meat of the show combines a season-long investigation with a larger story - also investigative - involving the criminal dad. The plots are good and engaging and I'm not discussing them further because they're 100% spoilerable. What makes this show shine is the combination of rich, deep, character-driven writing with a lead actor who feels so totally real that, despite having seen her in other British shows, it's almost hard to imagine she's not actually this person. It has the feel of real life, like yes, it's a cop show so there are some extreme and somewhat heroic acts, but they feel as if they're done the way truly competent but still very human (meaning scared) cops would handle these situations. In fact, that's actually what makes the show work in a way; the investigations drive the plot but because the writer and actor have managed to immerse you (me) in the person, what becomes most interesting is wondering what our lead - Catherine - is going to do and how whatever she does will affect the other part that makes this show so good which is a rich and complex family life. Raising the son of the person you feel killed your daughter already has a lot of interesting complexity to it, but Catherine also has a somewhat conflicted relationship with her loopy alcoholic sister and her ex-husband to mention a few. The other thing that makes this show really work is its dry humor which, combined with a lead who feels so solidly grounded, comes off as part of the gallows-tone of policework as opposed to snark. Clearly I'm giving this a recommend and I guess the only reason someone might not enjoy it is if this show feels too much drama and not enough crime for you. It's also fairly grim, like I wouldn't say these are joyous people in joyous situations but to me that all read like a reiteration of its immersion in feeling like real life - it's someone who loves her job and life but both of those in differing yet related ways carry dark circumstances and I found the whole series to be totally gripping.

Movies:

Extra Ordinary - This... supernatural comedy (?) is either (a) awful at a level that begs a question I've begged before (that would be "why on all that's holy would anyone finance this?") or (b) genius for reasons I'll go into in a minute. Look, I'm 99% sure it's (a) and therefore you should absolutely skip this abomination. However, if you're willing to take a gamble (and, clearly, get crazy high prior to doing so), (b) might possibly deliver exactly enough to keep you watching the whole thing as it did for me. So the basic plot: a driving instructor whose primary skill is, I think, banishing ghosts (OMG already right?) is contacted by some dude for driving lessons only it's secretly to get rid of the ghost of his annoying now-dead wife; in the meantime, and honestly I'm a little less clear on this part (and kind of not so clear on the prior part either come to think of it), some rock musician is trying to sacrifice a virgin in order to revive his career only somehow the virgin inadvertently dies via (I think) another nagging-though-not-dead wife and now the musician needs to hunt up another virgin. Well as it turns out, these two stories collide as the daughter of the dude - who himself turns out to be paranormally inclined and, QED, the love interest of the driving instructor (sidebar: I can't believe I'm actually writing out this plot) - is a virgin who's kidnapped for the rocker-reviving sacrificial ceremony and the driving instructor and the girl's dad go off to save her. In between all that, the virgin-sacrificer also wants driving lessons partly because he has drivingphobia and wants to overcome that phobia but mostly because he'd seen the driving instructor doing something with ghosts previously and wanted to steal her hair for ghosty/summoning reasons. How's everyone doing so far with this plot? Okay, so then there's this sacrifice in the works and... a crow? magpie? some bird gets involved and everyone winds up somewhere doing battle with the bad guys or Satan or something and then there’s a summoning, during which - and I can't say anything was a spoiler by this point in the movie but just noting there may be a spoiler coming - it's revealed who's actually a virgin and who's not, and, after some public devirginzation in order to avoid being a vessel for the devil, everyone goes into battle including the bird, and only some make it out, a big reveal about the bird, possibly a birth?, and then it's 3 months later and all's fine.

So there's that plot - again, financing, why? - and you can absolutely see how atrocious this wacky-yet-also-moving-and-romantic-and-actiony-in-its-mind film is totally terrible as noted and leave it at that. Or, you can watch having the recognition or at least the .0000000001% possibility that the following is what was actually going on with the movie: the writers (who also directed) were just totally fucking with their idiotic producers and were trying to see how far they could push the stupidity and how convincing they could be to get the producers to keep throwing money at the worst script ever (aka theirs) they'd written, high, in a weekend. Like about 18 minutes in, I definitely had a moment (and don't ask me what it was because I've long forgotten) where it struck me that maybe the filmmakers knew how truly awful the movie was and were just going for it. Like the whole thing with the bird? I can - and did - totally imagine a scenario in which one filmmaker said to the other, "Let's see if we can talk the producers into paying to put a bird in this thing" and the other goes "How much" and the first says, "I don't know, $50k?" then immediately goes over to the producer and says, "You know, beneath all the humor in this movie we're going for something much more powerful about family and connection and the moral spirit that connects everyone and we thought what would be great would be to have all that in a bird who later joins the battle and then sacrifices itself, which we kind of need anyway for the big battle scene and we don't really want to kill any cast members because we're paying them so it would be better to keep them around and the bird will probably be around $50,000 for the trainer and additional shooting time which in the scheme of things isn't much for all the power, mystery, and drama it's adding to the film." And then the producer says okay and the filmmakers are like, "Well we shot half the movie and now we have to jam in a bird. What should we do with it?” “We could chop its head off?" "Yeah, that's good, and then we'll have a closeup of someone's really sad hand reaching in to cradle the bird head." "Perfect, in slo-mo." "Exactly." This, for me, was the entire film and if you watch it through that lens, the lens where you decide that just maybe the filmmakers knew precisely the movie they were making and were completely manipulating everyone around them into believing they were crafting a potent supernatural action romance whereas they were actually making some hidden self-aware idiocy well then you just might be entertained. If you don't think you'll be able to make it to that space, avoid at all costs because, barring this movie being intentionally deceptively bad, it's actually just awful, borderline unwatchable, and, despite being released, unreleasable.

The Farm by Tom Robb Smith

I really enjoyed this novel about a woman who may or may not be crazy narrating, to her son, the events of what happened to her in an effort to get him on her side against her husband. The book is billed as a mystery and it is to the extent that the author withholds the what, why, and how but I'd say it's really more of a character story wrapped in a mystery and that its main thrust is that the story puts you, the reader, in the same position as the son, i.e. if this were your mom, would you think she was crazy or would you think she was the victim of something real that your father had done to her? That mystery is really what kept the story going for me as the story itself is simple: a woman and her husband buy a farm in Sweden for their retirement and either there's something very shady happening in the isolated rural community they move to or not. There's another thread overlaying the mom's story about the son not having come out about being gay but it's really completely useless and in fact I'm honestly not sure why it was in the book at all. It didn't detract because it was barely present but it was there nonetheless. The events that happen on the farm aren't momentous which is why I wouldn't say it's a mystery in that sense - and am noting it in case you're thinking this book is a thriller of some kind which is what the publisher wants you to think - because the events are minor and all the mystery relies on the mother's interpretation of other people's behavior. Thus in some ways the story is very mundane and it's the setup - she was briefly institutionalized before the doctors released her and then flees to England to tell her son her story first while her husband is frantically coming after her - that generates the mystery. This is why I'm not going into the plot details as there kind of aren't any. The mother's interpretation of those details and your - the reader's - questioning whether or not those interpretations are valid and what might really have happened in Sweden is where the drive of this book lies. I really liked it. I mean once I understood that I wasn't in a thriller but rather in this psychological assessment, I was into it, and, even though at a certain point I drew my own conclusion about whether or not the mother had had some kind of breakdown or was genuinely the victim of a conspiracy, it didn't matter because by that point I was interested in seeing how it all turned out and if we'd find out one way or the other. I think if that's not your mindset, you'll find the book to be slow because, as noted, not much happens; if it is your mindset, like if you get into the spirit of the book in which you, a child, are really paying attention to your parent and trying to understand what happened and whether it was real and if one parent is turning on the other or not and then, once you draw your own conclusion, what you do about that, well then I think you'll inhale this book like I did.

