MOVIE: Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)

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Kung Fu Panda 4Year: 2024Rating: PGLength: 94 minutes / 1.57 hours Where movies like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) are the exception to the "fourth movie after a contained trilogy" rule, Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024) is the unnecessary sequel that's still just trying to cash in on a franchise. While I think the first Kung Fu Panda (2008) was the best of the first three movies, their story of Po's (Jack Black) journey to becoming a kung fu master felt complete by the end of the third film. That this movie barely had any of the characters from the previous movies should give you an idea of how the actors saw it. The problem Kung Fu Panda 4 falls into is the same one that I think plagued Cars 3 (2017). When the main character of the franchise is now set to be the mentor of the next generation, it usually means the writers are out of ideas....
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MOVIE: Ghostbusters – Frozen Empire (2024)

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Ghostbusters: Frozen EmpireYear: 2024Rating: PG-13Length: 115 minutes / 1.92 hours After the delightful reboot that was Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), I was excited to see that they would make a sequel with Ghosbusters: Frozen Empire (2024). Since Afterlife had taken the content more seriously than previous iterations of the franchise, I wanted to see if they'd continue that path in a meaningful way. Not that relying on comedy was a bad thing, but it felt like there was more to explore with these new characters. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a compromise of the old and the new in Frozen Empire. 80s nostalgia is huge in Hollywood right now, but I'd rather it stay as cameo appearances like in Afterlife than in bigger sub-plots like it was in this movie. There were almost too many character arcs in this film, most of which moved at a glacial pace for its almost 2-hour runtime. The ones that were interesting (and focused on the newer...
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MOVIE: Maestro (2023)

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MaestroYear: 2023Rating: RLength: 129 minutes / 2.15 hours There is nothing worse to me than a movie that tries too hard to be a good movie. Maestro (2023) was a film I looked forward to, but its execution left me sorely disappointed. Maybe it's my current distaste for biopics featuring famous men who cheat on their supporting wives—either with other women or, in this case, men. But this wasn't the whole problem. Like a reverse "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers (1967), Maestro was trying so hard to be a good movie that just ended up being mediocre. I get the sense that Bradley Cooper is desperate to win an Oscar. He has directed a few films now that felt so needy for critical affirmation that they fail to miss the key tenet of actually being good. The question is whether he more desires the Best Director statue or the Best Actor one, and I think it's the latter. Ironically enough, if...
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VIDEO GAME: Q.U.B.E. – 10th Anniversary Edition (2022)

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Q.U.B.E.: 10th Anniversary EditionYear: 2022Rating: ETime Played: 565 minutes / 9.42 hours It's wild to me that I decided to play Q.U.B.E., especially after I wasn't particularly satisfied with the sequel, Q.U.B.E. 2. Something in me had a hankering to play a first-person physics-based puzzle game, and I figured I had this game for free in my library, so why not? Even as a 10th Anniversary Edition—which mostly just extended the playtime with a few extra features—I felt other games in the genre were better than this. If anything, it made me appreciate the sequel a little more. The main game-play mechanic in this game is a glove that can create a variety of different cubes that can help the player move through a series of rooms on a mysterious space station. There are a lot of different cubes that you have to learn how to use as the game progresses. It felt like there were almost a dozen by the end...
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MOVIE: Ferrari (2023)

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FerrariYear: 2023Rating: RLength: 130 minutes / 2.17 hours Almost ten years after his previous film released, Michael Mann is back with a biopic about the private and public struggles of one of the greatest carmakers. The irony of Ferrari (2023) is that the women surrounding him seem much more interesting than the man himself. Even the fittingly named Adam Driver doesn’t seem to transform into Enzo Ferrari as much as just be Adam Driver with some extra makeup on and an Italian accent. To say that I was disappointed that there wasn’t more racing in a movie about Ferrari would be an understatement. Ferrari is yet another biopic that tries to show the struggles of a famous man whose extramarital affairs complicate things that otherwise wouldn’t be nearly as complicated. Perhaps this is why Penelope Cruz’s performance as Laura Ferrari was the standout role in this film, as she was the only one holding his empire together despite him having birthed an...
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MOVIE: Napoleon (2023)

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Napoleon Year: 2023 Rating: R Length: 158 minutes / 2.63 hours On paper, this movie had a lot going for it. Ridley Scott, partnering with Joaquin Phoenix again after the wildly successful Gladiator (2000) felt like this was a surefire entertaining film. Instead, the few scenes of military action were the only things that made this movie worth watching. Usually, when I watch a biopic about a famous individual like Napoleon Bonaparte, I’d expect something eyebrow raising that I didn’t know before. Napoleon is not that kind of film, as it is filled with history that I already knew, and I don’t consider myself a scholar of Napoleon. A lot of biopics tend to either show the genius of their titular character or cast light on their odd behavior (despite their angelic public persona). Napoleon has moments of both, each of which undercuts the effectiveness of the other. I can’t take his military success seriously when he has such peculiar bedroom habits, and I find...
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MOVIE: Us (2019)

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Us Year: 2019 Rating: R Length: 116 minutes / 1.93 hours I’ve been reluctant to jump on the Jordan Peele bandwagon. This has mostly been because I rarely watch horror films. What initially won me over was the social commentary Get Out (2017) provided. NOPE (2022) was an interesting take on alien films that spoke to the inherently violent nature of animals. With these two movies in mind, I finally filled in the gap and watched Us (2019). Unfortunately, my lack of desire to watch this film when it came out seems to have been justified as I ask, “What was the point?” I don’t want to spoil too much, but the twist was pretty easy to spot quite early on. Once the premise became clear, the movie seemed to be an excuse to just have the characters fight each other to the death—sometimes in the bloodiest way possible. Even the ending didn’t seem to be anything profound unless I’m missing something deeper that was...
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BOOK: The Memory of Earth (1992)

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The Memory of Earth Year: 1992 Author: Orson Scott Card Length: 635 minutes / 10.58 hours Having read through Orson Scott Card's science fiction Ender's Game saga and alternate reality historical fantasy Alvin Maker series, I was comfortable starting a new series from him. The Memory of Earth is the first book in the Homecoming series. As a post-apocalyptic story, there are definitely elements of science fiction and fantasy in this book (however, I wouldn't quite call it science fantasy). And while there are elements of his writing in the previous series I've read that I don't much care for, I really didn't like The Memory of Earth. I'm not sure if this book was so bad due to publisher deadlines or if Card wasn't getting honest feedback on it. As it stands, everything in this book feels generic. The post-apocalyptic setting has all the annoying "let's have an in-world complicated name for items from modern technology" tropes that don't really add anything. The plot...
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VIDEO GAME: Mega Man Star Force 2 – Zerker X Saurian (2008)

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Mega Man Star Force 2: Zerker X SaurianYear: 2008Rating: ETime Played: 1,055 minutes / 17.58 hours After playing through the first Mega Man Star Force game, the experience underwhelmed me. I absolutely loved the Mega Man Battle Network games, so I figured this "evolution" of the formula would still keep my interest. Unfortunately, after two games of this, they haven't won me over. Sure, some mechanics that made the Battle Network games fun find a home here in the sequel, but the whole series just feels so far separated from the original series as to not even be related. I think some of what attracted me to the Battle Network series was the link between it and the robot masters of the original series. In the Star Force series, the enemies have either been based on constellations (as in the first game) or mythical creatures (as in this game). Neat themes, sure, but they don't link to my inherent Mega Man nostalgia....
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VIDEO GAME: Pokémon Rumble World (2016)

