Category Archives: Reviews

Book Review: The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

Jean-Paul’s rating: 5/5 stars

“The Ocean at the End of the Lane” is a children’s book in the same way that Grimm’s Fairy Tales are for children.  Ok, maybe not that bad, but Gaiman has a particular gift for seeing adult themes through the eyes of a child.  There is a matter-of-factness in children when confronted with things that stretch the boundaries of their knowledge.  There almost has to be since they are constantly assaulted with new information.  And even though there is a suicide and nudity and sex in this book, I would still consider it a children’s book just because Gaiman captured a child’s spirit so well.  That isn’t to say that what we have here is only a children’s book.  Far from it.  “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” should appeal to just about everyone.  All the characters are fully flushed out and entertaining.  The story is compelling and dreamy and thought-provoking.  Gaiman’s descriptions make it seem like you are there witnessing the goings on in the story.

What I like best about the book is that even though the protagonist is a young boy, he is helped along his journey by a triumvirate of strong women in the Hempstock family.  Even the main villain is female.  This is such an unusual occurrence in literature or any form of art that it is worth pointing out.

The story itself is best described as a fairy tale if one were to assign such designations to books.  The Hempstocks are aglessly old.  Even the youngest, Lettie, is aged beyond description despite appearing only thirteen.  One of the best lines is when the boy first realizes it.  “How old are you?”  “Thirteen.”  “How many years have you been thirteen?”  The entire book is filled with dialogue like that.

This book draws you in and doesn’t let go.  Dream and reality are combined.  Oceans fit in buckets.  The world is filled with monsters who mean well but cause havoc anyway.  It is a complete delight from start to finish and I’d highly recommend you all read it.

Book Review: Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

The world is an exceedingly strange place.  Take the Museum of Jurassic Technology, for instance.  It is certainly a museum.  But what the heck is Jurassic Technology?  Well, keep guessing, because the museum’s curator, David Wilson, will only give you an answer that is equal parts satisfying and confusing.  The exhibits in the museum are equal parts baffling and revealing.  All are tantalizingly real, with professional audio and authoritative sounding placards.  You want to believe they’re true.  After all, they’re in a museum.  And some of them are real, but you’re never quite sure which.  Thus begins “Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology”.  Weschler describes many of the exhibits on his first visit to the museum and later tries to fact check some of them.  Down the rabbit hole we go.

David Wilson is an anachronism.  Here it is, the 20th century (the book was written in the 1990’s), and here is this beautifully maintained museum of nonsense.  Well not nonsense, but certainly not sense either.  The museum is a throw-back to when rich people collected the oddities of the world and displayed them for public consumption.  Somewhere down the line, logic and reason took over and we now have large museums of peer-reviewed exhibits instead of the hodge-podge collection like Wilson’s.  This is both a blessing and a curse.

The book is split into three parts.  The first part is quite entertaining as it describes both the museum and introduces us to the curator and his family.  I was mildly put off by Weschler’s prolific use of SAT words near the beginning, but I either got used to it or became resigned to the fact that a place as odd as the Museum of Jurassic Technology deserves triple word score words.  The second part kind of lost me.  It goes into excruciating, and often dry, detail of the history of Wunderkammer, or Wonder Cabinets, of which the Museum of Jurassic Technology is a worthy successor.  There is some interesting historical sleuthing here, but Weschler’s use of notes, which can span pages, to add more depth to topics he is discussing really threw me with having to constantly page back and forth from the story to the notes section.  Many of the notes, I was left wondering why he didn’t just include it in the main text.  Part three wraps things up satisfyingly as we travel back to the Museum of Jurassic Technology and are once again treated to the many oddities the Museum has to offer.

The book is a decent read.  It really makes you think.  For instance, after reading about so many truths and half-truths and lies and mischaracterizations associated with the various Wunderkammen, who’s to say that anything Weschler wrote is the truth.  Who’s to say that the Museum of Jurassic Technology actually exists.  After reading “Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder”, you’ll look at the world slightly differently than you did going in.

Movie Review: Lucy

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A very fun movie if you don’t think about it so hard.  Decent plot with some great visuals.

