Quick Reviews and Other Stuff: October

hey. here’s some stuff.

Movies

1. Strange Way of Life — I was reluctant to count short films as movies watched, but a) they’re on Letterboxd and b) I count a novella as a book read, so whatever, let’s do it. Pedro Almodóvar teams up with Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke, who star as a pair of men who may or may not have been pining over one another for the last 25 years. The writing was a bit cliché/heavy-handed but overall does a good job of infusing a sense of history between Jake and Silva. I think this was just okay, but I’ll always support gay cowboy movies.

2. The Human Voice — Shown together with Strange Way of Life, this is Almodóvar’s first English-language piece, and it stars none other than Tilda Swinton in an unhinged one-woman monologue, a phone conversation with her former lover, heard only from one side. Swinton has magnificent range as always and the visuals of this — the costuming, the unique set, the colors, the dog — are stunning to look at.

3. The Creator — I spent a few days in Denver and ended up with some free time after one of the concerts I was supposed to go to got cancelled. I had a rental car and a free evening so headed to the movies where it was me vs. like eighty billion Taylor Swift fans. The Creator isn’t a particularly original storyline — human vs. robot, everyone vs. US military, Maybe The Robots Are Good Actually, etc. — but it really shines visually. While there’s obviously heavy CGI when it comes to, like, robot fights and humanoid looking AIs and gigantic spaceships, everything is filmed in a very natural way, on location. At no point was I watching this and was like “oh wow that is very clearly fake”, as opposed to the way CGI has been utilized in a lot of big budget action films lately.

4. Sanctuary — Finally, a movie for all the femdom lovers in the house. This movie is very horny and yet also doesn’t push the envelope enough for me. I liked it but also appreciated that it was only 90 minutes long. The blurring between what is reality and what is a scene between Hal and Rebecca is really well done and it’s easy to come out of this with questions about what is and isn’t in their “script”. Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley are both very good in what could have been fairly thin roles; Abbott in particular manages to perfectly capture the mixture of self-loathing and arousal that Hal feels with Rebecca.

Books

1. Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond — The people who need to read this book and have their hearts changed by it will never pick it up because they think it’s “liberal propaganda” which is a shame. If you’ve ever been even just middle class, let alone dealing with living in poverty, you probably aren’t going to read much in here that you don’t already know or haven’t experienced, but Desmond is educated and passionate about the topic of what we can do to end poverty in America. I finished this book and then immediately got off a plane in San Diego, where tents on sidewalks with “remove your belongings or they’ll be discarded” signs taped on them rubbed elbows with bougie nightclubs and tourist spots, and couldn’t stop thinking about how all of that poverty could be eradicated if we were just willing to try, and we’re not. We’re still fighting the “unhoused people are people too” battle, for crying out loud. It’s very sobering to realize how easy it would be to address if anyone were ever willing to upset the status quo and spend some political capital on it, but here we are.

2. Stone Heart, Katee Robert — I said I wasn’t going to bother reading other books in the Dark Olympus series and then grabbed this for free on Amazon. It’s a novella focusing on Medusa and Calypso; Medusa is intriguing and I’d love to read more about her, but otherwise I was left unsatisfied. There’s no depth to the characters, everyone has the exact same voice, and even the spicy bits weren’t really that good this time around.

3. Fire Season, K.D. Casey — I read most of this in one sitting and have no regrets. Maybe I’m just at a particularly delicate spot in life or something but I cried through big chunks of this book as Reid and Charlie struggle to deal with their feelings, their pasts, the realities of being professional ballplayers in two very different stages of their careers. The pain, uncertainty, hope, fear that they both go through is so palpable. Even though their attraction to each other is immediate — come on, this is a romance novel after all — this is a good, slow burn, with lots of longing on both sides before they get it together, and when they do it’s absolutely worth the wait. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually felt a little breathless as I read. Helping someone with their curveball mechanics has never been so hot or so emotionally fraught.

