Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Books Read in 2019

I've come a long way since January 2017 when I set a goal of reading 1 book a month and accomplished only half that.  I completed 17 books in 2019 and started another, which I will finish soon but not before 2020 rolls around tonight.

Full disclosure: two titles on this list were started in 2018, but I finished them and read the majority of them in 2019.  They're denoted with *.

Titles are listed in the order I read them.

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

The striking, neon-on-black cover art immediately caught my eye in a local bookstore in Minocqua, WI, where I was working for the frigid month of January.  The world Miller crafts is cold and icy, a city surrounded by the arctic ocean.  Minocqua, WI, is a little island town in the middle of a large lake, and, with temperatures nearing -40º F outside, it was easy for me to feel immersed in the world as I sipped my coffee and read by the hotel's cozy fireplace.

That said, I would say Miller's descriptions of the city of Qaanaaq were the strongest part of the book.  I retain a vivid impression of the buildings, the shanty-towns, the dirty streets, the smells of ramen noodles wafting through the air, not unlike my memories of Isengard or the Doors of Durin from when I first read Tolkien.

Miller crafts a cast of characters all of whom struggle with their own flaws/traumas and distinct POVs.  However, I never found myself falling in love with any of them, never felt truly invested in their struggles, which made it hard to keep turning the page to see them achieve their goals. 

In a unique, deeply developed locale filled with intrigue, class struggles, politics, and plague, Miller hints at plots that I personally would have found more interesting than the one he gives us.  There's a lot going on on the macro level in Qaanaaq, but, in the end, our story isn't about it.  Instead of diving into the problems the city faces, confronting the class strife directly, those issues are left on the periphery as Miller's plot focuses on the personal struggle of a family.  I would normally praise this kind of sci-fi/fantasy story telling.  I get so tired of end-of-the-world stakes, and I welcome focused stories where the stakes are deeply personal.  However, those types of stories rely on their characters, and, because I couldn't get into the characters, I was less than satisfied with the plot.

One last thing:  Miller includes a gender-neutral POV character, which draws the reader's attention to how desperately the English language needs singular gender-neutral pronouns.  For the most part, Miller is able to get by with "they," "them," and "their," but there were multiple times where I had to reread paragraphs slowly and mindfully to pick apart whether the pronouns were referring to his gender-neutral character or to some other characters in the scene.  I don't fault Miller for this at all; as I said, he does a lot of good work making do with the words we have, but we need to adopt new words as our world and culture marches forward.

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

While no books jump out for my favorite fiction book read in 2019, book 1 of the Expanse series could be a candidate.  I had watched some of the (formerly) Sci-fi channel series (now owned/produced by Amazon) before I started reading, but had retained almost none of it.  So the book felt fresh and new and engaging and exciting.

Corey (a pen name for two co-authors), alternate between two POV characters throughout the book and do an excellent job of leaving you on cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter.  Just when you're really getting into a POV, the chapter ends, and you're compelled to plow through the next Holden chapter so you can back to Miller (my favorite character) only to find yourself getting invested again in Holden's plot only to find the chapter ending and you're back to Miller but now you're wanting more Holden.  It goes on like this for several hundred pages.

One of the things I enjoy most about the Expanse books is how much Corey includes real physics/science.  The colonization of other worlds in the solar system is very grounded and realistic. We live not in a fantastic Star Wars or Star Trek space adventure, but one more like Black Mirror in that the science is not distant fantasy, but rather realistically plausible based on our current understanding of the universe.  Whenever the Rocinante (or any ship) is zipping through space, Corey's characters are very conscious of gravity.  Gravity affects every aspect of life.  There is no artificial gravity, no constant "ground."  Which direction is up can change on a dime.  Perhaps it's because I've been reading Carl Sagan and other space science books, but I find it fascinating.

By making the reader conscious of gravity and physics, by feeding us the rules, Corey's use of real science serves a larger narrative purpose which I really respect:  it makes it all the more impressive when alien technology breaks these rules.  "You can't travel at [x] speed and stop without [y] happening because of inertia!" says a character.  Then:  *Alien object travels at [x] speed and stops without [y] happening.*  All human characters:


Of the 3 Expanse books I read this year, this one was certainly the most plot heavy, which elevates it above the other two for me.  A lot happens in this book.  It's exciting, intriguing, and does an excellent job of setting up the series to come.

Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey

With the 2nd book in the Expanse, Corey adds more POV characters.  Some of them were awesome from the get-go, others really grew on me as the story went on.  One of Corey's great strengths is forcing his characters to see how actions have consequences, and that's probably most evident (in what I've read so far) in Caliban's War.  In fact, the whole book is dealing with the consequences of the first book.