TV/Streaming:

The Boys (Season 3):

I'd say this most recent season of a show in which superheroes are a sort of corporate commodity reverted back to its season 1-ness which isn't a compliment (hmm I guess I never published that review) especially since season 2 demonstrated how entertaining the show could be (how could I not have published that review either, me?!?!). So the gist of show for those who haven't seen yet but are also somehow riveted by reading a review of the third season of an unwatched show: superheroes are the product of some kind of drug where there was an experiment ages ago - I'm honestly a bit hazy on the backstory meaning it's possible I'm just inventing it - where pregnant women were injected with something and their kids came out with superpowers. These kids, once grown up, are part of a large squad sent off to do various superhero-y things depending in part on their power levels but mostly on whether or not they can be marketed with the most popular ones treated like megastars. On the other side are people who think superheroes working for a corporation (to hardly mention superheroes in general) is a bad idea and those people - the eponymous Boys - go off and oppose the corporation and their superheroes more through wiliness than anything though, given that that's absurd, later seasons have either brought in ex-superheroes to work for them or they've given themselves temporary powers using some drug. Meaning it was human v. superhero and now it's kind of superhero v. superhero. This mushiness over what the show is and its rules around what's possible and what's not is, in part, a piece of why the series is mediocre at best. For these sorts of shows to work, there need to be Achilles heels all over the place because otherwise the world is constantly knocking you out of its own reality, like if no one, not even another superhero, is powerful enough to kill the #1 superhero, then there's either (a) no drama at all or (b) no logic at all or (c) in this show both. There's a sort of sarcasm to the show that I guess is supposed to be amusing but for me never hits, but there's also a real dragginess to it because none of the characters are particularly well-drawn (asterisk on the season 2 lead character who, without spoilering, was very well-drawn (though I think the actor was mostly responsible for making that character so alive and not the writers) and set up a clear and logical antagonist for everything that was going on). They're blunt, like: the Iowa good-girl superhero, the nice guy, the closeted lesbian superhero, the not-nice-but-solid-underneath guy, the hairtrigger guy, etc. It feels like the show doesn't know what it is, as in"I'm a quippy action show, but with drama, and I'm about corporations and power only I'm not because unpowered people have power over powered people when it's convenient for me, and I'll have my characters talk as if they're in meaningful relationships without actually showing the soap opera development of those relationships, oh I also have plot when I need it but no real ticking clocks (except for ones I toss in there when I realize I have no ticking clocks but Amazon ordered 8 episodes and I only have enough plot for two), and yeah that's me!" It's really flaccid because unlike, say, Umbrella Academy (ugh yet another review I forgot to publish stop that, me!) which has a similar vibe and where there's kind of the same ticking clock each season (world destruction), there at least IS something that the characters are doing and up against every season. In this show? Really the first few episodes were more or less people sitting around talking about their existential crises and then around episode 6 the show woke up and remembered it was supposed to be an action series and went ahead and did that. Blargh. I mean I didn’t DNF and will no doubt watch future seasons, but I can't imagine binging it because many episodes are just so sluggish - in fact, up until the final three episodes I don't think I made it through an entire episode in one sitting without getting so bored I needed to go watch something else. Season 2 was good though because of that lead actor but, yeah, I'm not so hopeful for future seasons but I guess I'll see <yawn>.

South Side (Season 1):

Bearing in mind that comedy is subjective, I found this series about (mostly) Black people on the south side of Chicago to be crazy hilarious. I'm noting Black because the point of the series is give us a very particular and to me sharply funny lens on various characters - cops, retail store employees, some aspiring venture capitalists - that are more often presented in terms of drama, like crime or drugs or whatnot, whereas this show is just about people living their lives but infused with perspectives, attitudes, and plot points that are specific to a world I hadn't seen before, as in there's an entire episode - and in fact this episode was the turning point for me from "yeah amusing show" to "genius" - devoted to one character's efforts to get the right wig for her high school reunion (well it's actually a funeral but a bunch of her high school friends will be there so she's viewing it as a reunion, a setup in and of itself I thought was pretty entertaining) combined with another character getting stuck on a roof, which doesn't sound like much but, with both plots, they were taken to hilarious and, in the wig plot, sort of interestingly character-driven dramatic, extremes. To me. I can't emphasize the “to me” part enough. I thought this show was genius in its writing and its combo of absurdity and real - kind of like Corporate (finally a review I can link to - here) a bit in tone - but that may not be your response so if you've noticed across the eons of Media Report that our humor doesn't line up, well you've been warned if you end up watching and don’t like it. What I loved about the show most of all was the writing as it was super sharp though not apparent to moi up until the wig episode, but really from wig onwards it was just kind of hilarious genius. I also liked that these were characters I hadn't really seen portrayed before, to hardly mention in circumstances that were both deeply specific but also, via the writing, managed to spiral into something either bigger or even more specific, either of which outcome was totally satisfying. You can kind of feel the love the writers have for their characters and the subsequent humanity that infuses everything and allows you to laugh, by which I mean you're laughing because of someone rather than at them - it's not cringe comedy - and that combined with the fun acting and ridiculous yet somehow character-grounded plots made me absolutely love this series and I'm knocking wood that the subsequent seasons are as good or better than the latter half of this one.

Movies:

Plane - This is an indescribably bad action movie that I'm going to attempt to describe anyway. And to be clear: I have no problem with a dumb action movie (John Wick - yes, please!) and in fact I initially thought this Gerard Butler/Mike Colter film about a plane crash resulting in a hostage situation and a rescue attempt - you can easily fill in all the blanks yourself there as they're exactly as generic as you're imagining right now - would be some entertaining dumb fun. And I was wrong. My take on the entire film was: I'm not bored... but I'm not interested. There was also one deeply deeply strange component to the movie but the plot first: Gerard Butler is flying a NYE flight - presumably to justify why there are only 10 people on the plane (read: the studio couldn't afford more than 10) - one of whom is handcuffed ex-army (or somesuch) dude Mike Colter who's a murderer but for all the right reasons plus a bunch of other types - the asshole, the self-absorbed GenZers, etc. - and there's some kind of engine blowout and maybe an unexpected storm (I can't remember, it was too dumb) and they crash land on some island. In the meantime, a hostage gang on a neighboring island decides to check out the crash and see if there are any people alive to ransom and even more in the meantime, there's an airline-crash-in-hostile-territories-where-neighboring-island-gangs-might-come-over-to-take-people-hostage consultant who advises the airline honchos to send in a crack team of Navy Seal-type experts to find the plane and save the passengers because... honestly I don't really know, something about the government being too slow, but really this character raised many of the stupidity issues with this movie which, again, almost made it good-bad but never managed to really get there. Like does anything I just wrote about the consultant make a lick of sense to you, not least being how there's enough business generated in this very particular arena for him to have an expertise and consulting business in it at all? The movie is filled with this kind of stuff, like there's a scene where Gerard Butler is in some decrepit office in the jungle and a random guy for no reason whatsoever and with zero dialogue just comes in and starts beating the crap out of him, a feeling I could relate to admittedly but still. But the thing that made this movie just truly weird was that it looked like it was shot in the mid '60s. The airplane they used was so ancient it didn't even have an engine on the wing like modern jumbo jets; there was this odd hazy look to it, kind of washed out like you'd expect a '60s movie to be when viewed today, only I don't think that was intentional as in I don't think it was a filmic choice but rather some cheapness with a heaping of lack-of-talent tossed in for good measure. It looked like they spent 98% of the budget on their big(ish) name actors and just made the movie with what was left - I really think I'm right about this. As you can see from the review, the movie wasn't bad enough to have inadvertently hilarious sequences worth recounting nor was it engaging enough to write about the cool plot or whatever. Not boring but not interesting, as in you can totally group-watch it and people can kind of make fun of it while playing on their phones and actually watch the whole thing rather than DNF or equally the power could go out halfway through and no one will ever think to turn this on again. If that's what you're looking for, and in some ways it fit the bill the night I watched, here you go.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

So some Janice rec'ed this meta-genre novel about what if the surviving virgins from cliche slasher movies formed a support group for each other only to find a slasher was coming after all of them and thanks, Janice, because the book was totally fun! Though the story is set today, the book is nonstop '70s/'80s slasher-movie references and in fact most of the "final girls" are lifted more or less directly from things like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. but with all of those stories treated as fact and now it's 30 or 40 years later and those women have moved on with their lives but are still traumatized. And the book itself is written with the heightened ridiculousness of all those movies which will either be fun - me - or unreadable - you if you aren't into that particular flavor. I'm not going into plot, not so much for spoiler reasons because, in that genre, you already know what's going to happen just not how or how it's going to turn out in the end, but because the pleasure of the book is that it's very much in the now. The events are happening to our first-person narrator and you therefore get an enjoyable mix of backstory and nonstop present-tense action as she tries to figure out what's going on, why, who, and how to stop it. There was definitely a frustration with the lead character in that the author made this slasher experience a character journey as well based on what happened to our lead in the past, how she related to the other women, and her choices going forward, all of which was good, but I'd say one problem is that there's a certain passivity and/or bad decision-making at the beginning which I found to be a little annoying because I didn't want to stay with a character like that the whole time, i.e. someone who, as in those movies, more or less screams and runs (not exactly that way in the book but you get the gist). I'm noting this because if you find yourself in the same space, keep going, the author gets it all there in the end, but it definitely sat in that spot too long for me to the point where, even though I was enjoying the book, I contemplated DNF'ing because I just didn't want to be with that character anymore or in the - being vague here to avoid spoilering - circumstances she was in that lifted it out of real as in legal reality and into the space of slasher-film reality and I began to feel as if I was in a world without rules anymore with a character who was a cipher and nothing more. I was wrong, so if you end up feeling that too, keep going! This is just straight-up entertainment in a sort of heightened real world that plays out its ideas in a really entertaining way even if you're only a casual fan of the genre (like I don't think I made it past Halloween II for example). The writing's breezy, there's a ton of action, and, beyond the character quibble I noted, I flew through it and you could happily inhale this on a cross-country flight.

