Movie #1 of 2018: Airplane! (1980) It’s been quite a while since I last watched this movie, and my wife picked the DVD off the shelf tonight because she had never seen it at all. It holds up pretty well, although the pacing is noticeably slow from a modern perspective. (Obviously this is a movie …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
TV Review: Class, season 1
TV #4 of 2018: Class, season 1 This show has its weaknesses, and almost all of them are unfortunately on display in that headscratcher of a finale. (Among other things, writer Patrick Ness never seems to understand how deeply uninteresting the Shadowkin are compared to some of the other things his characters have to deal …
Book Review: The Widow’s House by Carol Goodman
Book #9 of 2018: The Widow’s House by Carol Goodman I really liked this modern gothic suspense novel, in part because it reminded me of so many other books I’ve enjoyed. It’s the story of a troubled woman returning to her hometown (think Sharp Objects or The Roanoke Girls) to become the caretaker of a …
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Book Review: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
Book #8 of 2018: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman (Seraphina #2) I adored Rachel Hartman’s earlier novel Seraphina, and this sequel coasts by on a lot of borrowed good will from that. Unfortunately, Hartman has jettisoned the parts of Seraphina that I found most engaging (namely the cultural differences between humans and dragons, her heroine’s …
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TV Review: Black Mirror, season 4
TV #3 of 2018: Black Mirror, season 4 I loved the opening and closing episodes of this latest anthology, and the rest were pretty great as well. (Only Metalhead didn’t really do much for me, but it was impressive enough on a technical level.) I feel like this show gets mischaracterized a lot – it’s …
Book Review: Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale with Stan Redding
Book #7 of 2018: Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale with Stan Redding All things considered, I think the 2002 movie adaptation tells Frank Abagnale’s story better than Abagnale (with co-writer Stan Redding) does himself. Even setting aside the issue of whether the criminal prodigy …
TV Review: Marvel’s Runaways, season 1
TV #2 of 2018: Marvel’s Runaways, season 1 I had high hopes for this one throughout the first few episodes, but it definitely ended up as one of those Marvel projects with better acting than writing. I understand it deviates a lot from the source material too, which is even more frustrating – I hate …
Book Review: Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone edited by Rich Handley and Jim Beard
Book #6 of 2018: Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone edited by Rich Handley and Jim Beard Some of the short stories in this anthology are better than others, but on the whole it’s an incredibly strong collection of tales spanning the length of the classic Planet of the Apes film and …
Book Review: Golden Son by Pierce Brown
Book #5 of 2018: Golden Son by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #2) This is my second time reading this novel — although the first time as an audiobook — and I think my original review from 2016 mostly stands: “Given their common themes of dystopian wargames and rebellion against a corrupt government, The Hunger Games …
TV Review: Stranger Things 2
TV #1 of 2018: Stranger Things 2 I felt like this season was a little bit scattered compared to the one before it, and the overall threats / plots never really clicked for me. (The Eleven-centric episode in particular didn’t seem to bring anything much to the table.) The character arcs were great, though, and …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 