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Pokémon Rumble World Year: 2016 Rating: E10+ Time Played: 10,653 minutes / 177.55 hours When I first got my Nintendo 3DS in 2016, I downloaded all the free games I could. As a Pokémon fan, I was glad to have such titles as Pokémon Picross and Pokémon Shuffle to satiate my need for puzzle games. I also downloaded Pokémon Rumble World. As the free-to-play version of the game, there were a lot of things locked behind currency that took an incredibly long time to access. The game wanted you to spend enough money to buy the game (at full price) so you could access everything. As is the case with any Pokémon game, Pokémon Rumble World focuses on the "catch them all" aspect. Each balloon you unlock lets you visit a randomly selected area with a specific elemental theme (e.g., volcano, beach, castle, factory, etc.). By battling hordes of the Pokémon found in these areas, they occasionally become "wobbly" and are caught once fainted in...
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BOOK: Golden Son (2015)

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Golden SonYear: 2015Author: Pierce BrownLength: 1,143 minutes / 19.05 hours After reading this book (or more accurately, listening to it), I'm on the edge of whether I'll continue this series. I thought Red Rising was OK for what seemed like a Hunger Games rip-off. Perhaps my problem with this one was trying to listen to it while caring for an infant. Or it was that it's been three years since I read the last book. Maybe the genre (or what's become of it) really doesn't appeal to me. At any rate, I had trouble engaging with this book at all. It didn't help that I only vaguely remembered the main character and what his goal was. This sequel didn't seem to have any of the recurring characters from the previous book, or at least it didn't pull from that cast of characters very much. I understood the need for a revolution against the higher classes via infiltration, but the motivation of the...
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MOVIE: Ant-Man and the Wasp – Quantumania (2023)

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Year: 2023 Rating: PG-13 Length: 124 minutes / 2.06 hours I'm not sure how much more of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) I can take. After a lackluster Phase 4, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) is what they chose to kick off Phase 5? Don't get me wrong, I truly enjoyed the first Ant-Man (2015). However, this was because I saw it more as a comedy heist film than as an action-packed superhero film. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) initially indicated this shift for me, but now Quantumania has cemented the averageness of Marvel movies in my mind. The part that hurts most is that they could have leaned more into the comedy. They tried with M.O.D.O.K. (who had a fantastic comedy spin-off TV show before being in the MCU) but most of those jokes were childish at best. I have to give them props for making this bizarre character make sense in the greater scheme of MCU continuity....
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MOVIE: The Expendables 3 (2014)

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The Expendables 3 Year: 2014 Rating: PG-13 Length: 126 minutes / 2.10 hours When the first Expendables movie came out, the premise of a ton of washed-out action stars coming together in a single film amused me. It wasn't that great, mostly because I thought to myself, "These are the only guys they could get?" Partly because of this, my standards had been lowered for the second film in the franchise and I found it was an absolute blast with a lot of big names that the first movie was missing. Then they made a third one and ran out of names. What set the first two Expendables movies apart was the 80s action film machismo that made the concept of bringing these actors together so amusing. Now? It seems like they're reaching the bottom of the bucket for these types of actors—mostly because I don't consider them as the over-the-top action stars that the rest of the crew is. I mean, Kelsey Grammer? Really?...
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BOOK: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

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The Man in the High CastleYear: 1962Author: Philip K. DickLength: 505 minutes / 8.42 hours While I haven't seen the Amazon TV series based on this book, I have had enough awareness of the basic premise going in. An alternate reality where the Allies lost World War II felt like such an interesting concept that I had to read the book that spawned this idea. Of course, I also enjoy Philip K. Dick's writing for the same reasons: he has novel ideas that he executes well. Unfortunately, I found The Man in the High Castle to be underwhelming. To Dick's credit, his world-building for a history where Japan took over part of the United States after World War II felt quite thorough. Little subtle ways that people act, economies based on American antiques, as well as other differences that made sense with such a drastic change to history. The problem is, Dick was so focused on world-building that he forgot to write...
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BOOK: The Atlantis Complex (2010)

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The Atlantis ComplexYear: 2010Author: Eoin ColferLength: 458 minutes / 7.63 hours While I have certainly enjoyed the Artemis Fowl series, I knew the time-travel plot of The Time Paradox was the writing on the wall for this teenage genius criminal. The Atlantis Complex merely enforced my opinion, as it completely removed the elements that made the titular character himself. At least in the previous book, the author contrasted the character's growth against a younger version of Artemis. Here, it just feels off. Unmemorable and going through the motions, The Atlantis Complex is underwater in more ways than one. I get that YA series will often lean on the formulas that made them successful, but seven books into this series and it has become quite stale. Having read this book about six months before writing this review, nothing stuck with me other than the potential for an eventual development in the "relationship" between Artemis and Holly. Everything else faded into the background as...
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MOVIE: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent Year: 2022 Rating: R Length: 107 minutes / 1.78 hours One of the best bits in the television show Community was Abed's exploration of Nicolas Cage's career. Is he a genius? Is he a hack? There is an almost equal amount of evidence to suggest either side. When I first saw the trailers for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022), I thought the meta take on Nicolas Cage's career would be a fun trip. However, which version of the actor would we get? Genius or hack? The fundamental problem with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is that it doesn't go far enough into the meta. It felt like someone just opened up IMDb and chose the top ten Nicolas Cage blockbusters to name-drop throughout the movie. We don't get Moonstruck (1987). We don't get Leaving Las Vegas (1995). We don't get Adaptation. (2001). As a result, this film mostly focuses on his action-oriented movies, which typically aren't...
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BOOK: Waking Gods (2017)

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Waking Gods Year: 2017 Author: Sylvain Neuvel Length: 336 pages When I read Sleeping Giants, the narrative technique used to tell this story blew me away. I was hooked, and it pleased me to learn there were two more books in this Themis Files trilogy. Sure, I still had some qualms with the first book, but it was mostly from an "omniscient exposition dump." It took me a while to get back to this series, but I was looking forward to reading the second book, Waking Gods. In that time, something changed, and I did not enjoy this book. Despite loving this indirect narrative approach in the first book, the technique showed its cracks as it reached past its limitations in Waking Gods. Interviews and recording transcripts can only show so much, and it's difficult to get into the characters when they're at arm's length. And perhaps this was the other thing I didn't like about this book: the characters. None of them are particularly...
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MOVIE: Mulan (2020)

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Mulan Year: 2020 Rating: PG-13 Length: 115 minutes / 1.92 hours In Disney's ever-ouroboros-like handling of its back catalog, the continuation of live-action adaptations of its animated classics claims another victim. This time, Mulan (2020) seems to miss the point of what made the original so beloved. Of course, you can probably say that about other live-action adaptations as well (especially The Lion King (2019)). If anything, Mulan is a parody of its source material and Chinese culture overall. Everything about this adaptation felt flat and uninspired—like Disney is just running all their previous animated classics through the live-action machine to see if anything good comes out the other side. Don't get me wrong; I think Disney has had a few live-action successes. I think The Jungle Book (2016) improves on its source material. It's just when you adjust the way you tell a certain story too much, it no longer contains the elements that made the original fun and exciting. By making Mulan (Yifei Liu)...
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MOVIE: Song of Love (1947)

