The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Movie #21 of 2025:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

After nearly two decades, the Indiana Jones trilogy of the 1980s got another big-screen outing, although the brand had survived in the meantime with a succession of video game projects, a TV show about the character’s childhood adventures, and the like. There’s an undeniable thrill in seeing Harrison Ford don the familiar hat, whip, and jacket again, and while the ensuing story is occasionally goofy, it’s never the complete trainwreck of Temple of Doom. He feels like Indiana Jones no matter the extra years, seamlessly slipping back into the role of archaeology professor slash tomb raider as he punches bad guys and dodges traps in pursuit of the latest maguffin.

This is not a great movie, to be clear. It’s too indulgent in its 1950s period trappings and its now-dated CGI animal effects, and like a lot of the series, it’s unavoidably problematic on close inspection. The plot hinges on the racist idea that ancient indigenous populations were too primitive to build things like pyramids, which are instead attributed to alien intervention. (Okay, technically these are “interdimensional beings” and not extraterrestrials, but come on. They have a flying saucer and are plainly modeled after the stereotypical Roswell greys. And either way, it’s an odd fit for a franchise that’s previously trafficked exclusively in the divine for any special powers, on top of the implicit bigotry.) The modern native people are likewise reduced to a nameless unintelligible horde, just one of many jungle threats that the adventurers have to overcome on their way to the fabled treasure. And I have mixed feelings about the use of the Soviet Union as an obvious stand-in for the original Nazis as villains, which suggests an equivalency between those enemy forces that risks minimizing the unique horrors of the latter.

But on a surface level at least, this is fun. The opening sequence where our hero survives a nuclear blast by climbing into a refrigerator that’s then tossed into the air and rolled down a hill has been widely and correctly derided, but the introduction of Shia LaBeouf as his son Mutt works better than its reputation would suggest. I also appreciate that the film brings back Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark, reframing her as the love of the protagonist’s life when he was formerly a James Bond womanizer with a different romantic interest in every installment. She and Ford are the only actors to reprise their roles here — although John Rhys-Davies and Sean Connery were reportedly offered cameos that they turned down — and it’s nice that a star in his 60s isn’t shown chasing after the typical young Hollywood type.

Ultimately the title is a family-pleasing spectacle that recalls its predecessors without ever repeating them, which is basically the goal of a legacy sequel like this anyway. Did it need to be made? No. Does it offer any particular closure or answer longstanding questions? Not really. But it lands as both a continuation and a possible conclusion to the Jones saga, though one more release would eventually follow in 2023.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: 107 Days by Kamala Harris

Book #178 of 2025:

107 Days by Kamala Harris

Plenty of books have been written about modern politics, but the most obvious comparison point for this particular one is probably Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign memoir What Happened, produced in the wake of her loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 election for president. Kamala Harris experienced a similar defeat to the same man eight years later, and this volume is her own attempt to capture what it was like for her inside that race. Unlike the former Secretary of State, she doesn’t go too deeply into diagnosing the ultimate reasons that voters preferred the Republican option over her, but she at least is able to share her unfiltered opinions and frustrations in the lead-up to November.

The title references the fact that it was a historically short campaign (due to when Joe Biden stepped down from his reelection effort and endorsed his VP to be the Democratic nominee in his place), and perhaps the keenest takeaway is that 107 days was not a long enough span to successfully make the case for the author’s candidacy. Time was at such a premium that opportunities had to be picked over extremely carefully and strategic mistakes could be dire, while some folks who don’t follow political news very closely simply didn’t get to know the candidate as well as they might have in a more traditional timeframe. She’s also blunt about the level of misinformation, bigotry, and partisan attacks that came from her opponent and his supporters, reflecting the unfortunate contemporary reality that Democrats have to strive to appear like reasonable and professional adults at all times, whereas Trump’s GOP is seemingly free to hurl lies and childish insults without consequence. It wasn’t a level playing field, and left her team scrambling to determine which distracting controversies were worth addressing.

Finally, there are the gossipy tidbits, most of which have already made it into the headlines about this work. She considered her friend Pete Buttigieg to be her top choice for running mate, but didn’t feel Americans were ready to elect a gay vice president with a woman and a racial minority on the top of the ticket. She didn’t think Josh Shapiro would be able to set aside his own career ambitions for the White House enough to be a trusted partner for her. She felt sidelined in the Biden administration, which never treated her as a valued contributor or assumed successor and often threw her under the bus with reporters. And yes, she was tickled by the Maya Rudolph impressions on Saturday Night Live.