Did you know that humans only use 10% of their brain?  You did?  Well you shouldn’t because we don’t.  Regardless, that’s the premise of “Lucy”.  Not a good way to start.  The good news is that they very quickly establish that the science in the film is going to be over the top made up so the 10% lie actually fits.  I would have probably hated the movie otherwise.

Scarlett Johansson does a great job playing the titular Lucy.  Lucy is a woman on an extended vacation in Taipei.  She ends up going on a delivery drop with her boyfriend who ends up forcing her to make the delivery herself.  We are treated to cut over shots of a mouse approaching a trap and then a gazelle being stalked by cheetahs.  I absolutely loved this as a cinematic device.  It helps build the tension in what would normally be just a woman waiting for a person to come meet her.

Of course, you know that Lucy eventually has something happen to her that makes her able to use more than 10% of her brain.  The lead up to that is very fun.  At no point do you really quite know what’s going on.  I assume this is on purpose since you’re basically seeing everything from Lucy’s point of view.

Once Lucy gets her powers, we’re treated to a roller coaster action sequence as Lucy goes on a rampage taking out the people who did this to her.  It is all well done and it’s quite fun watching Lucy attain more and more powers as she unlocks more and more of her brain’s capacity.  We’re treated to her digging into people’s minds to get information, Lucy changing her appearance simply with a thought, and her being able to visualize phone calls that are going on around her and picking the one that she wants to listen to.

Really, the only downside to the movie is the ending where we’re treated to a longish sequence of visuals which don’t really serve much purpose.  Lucy is also quite inconsistent in who she kills and who she lets live.  This is partially because it wouldn’t be much of a story if she killed the main bad guy right away.  I also like to think, though, that her inconsistency is due more to her not even recognizing humanity as alive after her powers manifest to a certain point.

As long as you remember to turn off your brain, “Lucy” is a heck of a lot of fun.  I think this is a requirement for enjoying this movie.  Enjoy.

Book Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 Stars

I picked up “Gone Girl” because I had just finished my previous book and because it was both immediately available to download from the library and I had just seen that it was going to become a Ben Afleck movie.  I had heard of “Gone Girl” before, but it never piqued my interest until I saw about the movie, which I will still likely see despite my, as you will see, somewhat tepid review of the book.  As a general rule, I like to read the books before I see the movie.

“Gone Girl” starts out quite good.  The two main characters, Amy Dunne and Nick Dunne, are fleshed out really nicely.  The storytelling for the first half of the book is done alternating between a first person perspective through Nick’s eyes starting the day Amy disappears and a series of Amy’s diary entries retelling events from years ago when Amy and Nick first met up to the day that Amy disappears.  It is a very cool, very effective way to tell a story.  If only the story it had to tell was worth it.

My biggest problem with the story was the incessant bludgeoning of the reader with detective story cliché after cliché.  When the twist comes along, you get to understand that all the clichés are kind of the point, but by that time you already feel like you’re stuck in a crappy detective novel.

What saves the book is that the twist is pretty freaking cool.  I will not give anything away, but suffice to say, I was very pleasantly surprised at it and it fit in very nicely with everything that came before.  Unfortunately, it then proceeds into another series of clichés that again reduces it to more of a tedious than enjoyable read.

The end is a huge let-down.  It does one of those leave you hanging things where you’re left to wonder what happens to everyone.  Normally, I go for this kind of things, but the preceding events are so outside of normal human experience that it’s very difficult to come to any conclusion as to what any of the characters are thinking.  Seriously, there is some effed up psychological stuff going on here, which is again, kind of cool.

In the end, the problem with “Gone Girl” is that it doesn’t really cover any new ground.  It’s the same old ground that twists into the same old ground.  A cool twist is not enough to save a book.  So why would I ever want to see the movie, you may ask?  Because, in the right hands, I think this could make for a very good movie and I am interested in seeing how they bring the twists and ending to the big screen.  We shall see.

Movie Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom line: Some good action.  Close to zero character development.  Close to zero laughs.

