Twenty One
Hamnet
Sometimes you can say too much about a film that left you pretty much speechless, so I won't do that. I won't blather on about the stunning visuals, the aching beauty of English woodland, and the captivating woman that belongs there.
I won't bleat about the selfish man who captures her heart but is the epitome of wanting different things, deserting her when heavily pregnant, compelled by nothing more than ambition and the feeling of being caged by a world that is for his wife infinite and unbounded.
Until it becomes bounded. It's not a spoiler to say that Hamnet dies since that's the whole of the film. It's a film that's all about how things happen, not about what happens.
Where it's most convincing is in Agnes. What a part! Chloe Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell have created peak "strong female lead" without in any way sliding into the cliche. Amazingly real, earthy, passionate, deep. It's a role that needs a woman to rise to meet it head on. And does Jessie Buckley do that?
Polish Ms Buckley's Oscar. She is so good. As we walked out, Zenita said to me, It's like she wasn't acting. I knew exactly what she meant. You feel right along with her. The shy smiles, the love for her kids, the bare torment of her grief.
If you have a heart-- Well, if a film can make you cry, take tissues. (For me, of course it was very close to the bone. I'm the father of twins. My Zenita sobbed when the twins were lying together on the deathbed. And I could understand and appreciate in a very real way the pain Agnes felt, how desperately she tried to keep her son alive by sheer will alone. And we felt it all the more, me and Zenita, because Judith was born not breathing, just like Zenita, and I think we were both willing her to live. But you don't have to be even a parent to feel along with this.)
Not everyone will love Hamnet. They'll dislike the contrivance, slow pace and the sentimentalilty. But those are all the reasons I have it as a five-star movie. It's only pretending after all to be about a play or even about a child who dies. It's about a woman, about motherhood and about the deep tides of humanity that rise and fall and carry us with them.
Nineteen One
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
So I enjoyed Ralph Fiennes of course -- absolutely astonishing, especially the Iron Maiden segment; I enjoyed Jack O'Connell -- brilliant as a psychopath who patterns himself on Jimmy Saville; I loved the reflective tone; the visuals; the worldbuilding; the humour. Yet...
So why do I have reservations? Well, the one thing you'll notice is missing is plot. Not that plot is missing. There are two big plotlines. But they don't intersect. One is very slow, and perhaps not entirely plausible -- no zombie film ever thrived by suggesting a road out. The other is brutal, and the characters among the Jimmies were too low flame to play against Lord Sir Jimmy Crystal.
And the reflectiveness wasn't *about* anything. It just slowed the film down. There was no question asked or answered. In such a low-tension film, you need there to be.
So is it any good? Yes. And if you like the franchise, you'll like it. You might even love it. You'll certainly love Fiennes. Maybe even Oscar-level good.
Distress
I don't know what it is about Greg Egan. It's like he builds this cool setting: future Australia, leaning towards post-scarcity but not quite there; organic seastead grown by anarchists; scientists fighting over the Theory of Everything; a digital journalist who's part-cyborg.
Then he gets bogged down in a plot that disappears up its own arse so hard that although the world was (just) enough to follow it, you get that sinking feeling, like you will not arrive at anything worth reading. And really, you don't.
It's far too talky and far too "clever". The idea doesn't even really make sense. Probably. I wasn't paying enough attention to quite follow it. I wish he'd had more cool science fiction and half the science. He set the scene for it and then just ugh, didn't bother.
If you like hard scifi, you might like it. You could probably pass it off as "cerebral", in which case you might go as high as three and a half, four, but I couldn't, so two and a half, three at the very most.
Eight One
The Mote In God's Eye
Like most fans of science fiction, the one thing I've always loved is worldbuilding. The skilled writer transports you to a world of their imagination, which has rich detail and surprises for you to enjoy.
Or it's like someone dropped the 1950s into space. In fact, in some respects the 1950s is generous since this often reads as though it's the 1750s. For instance, it sticks in my mind that people trade letters for mail. Even though they have "personal computers". Yes, it's a civilisation that has invented interstellar travel but still has mail packets.
It also has a sneaky Muslim, a woman who considers other women sluts if they use birth control and marries the "hero" without ever having any interaction in the book beyond thinking he's a hunk and when on a mission to discover an alien civilisation, thinks wistfully of how much she misses "girl talk". About cooking and dresses and shit, Scots who do comedy Scots accents, commoners who are grateful that the nobility do all the thinking for them, the scion of warlike people who is stiff and humourless, a Russky who is even stiffer and murdered tens of millions of people to teach them that communism sucks.
There are also some aliens. Who are comically deceptive, yet the humans prove unable to notice that they're nefarious.