I don't have much to say about this one.  It's really just more Expanse.  I'll continue reading the series in 2020.

Eagle in Exile by Alan Smale

The second book in Smale's Eagle trilogy.  I read the first one in 2017.  I enjoyed it enough to finish, but not enough to feel motivated to read the next one right away.  Having read book two in 2019, I feel the same way.  Smale puts in a lot of work researching history, and it shows.  The level of detail explored in the daily life of the Cahokian people, the mindset and thought-process of a man raised in Imperial Rome--it all feels very historically true in this alternative history world.  That said, Eagle in Exile can be very boring at times.  It takes a long time for plot points to happen, and the time taken to get there does not always make the moment any more fulfilling/satisfying.  It takes a long time to get places.  Literally.  It feels like you're reading about walking or boating places in real time, what filmmakers refer to as "shoe leather" when trying to pad a runtime.

I like historical fiction.  I find Native American and Roman cultures extremely interesting.  I went to college a couple hours from Cahokia, IL, where the majority of the book takes place.  Smale writes some brutal, awesome battle/fight sequences.  There's so much for me to like here, but it can just be down right boring.

Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey

Book 3 of the Expanse.  Introduces more POV characters;  some are awesome, while others are just "meh."  Corey has a habit of killing off my favorite POV characters...

In a Sunburned Country* by Bill Bryson

I loved A Walk in the Woods.  This is not that, but, once I got a few chapters in, I really enjoyed reading about Bryson's adventures and learning about Australia.  I actually worked with an actress this year who told me she was from Australia.  "Oh, where abouts?" I asked.  "Darwin," she replied, her inflection and facial expression telling me she had no expectation of me ever having heard of her home town.  However, thanks to me constantly flipping to the handy map Bryson includes in the front of Sunburned Country, I was able to reply to her, "Oh yeah, up north."  I've never seen anyone get so excited at hearing what direction their home city was in relation to the rest of their native country.  Thanks, Bill.

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan speculates on the future of humanity in space, from travel to other worlds, colonizing the solar system, and searching for life in our system and abroad.  He also gives you a crash-course in astrophysics and goes over the history of humanity's interest in space and our space program.

I found Pale Blue Dot a little more accessible than CosmosCosmos was more traditionally academic and felt like text book at times.  Pale Blue Dot feels more like a guided journey, giving you an in-depth review of each of the worlds in our solar system.

The Fisherman by John Langan

This came recommended on some websites as a great, recent work in the "Cosmic Horror" genre.  (Maybe I found it looking for titles similar to the Southern Reach trilogy).

The beginning and the end are weird, creepy, properly Lovecraftian entries in the genre.  But the story I was pitched on the back cover turned out to be a frame story.  The majority of the book is told as a story within a story, and that narrative is much more straightforward (for lack of a better word) than I'd like in a "cosmic horror" book.  There's a fine line in dealing with concepts beyond human comprehension.  Give away too much, and your mystery is too understandable, lacks that "beyond comprehension" element.  Hide too much, and your audience can't follow what's going on, or you come off as being coy for the sake of coy or that you as the author don't know what's going on.

What I felt I was missing in plot, Langan does make up for in character.  Every character felt fully developed and three-dimensional, and I wanted to see them survive.  The character work was solid, I just could've used a little more mystery.

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Reading Rama, I recognized a lot sci-fi aspects which may have been borrowed by the Expanse series.  Clarke puts a lot of thought into real-world physics, and, like in Expanse, it's a moment when alien tech breaks the rules and does the "impossible."

Unlike the Expanse, Clarke's characters lack... flaws?  Personality?  Anything to make them interesting?  I can't tell you any of their names.  Jimmy?  There was the captain who had a lot of sexist internal monologuing.  This was actually pretty bad.  Sci-fi has always had its share of misogyny, but Rama particularly did not hold up well in a post-"me too" world.

And there was no plot.  A mysterious object shows up.  Humans explore it.  The end.  Exploring how an alien object works is not a plot.  That's just set up.  That's just world building.  That's just the notes you make before writing your actual story.

Exoplanets by James Trefil and Michael Summers

My favorite book I read this year, appreciated even more having read Sagan a few months before.  Exoplanets explores the discoveries made by the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes.  Trefil and Summers explain how humans suffer from the "curse of the single example."  The only example of life we have is life on Earth.  The only example of a life-giving planet we have is Earth.  The only example of a solar system we had was our own.  For millennia this has given us a bias when we look out at the stars.  However, as we learn more about worlds within our own solar system, as well as worlds outside it (exoplanets), these biases and assumptions begin to break down and change the way we search for exoplanets and the way we search for life.  Highly fascinating, easy to read and understand.  Would recommend to anybody who has any interest in space.

