Quick Reviews and Stuff: December

Turns out the “I don’t know what day or time it is” end of year fugue state means that you blink and suddenly you’re a week into a whole new month.

Anyway, hope all of you had excellent holidays/Decembers/whatever. Here’s my last push of Stuff I Did in December; a 2023 Favorites list is forthcoming.

Books

• Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America, Sarah Kendzior — I had to take breaks often while reading just because, well, it’s depressing, but this is ultimately a very readable account of the American landscape and history of events and shady characters allowed to act without consequence that allowed our current Trump QAnon MAGA hyper-divided world to come into existence. Kendzior weaves the facts of what created and enabled Trump in with her own experience and knowledge that comes from studying authoritarian states, as well as her experiences making a life in “flyover country”. Kendzior makes the very able case that all of this was predictable and no one listened.

• A Touch of Ruin, Scarlett St. Clair — I read the first book in this modern take on Hades/Persephone back in October and felt mostly meh about it, I feel even more meh about the sequel. There are nuggets of an interesting story here — learning to deal with grief, Persephone coming into her powers, more understanding of how the underworld works, the continued conflict with Demeter and other gods — but Persephone’s constant misunderstandings, refusal to communicate, and lack of thinking through ANYTHING was absolutely wild to me. Yeah, Hades bungles his fair share of things too and needs to learn to communicate better, but Persephone constantly jumps to the worst possible conclusion about literally everything. Hades has to spend a chunk of his time cleaning up after her mistakes, and then instead of talking about it, they start to talk about it and then have sex instead, so nothing actually gets resolved although we’re all just going to pretend it did. The spicy scenes weren’t even that interesting in this book in comparison to the first. Yes, I’ll probably semi-hate-read the next book in the series.

• Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield — Annihilation, if it were queer and about the ocean. I want to luxuriate in the writing style of this book, which manages to be haunting and creepy and mournful. A strange little study of grief and of someone going away and coming back wrong. The story tells you very clearly, early on, how it will end, and yet the ending is still a bittersweet shock nonetheless. A remarkable debut from Armfield.

• The Toll, Neal Shusterman — A mediocre end to a series that started with Scythe, which will still stand as one of my favorite YA dystopia stories ever. The first book introduced a fascinating world where humans have conquered death and have given over control of their lives to a benevolent AI, but the ending of the series feels like such a cop out after the promise of the hundreds of pages that came before it. Citra and Rowan, our series protagonists, are sidelined for the vast majority of the book and we’re asked to care about a bunch of side characters instead. Bold move that didn’t pay off.

• Not Forever, But For Now, Chuck Palahniuk — Wickedly gross and over the top, AKA “it’s by Chuck Palahniuk, what did you expect?” I didn’t care about all of the gross/taboo subject matter (this includes basically every trigger/content warning you could think of) but I did care that the story took so long to get where it was going. Palahniuk includes an author’s note at the end that explains what he was trying to accomplish/the deeper meaning of the story, and the book takes a whole different meaning with that added context, but the whole thing just meandered for so long, writhing in its absolute filth, that it was hard to root for much other than for things to be over.

Movies

• Elf —A friend and I stayed with her parents while we were road tripping; her dad suggested we eat dinner on the floor and watch a holiday movie, and friend was like, you laugh but I’m pretty sure he’s serious. Anyway, I ate pizza on the floor and watched Elf the whole way through since probably the year that it came out and it still holds up pretty well. I’m always wary about revisiting older comedies only to find how badly they missed the mark, but Elf manages to be funny in a way that still works 20 years (unacceptable!!) after its release.

• Foxcatcher — Based on the true story of incredibly wealthy person and also murderer John du Pont. Excellent performances from the main cast here; Steve Carrell in particular is wildly creepy as du Pont, showing that he has the acting chops for things other than comedy. The movie plays with the timeline of real world events and I think could have done more to show how untethered from reality du Pont was by the time the movie reached its climax.

• The Muppet Christmas Carol — This is a classic for a reason and anyone who doesn’t like this movie is wrong.

• Home Alone — Kevin’s family sucks. Also, man, air travel pre-9/11 really does hit differently, huh.

• Die Hard — This is a classic for a reason and anyone who doesn’t like this movie is wrong.