How do you make Will Arnett not funny?  Star him in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.  Seriously, Michael Bay, how do you make Will Arnett not funny?  Joining Will Arnett in not being funny was everyone else in the cast.  The saddest thing was you could tell how very hard they were trying to make things funny, but there was no material to work with.  All the comedy was shoehorned in there along with a bunch of poorly executed nudge-nudge-wink-wink references to the old TMNT series.  Please tell me you made a lot of money on this movie, Will.

And then there’s the character development.  Or lack thereof.  You have April O’Neil (Megan Fox) whose entire schtick is telling people how she wants to be a serious reporter over and over again.  Then there’s Vernon Fenwick (Will Arnett) whose entire purpose is to drive April everywhere and pine for her.  There were also four turtles who we get to know by them repeating their names.  I’m Leonardo and I’m the leader!  I’m Michelangelo and I’m the goofball.  I’m Donatello and I’m the smart one, see, I have glasses!  I’m Raphael and I’m the broody one.

There are a few kind of cool action scenes.  The best is the one where they inexplicably choose a semi-truck with trailer as an escape vehicle and go sliding down an inexplicably snow covered mountain with other vehicles in pursuit.  The final battle against the Shredder was also decent enough before being ruined by some unbelievable silliness.

There’s not much to say about the plot.  The origin story is different than the TMNT of old, but it’s not so bad.  The Foot Clan is reduced to machine gunning mercenaries with a few ninjas thrown in for good measure.  Of course, Splinter almost dies and the Turtles need to save his life while simultaneously saving the world.  How they are able to save Splinter’s life is beyond idiotic.  They basically give him an infusion of their own blood because it has magical healing powers.  But, um, wouldn’t Splinter’s blood also have that healing power?  The answer is yes, yes it would.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is decidedly in the do not go to see category.  Save your nostalgia for a rainy day at home where you can loudly lament Michael Bay killing another childhood memory.

Movie Review: Guardians Of The Galaxy

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A very enjoyable variation on the Superhero theme of movie.  Lots of likeable characters, some good humor, slightly touching.  The larger ship fight action scenes fall flat because they are mostly impossible to follow.

Well, Marvel has yet another winning franchise.  Who’d a thunk that a movie about a bunch of misfit heroes with pretty much zero name recognition would be both a success and as good as it actually was?  A lot of this has to do with the fine cast of second tier stars.  Chris Pratt started off a little soft and appeared to be a little uncomfortable as Peter Quill (Starlord), but he very quickly pulled it all together to create an incredibly likeable character.  The interactions between Gamora (Zoe Salander) and Drax (Dave Bautista) were entertaining.  Vin Diesel gives the acting performance of his life as Groot.  And Bradley Cooper steals scene after scene as the raccoon, Rocket.

The key to this film’s success is actual, honest to goodness character development.  Marvel seems to be really good at this, but this is really the first time they have gone full-bore introducing five new heroes and yet still cram the story full of character development for all five of them while at the same time telling a pretty decent story.  Another key factor to this movie’s success is the lightness of the story.  Yes, serious stuff is happening all around, but there’s also always time for a well placed and very well-timed joke.  Like when Rocket says he needs the prisoner’s mechanical leg to help them escape.  Classic.

The only real downside to the movie were the way too hectic battle scenes.  The close up action worked really well, but get more than a few ships speeding across the screen at the same time and you really can’t tell what’s going on.  Messy visual spectaculars are all the rage these days, unfortunately.  Of course, it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in those scenes so it’s easy to look past it.

Yep, there will be another “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie, you can all but guarantee it.  This one was too fun and appears to be as successful as it needs to be to make it happen.  It’s a great group of characters and I’m looking forward to seeing their next adventure.  In the meantime, I’m sure I’ll watch this movie again once or twice.

Movie Review: Hercules

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: After a disappointing start, this is a movie that is both entertaining enough and engaging enough to watch from the comfort of your own home.

Let’s get something straight right off the bat.  This movie is not about Hercules the Greek mythological being.  Wait, that’s not quite true.  This movie is about a man named Hercules who is both big and powerful and creates the myth of Hercules the Greek mythological being to help him and his crew of mercenaries land paying gigs.  After some initial disappointment of not seeing a movie based on Hercules’ twelve labors, I found that I liked what they did to spin Hercules’ myth around an all too human, if impossibly large, man.  Keep this all in mind if you plan to see the movie.

