The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

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.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

Book #172 of 2025:

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

If you’ve read any of author Andrew Joseph White’s YA works, you know that they tend to be rich in both horror themes and #ownvoices details pulled from his own transgender experiences, often with those two elements structurally intertwined in order to subtly comment on one another. This title, his first to be marketed for an exclusively adult audience, escalates such matters further with its tale of a pregnant teen forced to carry his abusive boyfriend’s child to term, all at the behest of the strange hive of parasitic worm-things that have taken them over as slaves.

It’s… a bit much, honestly. I’m not complaining about the stomach-churning degree of graphic specificity to the hero’s ordeals, which offers blunt commentary on the trauma of involuntary pregnancy in a post-Roe world, or even of the character’s status as a nonverbal autistic trans man with an uncomfortable fixation on self-harm and a dubiously-consensual sexual dynamic with his abuser. These aspects are unsettling by design, and White skillfully deploys them for readers who can handle it.

The problem is with the alien larva hivemind, which never really feels fully conceptualized or explained well to me. They’re amassing a cult of people like the protagonist who don’t have anywhere else to turn, with many cells across the country who kill on their behalf to keep them fed, and they want him to give birth for some mysterious purpose, but that’s all kept to the periphery of the plot with a lot of unanswered questions. The overall style reads as this writer’s typical approach blended with that of Octavia E. Butler, but she always imbued her own inhuman creations with a sense of internal logic that eludes the creatures here. And with that part of the central predicament feeling so inscrutable, I find that the conflict and its ultimate resolution are each robbed of considerable impact.

[Content warning for transphobia, homophobia, slurs, cannibalism, infanticide, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Movie #18 of 2025:

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

I’ve long held that this second Indiana Jones feature is the worst of its series (or of the original trilogy, at least), which in consequence has meant that I’ve probably seen it the least often. And though I tried to approach this rewatch with an open mind, I’m still forced to report that the situation is pretty dire.

I hardly know where to begin with a project so profoundly miscalibrated as this. It is, technically, a prequel to 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, although you’d only know that by catching the brief “Shanghai, 1935” chyron after the initial dance number — more on that later — and remembering that the previous movie was set in 1936. Certainly this film gains no benefit from its flashback status: Harrison Ford’s title role is the only recurring character, despite the many figures from Raiders he had history with and who thus theoretically could have appeared. His wayward archeology professor goes through no particular arc showing an evolution towards who he is the following year, nor is there anything in the dialogue that remotely sets up that future for him. And while retreating into the past lets the movie avoid revealing whether Indy and Marion Ravenwood are still together, it creates a minor continuity puzzle by introducing his “best friend” Short Round, who will never be mentioned again after this.

Which brings us to the racism, I suppose. In my review of Raiders I acknowledged how that story has problematic implications and disappointing representation, but I’m comfortable saying this one is just straight-up racist. It plays on ridiculously offensive stereotypes for its Indian and Chinese characters, and while child actor Ke Huy Quan — in his film debut! — turns in a charmingly enthusiastic performance, it’s hard to see past the schlocky thin material that he’s given. He doesn’t even get to have a real name! The kindest note I can offer about the racial element of this production is that it at least casts mostly people of color to play those roles, in contrast to the situation with Sallah last time.

The presence of an underage sidekick also registers as an immediate gimmick that never comes close to being justified. It’s not a dynamic that feels natural for the archaeologist protagonist, nor does the kid contribute much to the plot that an adult couldn’t in his place. And though the hero’s new love interest Willie Scott is a more plausible inclusion in the main cast, she’s deployed as such a screeching wet blanket throughout that the attraction doesn’t seem based on anything significant. Her romantic predecessor could be equally testy with Jones, but she had softer moments too, in addition to their backstory and connection through her father’s work. This newcomer brings no skills or prior relationships to the narrative, and so predominantly serves as obnoxious comic relief. Unlike Shorty, it’s no surprise that she doesn’t reappear later in the franchise.

In fact, whereas Marion felt like an integrated part of the story of Raiders, Willie reads as grafted-on like a typical Bond girl. And that’s the best lens to view the beginning of this movie, I think: as a misguided attempt at a James Bond sequence. After she and her fellow showgirls deliver a bilingual performance of “Anything Goes” to score the opening credits, we find Indiana in a tuxedo swapping one-liners with some enemies, who proffer a massive diamond before double-crossing and poisoning him. Soon enough he recovers the antidote from Willie and flees on an airplane with her and Short Round, only for the villain’s agents to dump the fuel and jump out with all the parachutes, leading him to use an inflatable raft as a makeshift landing strategy instead. It’s all quite ludicrous, and frankly a bizarre change of pace from the tone established in the series debut.