It's readable in a sense but the sexism, racism, madarse conservatism, bootlicking and craziness of a space empire backed by religion, but not a new religion but basically if not exactly Catholicism (it wasn't clear). It's like the opposite of worldbuilding. These are writers who just could not be bothered to build anything. They simply transferred their own fondly remembered past into the future.
What's infuriating is that this is one of the best-loved books in scifi. But the story is as limp as the setting. I'd give it maybe two because it's easy going but shameful in how lazy and ineffective it is even so. Proof, were any needed, that rightwingers simply cannot do art worth anything.
Four One
History of Sound
There's not that many films where you find yourself saying, they need to gay this up a bit. After all, the obtrusive gay is a feature of modern films. What I mean is, characters that are gay for no reason. Because, look, in real life we aren't all just announcing to each other, oh btw, I'm queer, or yah, I'm pandemisexugenderal or whatever the fuck. It might come up but it doesn't feature that heavily in our lives. In fact, probably there are a lot more queers in your life than you think.
But History of Sound really did need a lot more gay. It was a gay romance with only negligible romance and not much gayness. Perhaps they felt that it would be difficult for the audience or for the actors, who as I understand it were not gay. Although now I think of it, Josh O'Connor plays queers in literally every film he's in.
For my money though, the film needed a stronger romance. So much hinged on it that it felt a bit lacking because there was not enough feeling. It didn't help too that Paul Mescal phoned it in. He can be really good but he can also be really bad. Compare Aftersun with Gladiator 2, for instance. O'Connor was just so much better, but he's one of the most watchable men in cinema at the moment for my money.
It was all a bit ho hum. Maybe two, two and a half stars. It was supposed to be slow but slow can be intimate, moving, replete. Or it can just be slow and this was sloooooow.
Fire Upon the Deep
I'm still reading science fiction and I thought I'd try an old "classic". I'd heard really good things about Fire Upon the Deep, and look, there's good things about it. The worldbuilding was excellent and there were plenty of ideas kicking around. But the plot was thin, and I found it plodded a fair bit.
There's also a couple of "twists", which I won't spoil, but one is a characters get fooled and the other is the ending. And both are horribly mishandled. The first just doesn't play out at all, and the second you're left wondering how that worked.
It was worth reading all in all but maybe only three stars when I was promised it was a banger, which wasn't really the case. I'd persevere with the author though, and the ebook I got hold of has the sequel and prequel so we'll do that too in due course.
The Housemaid
Now the stars of The Housemaid are very obviously Sydney Sweeney's tits. And by god, did the director know it. They were featured throughout, straining against Sydney's top, overflowing her clothing, and unsheathed at one point. It's kind of unfortunate, I suppose, that when they write the story of Sweeney, that's what they'll write about. What they won't write about is her acting talent, because it's not really existing. She's fine if you give her a role where "I'm bored" works but that really is all she does. Even when the action hots up, she looks like she'd rather be doing something else.
It doesn't help that she's cast opposite Amanda Seyfried, who acts her off the screen at every opportunity, and is frankly hotter too. She does have a much better-written role though, which requires and gets a wide range.
It's a decent thriller in the old mode, nice and twisty. It's maybe a bit long and you won't be surprised, even if you can't quite pick how it will turn out. But I think that a twist that is credible is a good thing, so it was none the worse for being a bit oh, right... Shout out too for Brandon Sklenar, who does the smirking male lead perfectly. He has a nice bit of edge and he's really fuck off gorgeous so you won't hate watching a nicely made, well-shot film. Maybe three stars or a bit better.
Eleven Twelve
Blindsight
I've always enjoyed science fiction. I don't know why. Perhaps it's just the autistic feeling that I don't belong in this world, translated into readership. Anyway. I particularly like harder science fiction -- the less "fantastic" it is, the more I like it. So Blindsight should be right up my alley. It's hard, or at least pseudo hard -- it has a fair bit of made-up science but it's credible and based in the real stuff.
But actually, to some extent, that's the problem and it's a common one in hard scifi, at least in my acquaintance with it. It gets lost in ideas. I recently read Permutation City and that was hard as fuck or pretending to be, but it meandered into a wilderness of idea porn. Blindsight is similar. It's constantly explaining.
I liked the aliens, which were/was satisfyingly different, and credibly built on a pattern very dissimilar to our own. The idea of intelligence without self-awareness worked well, and even more so in today's world of ChatGPT. Chat will quite happily tell you it's enjoying working on the thorny problem you've put in front of it, and you have to remind yourself it doesn't have any sense of enjoyment whatsoever. It also doesn't have any intelligence but you can see how it could look like it did in future while still having no real awareness of itself or the world around it.
