Media Report
Snowpiercer, some Netflix atrocity, and more!
Books:
The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson
I didn't DNF this thriller/mystery about some back-and-forth between murderous psychopaths but really I could have at any second. The basic setup lifts directly from Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train (only it's a plane) and the entire book, I think, is a (spoiler alert: failed) effort to write a Patricia Highsmith-type book. If you haven't read her, you may be familiar with her in film form from Hitchcock's rendition of the above novel or of Matt Damon starrer The Talented Mr. Ripley. She's an incredible author and what makes her books so great - which I'm mentioning to help you understand why this book is decidedly not great - is that they are often (though not always) structured as a crime (generally murder), its coverup, and the cat-and-mouse of the police (who are never bumblers) trying to nab the criminal and the criminal's efforts to avoid getting caught. They're usually told from the criminal's POV and what makes them engrossing is that they're mostly about ordinary people who get caught up in a crime and how they deal with becoming unrecognizable to, or, in some cases, finally recognized by, themselves as a result. Additionally, she puts you, the reader, in the odd position of rooting for the criminal to get away with it because that's our lens into the book, meaning the books in some way place the reader in the same moral quandary as a murderer. Not all of them are amazing - I'd start with the Ripley books or The Tremor of Forgery if you're looking to try her out - but there's definitely something there. So this book wanted to be that and the basic plot is that two people meet on a plane and one decides to help the other kill his wife and the wife’s lover. I won't go into plot details because it's really not worth it. The POV shifts back and forth between murder-enabler and a few other people and really the book fundamentally misunderstands that Patricia Highsmith's leads weren't psychopaths who killed just 'cause but rather people who either made a mistake or were driven to it by circumstance which is what made her books crime-as-morality tales rather than this which is just plot contortions with no reason to invest in the character outcome one way or another. Psychopaths are boring because the essence of a psychopath is that they don't care - and if the lead of a book doesn't care, why would I?
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
This is a novel about a teenage girl in a poor Nigerian village who, despite some pretty terrible things happening to her, never gives up on her hope for something better. I really liked this book overall. To an extent I felt like the character was a cipher for things that happen to young Nigerian women, e.g. she's sold into marriage where we learn a lot about what that's like then something happens which I won't spoil but which sounded like something true to that part of Nigerian culture at which point another thing happens to her etc. I'm noting this, but I really didn't mind it. The lead (this is a first-person novel) wasn't simply an authorial mouthpiece or stand-in for the stories of many women (though she was partly that), but had enough character to keep her engaging throughout. Also, while I was familiar with some of the things that occurred from reading other books, there were events in this book that were new, in an appalling way, and there were large chunks of it where the author managed to combine those things in the form of a real page-turner. I'd say it takes around 25% for the book to really rev up - not that it's boring until then, just that an event happens somewhere around that point that shifts things in a new direction - and it's pretty engrossing from there to the end. It was well-enough written, involving, a good story told in a way I thought touched on some pretty powerful topics, a deep-dive into a culture while still feeling like a novel, and an overall engrossing and worthwhile read.
TV/Streaming:
Bigger (Season 1):
This sitcom is a modernized cross between the unmodern Friends & Thirtysomething that focuses on five college pals now in their 30s (see the cross there?) going about their lives. It has an unfortunate gimmick of the lead character addressing camera, something that IJHO only works when it's deeply inherent to the nature of the character, like Fleabag, versus just “comic” asides which is what this show does. Presumably the idea is to show us the contrast between what the character does and what the character's thinking but the asides end up being the same opposition thing over and over and over, e.g. thought to camera: "I hate this person" vs dialogue to person: "OMG hi!!" Other than that, the show's okay though horribly contrived with a season finale that was pure plot abomination and which demonstrated that the writers clearly had no clue how to sustain a story so just invented some idiocy (I won't spoil but then again, is this review compelling anyone to watch this show?) in order to end on a cliffhanger (in their minds) as a setup for the next season. Despite all those insults, I did, in fact, watch the whole thing. It annoyed me nonstop and presented a really untextured, dichotomous view of the world - homeless people are good people and you're a hypocritical meanie, yoga studio owner, for preaching namaste then getting a petition and calling the cops to get the homeless person's humongous tent off the sidewalk in front of your business, you bad person, you, he's a war vet! Because who wouldn’t want a big tent with someone living in it directly outside your front door? Conservatives and racists that’s who! Hmm, as I'm typing this, I'm beginning to wonder if I secretly hate-watched this show. I feel like I would've known if I'd hated something, but maybe this is a whole new level of subconscious viewing for me. So there’s the review - as it turns out, I closet-hate-watched this series and I guess if you’re looking to do the same, though presumably uncloseted at this point, well this show is here for you.