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Song of Love Year: 1947 Rating: Approved Length: 119 minutes / 1.98 hours Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time with me will know that I absolutely love the story of Clara and Robert Schumann. She was such an inspiring woman and well ahead of her time in terms of her independence. In researching her life for a future historical fiction novel I plan to write, I found that Katharine Hepburn had portrayed Clara Schumann in Song of Love (1947). I already knew the story beats of the life of Robert and Clara (with some of the drama Johannes Brahms (Robert Walker) introduced), but Song of Love misses the point almost entirely. While there were some scenes in this movie that spoke to the situation of Robert and Clara's tragic love story, they were completely lost in what I can only describe as "1940s sitcom schtick." These scenes added nothing to the narrative of the implied love triangle between Clara, Robert, and Johannes....
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MOVIE: Escape Room (2019)

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Escape Room Year: 2019 Rating: PG-13 Length: 99 minutes / 1.65 hours For all the Young Adult clones that The Hunger Games (2012) spawned in Hollywood, it's interesting to see something that takes the elaborate death traps present in that series and applies them to the horror genre. While I'm sure the Saw series likely did this kind of thing already, I haven't seen any of those films to know (too bloody for my tastes). This is where Escape Room (2019) takes an interesting premise and makes it feel like a generic Hunger Games knock-off while remaining a PG-13 horror film. At first glance, Escape Room is a smart thriller that forces its "players" to solve these rooms and eventually escape alive. Some of these set pieces are quite well done, including an oven and an upside-down bar. The reason these people were trapped in a series of escape rooms was also somewhat interesting, even if it wasn't explained very well. However, as is the...
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MOVIE: Artemis Fowl (2020)

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Artemis Fowl Year: 2020 Rating: PG Length: 95 minutes / 1.58 hours When I first saw the trailers for Artemis Fowl (2020), I was intrigued enough to pick up the book and read it. With its continual delays, I was able to also read through the first five books in the series. This may have helped me understand what Disney was trying to do with this, but it doesn't excuse their butchering of the source material. I can only imagine how confused people who hadn't read a single word of the books would be, and I was right on the verge with them. What gets me is that, as a fairly short book, Disney could have made a perfect adaptation in a scant two hours. Instead, they decided to cram so much "sequel potential" into 95 minutes to lose focus on any of the stories they were trying to adapt simultaneously. I also understand how the movie version is inclusive of all races and genders,...
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BOOK: Autonomous (2017)

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Autonomous Year: 2017 Author: Annalee Newitz Length: 627 minutes / 10.45 hours Science fiction often seeks to answer the moral and ontological questions that we’ll soon face in future technological landscapes. When I picked up Autonomous, I was expecting an examination of artificial intelligence and the ability for robots and machines to eventually become sentient. Unfortunately, that was only about half of the book that I ended up reading. The fact that there were two dueling scientific topics in this book made its message muddled, let alone misleading. It really should have been branded/titled as a book about pharmaceuticals and the patent system that holds the healthcare system hostage. While I’m sure the pharmaceutical elements of this story are accurate (at least in a fictional context), this wasn’t the reason I wanted to read Autonomous. Granted, telling two parts of the story—from the POV of the pirate chemist and from the POV of the law enforcement sent to catch her—was a good way to reveal the plot...
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MOVIE: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

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I'm Thinking of Ending Things Year: 2020 Rating: R Length: 134 minutes / 2.23 hours Perhaps I should have learned my lesson from when I watched Synecdoche, New York (2008). I have appreciated plenty of Charlie Kaufman's films, but only when he's the writer. Not the director. Or maybe this is a more recent change, as some of my favorite Kaufman films were released before 2005. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Being John Malkovich (1999) are some of my favorite films, with Adaptation. (2002) being at least something that I understood (despite its extremely meta nature). I'll admit that I thought I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) was initially about suicide by its title. As I started to watch, I thought I would be getting a thoughtful look at the midwest's mundane nature (a la Nebraska (2013)). Then a bandage switched sides on a character's forehead. From that point, everything became much more bizarre—to the point where I stopped even trying to...
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MOVIE: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution (2019)

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Mewtwo Strikes Back: EvolutionYear: 2019Rating: PGLength: 98 minutes / 1.63 hours Growing up with the Pokémon franchise during the peak of its fervor, I definitely remember going to see the first movie when it came out in theaters. Consequently, there is an amount of nostalgia that I associate with this first forray of the franchise onto the big screen. When I saw that Netflix had recreated the 2D anime of my childhood with their style of CGI animation, I was intrigued enough to check it out. Much like in the recent CGI version of The Lion King (2019), just because a movie was faithfully recreated using newer animation technology does not make it a better movie. Additionally, I believe the fact that I had aged since I first watched this movie made it so I could see it through a more objective lens. What I found was that the story was incredibly light, and the only thing that made it worth watching...
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MOVIE: Synecdoche, New York (2008)

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Synecdoche, New YorkYear: 2008Rating: RLength: 124 minutes / 2.07 hours I knew going into Synecdoche, New York (2008), that it was a Charlie Kaufman film. I knew his material could get weird (like Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation. (2002)) but movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) had enough heart that I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Except nothing could have prepared me for the madness of Synecdoche, New York (2008). I mean, there are meta films like Adaptation. then there are meta films of a whole different level like Synecdoche, New York. In the end, I think the story suffers due to its insistence on the artistic. I’m all for “smart” films that make the audience think. However, I am not a fan of movies that are so intellectually up their own behind to obscure every piece of meaningful plot and character development behind metaphor and “art.” There is a point where the plot gets so convoluted...
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BOOK: The Holy Bible-Abridged (2015)

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The Holy Bible: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness Year: 2015 Author: Zach Weinersmith Length: 72 pages Satire is a fine line between comedy and offense. While I can't fault The Holy Bible: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness for being precisely what it says—abridged beyond the point of usefulness—there's definitely a bias present in its scant 72 pages. I can take a joke about my faith pretty well, mostly because I understand the reference being made and can identify what's funny about it. Sure, The Holy Bible: Abridged has a few amusing bits in it, but there are almost too many portions that feel too irreverent to be funny. The Bible is a long book, and I know most people probably haven't read through the entire thing. This book tries to remedy this situation by providing a brief comedic sentence about each book in the Bible. Sure, it gets the point across quite succinctly sometimes, but it misses the point in many of its...
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MOVIE: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

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The Magnificent AmbersonsYear: 1942Rating: Not RatedLength: 88 minutes / 1.47 hours Some films are timeless classics, like Citizen Kane (1941), then some are doomed to live in their shadows like The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). It’s easy to see how a success like Citizen Kane would incentivize studios to let Orson Welles direct another film in the hopes that he’d surpass himself. Unfortunately, I don’t feel The Magnificent Ambersons ever achieves that level of cinematic notoriety, merely acting as a footnote to much more famous films. Consequently, this movie hasn’t necessarily aged as well as its 1941 counterpart. I’ll still give credit where credit is due and say that The Magnificent Ambersons contains the visual charm and bold style that defined Orson Welles’ films. If only the story and characters were memorable enough to care about, then we might have a good movie on our hands here. As it stands, I didn’t care for any of the characters, nor did I even feel...
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BOOK: Cartwright’s Cavaliers (2016)