But for all that, I wasn't always sure what was going on. Maybe that was down to my own inattention but I still blame you if my mind wanders when I read your book. You're supposed to nail me to the page, bro. Still, a solid three I'd say, and you might go higher if you like that kind of thing.
Eternity
Less hard as far as scifi goes is romcom Eternity. But it was a lot more fun than Blindsight. I enjoyed it although it was never really any more than mildly amusing and fell foul of poor pacing towards the end, where the plot went a tiny bit astray. It never pretended that its concept wasn't silly and it unashamedly leant on the charm and rizz of its stars. If you're a fan of Elizabeth Olsen, then you know she packs both charm and rizz to burn, so that was a wise choice, and although Miles Teller is not really my cup of tea, he was at least watchable. The other guy is British as far as I know, and consequently had no excuse at all for the grating New York accent he bunged on.
It was fun though, although I wouldn't say Olsen had any real chemistry with either of her costars, which given that the other guy was super hot was a bit weird but maybe they didn't get on. Anyway, three stars, watch it if you like that kind of thing.
Solaris
So I reread this and it matched my memory. Lem is feted as a scifi writer but he's in the Ursula LeGuin class to me: everyone rates them except for me. I found it really boring and static. I had to grit my teeth not to bin it long before halfway through. It wasn't even interesting in its meditativeness. Thematically, it worked, I suppose: it has the same idea of contact that cannot include communication. But it doesn't deliver. Thumbs down and trust me, you'll hate it too so stick to pretending you've read it and proclaiming it a work of genius.
Twenty six eleven
Permutation City
You know how sometimes you have an experience that is like eh but not really as good as you hoped it would be? Reading Permutation City was like that. I like Greg Egan's writing. I enjoyed the collection of his short stories I read. They didn't all work but they were worth reading. And I've been focusing on scifi recently, particularly thinky or hard stuff.
So this was what I was looking for? Hmmmm.
Well, it was well written. And it had plenty of ideas. And the scifi was at least somewhat hard (although the "dust theory" is not all that plausible as Egan himself has accepted). But it was slightly hard going and I was glad to get through it. It wasn't that it didn't make sense. It was more that it didn't pay off. Two of the storylines didn't seem to add enough to merit their inclusion and the nonlinear framework seemed designed to confuse rather than intrigue.
So it was the definition of a three.
Sliding Doors
One of my sisters pointed out that the musing of one of my characters in something I'm writing is exactly the plot of Sliding Doors, and although I'd argue that I wrote it in a way that slightly obscures that, the truth is that it is, but Sliding Doors was never actually very original to begin with. It's an interesting counterpart to Permutation City though because it's a different view of the parallel universe. And it's a banger. Even though Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah have very little chemistry in my view. I was a bit afraid that I wouldn't like it as much as I used to because the sentimentality and corniness of the memes are so dated. But I did! I loved it just as much as I did back in the day. Between you and me -- and yes, I accept that I am a repulsive sexist -- I don't really enjoy romcoms if I'm not hot for the woman, and Gwyneth is no Kate Winslet. I don't like skinny, flat-arse or fragile at all (I think this might be because I don't particularly enjoy features you'd consider "masculine" to be reflected in women even if the same features would be very attractive in men), and I really disliked the Princess Di do as well. (In fact, I much preferred Jeanne Tripplehorn, although her character was yikes.) Still, she was engaging and attractive enough characterwise. And Hannah was Hannah. He's the same in absolutely everything and I don't hate that old school Hollywood thing where an actor just plays the same character regardless, so long as you like the character. I think a lot of us English types think of ourselves as that sort of charming romantic who can quote whole scenes of Monty Python and wish we had a table full of dining companions who screech with laughter when we do it...
Okay so I didn't claim it was realistic! But that's what makes it so good. It's like science fiction in that you don't just suspend disbelief. You leave that bitch at the door. A good old four.
The Running Man
There's been a few films recently that have divided opinion (although in the case of Bugonia that seems to have been everyone else and me), and this is one of them. Personally, I enjoy the reviews of the Critical Drinker -- who is an internet hater/misogynist/queerbaiter/whatever -- and Mark Kermode -- very much the Guardian wokey. They have different perspectives and if I see both of them, I can usually tell whether I want to watch something or not. Drinker has some interesting critique and doesn't enjoy pretentiousness, but also is primed to hate anything by women or for women. Kermode is clever, perceptive and tends to like things that I might yawn my way through. Drinker's good at nerdy, IP-based stuff and Kermode good at contextualising arty filth.