Fire and Blood by George R. R. Martin

After the disappointing conclusion to HBO's Game of Thrones, it felt really good to read something from the Song of Ice and Fire world again.  Even in what should amount to a long, dry history book, Martin is able to craft deep, complex characters and fill several hundred pages with emotional conflict and wit.

Another candidate for my favorite fiction book of the year.

Mindhunter by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker

I'm a big fan of Netflix' series Mindhunter, and, after watching season 2 this fall, I decided to read the book.  I wasn't disappointed.  Before watching the series, I had had no real interest in serial killers.  But his isn't about killers and their crimes.  It's about characters.  It's about the psychology that makes a person commit atrocities.  It's about analyzing behavior, extrapolating a personality from a crime scene, and using the personality profile to predict future actions.  I tore through it in about a week.  Runner up for favorite non-fiction book;  runner up for favorite book of the year.

Northland by Porter Fox

Similar in style to Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, Northland follows author Porter Fox on a journey from Maine to Washington along the American-Canadian boarder.  Fox seamlessly transitions from paragraphs about local history to ecological issues to the long history of mistreatment of indigenous people to a general sense of life along America's northern boarder.  Very interesting and informative, it's another book this year that I just devoured, finishing in a few days.

Runner up for favorite non-fiction book;  runner up for favorite book of the year.

Voices of the Winds* by Ella E. Clark and Margot Edmonds

A collection of Native American folk tales, this took me a long time to get through.  I think it's best parsed out, reading a couple stories at a time rather than the whole thing at once.  Some of the stories were really engaging and entertaining;  others were a little dry.  One thing I found interesting was the recurring myths from around the country.  Several tribes from different regions all had very, very similar stories for the discovery of corn, suggesting a common origin.  There were also a number of different "great flood" stories.  In Northland, Fox mentions a massive glacier that took up most of central Canada which melted, filling in the Great Lakes, raising water levels all over the world, and providing a possible origin to the "great flood" stories found across the globe.  What's truly fascinating is how the Native American oral tradition stretches back to the ice age, meaning some of the stories can offer a rare glimpse into humanity's pre-history.

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

People warned me that things get weird when you get to the third Dune book;  they seemed to equate "weird" with "bad" and imply that I stop after reading the second one.  Children of Dune does get weird, even by Dune standards, but I thought it continued the strange, philosophical exploration of the prior two entries and started to give me some broader perspective on the Dune universe.  I found myself particularly engrossed in the chapters dealing with the ousted Imperial family.  I'll give myself some time, and I'll likely read the fourth book later in 2020.

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

One of Chricton's first books to be published posthumously, Pirate Latitudes was the first of his novels I'd read since Jurassic Park back in sixth grade.  While I enjoyed a fair amount of the nautical details and appreciated how often the characters find themselves "out of the frying pan, into the fire," I don't feel I really came away with very much.  To me, Latitudes was a simple pulp-style adventure novel; I read it cover to cover in less than a week and was on to my next literary conquest without looking back.

Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
Growing up along the Mississippi river, Mark Twain was absolutely required reading in school, but somehow I'd never read Pudd'nhead Wilson.  Set in the 1850's, the book's title character plays with fingerprints as a hobby; no one views fingerprints as anything scientific.  Of course, by the end of the novel, he uses his hobby to solve a murder.  Wilson is Twain at his best, full of mistaken identity, poetic irony, and snarky wit as sharp today as it was 100 years ago.


On the docket for 2020:
Currently reading Trevor Noah's Born a Crime.
In the queue:
Borne and Dead Astronauts both by Jeff Vandermeer
Star Wars:  Thrawn by Timothy Zahn
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Several other Star Wars books, more of the Expanse series, and probably God Emperor of Dune.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Books Read in 2018

Last year, I set a goal to read a book a month.  I got through six.  This year, with the same goal in mind, began a little rocky, with only four read by July (though, to be fair, one of these four was Dune, which should count as three, considering it's over 900 pages).  However, I somehow read voraciously from August through December, completing a final tally of 14 books and reading about a combined 200+ pages of a few others that I didn't finish.

Below is the list of books I read in the order I read them this year:

  1. Dune by Frank Herbert
  2. Will Save the Galaxy for Food by "Yahtzee" Ben Croshaw
  3. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
  4. Cosmos by Carl Sagan
  5. On Trails by Robert Moore
  6. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
  7. Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer
  8. All the Pretty Horses by Cormack McCarthy
  9. The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
  10. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
  11. Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
  12. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
  13. Authority by Jeff Vandermeer
  14. Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer
Partial Reads
  • Voices of the Winds: Native American Legends by Margot Edmonds and Ella Clark
  • The Collected Sons of Cold Mountain by Red Pine
  • In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
In a Sunburned Country will likely be the first book I finish in 2019 and Voices of the Winds will end up in next years' "read books" list as well.