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Cartwright’s Cavaliers Year: 2016 Author: Mark Wandrey Length: 473 pages I don’t generally read military sci-fi, but I picked this book up for free and thought I’d give it a try. Cartwright’s Cavaliers certainly has its strengths. The action sequences are well-described, and the origin story of the main character was a unique setup that seems like it would be uncommon in the military sci-fi genre. That being said, Cartwright’s Cavaliers has a strong start but bumbles along to the point of being cringe-inducing by the end. It’s unfortunate, considering how it could have been better if it had stuck to some of the more common tropes of the genre instead of focusing on a (mostly) unlikeable protagonist. Aside from a sprinkling of typos and proofreading errors, my main qualm with this book is the main character: Jim Cartwright. About one-third of the way through the book, he is revealed to be a fan of an animated series that was popular with men of his...
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MOVIE: The Gentlemen (2020)

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The Gentlemen Year: 2020 Rating: R Length: 113 minutes / 1.88 hours I’ve enjoyed a good portion of Guy Ritchie’s filmmaking. While many of his more recent movies rely on franchise appeal (Sherlock Holmes (2009), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) and Aladdin (2019) are of note), I usually associate his style of filmmaking with the British heist film (like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000)). Consequently, I was looking forward to seeing his recent film, The Gentlemen (2020), as it seemed to be a return to the kind of filmmaking that attracted me to Guy Ritchie films in the first place. Unfortunately, it seems Ritchie has been away from his core movies for so long that he’s almost forgotten how to make them. The meta framing with Hugh Grant and Charlie Hunnam was clunky enough that even Hunnam’s character was getting bored with the “telling” in the exposition provided by Grant’s character. Sure, there were a few neat twists here and...
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BOOK: Mist (2013)

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Mist Year: 2013 Author: Susan Krinard Length: 384 pages My knowledge of Norse mythology is passable at best. Granted, much of it I “learned” from movies like Thor (2011), so I understand that there’s an amount of fictionalization to my knowledge. That being said, Mist seemed to take this pop-culture understanding of Norse mythology and transplant it into modern-day San Francisco. While solidly in the New Adult genre (there is plenty of sex and allusions to it here), I can’t say that anything is interesting here in terms of story. Sure, there are a few things that happen, but they all seem to be alluding to much more exciting developments that won’t happen until later in the series. One of my biggest qualms with this book was that I didn’t connect with the main character. Mist felt very “Mary Sue” to me. I found the more common elements of her existence (e.g., her employment, grocery shopping, laundry, etc.) were mentioned in passing but never given...
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VIDEO GAME: Untitled Goose Game (2019)

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Untitled Goose GameYear: 2019Rating: ETime Played: 2+ hours The indie breakout hit of the year, Untitled Goose Game, has a lot going for it. The action-synched music, the visual aesthetic, and (most of all) the ability to play as a modern-age dinosaur. While most of the geese I’ve interacted with in my life have been of the Canadian variety, the controls and feel of this British goose are accurate enough for me to become lost in moments of hilarity at the hands of this foul waterfowl. However, for $20, I can’t recommend anyone pay that much for what amounts to a polished tech demo. Despite all it has going for it, Untitled Goose Game is incredibly short. I was able to play through the four main areas in only a few hours, not bothering to complete the expanded list of tasks as most of them were minor variants of the things I had already done. Additionally, while the game seems open-world at...
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BOOK: Record of a Spaceborn Few (2018)

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Record of a Spaceborn Few Year: 2018 Author: Becky Chambers Length: 696 minutes / 11.6 hours Considering that A Closed and Common Orbit was only loosely related to the first book in the Wayfarers series, I knew that I shouldn’t expect the third book in this series, Record of a Spaceborn Few, to have any significant connection to the previous books. Unfortunately, even the several different storylines in this book were hardly connected, seeming more like a series of short stories that were inter-cut between themselves. While Chambers’ world-building and dialogue are still top-notch, there isn’t anything in this book other than some boring characters living their boring lives. I understand that any author worth their salt will develop vast amounts of details about the universe they create. However, most authors leave the aspects of the minutia and banal day-to-day lives out of their writing in favor of an actual plot with actual conflict. Instead, this book is filled with the details of world-building and nothing else. If these characters...
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BOOK: Tongues of Serpents (2010)

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Tongues of Serpents Year: 2010 Author: Naomi Novik Length: 355 pages Up until now, I had only read one other book by Naomi Novik. I had loved Spinning Silver and the unique take on a classic fairy tale it presented. While I understand Tongues of Serpents is the sixth book in the Temeraire series, I found it to be inferior to Spinning Silver in many ways. I will also grant that I’m not necessarily the target audience for this genre of historical fantasy when it takes a more nautical tilt (like Far Side of the World does). Still, there was enough of a standalone element to Tongues of Serpents that I was able to pull a story out of it and write a review of it. Some things I had trouble getting used to in this book were the fact that the dragons all spoke in the same English as the human characters. I had a tough time identifying which characters were dragons and which were humans, and I didn’t know why they sounded so similar (I’m...
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BOOK: First King of Shannara (1996)

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First King of Shannara Year: 1996 Author: Terry Brooks Length: 1,155 minutes / 19.25 hours While this prequel to the original Shannara trilogy was written well after completing the first three books, First King of Shannara failed to re-capture the magic that made me adore Wishsong of Shannara. If anything, this book seemed unnecessary. It told a story that already had a fixed ending as described in the exposition of The Sword of Shannara (which itself had a pretty un-climactic ending if I remember correctly). Sure, there’s a lot more world-building in this book, but only avid fans of the series will find any of it interesting. Perhaps my main gripe with this book is how I failed to care for any of the characters. Most of their interactions felt cliché and trite, and there was a smidge too many of them for me to want to take the time to know who they were. If anything, the characters were flat stereotypes with no personality. This was...
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MOVIE: Yesterday (2019)

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Yesterday Year: 2019 Rating: PG-13 Length: 116 minutes / 1.93 hours When I saw the first trailers for Yesterday (2019), I had some high hopes for this movie. The premise of only one person remembering The Beatles in a world where this famous band didn’t exist was intriguing enough by itself to warrant a watch. Plus, with Danny Boyle directing, I had perhaps anticipated more than what I actually got. It’s hard to hate a movie with such a great soundtrack full of Beatles songs, but the execution of the entire idea left me wanting a bit more and breaking my suspension of disbelief on more than one occasion. Back in high school, I had a history assignment to perform a thought experiment similar to Yesterday: what happens if The Beatles didn’t exist? Instead of just being a weird gap in the cultural zeitgeist, I think this movie would have done better to see the amount of influence the band had throughout the music industry. Sure, some moments...
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BOOK: Messenger’s Legacy (2014)

