Parasite 

Incomparable film, deft with a clear-eyed understanding of class warfare and the crushing brutality of wealth, as depicted through the characterization of architectural space. 

The Lighthouse

A sculptural richness to the cinematography carves a compelling, and surreal, tale of ego and obsession out of the primal and unknowable stuff of the elements. 

Midsommar

Millenial critique gives way to a lush cult horror, a floral fever dream staged with Swedish design cues and caressed by perpetual golden-hour rays of light.

Paradise Hills

A feminist critique of the princess trope, masquerading in flounces and makeovers.

Exit

The conceit is nonsensical but comes together quickly in this faced paced action, rock-climbing, romance, escape-rescue, story of an every man turned hero. 

Extreme Job

Loser cops turn, unexpectedly successful, fast food restaurateurs to catch their criminal. As hilarious as it sounds.  

Ash is the Purest White

A mobsters girlfriend finally gets out of jail and finds herself left behind, in this melancholy allegory of the jarring affect in China's hyperspeed modernization. 

Furie

Bad-ass mom takes on her child's kidnappers in this relentless chase and action thriller, played out almost solely through ferocious fight sequences. 

Diner

Insane visuals, wackadoodle plot, and campy performances somehow make this movie into a sticky treat, an overly saccharine toothache of crazy. 

Meanwhile, a veritable parade of great tv occupied the small screen. Below, the shortlist:

The Witcher

Dunkirk

Two (ok four) very compelling, very hard sci-fi books and one equally compelling movie in a span of a two weeks. Plus there was that big red moon not too long ago. And now, for a review of those recent novels which made me despair, and the counterpoint book which inspired me to catalog stuff and spend an inordinate amount of time buoyed by faith in all things good about people in space.

The Rifter Trilogy

An unfortunate cultural bias becomes apparent when the idea that astronauts need to be sociable, stable, professional and down to earth (pun intended) seems far-fetched, that the inevitability of human failure, emotionally and intellectually, is a given. Take for example, Peter Watt's deadly depressing depiction of life in earth's most proximal deep space - the ocean. The specter of the unknown abyss, primordially eerie and ferocious, plays a huge role (Starfish particularly) in establishing the idea that people can only survive deep space conditions, or perhaps persevere in anything, through shitty experiences. The rest of the series proceeds to devil's advocate that fallacy by exploring the superheated Darwinist fallout of relativistic morality through biological and digital global apocalypse. Watt pursues the chilling logic of self defeating interpersonal chaos to an uncomfortable, unsparing dystopia of potential transcendence.












The Martian

In the same way that Moon returned a sense of wonder to the potentiality of space travel, Andy Weir's near future survival story, The Martian, expresses incredulous awe for the ingenuity of man to traverse the universe despite the frankly terrible, horrible, no good odds. Written as a Murphy's law solution handbook for Mars, Weir's elegant and sometimes desperate problem solving exercises are utterly compelling on their own. But consider this...Science-ing the Shit out of something is also an evolving story written daily act in the act of research and building stuff - from particle physics to the bridge that straddles the San Francisco Bay to the water that comes out of the tap. In the mundane context of daily life, a celebration of scientific accomplishment is often forgotten but no small miracle.

The truly remarkable idea embedded in the Martian's hopeful, exuberant expression of love for all things geeky - engineering, biology, chemistry, computer science, physics, astrophysics, and daunting capital-m Math - is that all of it is accomplished by capital-p People. Qualified people that somehow didn't make it onto the crew manifest of the ill-fated Nostromo. In some ways, Weir's portrayal of the scientific community is an ode to all the individuals - even all those pesky admin party poopers - who come together to get things done, like I dunno, designing the perfect bolt so that the soft, squishy biology of a human being is able to propel like some suicidal shooting star into the inhospitable terror of outer space and penetrate a resolutely unfriendly world for the purpose of nothing more than something bigger than themselves.

Increasingly, I'm convinced that making interesting positive art is more difficult than painful existential and material drama. Certainly, happy endings are more difficult after painful existential and material drama in most of life. So if my promotion of all things positive and happy and generous towards the human spirit sounds fantastically and idealistically old fashioned, just a silly Tomorrowland Disney hallucination for children, then consider the dreary, soul-sucking alternative.