• Corsage — Historically inaccurate, filled with intentional anachronisms, but absolutely fantastic. Vicky Krieps portrays the Austrian Empress Elisabeth as she turns 40 and finds her life slowly unraveling. Krieps’ work at inhabiting Elisabeth’s very emotionally lonely world is top notch.

• May December — This movie is hard and uncomfortable and lets you just sit in those deeply uncomfortable moments. Expertly straddles the line between humor/camp (the score!! my god!!) and horror (I will not be hearing arguments otherwise). Charles Melton is a pleasant shock in his role as Joe, particularly in the way he uses his physical body throughout the movie. The way he curls in on himself, shuffles around, like a boy always waiting to be scolded. The arrested development of someone who experienced a trauma — even if he doesn’t recognize it — is so so fantastically well done by Melton here. Joe is a teen in the body of a 36 year old man who’s never really taken a second to grapple with what he’s gone through. This movie has a lot to say about true crime and the sensationalization (is that a word?) of it, about abuse and manipulation, and some very meta threads about acting. I’d been spoiled for a lot of this movie and still had several scenes that made me gasp out loud in shock/horror/upset.

• Phantom Thread — A friend recommended this to me after I saw Corsage and oh wow am I glad I took her suggestion. Vicky Krieps goes toe to toe with Daniel Day-Lewis and more than holds her own. Everyone in this movie is such a toxic mess and the slow way that the extent of that becomes clear is so well handled. I’m excited to revisit this one in the future now that I know how the plot unfolds. Unbelievable that Day-Lewis portrayed this weird little freak of a man (affectionate) and then just peaced out from acting entirely.

• The Killer —A perfectly cromulent action flick about an aging assassin whose very carefully constructed world starts to fall apart after he messes up on a job. Excellent soundtrack and Michael Fassbender pulls off playing a very world-weary oops-I-fucked-up guy.

• Napoleon — Did Ridley Scott know he was making a comedy? This was fine, the battle scenes were great as usual for a Ridley Scott film, but things felt choppy and sometimes underdeveloped. The director’s cut is apparently four hours long? I’m sure that will flesh out some of the choppyness but my god is that a lot of movie.

• Poor Things —I was fully prepared to hate this based on the plot spoilers that I’d read, but instead this is one of my favorites of the year. It’s not the feminist liberation tale that it wants to be — ‘woman experiences the world beyond her “upbringing” and has a lot of sex’ isn’t a new or fresh take. But the sets and costumes are intriguing, it’s wildly funny, and Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in particular are excellent in roles requiring more physical comedy than you’d expect of them. Director Yorgos Lanthimos has a schtick, and that schtick is Weird As Heck Movies, so expecting anything else would be a mistake.

• The Iron Claw — Who knew that Zac Efron had this sort of dramatic performance in him? Based on the real story/tragedy of the Von Erich wrestling family, this is toxic masculinity in a toxic industry and no one escapes unscathed. If you think this movie is too sad, go read up on the real family, who had even more sad shit happen that didn’t make it in here.

• Saltburn —Ended 2023 with a delightfully freaky little movie. Critics deride the Tumblrification/One Perfect Shot-pandering visuals of this movie, but, listen, there’s way worse sins in film than intentionally making something pretty so that terminally online people will post about it. Also sometimes you just need to see Barry Keoghan playing a weird little freak. This could have been better, and anyone who was surprised by the third act wasn’t paying attention, but it was a fun way to bring the year to a close.

Road Trip Y’all

Closed out the year with one last Mountain Goats road trip, this time hitting up Buffalo, Homer (kind of near Ithaca), and Pittsburgh. As always, great shows, great times with friends, and a fantastic trip to cap off the year.

I also got to meet some great cats while visiting various folks.

And while in Rochester, got a great tour of the city from my friend Trudy. I love seeing a new place through the eyes of someone who has seen all of the good and the bad of the city, who can tell me its secrets and show me what it’s like to actually make a life there. Thank you Trudy for introducing me to Rochester!

What’s Next?

Best of 2023 newsletter article thing installment is coming shortly; I like to take these things down to the wire, folks. What happens if I read the best book of my life but I don’t finish it until December 31st? All these cheaters calling it a year back in like November, psh come on.

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