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Messenger’s Legacy Year: 2014 Author: Peter V. Brett Length: 172 minutes / 2.87 hours In a series that’s full of exposition and backstory, I found it a little odd that these extraneous details weren’t relegated to side-story novellas so the plot of the main series of books could focus on the current action. What’s even more curious is that Messenger’s Legacy, a side-story novella in this series, doesn’t explore anything new or interesting that hadn’t already been covered in the main books. The only new information I learned in this novella was slightly more detail about bog and swamp demons, which seems unnecessary with all things considered. Following somewhat minor characters from The Warded Man (who haven’t appeared in the series since), Messenger’s Legacy shows it is easier to survive in demon-infested nights than the series initially indicated. While I’m not sure if any of these details will come into play in the main-line books, it does help expand the world-building just a little bit...
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BOOK: Roadwork (1981)

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Roadwork Year: 1981 Author: Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) Length: 577 minutes / 9.62 hours I wasn’t aware of Stephen King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym until I picked up this book to read on a whim. While it’s clear all of King’s technical prowess is still present in Bachman’s work, the “king of horror” gained a chance to write outside his genre. Of course, King has done this before with a few different books (like Hearts in Atlantis, The Green Mile, and The Dark Tower series), but writing under a pseudonym seemed to unleash an amount of cynicism I’ve hardly seen in King’s writing before. Written in the early 1980s, Roadwork exhibits all the identifying marks of a cynic who has been over-saturated with consumerism. The need to have a job to support a family by buying a house that needs to be filled with the accouterments of modern living is a bit too much for some people. This is especially true for those who don’t...
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VIDEO GAME: Owlboy (2018)

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Owlboy Year: 2018 Rating: E10 Time Spent: 5+ hours I had seen a video of some Owlboy gameplay a while ago that made the game look interesting enough to buy. The retro 16-bit-style graphics were what drew me to this adventure platformer. Now that I’ve played through it, I found it to be somewhat…disappointing. Sure, the visuals are quite striking, and each location certainly has some elemental charm to it. Additionally, the story is relatively simple but also charming in its own way. In the end, though, I don’t think I’ll give this game an additional playthrough. This is mostly because—without trying—I collected almost everything in the game in my first go. First off, this was a fairly short game, which I should come to expect from independent game developers. After all, Cave Story and Undertale weren’t terribly long, but perhaps I’ve been spoiled by games like Hollow Knight. Secondly, even up until the last boss, I could never quite get the hang of the...
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BOOK: Expeditions of the Mantis (2019)

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Expeditions of the Mantis Year: 2019 Author: Jim Henderson Length: 260 pages Sequels are interesting creatures. While the onus of the first book of a series is to lay out some ground rules of the universe and introduce us to the main characters, any follow-on books should dive a little deeper into the characters and explore some of the conflicts that drive the universe. Expeditions of the Mantis attempts a bit of the latter when compared to Jaunts of the Mantis, but ends up falling into old patterns by the end of the book. If anything, I have more questions about this universe now than when I started, since Expeditions of the Mantis only scratched the surface of some fascinating topics. Unfortunately, while the crew of the Mantis was the most interesting aspect of Jaunts of the Mantis, the dynamic didn’t work as well in this sequel. If anything, the inability to add in a strong “third character” (a role held by the preacher in the previous book) highlighted how one-dimensional these characters...
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BOOK: Nobody’s Fool (2019)

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Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead Year: 2019 Author: Bill Griffith Length: 256 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY*** When I was growing up, I occasionally read Bill Griffith’s comic strip, Zippy the Pinhead. While the absurdist humor was a bit above my head at the time, the titular character stuck with me. Fast forward to when I won a giveaway copy of Nobody’s Fool. I thought this was going to be a fake biography about the origins of the comic strip character; I was surprised to start reading and find so many real-life details from the 1930s. I thought it was an odd detail to include a fictional character in a well-known cult classic like Freaks (1932) until I realized that this story wasn’t fictional. It was about the real person who inspired the character of Zippy the Pinhead. Of course, I didn’t come to this realization until I was about half-way through the book. Griffith’s self-insert around this point helped to confirm my suspicions....
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MOVIE: The Fate of the Furious (2017)

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The Fate of the Furious Year: 2017 Rating: PG-13 Length: 136 minutes / 2.26 hours I’ll be honest and admit that this is the first movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise that I’ve ever seen. Sure, I’ve been aware of the franchise for years, but it never really appealed to me (I’m not much of a car guy after all). I got a free digital copy of this movie somewhere along the line and decided I might as well watch it since I own it. I had plenty of preconceived notions about this series based on little tidbits I’d picked up over the years, and pretty much every one of them was confirmed with this movie. I think this movie might be best summed up by one of the lines of dialogue. “What are you, 12?” A lot of the characters’ interactions and dialogue seemed like how a 12-year-old boy who was really into cars would write them. This was especially apparent during...
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BOOK: The Long Cosmos (2016)

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The Long Cosmos Year: 2016 Author: Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter Length: 742 minutes / 12.37 hours By the time I reached the end of the Long Earth series, I had a revelation. With the bounding conditions of the universe being that there are multiple worlds accessible via stepping and that no iron can pass between worlds, the ideas to explore these multiple worlds are almost endless. My revelation was that this series would have been better as an anthology of short stories from a collection of authors, instead of a handful of semi-disjointed novels that didn’t ever quite know what they were doing. The story never shined through, instead of feeling like a distracted three-year-old who wants to explore the potential of other worlds. While I felt the series was starting to succeed in telling coherent and solid plots, this book removed that forward progress. When nearly one-third of the first part of the book seems to be comprised entirely of summary and recaps...
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MOVIE: Christopher Robin (2018)

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Christopher Robin Year: 2018 Rating: PG Length: 104 minutes / 1.73 hours Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: a child from a famous story grows up into a businessman who doesn’t have time for his family but eventually comes to face his lack of work/life balance by revisiting the fantastical world of his childhood. If you thought this was the plot of Hook (1991), you’d be right. Unfortunately, it is also the almost-identical plot to the Winnie the Pooh sequel, Christopher Robin (2018). I’d forgive its unoriginality only if I knew who the audience for it was. Is it a morality tale for overworked parents? Is it a lesson for kids to never take work seriously? I honestly don’t know. I will say that Disney did a good job bringing the stuffed animals of the original story to life in this live-action adaptation, except that I was pretty shocked to find out that Rabbit (Peter Capaldi) and Owl (Toby Jones) were actual animals, and not of the stuffed variety....
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BOOK: Sideways (2004)

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Sideways Year: 2004 Author: Rex Pickett Length: 665 minutes / 11.08 hours When I got into this book, the only things I knew about it were that it was about wine and it was made into a movie of the same name by Alexander Payne. Unfortunately, unlike a good wine, this book doesn’t seem to have aged well. Maybe people were able to put up with buddy comedy sex romps back in the early 2000’s, but the social climate has changed considerably since then. I doubt a book like this would be written today, at least without some outcry from people who find the women in it to be inherently objectified. Most of my issue with this book comes down to the characters. I’ll give the author credit for creating individuals that made me react to them so vehemently. The problem is that I hated these characters. I hated Jack for being so sex-crazed that he felt obligated to satiate his urges mere days before...
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MOVIE: Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