With that out of the way, what you have in “Hercules” is basically a better than average Dungeons & Dragons campaign.  You’ve got a rag-tag group of adventurers including a fighter, an archer, a barbarian, a thief, and a mystic who go on various quests for both gold and glory.  After completing a side quest, they are engaged in their main quest to save a village from an evil usurper intent on taking over a peaceful kingdom.  There are plot twists and betrayals and even some tying in character’s back-stories into the main plot.  Now I want to play D&D.

The humor in the movie is decent if a little over-acted at times.  The movie is also surprisingly endearing.  Hercules develops his mercenary followers by both helping them and treating them kindly and this is revealed throughout the movie.  How they do this is pretty cool.  The movie starts with a quick retelling of many of Hercules’ labors as the myths describe them.  Then, throughout the movie, you see the interactions between Hercules and his companions and get to know a little bit of how they came to follow him.  Finally, in the end credits, you are treated to a comic book retelling of Hercules’ labors showing how his friends actually helped him complete each of the labors.

“Hercules” is a fun if forgettable movie.  I don’t think I’d recommend seeing it in the theater unless you want to get your D&D friends together and geek out to it or if you just really like Dwayne Johnson.

Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“Dracula” is a book with a really good premise written by a man with no idea how to tell a compelling story.  The story is equal parts brilliance and plodding nonsense.  It is written as a series of journal entries that detail the actions of the protagonists.  It’s an interesting literary device, but it mostly falls flat because of the fact that most action happens “off camera”, so to speak, with the journal entries retelling things that happened to other people.  This makes it very difficult for the reader to establish a mood.

Despite that, there are some great parts.  Right at the beginning, the retelling of Jonathan Harker’s journey to Transylvania and his encounters with Dracula and the denizens of his castle makes for some very compelling reading.  Another bright spot is Dr. Seward’s retelling of his encounters with Renfield, who is one of only two interesting characters in the book.  Other than that, there is strewn here and there tidbits of compelling reading, but it never lasts for very long.

To show just how poor Stoker’s sense of pacing is, he goes straight from Harker in Transylvania to an overly long description of Lucy’s courtship of three suitors.  The sole purpose of this is to establish how the three of them end up joining in on the hunt for Dracula.  So we get to read page after page of courtship nonsense just so we can be introduced to Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quncey Morris.  Of the three, only Dr. Jack Seward has a real reason to exist as he is the connecting tissue between all of the main characters.  The other two are blandly one-dimensional window dressing.

Interesting character number two is Wilhelmina Murray, or Mina, as she is called throughout the book.  Mina is probably as close to feminist as female characters were allowed to be in the late 1800’s.  She is strong-willed, intelligent, and comes up with almost every breakthrough in the group’s hunt for Dracula.  Of course, it’s still the late 1800’s so she is also the plot device to keep what flimsy of a storyline there is going.  Time after time, we have the men praising her for her strength only to immediately backpedal and go with the “oh, but you are a woman and thus must be protected by us manly men” trope.

The story itself relies on a series of not fully explained details, like Jonathan Harker’s escape from Castle Dracula, and poorly reasoned decision making to keep things moving.  This turns what could have been a page-turning monster hunt thriller into an eye-rolling, saw that coming a mile away, yawn fest.

Despite the book’s many flaws, I can still see why hundreds of years later the world is still enthralled by Dracula and by vampires in general.  Like many good ideas with poor follow through (I’m looking at you H.P. Lovecraft), much that has come since is superior to the source material.  It is still worth while to read where it all began if to only see how far Dracula has come.

Movie Review: Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A beautifully produced film that once again gets to show off the brilliance of Andy Serkis of Gollum fame.  Some third act implausibilities spoil the movie some, but it’s still a worthy successor to “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”.