It’s not the full reckoning or mea culpa that I believe is warranted. She addresses how some issues like distancing herself from the Biden presidency and its slow response to human rights abuses in Gaza proved more important to voters than she expected, but she doesn’t take ownership or apologize for how her failures on the stump enabled the already-disastrous second Trump term. She makes excuses for campaigning with Liz Cheney, and doesn’t mention how the down-to-earth integrity and positive masculinity that made Tim Walz such a great running mate for her was subsequently underutilized on the trail. And as noted above, she can’t ultimately provide her own concrete explanation for why she lost, perhaps precisely because she doesn’t see any of these matters as her fault.

Would the writer have won if she’d had more time to pitch herself to America? Would I support her again, if she decides to run in 2028? It’s certainly possible, but this book doesn’t really land the argument for it, either way.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Murdle: Volume 3 by G. T. Karber

Book #177 of 2025:

Murdle: Volume 3 by G. T. Karber

Another hundred logic-grid puzzles of increasing complexity, identical in format to the previous volumes but totally standalone besides a few Easter Egg connections of returning characters and the like. (I particularly love the ones involving contradictory witness statements, where you have to figure out which suspect is lying in addition to everything else.)

As usual, the fun comes partly from solving the mini-mysteries themselves and partly from following the loose storyline that author G. T. Karber has invented to link them all together. In fact, this is probably my favorite plot yet, taking potshots at a corrupt tech company whose CEO is plainly meant as a fictional stand-in for Elon Musk, given the exploding rockets and empty promises of A.I. breakthroughs. Will our heroes Deductive Logico and Inspector Irratino get to the bottom of TekTopia’s shady schemes? Will the two men ever find time for a romantic getaway where no one winds up murdered in front of them? Read on to learn for yourself!

[But do note that the last entry accidentally omitted a clue, at least in the edition that I had. Per the official website, the description for #100 should include the line, “‘Look out down below!’ Deductive Logico screamed to the people in the newly renamed town, warning them about the disaster that was about to (quite literally) befall them.”]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Silver Elite by Dani Francis

Book #176 of 2025:

Silver Elite by Dani Francis (Silver Elite #1)

A whole lot of fun and just a little bit trashy, this romantasy title reads like a wild blend of the steamy military academy vibes from Fourth Wing and the covert revolutionary mission from Red Rising. Our heroine is a telepath, a member of the oppressed and feared underclass in her society, but because she’s one of the few who’s able to hide her abilities, no one outside her immediate circle knows about her secret. That proves to be an asset when she’s forced by circumstances into enrolling in the training program to become a special-ops soldier, and especially once she’s pressured by the resistance movement to act as their double-agent within the squad. All the while, she’s having to keep her true identity hidden from her new friends and their broody commanding officer, with whom she swiftly falls into an inappropriate yet smolderingly passionate love affair.

There’s a big twist near the end of the novel that I personally thought was far too predictable, but also a couple other developments that were more surprising along the way, so I suppose it evens out. Overall I’ve had a good time with this impetuous protagonist and her story, and I’m looking forward to picking back up with the forthcoming sequel next year.

[Content warning for gun violence, rape, torture, and gore.]

★★★★☆

TV Review: Star Wars: Visions, season 3

TV #52 of 2025:

Star Wars: Visions, season 3

I rated the previous batches of this experimental Star Wars anthology as two and four stars respectively, and so this latest one will get a rating of three from me, as it lands comfortably between the first pair. Like before, each episode is the product of a different anime studio, and they’ve been given the license to tell stories that are only inspired by the long-running sci-fi franchise, rather than strictly beholden to its canon.

The results don’t all work for me on a worldbuilding or plot level, but the pieces are often visually striking, at least. In fact, I would say that the last two installments of this season, “The Bird of Paradise” and “BLACK,” are by far the most technically-impressive to behold, while simultaneously not as enjoyable to me personally — the former having a really whiny protagonist for its lead and the latter feeling too confusing with its dreamy visuals and complete lack of dialogue.

I still always appreciate when shows try new things, and if the whole run had taken more chances like that, I might have rated this higher. But overall, I’d say it’s just a generally solid effort.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Royal Gambit by Daniel O’Malley

Book #175 of 2025:

Royal Gambit by Daniel O’Malley (The Checquy Files #4)

I think this 2025 title is my favorite installment of its urban fantasy series yet, and like the others, it can essentially be read as a standalone piece. The Checquy are a British intelligence agency tasked with protecting the realm from supernatural threats using their own special abilities, and while characters from one story often pop up in another, the organization is large enough for the overarching premise to encompass many such protagonists. (It’s very similar to Torchwood in the extended Doctor Who universe, and not only for the entwined ruthlessness and dysfunction of its various members.)