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Ant-Man and the Wasp Year: 2018 Rating: PG-13 Length: 118 minutes / 1.97 hours I'll be the first to defend Ant-Man (2015) from its detractors. Once I realized it was supposed to be a comedy (mostly due to Edgar Wright's early involvement), I knew the superhero aspect would take a back seat to the laughs. That being said, I cannot defend the honor of its sequel. Sure, a lot of the elements that made Ant-Man entertaining are still present in Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), but it's really more of a standard superhero film that's meant to answer questions brought up in previous films. While this film picks up well after the events of this first film and Captain America: Civil War (2016), not a lot has changed. The main characters are all there, but now Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) also has a shrinking suit. This is no surprise, considering the after-credits scene from the first movie, so it was nice to see her get into...
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MOVIE: Ocean’s Eight (2018)

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Ocean’s Eight Year: 2018 Rating: PG-13 Length: 110 minutes / 1.83 hours As the gender-swapped spin-off of a remake, Ocean’s Eight (2018) feels convoluted merely based on its heritage. While I love the Ocean’s Eleven (2001) remake, I was curious to see what would make Ocean’s Eight something that would distinctly empower women (which I’m assuming was the point). In the end, it seems like Ocean’s Eight merely highlights the 72% wage disparity when compared to Ocean’s Eleven since most of the tropes and clichés almost felt like they were pandering to the very audience they were trying to lift up. While I will praise Ocean’s Eight for its ability to be a passable heist film, both with main and “twist” heists, that’s mostly where my adoration ends. Sure, I get the need to move the setting to New York to better align with fashion and other women’s interests, and part of Sandra Bullock’s character introduction after being released from prison was fun, but there were so many problems with the plot and characters that I’m still...
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BOOK: Pebble in the Sky (1950)

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Pebble in the Sky Year: 1950 Author: Isaac Asimov Length: 487 minutes / 8.12 hours As I pulled together some of the information for this review, I became aware that Pebble in the Sky was Isaac Asimov’s first novel. To be honest, that explains a lot. I’d read a few Asimov books before—I, Robot being a personal favorite—so I was a little disappointed with this story. If anything, it showed Asimov’s potential for bigger and better stories, or at least stories that were a little more focused. As it is, Pebble in the Sky provided the groundwork for prequels and some of Asimov’s best writing, but it remains fairly rough in comparison. Some of the ideas in Pebble in the Sky are certainly noteworthy, including an age limit for humans and telepathic abilities. We also see here the ability of science fiction to address social issues as well. In this case, racism was the topic du jour, which was definitely in the early edges of revolution in 1950. And yet, the political commentary...
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BOOK: Pensées (1669)

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Pensées Year: 1669 Author: Blaise Pascal Length: 771 minutes / 12.85 hours While I do enjoy and appreciate the ease of which I can listen to an audiobook and absorb the content of a variety of books, there are always a few books that don’t translate well into the format. Sure, I might have my qualms about the narrator’s pronunciation, volume control, or other technical issues. However, this is the first book where the rating I’m giving applies explicitly to the audiobook version, and not necessarily to the book’s contents. The difference here is that the audiobook version of Pascal’s Pensées doesn’t allow the reader enough time to adequately absorb the content. If I were to classify this book, I’d probably say it’s closer to a listing of complaints/observations that would work better on a multi-year “item-a-day” calendar than in an audiobook format. The majority of Pensées is a series of proverbs by Blaise Pascal, a name that most scientists will recognize. The fact that...
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MOVIE: Jack Reacher – Never Go Back (2016)

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Jack Reacher: Never Go Back Year: 2016 Rating: PG-13 Length: 118 minutes / 1.97 hours The follow-up sequel to Jack Reacher (2012), Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) is almost a warning to the audience in the title alone. I understand how a long-running book series like the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child is advantageous for the author by allowing the reader to pick up any book in the series and not need the background of the previous titles. However, with these self-encapsulated scenarios, Jack Reacher is probably better aligned with a television series than a series of movies. Not everyone can be the James Bond series, which has been able to get away with this for as long as it has. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the original Jack Reacher movie, as it seemed to channel the “man with no name” / high-plains drifter / Ronin style that was prevalent in Westerns and Samurai films. His skills and calm demeanor unquestionably imply military...
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MOVIE: Ghostbusters (2016)

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Ghostbusters Year: 2016 Rating: PG-13 Length: 116 minutes / 1.93 hours Look, I'm all for giving women a shot in traditionally male-focused franchises, but when all it boils down to is an application of "Rule 63," then I don't think we're doing these women justice. In this remake/reboot, the visuals and weapons get an upgrade, and that's about it. If they truly wanted to make a "Ghostbusters with women," then the characters shouldn't have been so interchangeable with the originals. I understand the need to maintain the parallels to the original, but these characters come off more like men in women's bodies than women who have their own, unique challenges and approaches to solving problems. If anything, Ghostbusters (2016) shows how extraordinary the comedy and special effects of the original Ghostbusters (1984) were. While the original usually earned its laughs with a wink, this remake had jokes that mostly relied upon awkward and uncomfortable situations or faux pas. I get that sometimes the improvisational nature of comedy can work for...
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BOOK: The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)

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The Pilgrim’s Progress Year: 1678 Author: John Bunyan Length: 324 pages I distinctly remember my parents reading this book to me when I was a child. Decades later, I decided to re-visit it and read it for myself. I don’t know if it was an abridged version or a simplified re-telling appropriate for kids, but this was not the book I remember from my childhood. Sure, the action bits were still there, like the fight with Apollyon, the Slough of Despair, and the suicide discussion in Vanity Fair, but there was way more dialogue than what I recalled of the story. Not to mention the verbiage/wording seemed more along the lines of a King James Bible than of a fantasy setting. Sure, I’ll concede that, for 1678, this was a groundbreaking piece of fiction, and perhaps the first piece of successful fantasy ever written, but it hasn’t aged entirely as well over the years when compared to its source material. There are undoubtedly little lessons...
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BOOK: On Stranger Tides (1987)

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On Stranger Tides Year: 1987 Author: Tim Powers Length: 721 minutes / 12.02 hours Since I knew the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie was based on this book, I decided to give it a read to see if it was any better than the so-so extension of the Pirates franchise. Let's just say that this book was a loose inspiration for the film. About the only elements that survived the transition were Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth. Of course, even the movie version vastly improved the Fountain. In fact, I think I prefer the Pirates movie of the same name, even if the two don't share much in common. I will say that On Stranger Tides does excel in its action sequences. The fights and battles are choreographed and described in such a way that is entertaining to read and comprehensible to understand. Unfortunately, a book full of fight sequences does not a good story make. Events in this book just seemed to happen,...
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BOOK: Gaia (2017)

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Gaia Year: 2017 Author: J.A. Darmanin Length: 296 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY*** I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it’s one of those basic Young Adult stories, replete with the clichés like the “normal girl who finds out she’s super-special” and “main character is the only one who can save the world.” However, it also didn’t have the obscenity, violence, and sexuality that as seemed to permeate most YA books of late. Similarly, I found the main characters to be incredibly annoying, but then they were also written as teenage girls . . . so I guess there’s an amount of realism there. While there are certainly polished elements to this book, including the cover and some of the formatting, there are a few amateur mistakes that reveal that this is the author’s first book. The biggest problem I had was the variety of plot holes present throughout the book. Sure, there were a few moments that came...
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MOVIE: Call Me by Your Name (2017)

