Movie Review: Mary Poppins (1964)

Movie #10 of 2020:

Mary Poppins (1964)

I’m sure I must have seen this film when I was younger, but it wasn’t a large part of my childhood, and I have no particular nostalgic attachment to the title. I can easily see why it’s a classic, however, as it sweeps audiences along on a jaunty and imaginative trip back to 1910 England — closer at the initial release than that release is today! — full of catchy tunes and special effects that are no less impressive now. The main character is also much nicer than she is in the original book, although she does still gaslight the children at one point for no apparent reason. Parents may wish to discuss that and a problematic line or two, but overall, it holds up well.

[Content warning for racism, arguably including blackface.]

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Book #160 of 2020:

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

This 2018 racial injustice memoir is a little bit lacking in a clear throughline, and I personally haven’t gotten much out of the later sections that are specifically about problems internal to the Evangelical church community. And that’s not solely because I’m an outsider to that space, as I think author Austin Channing Brown could have provided helpful further context for readers like me. But as written, I feel like I’m walking in midway through a conversation that I can tell is important but do not have enough information to follow in all its nuances.

Stronger is the beginning of the work, especially for Brown’s descriptions of what it’s like to grow up black in a majority-white environment and her observation that people in marginalized racial groups know far more about white folks than we do about them. From popular TV shows and other subculture touchstones to basic knowledge of haircare to the fraught nature of police interactions, it’s too easy for white Americans to go through life in total ignorance of the black experience, but almost impossible for the reverse. As with most narratives emerging from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, it’s an eye-opening piece.

This is a pretty short book, which is good for it being a quick and easy-to-recommend read, but frustrating for those areas that could have benefited from being explored at greater length. I’d still suggest it for Christians seeking to better understand and combat racism in their midst, however.

★★★☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Book #158 of 2020:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

An eerie suspense novel that more than lives up to its title, Mexican Gothic follows a 1950s socialite as she is summoned from Mexico City to the countryside home of a cousin beset by disturbing visions amid her new husband’s uncaring family. The protagonist finds her white in-laws to be uncomfortably interested in eugenics and bloodlines, and as she cares for her ailing relative in that gloomy house, she soon starts sleepwalking and hallucinating herself.

I was expecting a tale of an outsider uncovering the dark history of the manor, a la Rebecca or The Turn of the Screw, where the supernatural is perhaps hinted at but ultimately left ambiguous. Instead, the horror here steadily increases until we’ve slipped into full-on Lovecraftian weird fiction almost without even noticing. That transition is as slow and atmospheric as the rest of the story, less a genre bait-and-switch than a gradual reveal of what’s been rotten all along.

Throughout, author Silvia Moreno-Garcia offers striking meditations on cycles of personal and societal abuse, and how hard it can be to escape them. Setting the narrative in an old British mining town compels readers to confront the colonialist mindset embodied by her villains, whose sinister entitlement is squeezing uncanny longevity from the land. Noemí is a capable heroine to set against such forces, but the feeling of hopeless decay lingers far past the book’s conclusion.

[Content warning for incest, cannibalism, racism, sexual assault, gaslighting, and body horror / gore.]

★★★★★

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Dragon Egg Princess by Ellen Oh

Book #157 of 2020:

The Dragon Egg Princess by Ellen Oh

I appreciate the #ownvoices Korean mythology that informs this fantasy setting, but even for a middle-grade novel, it all feels disappointingly underdeveloped. The humor is broad, the characters are flat, and the plot never really settles down into any specific stakes threatening the heroes. Generally speaking it’s the story of a boy who negates magic and a girl who used to be a dragon as they face FernGully-style evil deforestation and a royal coup, yet most of the events aren’t set up particularly well, and thus glance off without much impact. I suppose younger readers may like the book more, although I wouldn’t bet on it.

★★☆☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Book #156 of 2020:

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb #1)

This debut novel from author Tamysn Muir is a real trip, an atmospheric and hilarious adventure of galactic sword and sorcery that dances nimbly over the line between fantasy and sci-fi. It more than lives up to its pithy blurb of ‘lesbian necromancers in space,’ and I love how the prose blends the traditional genre style of formal writing with a much more colloquial and vulgar approach. The sardonic protagonist has quite a lot to complain about in this story, and she’s perfectly content to call someone a douchebag or a shitty trash child as the occasion merits. I imagine this won’t work for every sort of reader, but I’ve found it a refreshingly distinctive choice.

In fact, the book is nearly a five-star read from me, but I do feel that the skeleton combat scenes get a tad repetitive after a while, and I’m unhappy that — spoiler alert — a promising gradual enemies-to-lovers arc is curtailed by one of the women dying. There’s room to argue over whether that’s an instance of the “bury your gays” trope, both since Muir is a queer writer telling non-heteronormative speculative fiction and since death is not necessarily a permanent end in this setting, but it’s certainly not the outcome that I wanted for these characters. I’ll definitely be reading the two forthcoming sequels, to see if/how that plot continues and because the whole venture is morbidly entertaining in the best way.

[Content warning for body horror.]