Below are little reviews for each book I finished.


Dune by Frank Herbert

For years people who had read Dune told me "It's so good!  So much better than the David Lynch movie," and I wrote it off as one of those things every book reader tells you about whatever book/movie you're discussing.

But then I read it.

It is mind-opening.  It is for science fiction what The Lord of the Rings is for fantasy and possibly more.  It's Game of Thrones in space and so much more.  It truly is an epic, wild book, even if you've already seen the David Lynch adaptation.

Outside of its content, the actual writing is itself a fascinating work.  I had grown so accustomed to George R. R. Martin's and similar author's modern style of keeping each chapter or segment in a single character's POV that I had begun to accept that as simply the way writing is done.  So it was jarring at first when I realized that Herbert will switch POVs from paragraph to paragraph, but, as I grew used to it, I loved it as a narrative tool.  You're inside one character's mind, reading his internal monologue, seeing how he thinks he's being so clever, outsmarting the other characters in the room;  then, the next sentence, your in someone else's head, and you see that your previous POV is completely wrong in his assumptions and is actually being played!  It's a roller coaster.  It ties into another peculiar narrative technique he employes.

Herbert will blatantly tell you what is going to happen before it happens:  he'll state "This character dies.  This is who betrays him."  This too was jarring for me, until I found myself becoming more and more invested in having knowledge that the characters did not, watching them fall into traps, seeing them suspect people I knew to be innocent and write off the traitor as trustworthy.

Dune is easily one of the top five science fiction books I've ever read and takes the top spot as best fiction book read in 2018.

Will Save the Galaxy for Food by "Yahtzee" Ben Croshaw

"Yahtzee" is one of my favorite YouTube video game reviewers.  His videos are always deeply critical, and full of dry, clever humor, so, when I saw a book with his name on it at Barnes and Noble (and a space opera too, as if it was meant for me), I decided to give it a try.

I won't say that it was bad, just disappointing.  Croshaw's fast-paced, insightful, out-there humor - which works so well in his under-five-minute game reviews - is peppered throughout the book, but not enough to sustain a 350 page narrative.  It isn't a bad book.  The writing is proficient.  I just found it to be a little bit of a let down, like it didn't reach its full potential.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Perhaps I did myself a disservice by reading American Gods as my introduction to Neil Gaiman.  Perhaps I should have read a solo Pratchett book to familiarize myself with his style before jumping into Good Omens.  While I liked the premise and was entertained by a number of the "segments," I was, overall, disappointed.  My biggest problem being that word "segments," because, to me, the entire book feels less like a feature film and more like a Saturday Night Live episode where all the sketches are loosely connected by a singular theme, the theme being Armageddon.

Would I recommend it to my friends saying, "If you're going to read Neil Gaiman, read Good Omens"?  No.  Will I give the upcoming TV adaptation starring David Tennant a shot?  Yes.

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Beautifully educational, just like both the original and the rebooted TV series, Sagan is a master of tying ideas together, threading a single concept through astronomy, calculus, geology, physics, biology, anthropology, history, sociology, and any and every other science.  He states the expert in layman's terms and takes the layman on a journey into the minds of experts.

What struck me most in Cosmos and made it my second favorite non-fiction read of the year, was how much of a book published in 1980 is still relevant today, particularly how Sagan (and other scientists) offered warnings about climate change (warnings clearly unheeded).

I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the universe and tiny blue dot we call home, and I would especially recommend it to families with children as a book a parent can share with a young one to plant the seeds of curiosity and cultivate a life-long quest for the answers to how and why.

On Trails by Robert Moore

On Trails might have been my favorite non-fiction this year if it hadn't had to compete with Cosmos and Lost City of the Monkey God.  As a hiker/camper, nature lover, and national park junkie, I enjoyed Moore's diverse investigation of why we confine ourselves to the narrow path of trails.  The prologue explores his experiences on the famous Appalachian Trail (perhaps all the more enjoyable for me, because last year I read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson), and from there he takes us on a journey to look at the very first life forms on earth to move, to create trails;  to sheep and zebras and other herding animals;  to ants and bag worms and various insect paths;  to Native American trails, which became the roads traveled by Europeans, which became our modern highways;  to the International extension of the Appalachian Trail all the way into Morocco.