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Call Me by Your Name Year: 2017 Rating: R Length: 132 minutes / 2.20 hours Call Me by Your Name (2017) is the latest in a string of LGBTQ+ films nominated for Best Picture. Each year, we seem to see one of these LGBTQ+ films nominated for the highest award, but this year there’s a much more fundamental problem with it. Around the time the definition of marriage was changed by the U.S. Government, many opponents warned of a slippery slope that would lead to acceptance of lifestyles that are currently illegal. Call Me by Your Name is proof that we have proceeded down this slope. I understand that the themes of “first love” are what draw people to this film, and I’d be OK with that if the theme never entered sexual territory. As it is, this movie glamorizes sexual relations with a minor. This is statutory rape, which is illegal. Even if the parties involved were heterosexual, this would still be wrong. Unfortunately, I think it’s...
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BOOK: Ganymede (2011)

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Ganymede Year: 2011 Author: Cherie Priest Length: 729 minutes / 12.15 hours Now that I’ve read the first three books in the Clockwork Century series, any hope I had of some cohesive narrative is essentially gone. While following a new character for each book helps to provide a different setting of the steampunk alternate universe, when I know these characters won’t matter outside their own books, I kind of stop caring about them. Even previous heroines are relegated to cameo and minor character status as the persistent series of somewhat pointless events drags on. And don’t even get me started on the zombies, which are a distraction to any actual story in my opinion. I think the main problem I have with these books is the fact that things happen without much lead-up or foreshadowing. Sure, there are some fascinating factors involved with making a submarine work in the Civil War era, but the resulting battle and conclusion went exactly as I expected them to. This isn’t...
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BOOK: Watership Down (1975)

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Watership Down Year: 1975 Author: Richard Adams Length: 953 minutes / 15.88 hours In an ever-increasing list of books I failed to read as a child, I finally managed to get to Watership Down. While I am aware that many people speculate the true meaning of the book to be an allegory for Nazis or Communism, or whatever, the prologue provided by the author in this edition stated that it was merely a bedtime story for his children. With this in mind, I’m sure many subconscious influences led to some of the themes in Watership Down. Either way, the story seemed to be a rambling series of events that didn’t have much of a point or purpose. Let’s be clear: I like rabbits. I think they’re cute, and I even own two of them. Therefore, I appreciate the little details of lagomorph mannerisms sprinkled throughout. And yet, there were a few confusing choices made in this book, like giving a somewhat-confusing “rabbit language” that rarely...
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MOVIE: The Dark Tower (2017)

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The Dark Tower Year: 2017 Rating: PG-13 Length: 93 minutes / 1.55 hours Like many “best-selling” books and book series made into movies, I don’t have the time to sit down and read them all before their film adaptations are released. The Dark Tower (2017) is no different. In fact, I was only made aware of the Dark Tower series shortly before the movie was announced. Therefore, unlike the diehard fans of the series, I had no expectations for the film other than the understanding that there would be some interesting fantasy/sci-fi elements presented on the big screen. Unfortunately, at a measly 93 minutes of runtime, The Dark Tower felt a little . . . light. Sure, all the essential elements of the story were there: the gunslinger protagonist (Idris Elba), the magical “Man in Black” antagonist (Matthew McConaughey), and the conflict of good vs. evil. And yet, so much of the plot seemed glossed over that the entire movie felt like a trailer for...
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BOOK: Captains Courageous (1897)

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Captains Courageous Year: 1897 Author: Rudyard Kipling Length: 356 minutes / 5.93 hours Captains Courageous is one of those classics that I just haven’t read, for whatever reason. I got the sense it was about being at sea, probably in the same vein as Moby Dick or Treasure Island. And yet, I don’t know if I could tell you what happened in this book. Sure, the main character was picked up by a fishing vessel, and eventually, they learned how to deal with the harsh job of being a fisherman, but that’s pretty much it. The series of fishing adventures seem to be loosely tied together, and the overarching plot was weak at best. Part of me wonders if the audiobook version of this classic was to blame. Not only did the narrator have a bit of an accent, but she did all the different dialects of the various characters based on their ethnic origins. While I would usually love this attention to detail, more...
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BOOK: Notes from the Internet Apocalypse (2014)

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Notes from the Internet Apocalypse Year: 2014 Author: Wayne Gladstone Length: 323 minutes / 5.38 hours The main concept behind Notes from the Internet Apocalypse is interesting: one day, the internet just stops working. All the computers and phone lines still work, but the internet has just gone missing. The story that results should be considered a satire since I hardly believe people who have hidden behind a veil of anonymity for so long will do the same deplorable things in real life just to get their “internet fix.” Bringing the reality of our connected society to its extreme logical conclusion in a world without internet, Notes from the Internet Apocalypse is a harsh mirror of what we’ve become, even to the point of cringing at it. I was a little taken aback by the amount of vulgar language, overt sexuality, and lack of common decency by the characters in this book. Of course, in a book about the internet, these types of people run...
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BOOK: Rumors of Another World (2003)

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Rumors of Another World Year: 2003 Author: Philip Yancey Length: 272 pages Having been a Christian for some time, I was familiar with the name Philip Yancey. I knew he often wrote books about Christianity and how those of us in the faith should examine some of the more challenging topics of our belief. When I picked up Rumors of Another World from a friend, I was expecting an examination of the afterlife promised us in God's Word. Part of me was planning to use this book as a bit of research for my own fictional writing, or at least to give me ideas on how to incorporate a heavenly realm into it. In the end, this book was not what I expected. It has been a long time since I've read any Yancey, but I don't think this is his strongest work. My primary issue with it is that it tries to speak to too many audiences. If it either focused on trying to convince...
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BOOK: The Sword of Shannara (1977)

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The Sword of Shannara Year: 1977 Author: Terry Brooks Length: 1,600 minutes / 26.67 hours Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: an unassuming character is given the task to use a magical item to destroy a great evil that once terrorized the world. To help this character on their quest is their best friend, a magic-wielding individual, a ranger with a love interest, a dwarf, and some elves. Look, I get that The Lord of the Rings redefined the fantasy genre in the 1950’s, but why were fantasy writers still replicating this formula twenty years later? I only half-paid attention to this derivative plot, mostly because I already had an idea what was going to happen. Now, I will admit that The Sword of Shannara isn’t completely a 1-for-1 rehashing of The Lord of the Rings, but enough of it is similar that it feels almost too familiar. The plot does divert from the Tolkien formula, but probably not until about halfway through....
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BOOK: Valkyrie (2009)

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Valkyrie Year: 2009 Author: Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager Length: 268 minutes / 4.47 hours I first gained awareness of “Operation Valkyrie” when the film starring Tom Cruise, Valkyrie (2008), was first released. It makes logical sense to me that not all Germans involved in the war were Nazis, and not all Germans agreed with Hitler’s tactics. It is then the logical conclusion that some of them would attempt to assassinate the leader who had brought their country into a sweeping, global conflict. While this assassination attempt failed, I was still curious about the inner-workings of the plot and the people who would go so far as to try and kill Hitler. My expectation of this book was for it to be an in-depth analysis of the many facets of the operation. From Hitler’s security concerns to the backgrounds of the lives of the individuals involved, I was expecting this book to be a non-fictional examination of the assassination that never succeeded. Instead, I was a...
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BOOK: The Other Side of Magik (2006)

