Category Archives: Reviews

Book Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“Frankenstein” is not at all what I expected.  And, yes, I was well aware that the popular fiction versions of the movie were nothing like the original book.  The novel reads more like a travelogue than a story about a man who created a monster and reaped what he sowed.  It is a well written travelogue to be sure, but a good portion of the prose is spent describing the journeys from place to place.

Interspersed in between the travelogue are some fascinating psychological insights into both Victor Frankenstein and his Monster.  I’m sure massive bottles of ink have been spilled arguing back and forth on the plight of both Victor and his Monster.  If anyone can recommend a good one, I’d happily accept your recommendation.  They are both interesting characters and, while I sympathize somewhat with both, I think Victor is much more of a dick than the Monster.  The monster’s motives make sense throughout, while Victor warbles back and forth feeling both sympathy and hatred for his creation.

All that’s great stuff, but the story itself is lacking a good editor.  It inexplicably begins with a long introduction to a character, Captain Walton, who plays zero role in the book whatsoever except to accidentally meet Victor while trapped in his boat on the icy Arctic.  Again, it’s kind of cool and well written, but why is it even there?

I was also surprised at how little time was spent establishing Victor’s abhorrence for the Monster.  Man brings body parts together.  Man animates body parts.  Man can’t stand the sight of what he’s created.  Run away!

Another thing that bothered me was how much of the story was left to simple chance and willful ignorance.  There are many times when Victor could have easily created a pitchfork mob (but with guns!) and hunted down the Monster.  (And, by the way, there is not a single pitchfork mob to be had in this book.  Oh, popular culture, how far astray you have led me!)  But the biggest problem for is Victor’s complete misreading of the situation when all evidence both past and present point to a very obvious conclusion.  I guess it could be argued that Victor’s path to insanity lead him to believe what he did, but the only acceptable conclusion that I can come to is that Victor is a narcissist of the highest order.

“Frankenstein” was not an enjoyable read, but neither was it horrible.  There is a lot of literary juice to be squeezed from it for those with the propensity to do so.  It is a rare book that makes me want to read literary criticism of it and “Frankenstein” succeeded in doing that.  In the end, though, I read for enjoyment, and this book was only a moderately enjoyable one.

Movie Review: Edge Of Tomorrow

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A gripping, fun adventure that fails slightly in the third act.

When you go into a movie whose premise is time travel, you try not to get your hopes up.  “Edge of Tomorrow” sounded so cool from the previews, though, that my hopes were up and I am happy to report that the movie didn’t disappoint.

Most of Europe has been taken over by an alien species.  Tom Cruise plays Cage, a major in the U.S. army who starts the movie much like I’d expect Tom Cruise to be in real live; smarmy, manipulative, and just a general asshole.  Through a series of events that I won’t spoil, Cage ends up repeating the same day over and over again.  The montage of him performing this Groundhog Day makes for some really entertaining film viewing.

Cage eventually runs into Rita, played most bad assedly by Emily Blunt, who had once experienced the same thing Cage is now experiencing.  She eventually ends up training Cage to be as bad assed as she is and with the help of a theoretical physicist, they hatch a plan to defeat the aliens once and for all.

An interesting thing about living the same day over and over again is that you get to learn a lot about the people you interact with on that day, but they learn nothing about you.  Thus, Cage falls in love with Rita, but she keeps on just meeting Cage for the first time.  It was very cool how they developed this relationship even if the director decided to go the complete cop out feel good ending route.  Stupid test audiences.

The movie keeps up a pretty good pace throughout except for some slowdown in the third act.  They spend a little too much time on the day where Cage decides to go completely off script and visit London instead of joining the battle.  I also would have liked that day to end a different way, but that’s a small complaint for a decent movie about time travel.  There are some weird “oh, but this is what the enemy wanted us to do all along” problems with the movie that don’t really make sense when you stop to think about it, but the movie moves quick enough to make this stuff not really matter too much.

All in all, “Edge of Tomorrow” is an entertaining movie that kept my interest throughout.  You should go see it.