TV/Streaming:

Fauda (Season 1):

Third (fourth?) time's the charm (or at least not DNF) maybe for this Israeli action series which covers both an anti-terrorist unit and the Palestinians they're chasing not in a heroes/villains way but in a way that seems pretty even for both sides. The reason I started and stopped this show multiple times wasn't that it was bad but rather than it felt really generic with a bunch of Israeli macho hotheads grabbing Palestinians off the street and interrogating them and it just reminded me of all the worst parts of the series 24, not so much in terms of the righteousness but in terms of what seemed like some really dumb behavior for an anti-terrorist squad. For example, everyone's face was uncovered yet one of them was also kinda sorta undercover and, well, doesn't it seem like a bad idea for an undercover operative infiltrating a terrorist cell to expose his face while working with his counterparts? After a while it just began to annoy me because it felt as if I couldn't trust the writers, like they were too lazy to cover someone's face so how could I count on them to take me through a whole story? And, spoiler alert, that assessment remained true throughout this season. There were some incredibly blatantly dumb moves, ones that were there solely for plot convenience (don't worry, I won't mention them for spoiler reasons) to hardly mention in the final episode one of the Palestinian characters behaved in a way that was so incomprehensible that initially I thought I'd missed something but later, after some intensive Googling, realized that, no, it was just bad writing where the writers didn't explain or even imply the character's behavior at all but just had him do it then called it a day. So why, you're dying to know, did I finish this season and am planning to watch the future seasons? Basically because a fellow Janice told me the show got massively better and that the things I disliked and which made me DNF in the past went away and it became much more textured and interesting. And I can actually imagine that. I mean the basic setup of these two regions at odds with one another but right next to (or within depending on your political perspective) each other and where there's some combo of violence and oppression but also just people trying to live their lives but, because of these larger circumstances, unable to is there in the show. Look it's not like this show is terrible, just over the top a bit, somewhat ill-plotted, and very very very unshowered but there's definitely character there plus each episode is under 40 minutes so, for the promise of better to come, I was okay watching this season and will assuredly report back on whether or not my (minimal) time investment was worth it.

The Bridge (Season 2):

Well I totally got into season 1 of this British competition reality show about people building a bridge for $100k (maybe that should be the pound symbol actually) and tl;dr season 2 is even better. Before everyone drops everything and rushes off to the internets to find this show the way everyone normally does when I recommend something, I must give a few caveats because there's another way to view this show, i.e. as a total snooze. That's not me, but it might be you. So. The first season was 6 episodes and this most recent season is 8 and the extra few episodes earned their keep because of the way the producers upped the game this season (which I won't reveal for spoiler reasons though really there's no spoiler there but whatever). The game, which has a kinda Survivor-ish vibe, puts normal people in hideous physical circumstances where they're given instructions about how to build these floating bridge pieces - the prize is on an island a mile or so thataway - but really none of them has expertise in anything so it's just pure pain for them. They also - and this is part of what makes it fun - don't know exactly how the game is going to be played, as in they don't know certain facts about the nature of the game nor do they know exactly how the prize money works, and that ignorance creates some interest within the social gameplay because they may or may not be screwing themselves over. Also this season they brought in a survivalist who talks to camera (and to the contestants sometimes) clarifying why certain things are so difficult and the choices they'll have to make. And this is where the producers are super clever because they absolutely toss in challenges that pit individual self-interest against the group which allows for a lot of dramatic fretting and snakiness. They also cast a wide variety of people with a wide variety of social tactics. This is in direct contrast to Survivor (typical season review here) which has kind of gotten trapped in this thing where everyone more or less has the exact same social game. On this show, some people are playing a la Survivor (deceptive snakes) but others seem oblivious to the social gameplay nature of the show, perhaps in part because they don't realize how it's all going to come together at the end to win the money or perhaps it's just who they are and how they want to play, plus, very unlike Survivor, it's a nonstop sometimes literally as in a 24/7 physical challenge to build all those bridge pieces and keep them together. And this where I get to the caveat: I 100% understand how people could find this show to be boring. Not a lot happens and what does happen is fairly repetitive. I mean they're building a bridge; it requires X number of pieces; you watch normal people be miserable and rained on while they chop down trees and tie things together and whatnot. Yes, there's a lot of personality stuff in there and the producers are very interested in messing with the personal vs group gain. I'm invoking Survivor but part of me knows that Survivor fans might also be very disappointed with this show because it doesn't have challenges, there's no voting off an island and thus no immunity as there's nothing to play for in that sense. You're just watching people hack at trees and be really wet while scheming to camera and dealing with the curveballs the producers throw. It has more of a social experiment via game vibe than Survivor and, for me with this relatively low episode count, I was into it.

Movies:

You People - This was a shockingly (for me) entertaining comedy about a desperate abrasive White guy who finds true love and companionship with a Black woman and what happen when their somewhat racist parents - Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus - clash, rudely but politely, over the relationship. The reason for the shocking part is I didn't go into this movie with high hopes (“high” being the operative word here BTW and make no promises for those not in that state) at all as it's not the kind of thing I'd normally turn on. But some Janice said it was super funny and, bearing in mind that humor is totally subjective, I thought it was too. Not only was Jonah Hill's character cringe-y in a way I found to be entertaining but also the writing served to override his JonahHillness which I'm generally meh on. Basically, he was a vehicle for delivering cringe situations that I found to be funny and which escalated to what to me was the real comedy which was Eddie and Julia doing their thing, meaning I'd say one part of your feeling about this movie will be based on how you feel about the lead actors in general because the basis of all the comedy is what you love (or hate depending) about them with nonstop cringe quips. Your other feeling about the movie is whether or not you find it offensive or that other place where you don't find it offensive but at some level you either find it obvious or just don't want to hear about the topics of race and class in comedy form for around 90 minutes. I'm not sure what it even means to be offended by a movie so that's not my metric but Google around and you will see a LOT of people hated this movie for those very reasons. To me, the central determinant in my enjoyment, at least of comedy, is, beyond the obvious subjective sense of humor stuff, whether I feel there are enough sharp lines to justify sticking around through all the somewhat shallow bits and setup. I'd say 30 Rock is a prime example of this where you either click with the rat-a-tat humor where, in a worst case scenario, only a few jokes across an episode will hit for you even if most of the rest don't, but mostly they hit. This movie is the same. It's Jewish White quip-battling Muslim Black and all the attendant micro and macro aggressions, cliches about and by each other, and efforts by the parents to interfere with the main relationship all packaged in a romantic comedy formula that, while not original in the big scheme of things, hit all the beats when they’re supposed to be hit and keeps the whole thing moving along. If cringe isn't your thing or if you're looking for more of a romantic romantic comedy (I mean I guess unless Jonah Hill is the object of your romantic fantasy in which case you'll go nuts) or if the subject matter bugs you or if any of those actors aren't your thing, then you will probably dislike this movie. I had none of that; I liked the cringe, I thought the writing was fun and snappy, I liked Julia and Eddie, and I liked the overall rudeness of the whole thing and thus found it to be highly (noting once again!) amusing.

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

Yes, Agatha Christie, the author I haven't read since I was like 10 and inhaled all of her books though I'd never heard of this one which she wrote later in life. The reason I wound up reading this book is that I mentioned the above to a fellow Janice about how I used to enjoy Dame Agatha but that there was, not a childishness, but maybe a simplicity or something to her books that I'd outgrown and said Janice suggested I check out this one. It's definitely different from her other books in that it's not a detection story nor anything cozy but rather a mystery generated out of questions around what actually happened in the novel's central doomed romance. It's a rich-girl/poor-guy story told from the first-person POV of the poor-guy - a lower class Englishman - and that doomed romance is setup almost immediately and infuses the entire book; it starts with a how-could-something-so-wonderful-go-so-bad melancholy (kind of Rebecca-like maybe) and then unfolds from there. Since it's Agatha, it's definitely a mystery, and I won't be spoilering anything, but the basic gist of the plot revolves around a seemingly cursed property, a young, stifled woman coming into her inheritance, her handlers (stepmother, lawyer, banker, etc.), her not lady's maid - companion maybe? - because the book is set I think the '60s or maybe '70s but something along those lines, and her efforts to free herself from all these people as she falls in love with the English guy. It has a kind of gothic, windswept vibe to it and while not fun exactly - I mean it is, as noted, doom-laden from the start after all - it's still a pleasurable unfolding of a story. As far as the mystery goes, I wouldn't say I saw the resolution coming, and the process of getting there was also fairly enjoyable. Look, the Dame can definitely write and this book is pretty short and if you're reading hesitation in this review, it's that the book is very much about mood rather than plot per se and sometimes that spooky, moors-ish mood combined with people flying over to the UK on a 5 hour flight - a combo of older and modern that I liked btw - made it feel sluggish in parts because those sorts of books of necessity are a lot of time in the narrator's head talking about thoughts and feelings and foreshadowing and some of that felt a little much to me. But really this is still a good book and frankly if you're into that vibe, you'll probably inhale it and even if not, it was interesting to read such a familiar author in what I'd consider to be a more adult guise and that made it worth it.