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The Other Side of Magik Year: 2006 Author: Michael Lingaard Length: 411 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM THE AUTHOR*** The “fish out of water” plot device is not new by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it’s an interesting way to provide exposition in a fantasy world when an individual from our world comes to visit, but often the differences aren’t fully considered. Of course, there are good examples of this form of storytelling. From Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to Marvel’s Thor (2011), both directions of the “world swap” transaction can provide entertainment. Unfortunately, The Other Side of Magik tries to have its cake and eat it too. If The Other Side of Magik had merely focused on the adventures of a single teenage boy unknowingly thrust into a parallel dimension, it could have made sense. Instead, while the majority of the story was in the “magik” realm (of which I still don’t like that spelling), occasionally it would swap back over to our world and give the...
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MOVIE: Ghost in the Shell (2017)

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Ghost in the Shell Year: 2017 Rating: PG-13 Length: 107 minutes / 1.78 hours Having only seen the original Ghost in the Shell (1995) film (and its 2008 remake), and not having read the manga on which it was based, most of my comparisons of the 2017 live-action adaptation are from the anime film adaptations that came before it. For its time, the original Ghost in the Shell movie was revolutionary. Along with similarly violent anime films like Akira (1988), Ghost in the Shell showed the world that animation wasn’t just for kids. The adult and more psychological aspects of these films are what helped set them apart as some of the groundbreaking films in the anime genre. Regarding the live-action remake, I think it honestly took too long to get here. The concepts of cybernetically enhanced humans are surprisingly close to realized technology today. Given that these ideas seemed quite futuristic in the early 1990’s, the fact that they are plausible within the next...
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BOOK: Angels and Demons (2000)

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Angels and Demons Year: 2000 Author: Dan Brown Length: 416 minutes / 6.93 hours While Angels and Demons is not nearly as popular as its sequel, the famous (if not infamous) The Da Vinci Code, the elements which led to its successor’s success are certainly all contained within this first book in the Robert Langdon series. Of course, just because you have the materials to build a nice house doesn’t mean that it magically becomes a mansion. Despite containing many of the elements that made The Da Vinci Code so good, Angels and Demons feels a little underdeveloped in quite a few areas. First, the protagonist, Robert Langdon, is supposed to feel like an “Indiana Jones”-type character, but with a specialty like symbology as his background, I just can’t buy the action-hero transformation of this everyday academic. Add to this the almost repetitive nature of his “discoveries” wherein he makes an assessment, then goes to the location of the assessment only to find that he...
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BOOK: Tiger and the Robot (2017)

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Tiger and the Robot Year: 2017 Author: Grahame Shannon Length: 250 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY*** In this era of smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI), it's interesting to see a book start to explore the topic of AI without getting too bogged down in the details. With movies like Her (2013) showing just how integrated into our lives an AI personal assistant can be, this book's approach almost takes the idea from that movie and fuses it with the "mute" AI from Person of Interest. Unfortunately, I felt the AI section of the book distracted by the endless sailing adventures. As someone who lives in a land-locked state, I didn't understand much of the sailing jargon in this book (especially when it became technical), but I do think this book had some potential. Despite containing a main character who comes off a bit like a creeper (and thus somewhat unrelatable), one of my main qualms with Tiger and the Robot was the disjointed...
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MOVIE: Passengers (2016)

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Passengers Year: 2016 Rating: PG-13 Length: 116 minutes / 1.93 hours I have to admit that the plot presented in the trailers of this movie intrigued me. However, in its execution, Passengers (2016) left much to be desired. Of course, this was mostly due to the film using just enough “physics speak” to be partially accurate, but incredibly wrong. Those parts stuck out to me in this movie and I kept scratching my head while watching it and saying, “Wait a minute . . .” That being said, not all of Passengers was bad, just a pretty big chunk of it. I did appreciate the moral conundrum that Jim (Chris Pratt) encountered in the movie’s first act. It did add a bit of predictable drama to the characters, but depicting his struggle highlighted his humanity. In this plot with a clear three-act structure, this first act was the highlight that eventually devolved into a ridiculous setup for the final reveal. With each new character introduced,...
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BOOK: Commanding the Red Lotus (2016)

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Commanding the Red Lotus Year: 2016 Author: R.J. Sullivan Length: 236 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY*** Not so much a novel as a collection of three novellas, Commanding the Red Lotus is your standard sci-fi space story. Unfortunately, because these novellas are collected together in this way, it feels like an attempt to string them together to make a novel. If this were a novel, it should have started with the third novella and expounded from there. After all, most of the backstory was mentioned or alluded to in this third story, so more pages could have been spent exploring the dynamic of the spacecraft crew. As it stands, there were a lot of characters mentioned that I couldn’t tell you a thing about. When it comes right down to it, I have two issues with this book. The first is the main character. I feel the main character should have been the pirate captain, mainly because she had such an interesting...
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MOVIE: Superman Returns (2006)

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Superman Returns Year: 2006 Rating: PG-13 Length: 154 minutes / 2.57 hours Technically the fifth in the Superman franchise that started in the late 1970's, Superman Returns feels a bit like the black sheep of the bunch. There's a sense that it's just tacked on to try and capitalize on some of the popularity of superhero films, in part because of the director's previous successes with other superheroes. Part of me thinks that Bryan Singer should have directed the third X-Men film instead of this movie; since he clearly knew what he was doing with that Marvel property. But what really gets me about this film is the way it "plays to the audience." If you ask diehard fans of two of the most iconic fandoms what their absolute least favorite film is in their canon, you'll get some telling answers. For Star Wars fans, it's Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) and for Star Trek fans, it's Into Darkness (2013). But why do they hate...
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MOVIE: Hail, Caesar! (2016)

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Hail, Caesar! Year: 2016 Rating: PG-13 Length: 106 minutes / 1.77 hours I like movies as much as the next connoisseur of film, but clearly the Coen Brothers like them more than I do. Specifically, they like the films made during the “golden age” of Hollywood: the 1950’s. From action-packed westerns, to Biblical epics, to underwater choreography, to big-budget musicals, these films exemplified a Hollywood that was on top of its game. Unfortunately, as is the case with any great success, it can be hard to maintain over time. In what could be considered a “love letter” to a Hollywood of the past, the Coen Brothers bring all these films together in Hail, Caesar! (2016). While I could appreciate the references made throughout this film, many of them felt quite disjointed. Sure, there’s the tie-in to real-life Hollywood fixer, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), but he merely acts as a link between scenes of grandeur meant to show how well the Coen Brothers can follow...
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MOVIE: Independence Day – Resurgence (2016)

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Independence Day: Resurgence Year: 2016 Rating: PG-13 Length: 120 minutes / 2.0 hours Can we just be real for a second? Is the nostalgia factor so strong in Hollywood these days that anything coming upon its 20th anniversary is re-made, rebooted, and sequeled to death? Certainly, this is a pretty good marketing strategy, since last year's Jurassic World (2015) was such a huge financial success, even though it was essentially the exact same plot as the original Jurassic Park (1993). Clearly, the millennials who grew up with these films want to see them on the big screen again, 20+ years later with newer and flashier special effects. After all, Moore's Law implicates the visual style should be more than 1,000 times better than its predecessor. Here's the problem I have with this re-quel that seems to be going around: it doesn't give us anything new. Take Independence Day (1996) for example. This film was a great action film filled with plenty of interesting sci-fi, memorable characters,...
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