Luckily the tale does settle down from there and feel more like a proper Indiana Jones adventure once the trio arrives in India. The action that follows still isn’t my favorite, and the movie never manages to shake off that 007 impression of bad guys throwing the heroes into elaborate death traps with ample time to escape rather than killing them directly, but it’s almost defensible for the ensuing thrills. Or that’s the reason I’m rating the thing as highly as two-out-of-five stars, anyway. But I remain convinced that it’s a huge step down in quality, not to mention absurdly bigoted.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: Star Wars: Dark Legends by George Mann

Book #171 of 2025:

Star Wars: Dark Legends by George Mann

This 2020 title, recently re-released as an audiobook, offers a fun concept, executed well: seven short stories in the Star Wars universe, all with some sort of spooky flair. I don’t want to oversell the horror here — these are PG scares, and not anything wildly out-of-place for the franchise. But they still represent an imaginative new spin on that familiar mythos, bending it just enough to incorporate the sci-fi equivalent of werewolves and vampires and such. The characters are all original too, save for a few cameo appearances from Darth Vader, the Grand Inquisitor, and Dok-Ondar and the return of Darth Caldoth and his apprentice Ry Nymbis from author George Mann’s previous anthology Myths & Fables.

None of this is remotely essential to the canon, of course, but it’s a quick read that delivers what it intends to and doesn’t overstay its welcome. That’s a win in my opinion.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith

Book #170 of 2025:

Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #2)

I’m finally checking out the rest of the Talented Mr. Ripley series, beginning with this first sequel that followed in 1970 (fifteen years after the original volume, although only six have passed for our protagonist). When we rejoin him, he’s living a happy quiet life outside Paris, funded by the money from his murdered friend’s family and by an elaborate art fraud scheme that he’s helped facilitate in the meantime, pumping out forged paintings from a dead master whom the world believes is simply very reclusive.

The problem starts with a buyer noticing a slight inconsistency in technique and sniffing around the operation. Before long, Tom is impersonating the painter, building up a new cascade of lies, and eventually turning murderous again as we all knew he would. He then faces the familiar dilemma of secret corpse disposal, in a somewhat farcical manner as he’s repeatedly forced to pause his efforts and host the latest in a sequence of unfortunately-timed houseguests.

This plot is largely fine, but it plays out as too close a repeat of what we’ve already seen, just with more jetsetting and a less capable police investigation assayed against the antihero. He remains the most interesting thing about the story — there aren’t even any other recurring characters here — and it’s still a little jolting to observe him reflecting on his violent crimes in purely logistical terms, with no remorse or sense of immorality at all. Nevertheless, it’s sort of unavoidably silly that he’s in a predicament so similar to the last one, like when Dexter Morgan keeps tangling with one guest star serial killer after another. A campy enough adaptation could potentially mitigate that, but it’s a bit staid on the page, without as strong an impression of the queerness that illuminated the previous novel. Instead, Ripley is surprisingly married, and though his wife is absent for much of the book, he does seem to genuinely enjoy her company both physically and emotionally in a way he didn’t / couldn’t with any women before.

Overall, I give the title three-out-of-five stars for a competent yet generally unimpressive delivery. I’ll continue on with the next installment at least, but so far I’m not finding quite the same spark in the sociopathic expatriate’s ongoing adventures as made his debut work such a classic.

[Content warning for suicide and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Just Another Judgement Day by Simon R. Green

Book #169 of 2025:

Just Another Judgement Day by Simon R. Green (Nightside #9)

This urban fantasy sequence has been in a bit of a holding pattern since the end of the Lilith arc in volume six (half a series ago now), and this next installment doesn’t do much to change that. Suzie and John grow a little closer, with her taking steps to get past her aversion to touch, and their recurring frenemy Walker reveals that he’ll be stepping down as the Nightside’s de-facto head enforcer soon. But none of this is hugely significant on the serialization front, and the episodic material doesn’t present the most interesting case either: the arrival of a divine agent killing anyone who fails to meet his righteous standards, which would seem to encompass the majority of the local residents. Our antihero is asked to stop him, but this effort mostly consists of repeatedly voicing the same conversation about shades of gray and whether someone can ever be too far gone for mercy / redemption.