Snowpiercer (Season 1):
This is the TV version of a movie I never saw by the same guy who did Parasite (and, given my response to Parasite, that’s probably for the best). The basic setup is there’s some global cooling event in the near future - if only, PLEASE, please can we have global cooling instead? - which makes the Earth uninhabitable and kills everyone except for the several thousand people who managed to make it onto a train - Snowpiercer - designed as humanity’s ark. It’s a big class war with the rich people in first and the lowlives - “tailies” - in the back of the train. There are enough plot twists in it that I’m going to avoid discussing details because it’s impossible to do so without spoilering but I’ll just say it gets completely fun and engrossing, at least to gummy-brain, and gummy-brain enjoyed it so much that it was meted out once a week to have something to look forward to rather than binged. It was beloved for gummy-reasons such as its being just confusing enough to be riveting, but not so confusing that the gummied couldn’t follow, a friggin’ amazing performance by Jennifer Connelly - really all gummy jokes aside she’s great in this - and the lady who played Martha in The Americans (also great) combined with some of the most atrocious acting of the 20teens in the form of Daveed Diggs I mean some really top-level nonstop picking-the-scenery-out-of-his-teeth thespianage for every moment of his screen time, all wrapped up in 45-minutes of action-y fun. It’s people fighting for survival and hating on each other and revolutions being fomented and put down and secrets being withheld and all of it in tight corridors and only 10 episodes long and really just completely thoroughly entertaining.
Movies:
The Last Letter From Your Lover - This is an eminently missable Netflix movie, one in a long line of eminently missable Netflix movies and honestly is there any other genre for Netflix movies? This one is a romance starring Shailene Woodley as a/an, I don't know, 1960s wealthy dissatisfied housewife of the type who’s yearning for something unspecified, unhappy in marriage, has no relationships other than fake friends, just emptiness, Life’s Chosen Victim because money can’t buy peace with one’s choices, but good thing there’s an ultimate fulfillment for every woman in that sitch: a man! This non-story is intercut with current-day Felicity Jones as an equally I don't know dissatisfied reporter who finds a series of Shailene Woodley’s past love letters while researching a story during which she, too, gets her very own painfully contrived love story. It's a love story pile-on but with absolutely zero interest in (a) why any of the people involved are so crazy in love with each other beyond an implicit “well ‘cause they are” and (b) any sense of structure other than withholding information and later revealing it. Somehow "she's amazing (just trust us)" and "he's shy (read: harmless, safe, desexualized, only wants you for the purity of your being not just your body though he appreciates that too, and oooooooooh the amazing gentle sex once you just can’t help yourselves, backs arching in shadows and, these days, very “Irish style” in that somehow everyone’s having sex under the sheets fully clothed) therefore amazing (just trust us)" has become an acceptable substitute for, ya know, people behaving and we, the audience, learning about who the people are and what they want via that behavior and therefore understanding why they might want each other even if that initially doesn't seem to be the case. There is some seriously lazy writing here and seemingly untold scenes of people holding each other and staring into each other's eyes on beaches, bridges, in hotel rooms, behind a curtain somewhere, in a conference room, all to sweeping music to notify us that love is, as literally as it can be via a sound mix and your speakers, in the air!
And just sidebar (or maybe it’s the main bar?): I get that rape-y isn’t hot, but why are variants of “harmless” considered romantic in straight love stories, i.e. sad lonely-whether-she-knows-it-or-not female falling for the edgy Ryan Gosling harmlessness or the puppydog Ryan Reynolds harmlessness or the bruised Ryan Phillipe harmlessness (and could I possibly pull off the exact same thing with Hollywood Bryans (are there any?))? Like how is disempowered/low-self-esteem/neutered male as object of adoring female gaze anything other than a horrific reflection on the woman herself (and, I guess, the writer who created her)? If you reverse the genders, does "dissatisfied male seeking meek low-self-esteem female” read as anything other than the Hinge profile of a domestic abuser? Is one-partner-weak/one-partner-insecure hot in same-sex couples? I guess if you’re willing to call someone with a complete and utter life void who’s empty and dissatisfied with everything s/t/he/y has who then finds boundless joy and all that emptiness filled by a weak someone else “romance” as opposed to, say, pathological depression with a soupcon of dependent personality disorder, then that’s what this movie is: a love story for self-loathers. I sat through the whole thing but could have turned it off at any second and blithefully forgotten entirely about its existence which is my plan right now, and what were we talking about?