A great read for those who wish to attune themselves to the outdoors.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

I'd seen all the film adaptations and the TV show (which I highly recommend!).  The coolest thing was seeing how true almost every adaptation has been.  It was also very interesting to see all the flashbacks/backstory which made its way into the TV show, but was left out of the two film adaptations.

Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer

An Obama-Biden murder mystery which never lives up to its very cool cover art.

Politics aside, it is, in my opinion, poorly written:  full of cliches, often boring, and littered with far too much focus on very boring supporting characters.  Anyone not named Barack Obama or Joe Biden is one-dimensional and boring.  Biden is inconsistent, and Obama wasted potential.

Politics not aside:  If you disliked Obama/Biden, this one's not for you.  If you loved Obama and Biden, the book is deeply, deeply lacking in the political satire you expect/crave.

Probably the worst book I read this year.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormack McCarthy

I perhaps did myself a disservice by having Blood Meridian (widely considered his best novel, his masterpiece) as my introduction to McCarthy, but I did find All the Pretty Horses engrossing and disturbingly violent as McCarthy is known to be.  It's a great, dark coming-of-age story set on the American-Mexican border and is full of McCarthy's beautifully biblical language.  It was good, but I'm content without reading the next two books in his "border trilogy."

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

By far my favorite non-fiction book I read this year, Lost City of the Monkey God details 2015/2016 expeditions into Honduras to discover an ancient city never visited by Europeans.  Preston's writing is extremely engrossing and easy to read;  I was averaging 80 pages a day!

I can't recommend it enough.  Also, the head of the expedition was a Southern Illinois University Carbondale grad;  Go Salukis!

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman's quick, snappy, staccato writing takes you on an easy-to-read trip through his favorite stories of Norse mythology.  The title kind of says it all, but what makes it most fun is Gaiman's language and interpretations of characters (Gaiman's Thor is particularly fun).

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

I'm told this is the last "good" book in the Dune series, that they just get more and more "weird" after this.  We'll see.

Dune Messiah picks up the Paul Atreides story and explores fascinating concepts such as religion's relationship with government, destiny versus free will, and the cultural impact of what a man represents versus the man himself.

Not as good as Dune but still very interesting and high-concept, though laying the seeds of the "weird" to come.

THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY by Jeff Vandermeer
AnnihilationAuthorityAcceptance

The Southern Reach Trilogy narrowly takes the number two spot on my favorite fiction read list this year, particularly Annihilation.  I read all three books in the span of about five weeks or less.  I think it's easiest for me to organize my thoughts about it in bullets:
  • Seen the movie?  No problem.  The books are very different and provide a much more in-depth look at the world of Area X.
  • One reading of the series is to look at it as an allegory for climate change.  Area X threatens to radically change the world, just like climate change, so it's a race against time to either (1) push it back or (2) prepare ourselves to live with it, to survive with it.
  • It's a series about change.  The world around us changes.  The people we know change.  We ourselves change (often disturbingly viscerally in the Southern Reach world).  And the big theme here is that this change is inevitable.  We humans have a tendency to fight it, to believe that we are always in control, that we can maintain the status quo through sheer force of will.  But that's not what Area X has in store.  The Southern Reach is about the inevitability of change, change that we are powerless to stop.  This powerlessness can drive some people mad.  It's easy to see why the final book is titled Acceptance.

Monday, January 8, 2018

Man Hopes to Use Cheese to Mend Broken Frozen Pizza



BURBANK, CA -- 1/08/2018 - 2:20 PM PST

What clumsiness has wrought asunder, mayhaps melted cheese could mend. That was the logic running through the mind of local unemployed 29-year-old Brad Highland when he discovered his frozen pizza had cracked.

"I just opened the plastic and there it was. My pizza was fractured," Highland reported. He also made allusions to his pizza as a reflection of the current American political divide.  "I have some shredded Mexican blend in the fridge though, so maybe I can sprinkle some of that on after it cooks, and hopefully it will melt and hold the pieces together."


At press time, Highland was still hopeful that melted cheese could have a similar effect on Democrats and Republicans.

Monday, May 8, 2017

Guardians of the Snooze Button

Let me begin with the trailers:


  1. I walked into the theater in the middle of a trailer for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and, glancing at the screen as I climbed up to my seat thought, this looks pretty cool.  If the leads weren't cast to look like a couple of teenagers, I'd definitely think it looks cool.  I'll probably check it out if I don't have anything better to do when it comes out.
  2. A Spider-Man Homecoming trailer.  Michael Keaton looks interesting as Vulture.  The "protect my family" line is intriguing character set up for a villain, but still not enough to sell the movie to me.  Will there ever be a Spider-man movie where Peter doesn't have to hold on to two separate things with his web and use his inhuman strength to overcome an impossible situation?
  3. Damn it, Guardians of the Galaxy!  You made me watch a The Last Jedi trailer.  When The Force Awakens was coming out and I was all about watching the trailers, I didn't see a single one in theaters.  Now, when I'm trying to avoid everything I can leading up to Episode VIII, you show me one today.  That said, here's what I thought of it I guess: Meh.  Meh.  Ooh, that space battle looks like it could be cool. . . if it's anything like the space battle from Rogue One but also without pandering to be cool like the space battle from Rogue One.  Meh.  "[Luke's line about the Jedi must end]" -- Huh, I know I should be excited for that line.  In fact, it's a really interesting concept in the Star Wars universe, one that's explored really well (and by "well" I mean "half-heartedly") in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.  It's actually one of the most interesting ideas you can explore in the Star Wars universe.  So why do I have such a feeling that it will be extremely half-assed in its development and my assumed disappointment is tempering my excitement?
  4. Why do I have this weird feeling I'll be less let down by Thor Ragnarok than by The Last Jedi?
  5. Oh God, another awful Transformers: The Last Knight trail-- Wait. . . wait a minute. . . If I'm piecing this together right. . . is it possible that when Prime is the bad guy, Megatron (Or is he Galvatron now?  I still haven't seen Age of Extinction) will join forces with the humans/Autobots to defend the Earth?  Damn it, Michael Bay, if that's the case you might have gotten some of my money.  I'm conflicted.
  6. Holy shit that new Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales trailer looks awesome!  I am so excited for this.
Now for the movie itself:  Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
  1. Marvel.  Marvel, Marvel, Marvel.  Please stop masturbating in our faces with your God damn logos.
  2. Wow that's Kurt Russel and an actress I assume is Sky Lord's mom driving down the road singing along with the radio.  Excitement!  Oh, they're still driving and singing.  This is still going. Excitement.  Oh well, I'm sure the movie will have better pacing once it gets going. . .
  3. God, none of the Guardians are endearing in this scene.  Look, I'm biased, I'll admit, when it comes to heroes in-fighting.  It is one of the least attractive and most boring, manufactured drama a movie can have, especially when it starts from the very beginning of the movie.  These characters are a bunch of mean, un-funny assholes, and you expect me to root for them just because we liked them in the previous film?  For a movie that spends so much of it's dialogue talking about things that happened off-screen, it spends zero time telling us what's happened to make the Guardians all pissy at each other...
  4. ... Except for Drax who really comes away as the hero of the film, or at least the most consistently likable person on the team.  The guy who is shown, through Mantis the Empath, to carry heavy sorrow and suffering with him is the most uplifting and never dark/brooding character in the film.  He steals the show.
  5. What the hell is up with this introduction of Yondu and Stalone?  Was there a bunch of Yondu/Ravager exposition and that happened in the 1st Guardians I'm supposed to remember?  Because, again, for a movie that loves to tell us what happened off-screen, I have no idea who Stalone or the Ravagers are or why I'm supposed to feel anything for what's going on on this snow-whore planet.  Was I supposed to come away from Guardians one loving Yondu for some reason?  Is there any reason for him to be a beloved character if I'm not a comic book reader?
  6. I'm booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooored..................
  7. Nebula.  Now, I'm usually a sucker for the pervious movie's villain is forced to team up with our heroes to fight a common enemy in the sequel.  Hence why I kind of like Thor: The Dark World.  But I don't remember having enough emotional connection to Nebula to care.  I didn't feel strong enough to hate her in the first one or find her scary.  Hey, maybe it's shame on me for not remembering if there was much development given to her relationship with Gamora in the first film, but I certainly didn't feel anything for her or her manufactured sisterly drama here in Vol 2.  In fact, thanks, Marvel for giving the women in your movie nothing to do, except for Mantis who was all right.
  8. So now Nebula is chasing down Gamora with intent to kill.  Am I supposed to think you'll actually have the balls to kill anyone, movie?  Am I supposed to think Gamora is in any real peril?  This is the problem with most action movies, especially super-hero ones.  They attempt to create suspense by making you think the hero is in danger.  That's not going to work, because we all know the hero can't die.  But others can.  People the hero cares about can.  Put them in danger, and the suspense becomes "will the hero save them in time?"  Stop wasting time trying to make me think Marvel super heroes can die.  And don't come around smirking when you inevitably kill off Captain America in Infinity War Part I, because we all called that one years ago; it won't count.  Suspense requires stakes.
  9. Remember when Star Lord was funny?
  10. Let's take a second to talk about how shitty the action is in this movie.  Space battles:  a lot of CGI shit flying around randomly.  People are shooting at people.  I don't feel any sense of anything going on.  I don't feel any connection to anyone being shot at or doing the shooting (Because, again, the Guardians themselves are immune to danger).  There's no suspense to this action.  Also, it's kind of confusing as shit.  Yondu and Rocket's escape:  Rocket is just shooting and Yondu is arrowing.  There's just people dying left and right.  With a couple exceptions, the film pretends to revel in its violence without showing anything interesting happening.  Yeah, Yondu's killing a bunch of folks with his magic arrow, but it's not that visually interesting; at least, I don't think so.  A lot of the action is just really, really boring.
  11. Even when Drax is carrying Mantis and has to keep turning around to dodge the ship and its engines near the end:  this should be really funny.  I wanted it to be funny so bad.  It is really funny on paper, but something about the editing paced it too slow to be funny.  It falls flat.
  12. I liked Rocket stun-gunning Gamora.  That was an okay moment.  Really the only moment Rocket was likable though, which was disappointing.
  13. Now, the character of Ego is a very interesting Sci-Fi character.  He'd be a great episode of Star Trek.
  14. However, the conflict.  The plot.  The Ego vs Quill Vs Yondu relationship.  If that is the heart of the movie, I wish more had been devoted to Quill and Yondu.  Vol 2 does not sufficiently setup/earn the Yondu-Quill familial relationship.  If more had been done at the beginning to set that on its way, Ego's interest in Quill might have offered more conflict and intrigue, pulling him away from Yondu.  Comparing and contrasting Ego and Yondu.  There is a half-way decent father-father-son story in Guardians Vol 2, but it's buried...
  15. ...Buried under something I've referenced already: the movie's obsession with expositional dialogue about things that happened off screen.  Maybe instead of telling us about how Yondu was hired by Ego, you show it to us.  Maybe instead of telling us about how Yondu saved Quill from Ego, you show it to us.  Maybe show us those things instead of Ego driving down the road, taking Quill's mom to Dairy Queen.  It's extremely easy to pick up that Ego is a bad guy.  I don't really need that as a reveal.  Maybe it would create more tension to show this Yondu backstory stuff early on, you know, to develop his character and his relationship with Quill and make it a bigger deal when Quill is being seduced by Ego.  Instead Yondu is bonded with Rocket during Act II, because. . . well Rocket has to be in the movie, so. . .
  16. The movie is so in love with this that it even does it within the world of the movie.  Rocket passes Yondu's exposition on to the Ravagers who, like the movie, decide that just being told about something someone supposedly did once is enough to forgive their flaws and celebrate.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

