Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

First I’ll start on a side note.  I love the cover photograph of this book.  It’s the main reason I picked it up.  The premise on the back got me to purchase it.  The story is from four points of view: Alice, an 80 year old grandmother who decides to donate the family home to the Catholic Church after she dies, Kathleen, Alice’s estranged daughter who lives on a worm farm with her hippie husband out in California, doll house design competitor, Ann Marie (Alice’s daughter-in-law), who assumes the family home along with the beach front property around it will be hers someday, and writer Maggie, Kathleen’s daughter, who broke up with her boyfriend just before vacationing with her grandmother.   This tragicomic novel never really does anything daring but it’s an enjoyable read, enjoyable if you find dysfunctional families confronting each other while on the verge of discovery entertaining.   There were a couple laugh-out-loud moments and while none of these women stand out as very engaging characters I don’t think they were badly formed.  Sullivan is a gifted storyteller and I have a feeling she has many better books in her.  Grade: B

Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan

Published after her death, Marina Keegan’s collected work of writings is like being introduced to someone you would have wanted to be friends with, but sadly never will know.  It’s a farewell to a talent cut short, a career undeveloped but seething with potential.  My favorite pieces here are her personal essays, especially the one on about having Coeliac disease.  Her fiction is mostly just average.  But I loved reading this book because you can feel her youthful and fearless enthusiasm.  It’s inspiring that her friends and family had these works published for all to read.  Sad too that we’ll never she how much better she would have become as a writer.  Grade: B+

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

It seems a little unfair at times that Laika gets overshadowed by all the computer-generated animated feature films out there, especially when they’re creating some of the most beautifully crafted stop-motion animated of all time.  This film is no exception.  It’s stylistically a masterpiece with visuals that revival most non-animated films.  I’m watching the film wanting to yell at the screen to freeze frame so I can marvel at what I’m seeing.   The story of Kubo’s journey to find his father’s armor before his evil twin aunts and murderous grandfather, the Moon King, can find him and kill him is abundant with dark mystery and magic.  He travels with a protective monkey and later befriends a man cursed into the form of a beetle.  Directed by Travis Knight (CEO of Laika) and voiced by such talent as Charilze Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara and George Takai.  I can’t stress this enough, go see this amazing film.  I’m hoping it will win the coveted Oscar for Best Animated Feature, but it will be tough with Zootopia predictably being in the same race this year.  Of course it might not even get nominated which would be crime.  Grade: A

Suicide Squad (2016)

For such an awful movie, I must admit to being pretty entertained.  Sadly though, no matter how much fun I had watching the banding of such bad-asses as Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, Katana, Captain Boomerang and Rick Flag this is a cinematic mess.  David Ayer knows how to make a film look great but he might have considered handing over the writing duties to someone else.  Who do you blame for this colorful poop storm?   Everyone really.  Whoever is in charge at Warner Brothers, please, please, please do whatever you must to make better superhero films.  You have so many great characters, they deserve better than this.   What’s especially frustrating about this one is that you have a great cast in Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Viola Davis , Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje and Joel Kinnaman.   What could have been a fantastic Dirty Dozen-like picture instead turns into a typical end-of-the-world mega-crisis.  This film has it all:  an illogical plot, a cartoony over the top villain, and in your face violence.   Yes, I was entertained.  In fact I was laughing at all the jokes and thought some of the character building was great.  I even like Leto’s take on the Joker and hope he comes back to play the role.   Still in the end this is a bad film and I can only recommend it if you want to have a good time laughing at how bad of a film it is.  Grade: C  (I want to give it a B- because I had fun but I just can’t justify it. Shrug.)

Spoilers:

Suggestion on a sequel: keep the plot simple.   Don’t have them save the world.  Send them out on some top secret mission that not even the Justice League knows about.   Think Mission Impossible, not Avengers with Villains.  Also don’t ruin a great character like the Enchantress.  And whatever you do, don’t have your villain dance around like some weirdo.   No dancing.  Don’t blow up a city.  Keep with what this film does right: wise-ass bad guys having to work together to accomplish a single goal. 

The Fall by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The second book in the Strain Trilogy is a fun continuation of del Toro and Hogan’s take on the vampire outbreak story.  Nothing really ground breaking here but it’s a fun read.  There were a couple moments where I questioned the character’s choices but in the end I want to keep following the story.   It seems kind of hopeless as the Vampire pandemic spreads across New York City while the billionaire ldritch Palmer uses his influence and money to make sure no one is taking it seriously.  The Master is spreading his reach and the only hope we have is in Professor Abraham Setrakian, old guy who has dedicated his life to find and kill the Master, and ex-CDC officer Ep Goodweather who is having to help his son deal with the fact his mother is now one of them.   Grade: B+

Spoiler:

Vampires are taking over the world.  As a father I would do everything I could to make sure my son was safe, especially if his vampire mom was coming for him.  Not Ep, nope.  This guy decides to let his girlfriend take care of his son while he goes on a suicide mission to save the world.   I get it; he thinks he can stop it.  But your son needs you, man.  This is the part I had a really hard time buying. 

Mr. Robot (Season 1)

There’s a lot of love going around for this show and I personally don’t feel it’s warranted.  It is a good show but there are many better shows out there.  Rami Malek plays a hacker named Elliot who works for a cyber security firm but on the side works for Mr. Robot, a group of hackers intent on fighting corruption.   None of the characters are really likable and it’s hard to care about their vague conspiracy theory cause.  There’s a twist in the show that I saw coming from the start and I didn’t feel was very clever.   The writing is good though and the cast delivers strong performances.  I just would have liked to have liked this show more.   Instead it’s overrated and hard to embrace.   Grade: B

Spoiler:

Did Sam Esmail read Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk or see Fincher’s film of the same name and decide to make his own version of the story?  I wouldn’t say he stole the idea but his show is very close to being a clone.  They even have the same twist (with a slight variation).   Did Palahniuk consider calling his lawyers and ask, “Do I have a case?”  Yes, they are different but at the core they’re the same.  This isn’t really a knock on the show, more of a head-scratcher.  If I had done the same thing I’m sure I would have gotten a call to stop and cease.  It will be interesting to see what they do for season 2.  Or maybe I should say; it’ll be interesting to see what book or film Esmail is going to borrow from next.

Stranger Things (Season 1)

If ever a project was created solely to entertain me it was this one.  This is now in my top three favorite shows on TV.  Netflix, I don’t know where you found these guys, but the Duffer Brothers are for real.   Here it is a blending of Stephen King, Spielberg, and everything ‘80s to make a horror/science fiction spectacular unlike anything I’ve seen (even though its spawned from everything I’ve seen).   Three middle school friends, Mike, Dustin and Lucas, try to find their friend, Will, who mysteriously disappeared one night after playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons.   Meanwhile a strange young girl without a name escapes a nearby top-secret base where something very bad has been unleashed.  Winoma Ryder returns in full-on- crazy-mom-searching-for-her-son mode and David Harbour plays the police chief trying to get to the bottom of many strange things (hee hee).   There are not that many shows I want to re-watch after seeing them.  This is one of them.  The chemistry with the cast is great.  The monster is actually very scary.   I could see this being the next big show.  It’s wonderful.  Can I just write that over and over again in a blog?  It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, it’s freaking wonderful!  Grade: A