TV/Streaming:

Magpie Murders:

This is a mediocre though fine enough series version of the deeply mediocre Agatha Christieish book (review here and review for even worse sequel here) about an editor searching for the missing final chapter of a murdered author's final novel. The idea is that there's a linkage between the events in the final novel and, ultimately, the real present-tense mystery and the series intercuts between them and, frankly, not only are there really no meaningful links, but the past-tense mystery is kinda boring, primarily because everyone in it is a piece of Dame Agatha cardboard with no character beyond things like "the suspicious gardener" or "the pawn shop owner with a past" or whatever. The present-tense story is more fun in part because the editor isn't an investigator but rather just someone who ends up solving the mystery in her hunt for the final book. Though really none of it makes a lick of sense, neither of the mysteries (and this was true in my vague memory of the book as well). The cops in both, for instance, are idiots, one a bumpkin and one refusing to actually investigate anything for no reason whatsoever other than he doesn't like the nosy editor. On the one hand I could totally tell you all the plot details of both because they're completely irrelevant to the conclusion of both mysteries in that there's absolutely no way whatsoever that anyone could ever figure them out, though the explanations make logical sense. I'm guessing this is because that's how Agatha did it, where you have a bunch of people who could've done it with plenty of red herrings then Poirot puts it all together at the end. This series is that and the ending is ridiculous, especially the present-tense one which really doesn't make any sense either in its explanation, the aftermath of its reveal, nor the editor's behavior. But in some ways all these critiques don't matter if you go into this show knowing it's dumb and not particularly well-made (to hardly mention, other than the lead, one of the worsts casts I've seen in a British show to date which makes me think they spent all their money on that lead and scraped bottom for the rest) plus the direction seems to be referencing something that I was clueless about, like the score would get very dramatically strange at certain points and, I don't know, maybe there were British mysteries made in the '50s/'60s/'70s that had that style and which I was totally unfamiliar with. But it was jarring enough that I'm writing about it. I know I know this is all critiques and seemingly gives no reason to watch but the series is only 6 45 minute episodes and very easy to get through and equally easy to forget. The present-tense stuff has enough going on with the lead to keep it amusing and the past-tense stuff, while more turgid, is at least an investigation so there's some interest in seeing where it all goes. It's a barely classed-up procedural - imagine a very special 6-part Murder She Wrote - but sometimes, like on a rainy day or when you want something that more or less holds your attention without requiring much thought, that's just fine and when that day comes for you, there's this.

Masterchef Australia (Season 14):

I've said it before - though maybe only in my mind because I can’t find the Media Report where I actually put it in print - and I will say it again (or maybe for the first time): Masterchef Australia is the best Masterchef and possibly one of the best competition cooking reality shows out there. As a reminder: this is a series about aspirational home cooks competing in various challenges either for immunity or to save themselves from elimination where 24 cooks are whittled down to 1 winner. The show is great for several reasons. First, the producers have given it a, to me, perfect blend of enough backstory/personality so I can get invested (or not) in certain contestants while primarily focusing on the competition, i.e. the food. Second, all of the challenges are on-the-spot meaning no advance prep meaning in every episode you're watching people wing it which really does make for a more interesting challenge because even though (obviously) you can't taste anything, you can still compare (due to the excellent production) how various people are dealing with whatever was thrown at them and their own creative processes where they grope to come up with something that they think will work and their own hesitations about where they're worried they're screwing themselves over. While some challenges repeat - there's generally a "mystery box" meaning ingredients hidden under a box where the contestants have to make something using just what's in the box plus some pantry staples like salt, oil, flour, etc. - there are always new ones every week which keeps everything interesting because it forces you - me - to think what you (okay, me again) would do. Like some challenges allow the contestants to get better ingredients in exchange for less cooking time and it's interesting to watch that calculus. As with so much in Australia, it's all mega-sized - I mean those frigging Australian spiders, right?!? - meaning the show is like 64 episodes a season which is also part of what makes it work as that's enough time to get a feel for people meaning, because the show is zero contestant drama but a lot of personal drama (like struggling with depression or whatnot), it's more about people trying to overcome their own issues in order to succeed - not that all of them have some drama, but there's usually something there to keep it engaging on a human level. Third, the judges are pretty articulate and, while they're supportive, they're in it more to help people leave as better cooks than they entered so the critiques are sometimes harsh and always clear which as a viewer of something intangible like food on a screen is critical. And, fourth and finally, Australian cooking is heavily influenced by Southeast Asia so there are always ingredients and dishes that I've never seen before and which inspire my own imaginary world where I might actually go off and cook them (not that I ever have but still). If you're into cooking competition shows and prefer them with a more measured pace (as opposed to the Gordon Ramsay pace, my goto for what I hate about many American competition reality shows where they become a mashup between a competition and the contrivance of the Housewives and what am I investing in if I know a lot of it is fake?), go hunt this one down.

Movies:

Sorcerer - This is a '70s movie in both the literal and artistic senses that, apparently, is most famous for being a highly anticipated potential blockbuster that came out at the exact same time as the original Star Wars and thus totally tanked at the boxoffice. The basic plot of the film is four shady criminals - a Parisian fraudster, a Palestinian terrorist, a Mexican hitman, and Roy Scheider as a low-level thief who robs the wrong person - all wind up in a total shithole in an unnamed impoverished South American country where their only way out is to drive two raggedy-ass trucks filled with leaking dynamite through a jungle and up mountainous dirt roads to deliver the explosives to some rebels (I think) in exchange for cash. The way in which this movie is very '70s is that it has a detached vibe to it, like the first third or so is mini-movies showing the backstories of those four and how they wound up where they wound up. There's then a fair amount of not much happening followed by the circumstances where they find themselves in these two trucks followed by the bulk of the movie which is the horrific trip and the awful and dangerous circumstances necessary to get the trucks where they need to go. I think the movie was going for a kind of Heart of Darkness thing (I'm not sure if Apocalypse Now had been released at that point or not and as usual am far too lazy to Google) where the journey is meant to serve as some kind of metaphor for Life. I wasn't bored exactly and some of the truck stuff was pretty interesting mostly because it looked so atrocious to film. I mean there were no VFX back then so these were all practical stunts - like the trucks being driven over a rickety rope bridge - so from that standpoint it was kind of cool to watch. I guess the character emptiness is a hallmark of these higher-end artistic '70s movies, like I wouldn't say either The Conversation or The French Connection had much passion to them but were detached and observational of their characters rather than immersive where you're into whatever the characters are up to. This movie had the same thing and it's not a criticism; it's just the style. Also, it's not as if the characters were scrappy wily criminals who had a great plan to get out of their circumstances; instead an opportunity arose and they were chosen to deal with it so you don't get a great sense of who they are as people other than the mini-movies from the setup, just their desperation and willingness to go to extremes because the alternative - being stuck in the shithole forever - is even worse. I wouldn't say I loved the movie but I also wouldn't say it was a waste of time. I found it hard to engage with it for the reasons above but also found it somewhat clinically interesting, so I'd say this movie is probably worth your time as long as you know what to expect going in and, if you're a fan of these types of '70s movies and haven't seen this one, you should probably add it to your list.

Ashes of the Sun (Burningblade & Silvereye #1) by Django Wexler

This was a completely entertaining first in a fantasy (in case you couldn't tell from the title) trilogy about a long-estranged brother/sister who, for various spoilerable reasons, wind up on kinda opposite sides of a larger plotline. What I primarily enjoyed about this book is that the writing, while honestly irritatingly uncopyedited (like sentences switch tense randomly as do pronouns) for which I don't really blame the author since uh I only make 5 bajillion missed typos a day including no doubt some right here in uncopyedited Media Report but rather whomever published this, is very very speedy. The book is actually kind of doorstopper length but I zipped right through it and always looked forward to picking it back up. Look I'm not saying it’s the height of anything - the world is sorta generic (not entirely but components of it) and I wouldn't say the rules of the dual magic systems are all that clear which is problematic because there's a lot of it in the book - but the characters are fun and there's pretty much nonstop action. The sister has one form of magic and is being trained by this dictatorial group that's out to suppress the other form of magic the brother has access to - he's a scroungy/thief-type though with a moral compass - and there are lots of mysteries, presumably to be resolved in future books, around where this clash is heading and why it exists in the first place. I'm avoiding spoilering here but essentially the current system is the result of some centuries-ago mega-battles that wiped out (more or less) all the combatants and people in the present-tense of the book are either using whatever they can find that survived from that era or have some inherent power both of which are bound by energy limitations meaning power runs out and people then have to rely on skill and wits. The book is somewhat overwritten and there's a fair amount of shoe-leather between the action sequences and, as mentioned, a vagueness (unintentional I think) around the magic stuff, but really none of that stopped me from inhaling it. You can see the shape of where the trilogy might be headed what with the distant past stuff and these two opposing powers and political factions within the sister's world and perhaps a third outside power coming in to mess with everything (not clear on that yet) and these two siblings on opposite sides of the moral fence but still family kind of at the center of it all. And that's all fine for what I'd say is an airplane-read fantasy because it's so easy to just flip through and really despite my critiques that's the testament to the author and I'll be delighted to start the sequel pronto.

