Good novels read themselves; bad novels require work. Deborah Moggach’s Tulip Fever, a bad novel, required work. In fairness to the novel, as a historical romance, it’s not the genre I often read. But I wanted to read Tulip Fever, because there’s a film based on it that stars Alicia Vikander as the female...
As a new nation, America lacks a national epic. We do not have an Iliad or a Gilgamesh Epic or a Beowulf to connect us to antiquity, to a time before written language, to the so-called Age of Heroes. As we envy other nations for that connection, we struggle to fill this void with...
It’s been a goal of mine–unsatisfactorily fulfilled–to include in these pages reviews not only of novels from my own country, but also those written overseas. A culture can become myopic if it views the world only from its own perspective. We read world literature not only to experience how vast and different the peoples...
In a recent review I watched on YouTube, the critic stated that we are all feeling a little “zombie fatigue” these days. In truth, I’ve never been a great fan of zombie movies. Like a dutiful student, annoyed with the assignment but wanting a good grade, I keep watching them. From George A Romero’s...
The Hungry begins with a murder, ends with a murder, and in case you’ve forgotten what it’s about, there are several murders between. This is a bloodbath, I thought, as I watched it. It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy. After watching the movie and while preforming research on it, I saw that it wasn’t like...
In my review of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, I said I felt reluctant to see the movie, because I didn’t want Hollywood’s images to override the images I imagined as I read it. It was an innovated novel that invoked specific visions in my mind. I worried Hollywood’s interpretation would override those, and I wanted...
Though Tomb Raider starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, is a diversion, a simple entertainment, it gave us nothing new. It’s a competent film by competent filmmakers, who colored within the lines, stamped a MPAA rating on it, and packaged it in a candy bar wrapper. It’s mass-produced fluff. I went to see it...
Jason Matthews’ Red Sparrow concerns Dominika Egorova. The strength in the novel lies in her characterization and in the arc she experienced. Though she always didn’t feel like the novel’s protagonist, she always felt like its main character. The events in Red Sparrow happened because of who she was and how she changed. The...
Though set in modern times, when Putin is president of Russia, Red Sparrow reads like a Cold War spy thriller. As Jason Matthews, the novelist who wrote it, tells us in the narration, although the geopolitics had changed, the game remains the same. Nations keep secrets; their rivals struggle to learn them. This is...
The reader might remember that in my first review of Song to Song, I felt uncertain whether I liked it or not. I promised to revisit the movie in a month’s time, after it set with me for awhile, and watch it again. On the eve of that second viewing, I found myself excited...