It’s not the worst of its lot, and the minor developments do work to keep me engaged in where the larger story might be going, but at this point I’m relieved there are only a few more books in the line remaining.

[Content warning for incest, child sex abuse, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig by Jordan D. Rosenblum

Book #168 of 2025:

Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig by Jordan D. Rosenblum

This 2024 title is a fascinating account of how abstaining from pig meat became emblematic of Judaism, in a way that indexes Jewish / non-Jewish identity far beyond any other kosher practice. Author Jordan D. Rosenblum, a religious studies professor, begins with the biblical origins of the prohibition, which at that stage was no more primary than its fellow rules of kashrut. Gradually, however — for no clear reason that he’s able to uncover — it took on an increased semiotic importance, with the animal representing first Rome and then Christianity as forces in opposition to Jews in popular culture. This enshrining also led to the eating of pork and bacon to be seen as uniquely transgressive for those within the religion, whether done willingly or under coercive threat.

The writer walks us through that evolution over the centuries, pulling together a vast multitude of sources that he says have never before been collected to illuminate this particular history. In the process he explores a few interesting side matters as well, like how Chinese food came to be associated with Jewish communities in America (the cuisine belonging to an immigrant population settling in the country around the same time, whose restaurants avoided both dairy and the decorations of crucifixes and saints found in many ethnic traditions, and whose foreign naming customs allowed for plausible deniability over dishes that did contain anything treyf).

It’s a very readable text, trading academic jargon for plenty of porcine puns, although it can still be heavy due to the necessary discussion of antisemitic ideologies that have utilized the pig to mock, dehumanize, revile, or otherwise marginalize the Jewish people. Partaking of the creature’s flesh was used as a test to flush out insincere conversos during the Spanish Inquisition, for example, much as its blood was deployed to desecrate the Second Temple in Maccabean times. Even a convention as innocuous-seeming as the traditional ham enjoyed by Christians at Easter arose as part of a trend of using the beast to mark Jewishness as the Other, we learn, in this case to distinguish the holiday from its Passover antecedents. At the extreme, like in Nazi Germany, this rhetoric directly equated Jews with swine as the most insulting imagery imaginable.

Overall this has been an educational work, and one that would likely make any reader reconsider their own relationship with the meat in light of this valuable context.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly

Book #167 of 2025:

The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #8)

A timely, enjoyable, and yet ultimately anticlimactic legal thriller. The case is almost ripped-from-the-headlines: a high school student murders his ex-girlfriend at the apparent behest of his A.I. chat companion, leading her mother to sue the tech company behind the product. Attorney Mickey Haller is on the job, aided by the investigative journalist Jack McEvoy, who’s looking to write a book on the subject. There’s a little bit of crossover fun here, as the latter character has been the primary protagonist in a few other Michael Connelly novels, though that’s blunted by the fact that he and Haller already crossed paths back in 2008’s The Brass Verdict, where they had a more adversarial relationship. Neither man mentions anything about that now as they appear to meet for the first time, which I have to assume was just a frustrating oversight on the author and editor’s part.

The plot is fun, before the end. As usual, we’re following the ins and outs of a trial pretty closely, with the so-called Lincoln Lawyer adapting his strategy on the fly and making tactical calls like which witness testimony to finish the day with, to linger in the jury’s minds overnight. There aren’t as many shenanigans outside the courtroom as we sometimes get in this series, although Mickey does hire an intimidating ex-con to lurk near a potential whistleblower and convince her she’s being watched by the defendants — the sort of unethical if not wholly illegal move that makes him such an interesting hero, noble as his efforts are on his client’s behalf.

The eventual structure of the piece falls flat for me, however. At the risk of spoilers, Haller delivers so convincing a performance that the opposing side agrees to settle the matter right before he rests his case, before they even begin to present their own. They publicly apologize and admit their liability in the girl’s death, in addition to delivering a massive payday for the good guys. It’s an abrupt dream-come-true ending that leaves the characters themselves reeling in surprise and expressing how they feel a bit underwhelmed, which winds up considerably limiting its impact on the reader as well.