TV/Streaming:

Sky Castle:

This is a completely gripping drama about hypercompetitive teens and the extent to which they and their parents will go to ensure they get into the college of their choice. While it took me like two episodes or so to really get into it, once this show got going, it was nonstop binge-y dramatic awesomeness. The show focuses around, more or less, five families in an extremely wealthy suburb of Seoul, all of whom are obsessed with getting their kids top grades and, subsequently, into medical school (which I gather is an undergrad decision in Korea) and what happens when one of the moms hires the world's most ruthless admissions consultant to guide her daughter through to the end. While I wouldn't say it's a satire because it's grounded in real human drama and feelings, it definitely has a heightened vibe to it, like some of the characters border on OTT in how they behave and the show itself goes to some very extreme places as it continues. But really that's the point. It’s talking about how these families, due to cultural, personal, or societal pressure, let a snake in the garden and the horrific consequences of that decision. I'm being vague to avoid spoilering here and, as every episode ends on some kind of cliffhanger, there's plenty to spoiler so I'm not going into the plot too much, but the snake in this case is really one in which the pursuit of external markers of success - grades, job titles, etc. - comes at the expense of internal life and dreams and how dire that choice is. I'm noting the tone because it's present for the entire series so if it's bugging you in the first few episodes, you should probably stop because it's inherent to the way the story is told. All thematic aside, it's a big juicy drama about seemingly small issues - maneuvering for a promotion, romantic competition over a classmate, etc. - which spiral and spiral and spiral into a lot of backstabbing and betrayals and how far people will go to screw each other over and whether or not they'll pull it back before it gets too bad. While the theme itself around competition to get into top colleges may not be new, I thought the way this show did it, packaged into a plot based on a combo of extreme behavior and vicious microaggressions, really allowed the theme to make its point while still being totally entertaining to the end (well, except the final episode, which wasn't bad or anything just unnecessary as the series had wrapped itself up in the penultimate episode and the final one kind of played like an extended epilogue). What can I say, it's a well-written, well-acted drama that's plotty, character-driven, and actually about something oh and really never pulls its punches meaning episode to episode it's not clear how, or if, it's all going to be resolved all of which adds up to a drama that IJHO is totally top-notch.

Wreck (Season 1):

This is a really-bad-yet-I-background-watched-anyway goofy thriller about a guy sneaking onto a cruise line crew in order to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his sister. It's in the wacky/horror vein, like lots of absurd gore and ridiculous behavior combined with sassy characters, boring romantic drama, and quips. I'll put it this way: most of the murders (and there are plenty) are committed by someone wearing a duck costume and all the leads are early 20s. Honestly my reference point for this kind of film is thin because I kind of hate the horror/comedy mashup as it ends up succeeding at neither. Horror (or slasher I guess in this case) is scary because it plays on fears we all have of being in a situation where there's a killer who has it in for us and, being normal non-military-trained types, have few to no options except to run, hide, maybe fight back, maybe come up with a plan, but mostly hope the bad-they dies before we do. I get comedy as release from tension but in these movies the comedy and characters tend to be super broad e.g. hiding from the killer in a dumpster… then emerging covered in gravy! Like I get it: the idea is to pingpong back and forth between scares and release from scares but for me the comedy is generally lame and really only serves to undercut whatever tension was being generated by the horror. Plus absurd horror in general as with Squid Game (review here) and same for this series just becomes boring. A bunch of corpses and blood spurting and people screaming and ridiculous deaths only, for me, highlights that I'm watching nothing remotely real and horror kind of relies on an emotional or amygdala connection to the events. So this show, which I know I've barely described but how much do you need? Boat crew, mean bosses, something going on, lots of teen (though none of them are teens) drama but in a dumb way like where the way we know two characters are meant to be together is via swelling music and the camera pushing in on flirty/smiley eyes as opposed to, say, an actual character connection, and a lot of people behaving like total idiots for plot reasons since the entire show relies on both the good guys and bad guys doing things absolutely no one ever would. To a large extent, I had this problem with Squid Game, like it's one thing to have a few people who are super into murdering strangers, but a crew of 50-100 people who are totally fine with it just pushes credulity, not so much because I don't believe 50-100 people would be willing to murder but rather because I don't think 50-100 psychopaths would be super into respecting hierarchy and, like, not killing their boss when their boss yells at them for screwing up to hardly mention keeping their mouths shut when they go home. Whatever. If young adult horror/comedy is your thing, maybe you'll be into this show, but I thought it was unbearable and left it on mostly because I didn't want to write a review about DNFing it and I didn’t DNF and aren't you all very impressed with me now?

Movies:

Downton Abbey: A New Era - Well the tl;dr here is whatever you've thought of Downton Abbey to date is exactly what you'll think of this movie. For me, while I like the series better than the films for the simple reason that there's a lot more time thus more room for character stuff, I've enjoyed both films because they have that nice soothing Downton-ness where you know whatever minor dramas arise and no matter how outraged any one particular character is, it'll all be fine in the end. In fact what I've liked most about the movies is that guarantee, as in I know exactly what I'm going to get when I watch one and I 100% get what I was promised. The plot of this movie is pure fluff. A film company rents Downton for a bit and there's some ridiculous and delightful bits of drama around the upstairs/downstairs characters being either outraged or charmed by all the lowbrow film people plus a bit of history as the movie and its stars try to adapt to the looming talkie era. Meanwhile there's another plot that involves part of the group going to a villa in France and like who doesn't want to go to a villa in France for some very polite distress around a spoilerable plot issue plus everyone making fun of the French while also kind of being mocked themselves. There is zero new here and everything goes exactly where you expect it which, as noted, is precisely why I watch these movies. Yes, there are some dramatic bits, all of which you can see coming, but that's also part of it. There's something really strange about knowing everything that's going to happen but being absorbed by it anyway and I think it all comes down to the actors in that they've crafted characters where it doesn't matter that I know how it's all going to turn out because I want to watch them, those particular people, turn it out that way. And I think that's probably the main difference between the series and the movies. In the series, I was engaged by the world and the various plots the characters were undergoing plus how those plots spread across the seasons. But I think the movies show that good actors with a clear idea of their characters can make plot somewhat irrelevant as you, the audience, are simply enjoying watching people move through their emotions and thoughts and words and interactions and banter and all that, as it turns out, is enough for me, at least in a world as familiar and comforting - or, if you’re a Downton-hater, insanely boring - as this one.

Claire de Witt and the City of the Dead (Claire de Witt #1) by Sara Gran

While I can't say I loved the underlying mystery or its unraveling in this first in a PI series, the writing was so strong and the characters so sharply written that I'll be reading future books in this series regardless of whether or not the mysteries improve. To be clear: it's not that the mystery was awful or anything; rather, it was just a combination of pedestrian - missing DA, New Orleans, some gang stuff - and conveniently solved though, and this is where it gets tricky with this book, part of the way the first-person lead operates is through some loopy methods meant to tap into her underlying intuition, like I Ching or viewing seemingly random events as clues which they in the end turn out to be. In other words, it's a mystery book with fate or luck or tapping into some spiritual ether baked in as the solution to the crime. Honestly I found it a little annoying since it meant the lead, just via wandering around, bumped into all the clues she needed to solve the crime. But that annoyance was overwhelmed by the strength of the writing which was very specific and entertaining and kind of weird in a good way and absolutely captured the flavor of the lead and the people around her - think Confederacy of Dunces and the way that book etched some very specific characters. The PI lead is a mess, kind of mean yet also kind of friendly and with a never-say-no attitude and a certain fearlessness that inevitably leads her to trouble and/or getting incredibly wasted on whatever drug she's handed. She also has a deeply held philosophy about the nature of detective work as summed up in an obscure, underground, French and also, in the larger sense, deeply French book which is almost a Jungian theorizing about the nature of solving crime. This is what I found to be so amusing about the book. It's just so particular. Plus the lead has a pretty wry sense of humor which adds to the book's overall appeal. I'd call this book more fiction in a mystery package than an outright mystery novel because, unlike with other mysteries where you, the reader, are part of the unraveling of the crime, that just isn't possible in this book because it relies on these seemingly random events rather than clues. Like I said, I didn't care in the end because I enjoyed the writing so much, but I'm noting it because you may prefer your mysteries much more mystery-like and that just isn't this book.