2016 Year in Review

Top Favorites of the Year
1) Rogue One
2) Rogue One
3) Rogue One
4) Rogu--
5)

But seriously...

My favorites were things that either lived up to or really exceeded expectations. I'm not saying all of these are objectively great movies, but I left the theatre on a positive.

1) Rogue One
2) Kubo and the Two Strings
3) The Eagle Huntress
4) Zootopia
5) 10 Cloverfield Lane
6) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
7) The Magnificent 7
8) Star Trek Beyond

The most "Meh" Movies. I didn't see a lot of bad movies this year, but these were some disappointments:

1) Shin Godzilla
2) Moana
3) Captain America: Civil War
4) Doctor Strange

I apparently did not see very much this year...

Top Movies that rival the 2016 Presidential Election for "biggest piece of flaming, offensive shit ever shown to the public" that I am glad I did not financially support:

1) Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

Top Movies I guess I'm "looking forward to" in 2017 (Note: I've already seen Lego Batman)

1) War for the Planet of the Apes*
2) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales*
3) Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
4) Lego Ninjago Movie*
5) Logan
6) Kong: Skull Island
7) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
8) Thor Ragnarok

*Denotes movies I am legitimately excited for.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Spring 2016 Catch Up

So there are a lot of movies I've seen since the last time I wrote so each review will be brief.  I'm also including some flicks I saw on HBO Go and Amazon Prime, so not every movie here is from 2016.  Here we go.

The Jungle Book

  • Highlights:
    • beautiful CGI animals
    • unique interpretations of old characters
  • Weak points:
    • child acting
    • lackluster plot
    • heavy use of CGI
  • One Line Review:
    • A so-so movie, but a great adaptation.
Captain America: Civil War