Andy Serkis is pretty awesome.  He plays Caesar, the leader of the ape tribe that escaped in the end of the previous movie as it maintains its empire 10 years later.  Serkis does all of the acting for Caesar, the movements, the voice, the facial expressions.  He does such a good job that Caesar might as well be human.  That isn’t to say that the other apes are two-dimensional, but Serkis makes Caesar almost four-dimensional.

The other headliner apes are also well played and the personality of each was well fleshed out, all without words being spoken, but with sign language and facial expressions.  Not an easy feat.  My only complaint about the apes in general was the insistence of the director to adorn the female apes with jewelry so the audience could distinguish sex.  Maybe there’s something else going on there that I just don’t recognize, though.  It was also annoying how much of a backseat the female apes took given that I’m pretty sure that most ape societies are fairly egalitarian about such things.

While the apes definitely stole the show, there were some good human performances as well.  Jason Clarke and Gary Oldman play the leaders of New San Francisco, with Jason being the ape friendly one and Gary being the ape hostile one.  As with the ape society, the human society was very patriarchical with only one female (Keri Russel) given any real role to play.  At least they didn’t make her the damsel in distress, which they very well could have.

The plot is mostly believable except for a few sticking points.  There’s a part in the beginning where Ceasar claims they haven’t seen humans in 2 years which seems unlikely given how close New San Francisco is, but it’s really a throw away point that doesn’t add or detract from the story.  Then there’s the apes’ use of guns.  What do you think would happen if an ape society that has absolutely no experience with guns suddenly gets hold of an arsenal and attacks the humans with it?  The apes would pretty much accidentally slaughter each other in the attack.  But no.  In this, they are really good marksapes and are able to perform a successful frontal assault on the heavily guarded human position.  I know, this was for special effects fun and allowed the movie to keep moving, but it still bothers me.

Aside from those minor quibbles, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is a good time and I would highly recommend it.  Be sure to see “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” first if you haven’t yet.  It’s not necessary to see the first, but it will add some context and it’s really a better movie in general.

Movie Review: Transformers: Age Of Extinction

Jean-Paul’s Rating: -10/ 5 stars

Bottom Line: Every time you see a Michael Bay film, god kills a kitten.

I am a masochist.  That is the only reason I can give you for why I went to see this movie after hating every other “Transformers” movie that Michael Bay has released.  “But this one will be different,” I reasoned with myself, showing all the signs of being in an abusive relationship.  “This one has Mark Wahlberg, I like Mark Wahlberg.  Michael Bay has changed, I just know he has.”  I need an intervention badly.

The movie started off decently enough in that “so bad it’s good” kind of way.  You have an intro where it is revealed that aliens destroyed the dinosaurs by turning them all into metal despite the fact that none of the present dinosaur remains are actually metal for some reason except one that they find in a mining complex.  There is all of this really amusingly bad dialogue and acting between Mark Wahlberg, the Michael Bay token hot chick, and the Michael Bay token annoying sidekick guy.  Then Kelsey Grammer and Stanley Tucci show up as the villains and I’m thinking that this may be a decent movie after all.  Boy was I wrong.

The rest of the movie was an insult to good taste and intelligence.  There is not a single plot point that makes even the remotest sense.  For instance, all the transformers are being hunted by a special branch of the CIA because of their metal which should have been in abundance on Earth because of the previously alluded to dinosaur extinction.  The action scenes are an assault on the senses that make no coherent sense whatsoever (except for a pretty decent fight scene between Optimus Prime and random space robot dude #1).  This, too, must explode for no reason at all because there hasn’t been a good explosion for over one second.Even ignoring the fact that there were supposed to only be 30 enemy robots in the final epic battle but the good guys ended um killing umpteen millions of them, the enemy robots have the ability to transform into this swarm of metal that can apparently fly anywhere and yet they consistently decide to turn into cars and robots.  All the better to shoot you, my dear.

I feel stupider after having seen this movie.  The following is a partial list of what would have been a better use of my time than spending the 2 hours and 40 minutes it took to watch this clunker: watching lead paint dry, peel, and crack for 40 years and then eating the paint chips, running a barefoot marathon over a surface of broken glass, getting killed by a pair of tweezers that was only used to pick the skin off of my body one tweeze at a time.