TV/Streaming:

Black Monday (Season 3):

This third season of a sarcastic, self-aware comedy series I've previously enjoyed (prior season reviews here and here) sadly tanked out because the writers, literally and figuratively, lost the plot, by which I mean not only is there essentially zero plot this season but they also lost the basic thread of this show. As a reminder, the series is set in late '80s Wall Street at the only Black-run investment firm and the OTT ridiculousness of the characters (plus nonstop self-aware puns then comments on the puns) acts as a kind of tonal excess mirroring the actual excess of that time period. What drove the show prior to this season, though, and allowed it to override its otherwise somewhat unbearable tone - puns and commentary on the puns are wall to wall - was an actual, real driving plot, like a ton of scheming and backstabbing and plays and counterplays all in the name of money and with the leads, in their ridiculous ways, barely scraping by (or not) by the end of each season. Without that plot, there's nothing, as this season sadly demonstrates. The writers made the mistake of thinking we, the audience, cared about the absurd and unrealistic characters, an odd choice because the first two seasons went out of their way to make the characters ridiculous - one antagonist, for example, is a televangelist who lives on a luxury jet that circles the planet nonstop; others are the “Leighman” brothers who are played as evil twins, etc. We, the audience, were never asked to take the characters or their relationships seriously since the show was structured such that it was putting all the characters in whatever situations the the writers needed in order to make points about America, race, and the extreme systemic risks we allow in the service of rich people getting richer. The leads were all cartoons, and, sure, as with any decent cartoon, there are moments of quasi-seriousness within all the levity, but it's as if this season the writers were somehow no longer in on their own joke that they were writing a heightened reality in the service of a commentary/parody. We (I) cared about watching those cartoons in a driving plot around something that had previously only really been shown with White people, i.e. finance and Wall Street. I'm definitively not interested in seeing where they all go post-Wall Street because they're not people and nothing is real - like one starts a jazz record company and why do I care and what show am I in and where's the plot and what does any of this have to do in even vague remote form with anything that went on in prior seasons which were solely about money-grubbing, law-skirting, Wall Streeters taking huge risks that could topple everything and, you know, like the cliche cartoon waiter balancing 30 plates on one finger while wending through a restaurant (actually is that a cliche? it feels cliche or at least something I maybe saw in Bugs Bunny), we're interested in the balancing act and the recovery when it all crashes down and not, uh, the waiter him/her/theirself. So watching, this season, one form a record company, one try to find herself, one a mega success in fashion, etc. but with all the puns and self-aware quips and commentary is just dull unfortunately. If they couldn't have found a way to keep the characters moving forward in the world they were in for the two prior seasons, they should've just ended the show. Sadly there was this season instead. It's a bummer that this show went so downhill and that the writers forgot their own premise and instead tried to have us all pretend that the leads were actual human beings that anyone cared about as opposed to what they had been in prior seasons - quippy joke-a-second ciphers in the service of smartly if absurdly plotted Wall Street satire. Oh well. If there's a 4th season, it's hard to imagine I'll sit through it though I'll probably try an episode to see if it returns to its roots and, if you're thinking of starting this show, well at least the first two seasons were pretty good but just know upfront it doesn't sustain.

My Brilliant Friend (Season 1):

This is the series based on the blockbuster books which I started then got bored with and, at some point, did the exact same with this series (started, bored, stopped) but you know what happened second time around with the series at least? I was bored again... and then I wasn't and then I actually ended up really liking it. The story revolves around two best friends and is very much of a slow slice-of-life examination of that relationship in 1950s (roughly) Naples. This first season covers a time period from grade school to the middle of high school and I'd say the first episode or two, when the girls are much younger, remain tougher to engage with, not because they're bad but because those early episodes are not only setting up a lot of exposition - lots of characters, a poor neighborhood, the subculture and how it operates and its expectations and gender roles, etc. - but also because child drama just, for me at least, really isn't super interesting. This isn't a flaw of the series as the writing and direction and acting are all really top-notch but rather (I'm guessing) being faithful to books. The first few episodes set up the two leads as the same in that they're both really really smart but very different personality-wise, with one more interior and the other much scrappier. There's also a setup around a local mafia family (or similar) and a lot about the poverty and dearth of opportunities for the people at that time/place, and what makes the series work as it progresses is that the two girls/women start taking very different paths due to life circumstance, luck, or otherwise yet remain bonded to each other. This allows the show to give us essentially three different storylines as you have one lead taking one plot route, the other going somewhere completely different, and then the third plotline as they connect with each other and help each other through their various difficulties. The plots are simple to say - Elena (interior lead) gets a summer job which forces her to confront aspects of sexuality and adolescence; Lila (scrappy lead) is courted by a rich guy she hates and faces family pressure to marry him - but what the series does so well is leave the resolution of those plots very character-based meaning they don't always go where you/me think they would go but rather where these specific characters take them. The series is definitely a slow-paced relationship show but I thought it crafted an interesting story and, despite the pacing and lack of anything super plotty, I was into it because I found myself really drawn to these very specific women and interested in seeing where they'd wind up in their different places yet somehow still together as best friends. Thus I'd say if you, like me, started then stopped but enjoy this kind of moderately-paced slice-of-life drama, it's probably worth giving it another shot as there's clearly some real talent creating this series and, while I'm not rushing into the next season instantly, I know I'll 100% be watching at some point.

Movies:

Gunda - This is an arty (read: slow and black & white) documentary which spends around a few months to a year filming a pig named Gunda from giving birth to her piglets through to some unspecified amount of time later where they're more like adolescents - tweenpigs maybe? Absolutely nothing whatsoever happens. We watch pigs doing pig things; at some point we spend 15 or 20 minutes watching a one-legged rooster wander around the farm; we then watch cows standing there being completely attacked by flies which was by far the most plot-driven and stressful part of the film for me because I desperately needed them to get rid of those flies because they were all over their faces and all that fly buzzing which, despite my abject laziness, almost drove me to grab a can of Raid and scout through my home just in case the flies weren't 100% on my screen. And, spoiler alert, the cows came up with something kind of genius for cows which is they stood next to each other front to back and swatted each other's faces with their tails, though I noticed one wasn't so reciprocal and, like, pig (waah waah)! So that was one plot and the other was the tweenpigs engaged in a nonstop teat-battle in what felt like real-time but I’m guessing was another 20 minutes. I don't know. I mean, it wasn't a nature documentary or anything as there was no narration, and, yeah, it looked cool I guess. But it's 90 minutes and I think it took me 6 viewings to finish and I did that because I was curious if anything ended up happening or if there was at least some interesting insight into farm animal behavior that I hadn't seen before. But no. It looked really hot out there and dry and lots of grass and straw and bugs and mud, all of which served as an affirmation that we humans made the right decision to move indoors, air condition and heat our environments, and attempt to kill everything that wasn't explicitly invited in because living outdoors… shudder. I wonder if this movie would've been more engaging in the theater, like perhaps it would've cast some kind of spell or something. I mean I finished it, but it was all pretty boring. My one takeaway, though, 90 minutes and weeks later is that it's really strange to spend so much time artfully observing the minutiae of lives we're planning to eat.

Parasites by Scott Lyell Gardner, Judy Diamond, & Gabor R. Rcz

This was a somewhat interesting overview of, well, parasites as in worms and their weird strategies for infecting hosts and what a huge part of the ecosystem they make up. By a certain logic, everything's a parasite, like really what's the difference between a tapeworm and, I don't know, agriculture? It's just, of course, that we don't think of our bodies as "environments" and obviously parasites - as with us, monoculture farming, and "drugs" like Roundup - can cause problems within the body though then again it's in a parasite's interest to be somewhat unobtrusive since the less noticeable it is, the less the body will do about it. And, with some parasites, there becomes a strange relationship, neither mutual where both benefit nor commensal where one benefits and one isn't harmed, but one where we're feeding it and it sucks for us but it's also killing harmful bacteria on its own behalf that benefits us and, perhaps, across eons, it may sort of become us like kind of eventually not just become a mutual relationship but become part of our bodies. Strange isn't it but - and this wasn't really central to the book - this happens all the time, as in apparently our mitochondria used to be an independent bacteria that got roped into some kind of parasitic relationship which eventually became the motor of basically all animal life. Same with chlorophyll, which was at one point a something - bacteria? - that got pulled in by a nascent plant feeding off of it and eventually became all plant life. So for me this book, which is really an overview of gross worms and how they jump from intermediate hosts to final hosts (like with malaria and mosquitoes), instigated some thoughts more than was actually about those thoughts. And as an overview, it was fine and informative, but definitely more in the category of a broad list of parasites and how they operate while touching on some underlying evolutionary relationships rather than being about those relationships. And this isn't a criticism as the book never claimed to be a theoretical examination of parasites, evolution, and what constitutes a "body" and whether today's parasites will be tomorrow's cells but it made me wonder about that and was relatively short and if you like this kind of thing, it's worth adding to your shelf.