Well, Drinker hated Running Man big style. He thought the tone was off. He seemed really affronted that it was mildly amusing. I thought the tone was pretty good, although the Man himself seemed a bit more prone to rage than anything he encountered really merited, which I put down to poor direction. Kermode thought it was fun. I agreed with that. It was a romp and if it had been twenty minutes shorter or at least had a tighter last act, it would have been absolutely fine. As it was, I was squirming a bit at the end, but it was worth watching.
Derry Girls
So I really like TV that is warmhearted. I don't really mean overly sentimental so much as it portrays people with good hearts being good people -- even if they are sometimes doing not quite good things. I'm a big sucker for copaganda, shows like The Rookie or Chicago PD, which portray cops as decent people willing to do the right thing to keep us all safe. Not because I believe it but because I like the idea. It's fiction after all.
Now, a lot of people like Father Ted and the IT Crowd, and I watched an episode of Father Ted recently and disliked it. I actually find Linehan's comedies underwhelming precisely because they lack that good heart. They are mean. The characters aren't good people. They are there for us to laugh at, not with.
But Derry Girls has heart. It's bursting with it. The characters are just lovely people, presented with warmth, and even when you're laughing at them, there's no bitter taste. They're *silly* rather than venal. Even Colm is a kindly man, even if he's very boring. It's also screamingly funny, anchored by women with exquisite comic timing and a supporting cast full of character actors who are brilliantly written to make the whole a colourful and lively universe.
I think actually why I think this is so much better than Father Ted is that Ted does not have anything good to say. It's not situated in anything. It doesn't talk fondly about the church, about people, about anything. It's as remote from us as Craggy Island itself. You either find Linehan's jokes funny or you don't, and I've never really enjoyed him as a gag writer. I'd give you the IT Crowd, which is at least some of the time funny, but Black Books barely raises a smile. The characters have zero plausibility. I'll just say this about my theory of comedy. Clowns are funny because they touch their pain inside. They're funny because you empathise with them. British comedy often portrays characters that you feel that deep empathy for. Dylan Moran is just a cunt in Black Books. You're supposed to laugh at him because he's a cunt. I've never much liked comedies that rely on that (except for Peep Show, which is just screamingly funny). I loved Only Fools and Horses, where you feel for Del Boy and Rodney -- they are just so real. Maybe that's it. It's that Moran's character is just not real. Just not "feelable".
Lisa McGee is as funny as fuck. Her characters are *so* real. They are occasionally stereotypes but so are we often. Then she deftly paints in a detail and they show just that bit more depth. Michelle's pain over her brother's fate is moving and compelling. You root for these guys, and you can't do that for anyone in anything Linehan writes.
Five stars. I mean it. One of the best TV comedies. Not a single bad episode; not even a bad five minutes. If you haven't seen it, I thoroughly recommend it.
Seven eleven
I had a big task lined up for this afternoon so I went out to get some groceries before I started. When I got back, it had vanished and so had all its sister tasks. I don't know if the project was finished or I had been booted. You don't get told. I don't take it personally because you never know what they actually want, and I've generally been valued. Or maybe I have. A couple of times a project has said I was among the best and that's why I was on it. But this one was so much work potentially. Not fun but I could earn from it.
It was my work for the afternoon. It was all I had. My main gig is dry and I never know why it is: whether they don't have work or are not working themselves. They don't bother to let me know.
And I know, even though I try not to let it overwhelm me, that there is going to be a day when there is no more of this work. They'll stop feeding back to AI. And then I'll have nothing.
I have no margin. That's the worst of it. I need to earn the rent, money to pay back debts, to avoid getting taken to court, and I have nothing I can make up a shortfall with. I had to spend what I had on eye surgery because it was that or go blind. And then when I got a bit more together I had to pay it to a woman who wasn't looking and smashed into my car and a guy who got a dent that probably took an hour to fix but cost ten grand for some reason. My car wasn't even worth ten grand. I managed to scrape together a few grand -- by which I mean I had to borrow from my own kid -- so I have another car. Sometimes the gears seem to catch and sometimes I think I smell petrol. I just have to tell myself nothing is wrong, I am smelling nothing, nothing, nothing is broken, nothing can be broken.
I can't get an actual job. I am trying but I rarely get any reply to an application.
I hurt all the time. Loneliness hurts. Social media makes things worse because you see such horrible people all the time and it makes the world hard to love. But without social media I'd have no interaction with anyone.
I need a break. I need to feel wanted and loved a little bit, a tiny bit, and not snubbed by the entire world. I have tried to do the right thing and my reward for that is this. It doesn't feel right. Sometimes, when you are on the edge, clinging on by your fingertips and you can feel the pain creep up your fingers, up your arms, into your heart, burning all of you into nothing.
Sometimes you just want to let go.