Movie #5 of 2022: Encanto (2021) Disney’s 60th animated feature is a real breath of fresh air, breaking from the studio’s usual patterns in a few startlingly welcome ways. The heroine doesn’t just have two living parents: she has a whole household full of siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins too, a rowdy ensemble …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Movie Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
Movie #4 of 2022: Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) Finally decided to rent this one, since I still hadn’t seen it and at this point it doesn’t seem as though it’ll ever make its way over to Disney+ with the rest of the MCU. It’s fun! The explosion-y climax goes on a bit long in …
Continue reading “Movie Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)”
Movie Review: Eternals (2021)
Movie #3 of 2022: Eternals (2021) The very definition of a skippable MCU title. I suppose the visuals are striking, and the diversity of the cast is appreciated, but outside of Kumail Nanjiani’s quippy efforts, it’s altogether a dour film of people standing around proclaiming ominously (in between exchanging laser blasts and/or punches) with little …
Book Review: The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier
Book #8 of 2022: The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier There’s a fine sci-fi premise to this 2020 French novel (released in English translation the following year), but I don’t know — something about the enterprise just leaves me cold. Partly the problem is that author Hervé Le Tellier takes far too many pages to …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier”
TV Review: Station Eleven, season 1
TV #4 of 2022: Station Eleven, season 1 Nearly two years into a real-life pandemic — one which delayed this very production — it’s maybe hard to believe that a tale about that sort of devastation and its aftermath could register as remotely feel-good. And the general premise here, of a roving troupe of Shakespearean …
Book Review: A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
Book #7 of 2022: A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #1) An utterly charming gay adult fantasy from debut author Freya Marske. Set in Edwardian England, the story follows a young baronet appointed to a seemingly meaningless civil service role, only to discover that its innocuous title masks a true duty of …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske”
TV Review: Fringe, season 4
TV #3 of 2022: Fringe, season 4 I didn’t have much patience for this penultimate run the first time I watched through Fringe, as the literal retcon of the rebooted timeline struck me as a lazy excuse for the writers to stop caring about continuity at all. They keep coy about everything that’s now different …
TV Review: ReBoot, season 4
TV #2 of 2022: ReBoot, season 4 Oh, that wicked cliffhanger! 20 years later, it still stings that we leave Mainframe in such a perilous position, and that the eventual semi-sequel to this show, aside from being awful all-around, never even tries to provide any resolution to it. Like the teams on Angel or Animorphs, …
Book Review: White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson
Book #6 of 2022: White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson This YA ghost story could have been a run-of-the-mill three-star read for me, but since the ending is so abrupt and unsatisfying, I think two stars feels more appropriate overall. I’ve had a really hard time getting inside the mindset of the protagonist, a teen …
Continue reading “Book Review: White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson”
Book Review: The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly
Book #5 of 2022: The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #4) A competent if somewhat straightforward legal procedural, following the trial of a woman accused of murdering one of the bankers foreclosing on her home. Even more so than Harry Bosch investigations or previous Mickey Haller cases, author Michael Connelly gives us the …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 