TV/Streaming:

Better Things (Season 1):

So this is one of those shows I started multiple times because I’d heard it was good but just couldn't vibe with it and is now also one of those shows that, after restarting years later once again, I vibed withish (see Succession S1, Spiral, and who knows how many others for prior examples of this exact same riveting phenomenon), at least enough to appreciate what it's offering and to continue for another season. For those who don't know, this is a series about a former child actress now single mom raising her three children in LA. She is, like so many Angelenos, in the biz, working and making a living without being particularly famous or successful, i.e. the type of familiar actor who winds up as a corpse or killer on an episode of NCIS. While the Hollywood stuff, which has a nice feel of reality primarily due to everyone's blaseness about all the Hollywood stuff (it's a business, this is the way it works, it's not that exciting or worth getting upset about, i.e. something everyone who stays in Hollywood eventually figures out (or, alternatively, never figures out and winds up utterly miserable 24/7 as a result)), is present, the main focus is family and the hassles that come from raising some very mouthy kids. Her wacky/drunk mom lives across the street and there are some vaguely romantic relationships as well but mostly the series is a dry comedic slice-of-life show set in a very specific environment. As with all comedy, humor is subjective, but I'd say this is more on the amused-dry-occasional-chuckle side of comedy than anything else. Some situations push the bounds of absurdity and, despite what I said about the Hollywood stuff above, LA and Hollywood both in spirit as well as with things like traffic issues, infuse the entire series. What the show definitely has - and I hope I end up being right about this - is a lot of potential meaning it feels like the kind of thing that could improve leaps and bounds each season. There's clearly talent there and, while I can't say the tone worked for me across the board (some plot stuff was just too silly and contrived for moi), I can say there's a sharpness to the observations and the writing that feels like it could coalesce into something really great down the road. Even if that doesn't turn out to be the case, though, there's still enough here that I'll watch the subsequent seasons and will surely report back on how that all goes.

The Big Brunch (Season 1):

This is a deeply mediocre yet still watchable(ish) cooking competition reality series about, you guessed it, brunch but... brunch? And that's the first problem with this show - not a showkiller by any stretch (or at least I watched the whole thing) - but like what exactly is brunch because it can kind of be anything meaning what really is the competition? In my head, brunch is nothing more than eating around 11am at a restaurant that doesn't cut off the breakfast menu until 3pm; arguably, 24 hour diners are nonstop brunch. As far as I could tell, in this show it meant that people could serve sweet or savory (though there was only one baker in the bunch so it was primarily savory) and otherwise it was just watching people cook any food they felt comfortable with and justifying it later in terms of the challenge. The second problem with this show is that there kind of is no show by which I mean there were two challenges per episode, one a "starter" (and WTF is a brunch starter?) and a "main" - all of which sure sounds like dinner to me - and they were both cooked in around the same timeframe, like 60/90 minutes so yeah, it's "you have one hour to cook X and then you have one hour to cook Y" and that was it every episode. And the final episode kind of threw all that out and became about the fact that the show was awarding the winner $300k and therefore the finalists had to present business plans for how they'd spend the money, something that had never been present at all during the show. So why, you're dying to know, did I watch? Well, it was amiable, as in the judges were kinda amusingish and the contestants all had decent backstories, oh and to give you a sense of the thinness of the competition, there was a LOT of time each episode devoted to the backstories, those pre-shoots where they visit a hometown and people discuss their struggles? Yeah those. Only, because the contestants kind of had the struggles most people had (restaurants closing during COVID, some family issues, some gender/sexuality issues, some "my parents wanted me to be a doctor" issues, etc.) there really wasn't a ton to talk about in them yet they were present in repetitive form almost every episode. Really it was the combo of, as noted, amiability and I guess the normal thing of nonstop interest in what everyone else is eating that kept me watching but you can absolutely 100% skip this show. I mean I'll probably watch season 2 if there is one but if you're not like me, this isn't even worth a minute of your time I guess unless you’re a total brunch obsessive and honestly even then.

Movies:

Tar - While I absolutely unconditionally cannot recommend that anyone watch this non-Janice worshiped arthouse character study of a symphony conductor played by Cate Blanchett, I also sat through its entire 150 minuteish length, often bored, always confused as to why I was even bothering, and constantly amazed at how insanely slow and meaningless it was, yet, despite all that, didn't DNF. The basic plot is non-existent. Cate Blanchett is a pompous conductor who lectures seemingly nonstop about her achievements and the history of conducting and why this symphony should be that way and her perspective on all that and we even get a scroll down her character's Wikipedia page, the camera moving luxuriantly past all the fake history like a hand intimately but clandestinely stroking a lover's back at an otherwise staid office party. When I say the nonstop bit, I'm not really exaggerating. The movie opens with her being interviewed by the New Yorker for like 15 minutes followed by a lecture she gives at Julliard for, oh, another 20 minutes, with a lunch with a random person talking about conducting for, say, 10 minutes. Really. Nothing happens. Nothing. And if you're hoping that somehow the magic of laying eyes on Cate Blanchett will be mesmerizing enough to hold your attention through all the diatribes about music and tone and whatever well unfortunately this, IJHO, is not Cate's best work. It felt like she got caught up in some mannerism instead of a character, like she chose a tone of voice and a posture and that was as far as it got. I don't normally critique actors in this way because there's so much else going on in a movie that it can be difficult to single out what was the actor and what was, I don't know, the director telling the actor to do something and the actor doing that and it sucked - is that bad acting or bad directing? And what if the script is terrible, like good luck to any lauded actor with soap opera scripts. But this was different because there was absolutely nothing whatsover to do other than watch Cate deliver lines because the lines themselves were either music gibberish or dull or any of a number of non-character in non-situation words so you are, really, just being lectured at and thus judging the lecturer (since, as you can tell, the lecture was always judged as “boring.”)

Anyway, at some point, we meet Cate's wife where there doesn't seem to be a great relationship there, see Cate conduct, see Cate be mean to her assistant, hear random things about Cate being accused of something and subsequently being cancelled, see Cate not handling that well but in an obtuse way or a dream way or a the-writer-just-wrote-shit-and-had-no-idea-but-he-thought-it-seemed-cool way and then the end. That last bit about the writer is really the entire movie; it felt like the writer immersed himself in whatever masturbatory notion he had at any given moment, filmed it, and called it a movie. For example, there's a scene where Cate goes into a basement to return a teddy bear to a cellist she's been flirting with (don't ask) where she wanders there for a while and we later see her with a black eye and the implication is she's been attacked, but she brushes it off publicly as having bumped into a lamppost or something. So, yeah. This sort of thing is the entire movie. Something happens offscreen - or maybe in her head I don't know - and then there's some talking and then there's something else. Every time there was a hint that any drama might erupt, it was rapidly squashed. But I watched, and, while I'm sure there were some people who were genuinely affected by this film, I feel like this is also the problem with non-Janice film critics: they love all aspects of film, like the nuance of camera or whatever, so are far more immersed in the exploration of subtleties and craftspersonship even if all that comes at the expense of story. So I guess if you're into film as art like where you're into trying to be in the head of a director or parse out meaning from micro-moments or lighting or sound design or similar (which is what I think most non-Janice film critics are as in they became film critics because they love film theory and stuff like that) then perhaps you'll think this film is amazing. If you're just looking for a story told well, uh, look elsewhere. Otherwise you’ll wind up either DNFing or sitting through it and wondering why you didn’t.

All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham

Well this was some highly-non-Janice-lauded DNF'ed snoozerina ostensible thriller that, unless napping is thrilling (and you know what? maybe it kind of is), was completely mislabeled genre-wise to hardly mention being a plotless bore regardless of genre. Yes, there are two mysteries which is presumably where the marketing came from. The first mystery is a woman's infant goes missing and it's a year later, her life's a wreck, and she's still trying to figure out what happened. The second mystery is less mystery and more withholding information as the lead woman - our first-person narrator - flips back to childhood with some trauma involving a younger sister that she simply doesn't discuss for a while. It's not a terrible setup and while, sure, we've all read books where the author does the thing where they don't have the lead tell us what they know and those books can be good or bad depending on what's happening in the lead's present tense and how well the author is at crafting character, well I think you know where this is going: this author's writing is a dud. Leaden, endless sentences that drive plot absolutely nowhere, as in pages and pages and pages of the lead thinking about stuff - and the same stuff over and over to boot - and not doing anything other than annoying people because the author didn't craft a character who seems to have a single skill set beyond moping. Like if you're going to have a present-tense investigation by an amateur then surely, a year into the case, that amateur should have a few tricks up their sleeve because they've seen what worked and didn't work and have adapted. Not this character. She does dumb and useless things over and over and, like, is that thrilling? For example, it takes another character - a podcaster the lead is working with - to suggest she look at the babycam tapes in the months leading up to disappearance. What do you think of a character who has all those recordings but, in the year of investigating since her child’s disappearance, it never occurred to her to look? Are you interested in watching her investigate anything? The same holds true for the past tense stuff where it's a blandly southern gothic-y upbringing - there's an old house on a marsh involved - and again, no character, no person, just stuff. I've written too much about this book already. I gave this book close to 50% before DNF'ing and I can say with absolute certainty that, if something's calling itself a thriller, then something thrilling needs to happen long before that point and nothing did.