[Content warning for incel misogyny, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Come My Boys: Memoirs Of Thirty-Four Years On The American Stage And A Lifetime In Theta Delta Chi by Norman Hackett

Book #166 of 2025:

Come My Boys: Memoirs Of Thirty-Four Years On The American Stage And A Lifetime In Theta Delta Chi by Norman Hackett

I have the dubious honor of being the first person on Goodreads to ever review this title, which was printed in 1960 for a very specific audience. Norman Hackett was a well-received stage actor in his day — he even has his own Wikipedia page — but this posthumously-published memoir is only partly about his acting career. The bulk of it is instead given over to his association with the college fraternity Theta Delta Chi, which is how it caught my eye as a fellow member.

His life story is interesting. Born in 1874, he attended the University of Michigan for long enough to be inducted into the organization we share, but left soon after to pursue his theatrical profession. In that capacity he toured around the country in various productions, always seeking out the local Theta Delts in any city with an active charge (what other fraternities call a chapter). This was an era far less connected than our own, with correspondingly weaker intercollegiate ties; although there was a national structure in place, most charges didn’t interact much with one another or realize any differences in campus culture. But they all came to know and love our author, and were eager to host him and come out to see his plays whenever he would pass through town.

Eventually he retired from that line of work and took up another for which he was uniquely suited, as the official traveling secretary for the fraternity. Doing so allowed him to continue his visits to schools and alumni groups and further strengthen those bonds of brotherhood, with himself as a key node in the growing network. He passed away in 1959 at the age of 84 with this manuscript already in the hands of his chosen editor, hoping that it would be read widely by those within the frat.

Historical markers of the time are neat, if obviously somewhat unintentional. He mentions his position as Dramatics Director at an army base during World War I, for instance, or how his first plane ride was to Hawaii, which in 1949 wasn’t even a state yet. But the majority of the text goes into extreme detail about the colleges he visited, which I’m afraid carries less appeal to a modern reader, even inside TDX. There’s a chapter for nearly every charge here, with the writer attempting to say something unique about its particular character or history, and each one ultimately devolves into a simple list of associated names going on for several paragraphs. While I suppose Hackett’s contemporaries might have enjoyed seeing themselves in print this way, it’s a bit of a baffling choice for an autobiography to include so many hundreds of acquaintances without any sort of personal anecdotes attached.

Who was this book originally for, and who is it for today? I’m not quite sure, on either front. Norm writes glowingly of the benefits of belonging to a fraternity — and to our own specifically, of course — and he often seems to be didactically instructing the younger generations on how to make the most of their college experience. But it’s hard to imagine anyone checking out this 400-page volume who didn’t have a strong vested interest in Theta Delta Chi already, and even then, it can be a bit of a dry read.

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Movie #17 of 2025:

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

There are some movies that I think, if you see them when you’re young enough, you can never hope to be truly objective about their qualities. Such is the case with Raiders of the Lost Ark (retroactively retitled Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark to fit with the subsequent series theming), though at least I’m not alone in recognizing this early George Lucas / Steven Spielberg collaboration as a classic.

The music! The plot! The action set pieces, like that giant rolling rock at the start of the film! The central character and his main outfit and hat and whip! The fate of the Nazi villains in the end! The closing scene showing us the new resting place for the titular Ark of the Covenant! Dare I say that all are genuinely iconic?

It is not, of course, a flawless production. With a modern gaze, it’s hard to overlook how Sallah is the script’s only real individual among a horde of interchangeable Egyptians, and he’s played by a Welsh actor in arguable brownface. Marion is meanwhile the sole female speaking role in the entire cast, and her backstory with the protagonist is eyebrow-raising at a minimum. (“I was a child! I was in love! It was wrong and you knew it,” she says, to the man who’s around a decade her senior. “You knew what you were doing,” he sullenly retorts.) The 1981 release date and the 1936 setting both help contextualize these aspects that would rightfully receive more scrutiny today, but they don’t exactly excuse them. Would a conflict against the racist Third Reich not be stronger if the narrative weren’t so dominated by other colonial-minded white men who likewise treat the foreign antiquities as their own private playthings to plunder?

But while I can point to such matters, I can’t honestly say that they impact my enjoyment of the piece. It’s just such a good story and reproduction of the old adventure serial style, filled with satisfying thrills set to a rousing John Williams score. It’s no wonder that it launched a lasting multimedia franchise, although few if any of the sequels ever came close to matching this original title in my opinion. But we’ll get to that in the weeks ahead as my new ‘Film Franchise Fridays’ routine rolls on.

[Content warning for gun violence, alcohol abuse, and gore.]

★★★★★