4. Thunderhead, Neal Shusterman — I didn’t like this one quite as much as I liked Scythe, but there was still plenty to enjoy here. I felt like this could have been a tighter story; it meandered a bit and while I’m usually indifferent to third-person omniscient narrators, for some reason it just sort of frustrated me here. I suppose it echoes the omniscient Thunderhead concept but it bounced around too much for my taste. I did like the inclusion of the Thunderhead as a character, but felt like introducing every chapter with a Thunderhead commentary got old after a little bit, especially because many of those sections just kept saying the same thing. Overall, though, there are a lot of really great, creepy twists and turns in this one and I’m really curious to see how everything gets resolved. (Also, I would like someone to go through here and delete like 75% of the exclamation points that Shusterman used.)

5. A Touch of Darkness, Scarlett St. Clair — I liked this a little better than Neon Gods, which I read last month and which is also a modern Hades/Persephone story, but it still wasn’t, like, great. Persephone is the absolute most irritating main character, making the dumbest choices and trying to handle things on her own that she knows she isn’t equipped to handle and then getting mad when stuff blows up in her face. I did like the drama between her and her mother Demeter, and in general I liked the cast of characters here. But it also featured some of my least favorite things, like: miscommunication, unnecessary third-act breakup, pitting women against each other, workplace drama that unfolded in a wildly annoying way, and Big Man Picks Up Dainty Lady To Carry Her Around And Possess Her. But the spicy scenes were pretty good. Much like with Neon Gods, I am most likely going to begrudgingly read the rest of this series.

Oh the places I went!

This was a great month for travel — hence me not really getting much else done — as I spent time in California, Colorado, and Texas, all in service of hanging out with friends and seeing my favorite band.

California is always a delight to spend time in; this time around, I built in an extra day in San Diego where I went to the Maritime Museum as well as the USS Midway. So many boats! The Midway trip was a spur of the moment decision and I wish I had more time to spend there; the little I did get to see was fantastic. Yes, I did sit down and listen to like 45 minutes of a talk from a retired Naval Aviator on how you land planes on an aircraft carrier.

From San Diego, I headed slightly north to Solana Beach, where I took my lunch on the beach, watching surfboarders and crashing waves and remembering why people pay so much to live here (because it’s beautiful).

Onward to Los Angeles, one of my favorite cities— and no, I did not rent a car; yes, I did accomplish much of this California trip via public transportation, don’t let anyone say you can’t do it! Then from LA up to San Francisco, where I was inadvertently there during Fleet Week. There wasn’t enough time to go see zoom zoom planes but I did catch a few glimpses of them zooming over downtown SF, which largely satisfied my need for speed. (lol i’m sorry)

Denver ended up being a bit weird as one of the two shows I was there to see got cancelled, but it did mean I got to meet up with a hockey friend and take myself shopping and go see a movie and also, like, go to sleep before midnight. I also used my free time to go to the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum as well as the History Colorado Center. Both are highly recommended; the History Colorado Center does a great job of grappling with the state’s history without whitewashing things or glossing over the atrocities committed in the name of westward expansion. (The exhibit on the Sand Creek Massacre is appropriately sobering but very honest about what happened and which influential figures from Colorado state history played a role in it.)

Texas was Texas. It was weirdly cold the first few days I was there, and then 90 degrees for the last day. There’s a lot of Texas. I’m used to getting in the car and driving for five hours and finding myself at least two states away, not just…five hours away in the same state. Houston was really the only city we had extra time to spend in. The Rothko Chapel is worth a stop for sitting in silent contemplation (if I lived there, I would probably be there all the time to just be in silence). You can’t take pictures inside the chapel so instead here is a picture of the Broken Obelisk that sits outside. The Art Car Museum was an unplanned stop but I literally did a “what is THAT” and made a u-turn so we could go back to it. I adore with all my heart places that still find a way to embrace being weird.

What’s Next?

November is light on travel; a trip back to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, a trip down to Raleigh after that for a few days. Other than that, finally a quiet month to sit down, avoid cleaning or doing laundry, you know, the usual.

Killers of the Flower Moon is out and I’ll make my way out to go see that once I can convince myself that I can avoid having to go to the bathroom for 3.5 hours.

My library stack of books grows and grows. I’m in the middle of a depressing book about the state of current affairs; I’ll probably pick up something dumb and fluffy as a palate cleanser soon.

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