Here we’re introduced to Lady Mondegreen — a name that made this linguistics nerd chuckle every time I saw it — as she investigates a mysterious death, is forced to rely more on her noble society connections than she would ideally prefer, and ponders just where her top-secret career is going. The first of these matters is inherently somewhat weightier than the rest, but the slice-of-life drama is still handled well by author Daniel O’Malley. And although I wondered around the middle of the novel if he was perhaps packing too much extraneous detail into the plot, it all ties together pretty satisfactorily in the end.

This isn’t really a conventional mystery with clues for an astute reader to follow and connect, but it’s an interesting case study for how the heroes can use their particular skills to pursue the truth themselves. The crown prince has been struck dead by the spontaneous appearance of a solid granite cube within his brain, and though no one is sure quite how or why the murderer did it, responsibility plainly falls to the Checquy to discretely look into the attack. Powers in this setting range to all sorts of random extremes, from turning oneself into a tree to breaking other people’s bones at a touch, and half the fun is seeing whether a given instance represents merely a colorful aside or something that will be substantially incorporated into the action.

I also appreciate how the writer develops a bit of a critique across this book for how the department leaders both wield and protect their influence at court. There’s been a minor thread of that throughout the previous adventures too, but it’s more central here as an issue the heroine has to confront and think through for herself, and it adds a further nuanced strength to the proceedings that I’ve personally enjoyed.

[Content warning for body horror, gun violence, torture, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Doctor Who: Love and War by Paul Cornell

Book #174 of 2025:

Doctor Who: Love and War by Paul Cornell (Virgin New Adventures #9)

The New Adventures series of Doctor Who novels, put out by Virgin Publishing after the TV show went off the air in 1989, has until now played somewhat safe with its core premise. The Seventh Doctor and Ace were the last televised team of that Classic era, and so they’ve remained the protagonists of these early offscreen stories. Although we’ve gotten some minor plot serialization and varying degrees of character growth, for the most part the books have retained the old status quo from the television days. But that all changes here, with the young woman breaking from the Time Lord in disgust at his ongoing manipulations and an older, more jaded traveler stepping up to take her place.

Meet Bernice Summerfield, the debut companion of the so-called Wilderness Years! Her name looms large in the subsequent canon of audio and prose, and even if you haven’t heard of her, you probably know her fellow archaeology professor River Song, who in many ways seems like a loose adaptation for the modern program. Benny is already a delight, and I’m looking forward to seeing the different energy she brings to the TARDIS (while admittedly missing the outgoing Ace, though I realize she’ll return eventually).

The storyline of this installment is exciting too, even beyond the heroine swap. We’re on the planet Heaven, a neutral site at the boundary of human and Draconian space, where an ancient evil fungus species is both infecting the living and reanimating the corpses that various peoples have laid to rest across the world. It’s a quintessential Seven gambit, wherein the trickster hero is strategizing chess moves and countermoves well in advance of their deployment and baiting the enemy into refusing his offer of mercy only to then ruthlessly crush them, despite the cost paid by his frail mortal allies in the process. He’s first dubbed Time’s Champion in this adventure, as well as the Oncoming Storm, and Ace’s heartbreak over the stark morality those roles require of him feels pretty earned. She’s had one-off love interests in the past, of course, but this one registers as a more serious entanglement before she loses him to the Doctor’s machinations.

The intersection of thrilling and momentous represents the sweet spot for me in this franchise, and it’s hard to argue that this title wouldn’t apply. It’s the most obviously important volume of its sequence yet, as well as a blast to read on its own merits.

[Content warning for body horror, gun violence, suicide, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Movie #20 of 2025:

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Neither Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) nor Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) ever mentioned that the titular archaeologist’s father was a fellow antiquities scholar, but he fits seamlessly into the plot of this third film in a way that, for example, Short Round never did in the previous feature. On paper, the idea of the action hero taking on his dad as a sidekick for the course of a sequel could have seemed just as gimmicky, but in practice the two have an excellent comedic rhythm and a strained relationship that gives the enterprise considerable heart.

The storyline has Indiana following after the senior Dr. Jones, who’s mysteriously vanished, and subsequently getting caught up in the older man’s longstanding quest to find the Holy Grail. In so many ways this feels like a return to form for the series, abandoning the divergences of the weaker Temple of Doom in favor of elements inherited from the original Raiders. The Nazis are again the villains, the treasure is another biblical one, the protagonist makes an early appearance in his college classroom before embarking on his latest adventure, and the supporting figures of Marcus Brody and Sallah are on-hand to provide him with their assistance. At the same time, however, it never seems like a simple repeat or the product of a soulless formula, but rather a distinctive and imaginative follow-up that finds new notes to strike in the globehopping professor’s combined hunts for the mystical artifact and his equally-missing sense of parental affection and respect.

