The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Final Days by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

Book #3 of 2019:

The Final Days by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

This 1976 semi-sequel to All The President’s Men continues Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the Watergate era, drawing on trusted confidential sources to provide an exhaustive behind-the-scenes account of the events leading up to Richard Nixon’s resignation from the White House. It’s a detailed play-by-play and a good historical record, but not a particularly gripping read. (I think I prefer the excitement of the writers covering their own quest for truth in the previous book over the more straightforward presentation of their findings here.) Still, this is an eye-opening look at the months after the burglary that history books tend to gloss over, and a reminder of how uncertain it was at the time that the ensuing scandal would really bring down a president.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell

Book #2 of 2019:

A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell

This domestic thriller about a ‘mommy blogger’ whose best friend goes missing aims to be the next Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, but that effort is hampered by a dull execution. There’s a little bit of tension in the first half of the novel as readers wait for the shoe to drop — Is the friend still alive? Are we not getting the true story from either the main character or the presumed widower? — but when the predicted twists come, they’re not really surprising or engaging for anyone familiar with the genre. None of the characters in this book are as clever as they think they are, and debut author Darcey Bell never really embraces the potential of the blog framing device as an unreliable narrator. Although the recent movie adaptation has been getting good reviews, I have to assume a lot has been changed from this source material.

[Content warning for consensual sex between siblings, drug overdoses, and discussion of domestic abuse.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Book #1 of 2019:

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I can understand why this book is a classic of Russian literature, but it’s a long and digressive tome, and as with author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s earlier novel The Idiot, it regularly prioritizes philosophical debate over its plot and characters. I would have preferred far less quibbling about interpretations of nineteenth-century Christian theology, especially given the author’s sporadic antisemitic comments throughout the text. (Side note: please mention that sort of thing when you recommend a book like this to your Jewish friends!)

The pace picks up a little after the halfway mark with a murder and the subsequent investigation and trial, and it is a better story than The Idiot, all things considered. When the characters are given a chance to come out from behind all the moralizing, they do tend to shine. Still, I really don’t love the book as a whole, and I think this is where I part ways with Dostoyevsky for good.

★★★☆☆

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Movie Review: Doctor Who: Resolution (2019)

Movie #1 of 2019:

Doctor Who: Resolution (2019)

As with last year’s – okay, last week’s – Black Mirror experiment Bandersnatch, I’m choosing to treat this New Year’s special as a movie, given that it’s built to stand on its own, outside of a proper season of Doctor Who. Like the Christmas specials of Who past, this is a one-off adventure that audiences can enjoy as part of their winter holiday even if they aren’t all caught up on the regular episodes of the show.

Yet it’s hard not to view Resolution in the context of Jodie Whitaker’s debut season in the lead role, which after all only wrapped up one month ago. In many ways, this special works even better as a conclusion to that first run of episodes than its actual finale, a lackluster affair that sputters its way through technobabble and a bland villain. Here we have great action thrills, real emotional stakes for some guest stars and most of the main cast, and, yes, a Dalek. (I try to keep these reviews spoiler-free, but the presence of the Doctor’s most iconic foe was included in the promotional materials for this special, and knowing/guessing the enemy’s identity in advance doesn’t really take anything away from the viewing experience.)

I’ve never been the sort of fan who feels that Daleks automatically bring out the best in Doctor Who, or that an incoming Doctor particularly needs to face one down on screen to establish themself, but after a season of brand-new threats, it’s a joy to see Whitaker tap into her character’s long history of battling the nasty pepperpots. The scene where this Dalek scout constructs its own metal casing is also deeply cool, and a wonderful funhouse mirror to the Doctor forging her latest sonic screwdriver back in the Thirteenth Doctor’s first episode. In general, Resolution offers a surprisingly fresh take on the Skaro baddies – a hard feat to pull off after 55 years of Who canon, and a good sign for other classic elements that showrunner Chris Chibnall might bring back next.

The subplot with companion Ryan reuniting with his deadbeat father also works better than expected, with a more nuanced treatment of their family dynamic than this show always manages to achieve. On the other hand, Ryan and his step-grandfather Graham continue to overshadow their fellow “new best friend” Yaz, a lingering issue from the past season that is probably the situation most in need of a course correction going forward.

All in all this special is great holiday fun, and it’s brought to life with panache by the returning Wayne Yip, probably my favorite recent Whoniverse director after Rachel Talalay. There’s still definite room for improvement in this era of Doctor Who, but the move from Christmas to New Year’s hasn’t hurt it at all.

★★★★☆

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Movie Review: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)

Movie #22 of 2018:

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)

This metafictional choose-your-own-adventure streaming special about a programmer’s breakdown while creating a choose-your-own-adventure game is an odd property to review. Is it a movie? A TV episode? A video game itself? I’ve chosen to treat it as the first option, since that’s what the crowd-sourced wisdom of IMDb and Wikipedia seem to have landed on, but that’s only the first choice facing a reviewer. The next is whether it’s fair to critique the special at all without having gone back and explored every possible permutation, or how much of the potential footage needs to be seen to form a critical opinion.

In the interest of full disclosure, my family watched the special through just once, although that included accepting several offers to go back to an earlier point and choose a different branching pathway (sometimes with different options available than the time before). At some point, the credits rolled, so even though the internet tells me there are other endings that I haven’t seen, I think I can probably say that I’ve watched this movie and thus review it.

Ultimately… It’s weird. As an experimental method of storytelling I appreciate what Netflix and the Black Mirror team have achieved with Bandersnatch, but as an actual story it doesn’t really entertain me. (The clunky interface also leaves something to be desired, especially when the viewer is asked to quickly input a phone number using the remote control.) And it’s frustrating to be asked to decide things like what food for the protagonist to eat or what music to listen to with the knowledge that these seemingly inconsequential decisions will potentially send the storyline off in different directions.