Bonus:

Sean Bean on the Council of Elrond. Twice, you geeks...

Fantastic article on Mars expeditions in the New Yorker.

Impromptu Duck Dinner
Caramel pecans, various dried fruit "tapenade" with madeira and wine, over duck breast (prepared thusly), served with greens. This was a lovely dish, though ideally I would chop and truly candy the pecans into praline and perhaps use fresh rather than dry fruit for what was supposed to be a sauce. Not bad for kitchen scraps on the fly.



Into the Woods
Chris Pine is the confirmed audience favorite for his hammy, show stopping performance in "Agony". But it is Emily Blunt who scene steals her way through the film, vocally and emotionally. The directorial decision to punctuate Sondheim's repetitive score through quick editing, allows the actors to tease out the pace of the lyrics. While the second half could have used a an extra dose of darkness to send harsh the message home, the film was mostly enjoyable rather than just bearable. Not often one hears that said about a 2 hour plus musical to movie adaptation.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - Miyazaki
Much preferred to the film version... this beautifully illustrated Manga pits the determined mystic against mankind's need for warlike resolutions to save a ravaged world.

Cities in Flight - James Blish
Elegantly written prose probes economics and restless political imperatives during the long relentless game of survival.

"Living seems to be a process of continually being born again. I suppose the trick is to learn how to make that crucial exit without suffering the trauma each time. Good-bye John..."
He thought that what she had said was probably the truth - for a woman. For a man, he knew, life is a process of dying, again and again: and the trick, he thought, is to do it piecemeal, and ungenerously.

In the Garden of Iden - Kage Baker
Fanciful blurring of lines between history and science fiction, young romance and religious passions to serious affect. Not an accident is the fall from Eden.

And as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so was my beloved among the sons. Et cetera. What would I give, to have that night back, out of all my nights? No treasure fleet could hold it. What I'd give; no caravan of mules could carry it away.

House of Suns - Alistair Reynolds
Much preferred to the elephant series, though burdened with similar lackluster character writing. Stay for the utterly compelling investigation of space travel and various permutations of corporeal knowledge encompassing eons.

To see something marvelous with your own eyes—that’s wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you’ll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold an incomplete half of it, and that it won’t ever really exist as a whole until you’re together, talking or thinking about that moment …that’s worth more than one plus one. It’s worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can’t even imagine it.

Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie
Let not the confusing pronouns and big statements deter you, this book deserves it's accolades on the basis of of imaginative characters, an unusual central conceit, and a tensely plotted narrative whole that reveals one bit at a time.

Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.

Gateway - Frederik Pohl
A very masculine text with a flawed, psychologically unstable protagonist and his band of ruffian friends, making and breaking their fortunes at the edge of the known human world in a way that will feel utterly universal. Probably my favorite out of this bunch of readings.

What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts?

Rob Brydon: Do you think we just have the same conversation in every restaurant?
Steve Coogan: Um, yeah, of course we do, we're bound to.
Rob Brydon: We are essentially having the same conversation every place we go to.
Steve Coogan: We start out being a bit awkward with each other, have a little bit of wine, exchange a few frivolities...
Rob Brydon: Loosen up, enjoying each other's company.
Steve Coogan: To enjoy each other's company, have a bit more wine. Get cantankerous. And...
Rob Brydon: Pick faults with each other.
Steve Coogan: Pick faults with each other. And it descends into a sort of a bitter, unhappy end to the meal.

Jodorowsky's Dune
The visionary director describes the process behind his fecund but unfinished opus, and reveals a deep abiding respect for artists and their talent, spiritual consciousness, and the power of LSD. Thwarted by the machine, his gracious personal reconciliation and unspoken resignation are touchingly fierce and heart-wrenching. The film suggests that Jodorowsky's Dune, despite never making it to the big screen, influenced Hollywood sci-fi indelibly. Foremost, through the creativity Jodorowsky nurtured, and ultimately, through the legacy of Jodorowsky's lifted creativity.

Cast
Emperor - Salvador Dali
Leto - David Carradine
Paul - His own son
Baron Harkonnen - Orson Welles
Feyd Rautha - Mick Jagger
Piter -

Crew
H.R. Giger (R.I.P.)
Moebius
Chris Foss
Pink Floyd (Nod to Magma)
Dan O'Bannon

The Long Versions