The prologue with Indy as a teen is perhaps overly cute in its effort to present an unnecessary origin story for his iconic hat and whip (and fear of snakes), but it doesn’t overstay its welcome and helps to set up his lifelong dynamic with the aloof Henry Jones. Although in reality Harrison Ford and Sean Connery were only twelve years apart in age, the generational divide between their characters appears lived-in and sincere, in addition to fueling one of the best punchlines in the reveal that they’ve both slept with the same woman.

That love interest is no mere copy of her predecessors either, and the movie’s ending likewise manages to differentiate itself in the maguffin being irretrievably lost, rather than recovered and extracted by the heroes. It’s a nuanced conclusion that opens space for a more satisfying emotional reconciliation between father and son, and it’s ultimately why this installment has always been my personal favorite.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★★★

Book Review: Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

Book #173 of 2025:

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

A sprawling novel of two families, one Black and one Jewish — husbands who run a used record store, wives who operate a midwife practice, and teenage sons who are secretly romantically involved — in a time of turmoil for their extended California community. I’ve generally enjoyed my time with these characters, but I think the connections among them can sometimes feel too coincidental / contrived, and author Michael Chabon’s grandiose prose often gets in the way of the story he’s telling. (“White nerd black nerd swung their heads to watch the tick-tock of her bodily clockwork as she made her way past them. The motion of the two heads, whup-whup, so uniform, so abject, like those dogs they used to feature at the station breaks on Channel 20, whipping around with their tongues hanging out whenever somebody off-screen waved a pork chop.”)

The bones of the plot are good, though, and I appreciate all the details that ground the setting in 2004, like how the political career of one Barack Obama of Illinois is just starting to take off. Still, I imagine a theoretical screen adaptation that could keep those elements while dropping the writer’s fancy stylistic flourishes would probably work better for me.

[Content warning for gun violence, drug abuse, childbirth, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and slurs.]

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: V for Vendetta (2005)

Movie #19 of 2025:

V for Vendetta (2005)

Seemingly more timely now than it was two decades ago upon release, this movie offers a thrilling tale of a terrorist antihero inspiring people in dystopian England to rise up against their oppressive government. (Things in the U.S. are obviously nowhere near as bad as they are in this story, but let’s just say that it’s easier to imagine the current administration disappearing undesirables and bringing the force of the state down on critical comedians than it was in George W. Bush’s day.)

Hugo Weaving’s “V” is a difficult character to get a read on or root for: his past is kept obscured from us, he likewise never shows his true face, and he engages in behaviors that without spoilers are morally challenging at best. But the framing smartly orients the audience primarily not in his perspective, but instead that of the individuals he’s affecting by his actions — the top-billed Natalie Portman as an everywoman who gets caught up in his wake, the police officers investigating the case, and even a smattering of unnamed civilians who recur throughout the piece as a silent Greek chorus. Over the course of the plot, they come to see the validity of the vigilante’s cause and join his movement, culminating in the uplifting pro-democracy implication that the awakened crowd itself constitutes a cure for the tyranny and fascism plaguing the land.

Against such a serious backdrop, the title figure’s theatrical shtick and all the stylistic action of twirling knives and bloodspurts are perhaps overly silly. If the message is supposed to be that an idea is stronger than a man, it’s weakened by the superhero stuff surrounding his backstory, in which we learn that an experimental treatment gave him “heightened reflexes” and apparently the ability to survive more gunshots than should be humanly possible. Far better are the scenes where he triumphs over his adversaries with cunning alone, strategically getting past their defenses to confront them at their most vulnerable.

Still, this is a 2005 film that bravely critiques institutionalized homophobia and includes two prominent gay characters who are persecuted for their orientation, and I don’t want to shortchange that. More fleetingly it also speaks up for Muslims and racial minorities, emphasizing how the reactionary rightwing regime is one built on abominable notions of purity that are inextricable from the leaders’ overall corruption. Sure, they’re so cartoonishly evil as to poison their own citizens and profit from the ensuing drug sales, and the imagery of the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol for anonymous resistance has by now been taken up and extended well beyond the specific sins on display here, but the Wachowskis’ script is crystal clear that the underlying rot of civil liberties sacrificed for the sake of imagined security is the real flaw that needs to be rooted out in this society.

Alan Moore wrote the 1980s graphic novel that this adaptation is based on, and he reportedly disavowed the screen version for watering down the anarchist themes in lieu of more contemporary politics. But I’ve always found the result to be pretty effective regardless, and I’m pleased that it holds up in a time when it feels more urgent than ever.

[Content warning for torture, violence against children, and pedophilia.]

★★★★☆