★★★★☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

Book #155 of 2020:

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

I like the early worldbuilding of this YA fantasy novel with all its rules for how to deal with the fair folk, but I lose substantial interest once the seemingly practical heroine — who should really know better — falls in love at first sight with a handsome elf prince. The power imbalance doesn’t bother me as much as it sometimes does in stories of teenage girls pairing up with ancient immortal men, yet I never feel like I’m given any particular reason to invest in their instantaneous connection, either. I’m glad the unfolding plot proves stronger and less problematic than the similarly-themed A Court of Thorns and Roses, at least.

★★★☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

TV Review: Shameless, season 6

TV #25 of 2020:

Shameless, season 6

I generally wind up feeling more generous towards a year of Shameless as it approaches its endgame, and that’s definitely true again here. The beat-by-beat legwork of the plotting can be a tad shaky — it feels like we’re told Ian has his mental illness under control, for instance, rather than seeing actual evidence of that struggle — but we know the Gallaghers and their associates well enough at this point to feel invested as certain developments come to a climax.

I’ve had a harder time than usual with the beginning of this season, however, with its profoundly-misguided storylines like Carl imitating a stereotypical black gangster or the new character played by Will Sasso yelling about torturing and killing his lesbian neighbors for would-be comic relief. This show will always live up to its title in pursuing the outrageous, but these writing choices are more lazy than daring, aiming for an easy lowest-denominator laugh rather than attempting anything complicated in a distinctive voice.

I also have basic issues with the verisimilitude of too many of the scenarios in this particular run. As a dramedy that embraces its comic side, the series is entitled to some cartoonishness in logic, but there are weird inconsistencies in how even the more serious angles are set up. Why is a college sophomore (?) being given the research, teaching, and grading responsibilities of a grad student? Why do people on the poverty line we’ve seen struggle to pay their bills suddenly not seem to care when they lose huge sums of cash? Why does a promising eviction plot get walked back almost immediately? Why exactly does a young girl want to become a teen mom?

If the trajectory of this season had been reversed, I could see myself quitting in disgust over how ridiculous it had all grown. But, somewhat against my better judgment, I find that the program has instead recovered enough to rope me back in. Sigh. I’ll keep watching, at least for now.

[Side note: I don’t typically comment on promotional poster / cover art, since that’s an entirely separate creative process, but honestly… what on earth is going on here?]

★★☆☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

Book #154 of 2020:

The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings #3)

This conclusion to the classic fantasy trilogy probably has too much falling action after the main stakes are resolved, and its treatment of the anonymous hordes of dark-skinned humans who rally to the banner of evil may represent author J. R. R. Tolkien at his most racist. But it’s nevertheless a powerful piece of epic storytelling that stands the test of time, full of bold heroics and poignant farewells. Eowyn’s character arc also helps alleviate the lack of significant female roles in the preceding volumes, although this remains a saga that’s overwhelmingly focused on the deeds of men.

The Return of the King continues the dual-narrative approach of The Two Towers, but I think it works better here to spend so long without checking in on Frodo and Sam, given that we’ve left them in a state of immediate peril and are witnessing struggles that connect with theirs quite closely. The other members of the fellowship are actively trying to draw their enemy’s attention away from Mordor, and there’s genuine suspense over the outcome, as when the Mouth of Sauron taunts them that the pair has been discovered. The plotting justifies the stylistic choice to present one strand in its entirety first, which could before seem pretty arbitrary.

And despite the surprisingly early climax to the novel, I do love most of the extended denouement that follows — especially the Scouring of the Shire, an important component to Tolkien’s portrayal of the costs of war — as well as the inventive decision to never depict Lord Sauron directly. I suspect it’s one of the reasons this series feels so archetypal and has proven so influential in its genre, in that it doesn’t need a supreme villain personality to effectively challenge the protagonists. Like the depth of the writer’s worldbuilding, the ultimate internality of the respective quests bears witness to the enormous effort that has gone into crafting this tale.

In the end I still prefer the simpler charms of The Hobbit to these more-famous sequels, but I’m rather pleased in this reread to discover how much richer the later books are than I had recalled.

This book: ★★★★★

Overall series: ★★★★★

Individual rankings: 1 > 3 > 2

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Movie Review: 13th (2016)

Movie #9 of 2020:

13th (2016)

A decent overview of how America has continued to marginalize its black population after the abolition of slavery, first through discriminatory Jim Crow laws and now via mass incarceration that disproportionately targets African-American men. I particularly appreciate the insights into the corporate interests keeping the growing prison system full, and the reminder that felony convictions also determine who can vote to have a say in our government representation.

On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of this style of documentary made up of so many talking-head interviews, especially when, as in this case, they are not consistently labeled with a reminder of who each speaker is. Because it’s drawing clips from so many different conversations, the overall narrative of the piece is a little disjointed, and the film’s length keeps it from the level of detail seen in books like Stamped from the Beginning or The New Jim Crow. Still, if you’re trying to learn more about the topic of modern U.S. race relations in the space of a couple hours, this movie could be a good resource.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started