TV/Streaming:

The Great British Bakeoff (Season 13):

I have to hand it to whomever created the format of this phenom baking competition reality show as it's just a solidly good way to make an otherwise insanely dull (I mean you're watching people mix things together and put them in an oven for an hour) series into something soothing, pleasant, and engagingly, if mildly, suspenseful. For those who haven't seen, this is a baking competition show and the format is a theme each week (some of which make no sense to me like "desserts" as the whole series is basically desserts but whevs) with three challenges: the first is something the bakers have practiced at home a la "make 24 identical macarons in the flavor of your choice you have 90 minutes go", the second is a challenge for which they have no prep and which is judged blind, and the third is a bigass showstopper which they've also had time to practice. All of this is very glossily shot and the judges give meaningful critiques so you can get a sense of why things worked or fell apart. The reason I'm complimenting the format genius is that, 13 seasons in and despite some judge and host changes (and the hosts have really gone completely downhill over the years), it's still a consistently pleasant show to watch with enough of a sense of the contestants that there's some personality but without being a particularly personality-driven show as in it's about the baking and the judgement and, I guess, a sense of good-spirited competitiveness - it's not a cheery show exactly but it's also not going out of its way to make anyone feel bad. The hosts are truly awful, at least these past few seasons, like just bouncing around the tent being unfunny idiots, though I guess if your idea of comedy is bad puns delivered with frantic energy bordering on desperation then this will be your heaven. Really the hosts in the first few seasons were much better, not so much because their puns were better, but because they had a bit of snark to them that was entertaining. Plus the early seasons sent the hosts off to do background on some of the more obscure bakes, kind of like on Antiques Roadshow (if you've watched) where the host will go off for a few minutes to learn about something arty and local in whatever town they're in; I'm not saying I miss those segments, though in some ways I wouldn't mind if they returned, but rather they added a texture to the hosts and made them more than just joke-crackers wandering around a tent and into people who at least gave the appearance of being interested in the subject matter - baking - as opposed to the current situation where it feels like bored standup comedians trying to entertain themselves and get on camera which, well, is pretty dull unless you just love those jokes. But as I mentioned, the strength of this show's format is such that even all that criticism really doesn't matter because it's background to the main event which is watching normal people but with a particular interest in baking trying to overcome the pressures of being on camera, being in an unfamiliar kitchen, and being under serious time pressure and seeing if they'll be able to pull off what they intended or if it will all fall apart. All of which adds up to an engaging competition as far as I'm concerned.

Babylon Berlin (Season 4):

This fourth season of a highly stylized series focused around cops (and a lot of others) in early '30s Germany was decent but frankly too long as in I liked it while also finding myself drifting at points. If memory serves (and it absolutely may not), the first season of this show was 8 episodes and this one was also 8 episodes... only stretched over 12 episodes. And by stretched I mean that the final episode of the season (don’t worry, no spoilers) which, you know, should really be all the plot threads coming together, spent what felt like 80% of the episode on a boxing match between two characters we’d never seen before and with our leads in the audience cheering them on. Um, yeah. The other thing with this show, a thing which existed in the first season and every season subsequently, is that there’s an I don’t know – plot? beat? – with the lead where he’s the subject of some doctor’s experiment or something like that and really, four seasons in (you’ll see for yourself at the end of this season), I have no idea what all that is and it feels so like something from the plot of James Bond villain or the like. I don’t know. I thought I understood it season 1 (something about PTSD from WWI and addiction and an effort to overcome that) but… I don’t know. I don’t get it at all nor do I know why it’s in the show or what any of it is supposed to mean. If anyone makes it to the end of this season, feel free to explain it to me! The plot picks up from where our characters were in the prior season and, annoyingly, absolutely assumes you remember who everyone is and what happened to them before and what all of their interrelationships are, i.e. each episode REALLY needed a previously-on and none of them had that. Like in episode 5 or 6 some character shows up and I was like... uh who's that again? Only to have the same experience in episode 11. Like kudos to the writers for having an ongoing story but, I mean, come on, there are years between seasons here, people! Just toss my poor old cerebellum a bone: who’s a communist, who’s a Nazi, who’s on what side and why and what are they trying to achieve? Please? Right up to the very final episode, there was stuff that I just didn’t get because I didn’t feel like dashing off to Wikipedia or reading some recap before as “doing homework” seems pretty antithetical to “watching television.” This also, in part at least, contributed to some of the slowness of the show so perhaps if you're binging all the seasons at once, you won't have that experience.

I know I've mostly just insulted this show but the good thing about it is that it not only has a sense of humor but a really good sense of place and time and a great kind of spirited Shirley-Temple-movie vibe but with the grimness of Nazis rising which makes for an interesting series to watch. You'll note I've said nothing about plot not so much for spoiler reasons (though that's partly true) nor because I wasn't 100% tracking it for the reasons noted above (also partly true) but primarily because, while this is definitely a very plot-driven show as each season circles around some new major criminal investigation which ends up intersecting with politics, romance, gender issues, and the German cabaret scene, the reason to watch the show isn't the plot. The plots are fine even gripping at points, but the overall style and musicality (there's some fantastic dancing in the show (not as fantasy sequences or anything but woven in as in there's a major ongoing subplot involving a highish end dance club)) and a German lens on the German politics at the time. I mean most Nazi-era stuff I've seen or read - and this is still pre-war, like early '30s - has been done by non-Germans. In fact the only German movie I can think of off the top of my head that dealt with this era was the pretty interesting The Nasty Girl which was based on a true story about about high schooler in the 1980s or so who, for a school paper, was researching the history of the town and basically discovered everyone in it had been a Nazi during the war and the townspeople's efforts to suppress her findings. So I think the reason I like this show and will continue watching even though, as noted, I found it draggy in parts this season, is that it presents something familiar in an unfamiliar way meaning it intimately understands German people and culture in a way non-natives simply can't. Plus, all insults aside, when it's good it's really good and as noted it looks cool plus dancing so all in all, if the show ends here, that's fine and, if it's picked up for more seasons, I'm good with that too.

Movies:

All My Friends Hate Me - Though not as much as I hated this movie. Hated. As in the writer and director are moving to my "avoid at all costs" list a list that exists solely in my mind and therefore I have no doubt I'll wind up completely forgetting who these people are and watching something else they do in the future and being deeply resentful - remember, me! The basic premise of the movie is a reunion of college besties a decade later and, I guess (not clear at all), they're not really besties anymore but have drifted but whatever, they're getting together in a super rich bestie's isolated parental mansion to celebrate the birthday of the lead. For a reason that's never (really) explained, there's a non-bestie there who looks at least a decade older than the rest and whom the besties say they met in a local bar and bring along to hang out for the weekend. And, for the lead, it's essentially like having a college reunion only your friends randomly picked up Beetlejuice and this totally abrasive stranger gets rowdy and rude and insulting and the friends all act like the lead's the problem in his reactions rather than the stranger and his bad behavior. That's basically the movie. The supposed friends are horrible to the lead, there's this addon weirdo being mean too, and everyone acts like the lead is the crazy one and the lead hangs out for the weekend having a bad time and thus the title. If you go look at non-Janice reviews which I did because it was inconceivable that anyone could recommend this movie to anyone, you'll see a lot of references to this movie being about social anxiety, presumably because all those reviewers were handed a press release telling them so before they watched as I can assure you that someone going in blind (moi) could see no such thing and here's why. In order to do a movie in which the audience is torn between wondering whether (a) the lead is being gaslit for some reason presumably to be revealed at the end or (b) the friends are behaving normally and the lead, due to insecurities or whatnot, is hearing/seeing everything through the filter of his own issues, you'd need to setup a character logic for that as well as plot actions that could conceivably be viewed either way. There could be something there, right? Like is something really going on or is the character blowing up a sarcastic moment or a bit of incidental rudeness into some larger conspiracy? And I guess I could even live with (maybe) discovering the character is that way as opposed to setting up the character as insecure in advance. This movie opted for neither. It was setup as just a normal guy driving for a few hours into the countryside to hang with his friends and, oh, the guy's girlfriend was going to come up too a day later. But fine. The real problem is the friends and the Beetlejuice guy in particular actually were horrible and/or weird in ways that were not open to interpretation, like subbing the lead guy's herbal pills with a roofie (or something) or a scene with the Beetlejuice guy wandering into the bathroom while the lead was naked in the tub, shaving despite the fact that that clearly crossed basic social boundaries, then in a, I don't know, bro not a gay way reaching into the tub and grabbing the lead's dick then making a joke about its shape. Like if someone did that to you, would you conceive of that as your own social anxiety rather than, say, being groped by a random asshole stranger? How about a total stranger chasing after you with an ax and screaming at you and then, haha, it's all a big joke that your friends set up - is there even a question about whether or not the problem is in the lead's head? No. So basically, absent reading something telling you what the film is - like I’m doing right now but likely not the way the producers were hoping - you're watching a person meet a group of people who are ostensibly his friends plus one asshole total stranger, being treated horribly by them all, staying anyway for no discernible reason, having everyone act like he's the problem, and then they all go home. If that sounds like a satisfying 100 some-odd minutes to you, go enjoy!