  • Highlights:  
    • cool action choreography and camera work
    • some funny bits
    • Chris Evans
  • Weak points:
    • pretended not to be an Avengers movie, but was a much better Avengers movie than either Avengers movie
    • Too much Iron Man
    • Not enough endings (topped out at 0)
    • Wasn't directed by Ken Burns
  • One Line Review
    • Was the most fun I've had in a Marvel movie since Ant-Man and simultaneously
Ant-Man
  • Highlights:
    • funny lines
    • great performance from Paul Rudd
    • Well shot/choreographed action sequences
  • Weak points:
    • Villains in Marvel movies have to be simple, black & white bad guys, huh?  Can't be any more complex than "this man is evil, because he is?"  And, speaking of "man," have any of the Marvel films had a female for their main villain?  I guess Marvel's saving that for when a woman hero gets her own film;  keep the girls together.
      • Sorry, Ant-Man, you don't deserve the brunt of that equality rant.
  • One Line Review:  Actually better than most Marvel films, and also pretty good.
  • Makes my top five MCU films list:
    • Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    • Iron Man
    • Ant-Man
    • Captain America: Civil War
    • Guardians of the Galaxy
The Martian

  • Highlights:
    • DAMN, Ridley Scott knows how to shoot a f#@king movie!
    • funny dialogue
    • cool science
    • Sean Bean
  • Weak points:
    • I personally don't care for survival stories.  I don't care for films without an antagonist.
    • Sean Bean didn't die in this movie.
  • One Line Review: I enjoyed it more than I expected, but not as much as everyone else did.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
  • Highlights:
    • Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer's performances
    • Some fun action sequences and witty dialogue
  • Weak points:
    • Maybe it's because I was also playing Minecraft at the time and didn't give the movie my full attention, but I found a lot of the film forgettable.
  • One Line Review:  Fun, but forgettable.
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel
  • Highlights:
    • Lead actors nail their comic timing
    • I LOVE INDEPENDENT SCI-FI!  This feels like a cute, contained, indie sci-fi movie, though it did have HBO and the BBC producing it so. . .
    • Funny dialogue and situations
    • Great exploration of time travel through a comedic lens
  • Weak points:
    • I was underwhelmed by the third act, but, in the movie's defense, I did get distracted by the launch of the Pokémon Go beta, so. . .
    • It wasn't as indie as I'd hoped, having a little more CGI (and better CGI) than I'd expected.  Weird to hold "having too much money" against a movie, but I kind of do.
  • One Line Review:
    • Probably the 2nd best small-scale time travel movie I've seen since Primer.  Have you seen Primer?  It's on Netflix; go watch that s#*t now!
Ex Machina
  • Highlights:
    • I LOVE INDEPENDENT SCI-FI!
    • Great performances all around
    • Very contained story and characters and setting, all of which make for great indie sci-fi (like Primer and Moon)
    • great sci-fi commentary/discussions on robotics
    • great social commentary, discussing the future of human technology and looking at human nature
    • beautiful production design
    • very, very, very good special effects
    • beautiful camera work, but. . .
  • Weak points:
    • I got a little tired of the heavy backlights with lens flares that fog the frame.  I want to see actors' faces, damn it!
    • Ending was a little predictable; one of those films where I kept waiting for the twist that never happened. (Technically there's a twist, but I've experienced enough sci-fi stories to accurately predict the twist.  So I was waiting for a different twist that never happened.)
    • Because I predicted the twist, I felt the ending went on a little too long; I felt a little Return of the King syndrome.
  • One Line Review:  Probably the best sci-fi movie since Moon.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

A Bug's Life - Nostalgia Review

I just rewatched A Bug's Life, because it has my 2nd favorite Pixar score after The Incredibles. I think it's Pixar's most under-rated movie.

In addition to the story and characters being so fantastic in their simplicity, the animation actually really held up too; something I've always felt Pixar is strong at is "shooting" their films as if they were live-action. I first noticed it in Ratatouille, but there are moments in their movies where you can completely forget that you're watching anthropomorphic animals, let alone a cartoon. Part of that is the engaging stories and characters, but a lot of it is the attention to detail in the lighting, framing, and focus; and these details are what really put Pixar a cut above the rest.

If you look at a lot of the jokes in A Bug's Life, they're very weird. Amazing and brilliant, but weird. Jokes about insects and acting. A lot of set up and pay off. The structure is almost textbook. I love it.

I also didn't realize how stacked the cast is. Look it up. I've always liked Hopper as a villain. Realizing he's voiced by Kevin Spacey made this viewing really fun, because I could almost see Spacey's face any time Hopper was on screen. I mean that in a good way. His voice acting is engaging enough to sell me on the character, along with the animated acting, which is incredibly expressive considering how early A Bug's Life was on Pixar's resume. I think the phenomenal creature design combined with Spacey's acting really made me like Hopper as a kid, and I still do today. I might even go as far as to call him my favorite Pixar villain.

And one more shout to to Randy Newman for the score. Hot damn did he write great music in the '80's and '90's. He still does, but, come on, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and, of course, The Natural.