I can handle mindbending fiction so long as it eventually makes some sort of sense — and Black Mirror has been able to do that just fine in previous episodes — but there’s too much in Bandersnatch that just doesn’t add up. Conversations play differently the second time around, the world itself is different based on what choices you make, and flashback memories are apparently mutable. Are we supposed to handwave these unexplained elements as being part of the main character’s developing psychosis? That doesn’t particularly satisfy me in terms of what I look for in a narrative.

I would probably watch another film presented in this style, and I give credit to the creators of Bandersnatch for pioneering the way, but this particular special falls far short of Black Mirror at its best.

★★★☆☆

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Movie Review: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Movie #21 of 2018:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Believe the hype. I’ll freely admit I was reluctant to watch this movie, both because I shy away from animated superhero content in general and because what I knew of its premise — a crossover team-up of different versions of Spider-Man — seemed aimed at comic book buffs rather than more casual fans like myself. I also don’t feel like Sony has the best track record for how they’ve handled their Spider-Man film license in the past, and I’ve been much happier with the character’s recent live-action adventures as Tom Holland over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Luckily, though, I trusted everyone who recommended this film despite my misgivings, and it ended up being one of my favorite movies of the year. The plot is twisty enough to continually surprise the audience, but never so complicated to take us out of the action. A lot of that is thanks to the writing, which somehow juggles a superhero origin story and six different parallel dimensions with apparent ease and still manages to be both hilarious and heartfelt throughout. The gorgeous animation styles are also incredibly inventive, capitalizing fully on the comic book nature of the project and delivering visual puns and other graphic punctuation as no other medium could. And the human story at the movie’s core, tightly focused on newly-powered Black Hispanic teen Miles Morales, is a fantastic distillation of why we celebrate people who step up and choose to become heroes.

The movie is not without some minor flaws. Although the madcap pace helps disguise a few rough patches, the writers occasionally lose track of what the audience and the characters know at particular points in the narrative. (Gwen Stacy has no reason in the film’s continuity to initially lie about her name, Miles mentions ‘the Prowler’ before anyone else has identified that villain as such, and so on.) It’s also a shame that half of our eventual Spideys are essentially just used as punchlines, rather than getting the rich inner life of every other character. The jokes are funny enough to mostly excuse that, and the weakness likely only feels so glaring because Miles and the rest of the cast are so well-realized, but that flat characterization is a rare false note in what’s otherwise a masterful composition.

(I also would have liked to see more representation of Peter Parker’s Jewishness than just that one quick flashback of him stomping a glass at his wedding, but I’ll celebrate what I can for positive Jewish depictions in media this year.)

If you only see one superhero movie from 2018… Well, it should honestly be Black Panther, a basically perfect piece of cinema with a far more compelling antagonist than the Spider-Verse’s Kingpin can offer, especially if you’re used to Vincent D’Onofrio’s nuanced portrayal of that role on the Netflix Daredevil show. But if you want a fresh take that pushes the genre forward and opens up brand-new storytelling vistas beyond the now-familiar Avengers and their ilk, you should definitely carve out time to see this surprise gem as well.

★★★★★

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Book Review: The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Book #252 of 2018:

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

This is a weird, messy book, but it has definitely lodged itself into my head and my heart. One part true crime investigation into the devastating 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library, one part oral history of that library and the broader library tradition, one part overview of the current state of affairs for libraries in the digital age, one part memoir of author Susan Orlean’s own childhood library experiences with her mother, one part meditation on libraries as repositories of the human drives for narrative and legacy, one part consideration of book-burning as the counteracting impulse for restrictive control… There’s just a lot going on here.

But Orleans mostly ties it all together, and her musings are interesting even when they don’t add up to much. Any book-lover will surely recognize the soul of the library in what she’s written here.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Veep, season 3

TV #54 of 2018:

Veep, season 3

This season’s election plot injects something more like stakes into the show’s proceedings, but overall it’s the same steady comedy of detestable people in politics. That’s never been entirely my jam, and it feels even more dissonant to watch in the era of Trump (even though this batch of episodes came out in 2014). As always Veep is dependable for a laugh that I may or may not feel bad about afterwards, but it’s never going to be my favorite thing to watch.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 2

TV #53 of 2018:

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season 2

There’s definitely a nuanced conversation to be had about what this show gets right and wrong about its portrayal of American Jewish life, but overall I consider it to be a positive representation that I can regularly see myself and my family in. And it’s so fun to see such a lush depiction of the late 1950s, on top of all the hilarious Sherman-Palladino dialogue.

But on a plot and a character level, I sometimes struggle with this show, and those issues aren’t really any better in its second season (a time when many series improve by taking the hiatus to listen to criticism and address their problems). A few too many people still seem like caricatures who don’t have anything to do when Midge isn’t around, and the writers definitely care about Joel way more than I ever have. I still enjoy the series an awful lot, but I’ve also come down quite a bit from the glowing review I wrote after I binged season 1.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Book #251 of 2018:

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (Princess Academy #1)

Situated right on the boundary between middle-grade and young adult fiction, this little book is pretty delightful. It’s more grounded — and more feminist — than the fairy tale it at first resembles, and is filled with strong female friendships and the struggles of marginalized existence for an annexed minority culture. These themes aren’t developed quite as deeply as I would prefer, and the narrative is a bit exposition-heavy at the start, but the story would likely be great for young teen or preteen readers in the Tamora Pierce demographic.

★★★★☆

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