Movie Review: Maleficent

Jean-Paul’s Rating : 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: A much improved second and third act can’t save this sloppy retelling of a classic Disney villain.

This movie is purportedly supposed to be about the true telling of a story that got twisted to make Maleficent look like the bad guy.  I guess it delivers at that, but it does so so entirely sloppily that it insults the intelligence of anyone above ten years old and draws on so many stereotypes of women that even girls below ten years old should be insulted.

In the beginning, young Maleficent is the goodest of the goodie two shoes.  She heals the trees and is loved by all the fairy folk and has powerful wings that allow her to soar quickly across crappily drawn special effect backgrounds.  She is also, for reasons unexplained, the only of the fairy folk to be entirely human-like besides having the wings and the pointy ears and the impossibly high cheekbones.  She also always wears lipstick.  Even as a ten-year old.  Who is a fairy.  The mortal enemies of the fairy folk are the humans who hate the fairies because…well, just because that’s what humans do.

But then the human boy, Stefan, comes around and they fall in love.  They then wait until Disney thinks it is ok for teenagers to kiss which happens to be sixteen years of age.  Since they kissed, they are obviously in love.  But it wasn’t meant to be because Stefan soon disappears to pursue humanly pursuits like becoming king even though that’s not at all how kings are chosen.  This paragraph is just as long as they spend explaining the nascent love affair.

Because, as I mentioned before, the humans hate the fairies, one of the human kings decides to attack the fairies.  He does this because, and I kid you not, he made a campaign promise to his people.  Led by Maleficent, the fairies lay blood free waste to the human army.  Gotta keep that PG rating.  The fairies are so much more powerful than the humans that only a complete idiot would ever even consider attacking them.

Now, sorely defeated and dying from his wounds, the King declares that anyone who kills Maleficent will be the next King.  Enter Stefan, once again, who happens to be a pot-boy or something to the king.  He runs to Maleficent to warn her that the King has put a price on her head.  The intervening years just melt away and they quickly fall in love once again.  But, oh ho, what’s this?  Stefan isn’t really in love and he feeds Maleficent a potion that puts her into a deep sleep.  Why doesn’t he just feed her a deadly poison?  Well because then he couldn’t have second thoughts about stabbing her to death in her sleep, of course!  So instead, he cuts off her wings because that’s much more humane.

Thus, does Stefan become king and Maleficent immediately become pure evil.  Her evilness is mostly confined to taking over and enslaving the fairy folk in vague, non-descriptive ways, because isn’t that just like a woman to redirect her rage towards those that don’t deserve it?  Am I right, fellas?  Maleficent continues her exclusive, ambiguous, fairy reign of terror until the birth of King Stefan’s daughter, Aurora.

Maleficent curses Aurora to be beautiful and loved by all and sugar and spice and everything nice until her sixteenth birthday when she shall prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall into eternal slumber until awakened by true love’s kiss.  This causes King Stefan to destroy every spinning wheel in the country and to send Aurora to live with three fairies.  There are innumerable problems with this.  Why would he trust any fairy?  They are also quite obviously three of the stupidest beings alive.  They are also three of the most annoying beings alive.  They are also only one foot tall.  And, slightly besides the point, they are also the creepiest humanesque fairies that computer generated special effects has ever devised.  But, no, here you creepy, idiotic, annoying, anthropomorphic fairies, take my daughter and hide her away from no threat whatsoever for the next sixteen years.  I get that the fairies are there for comic relief, but these are the most piss poor comic relief characters ever devised by Disney.  They should be ashamed of themselves.

Finally, after all of this, the story starts to get, well, not good, but decent.  It should come as no surprise that this also happens to coincide with the retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty.  Of course, Its not the same as the original story since it is told from Maleficent’s point of view.  I won’t go much into this part except to say that while it is sort of saccharine, it’s effective and we finally get some good acting in the movie from Angelina Jolie as Maleficient and Elle Fanning as Aurora.  The movie continues to be decent until the very end.

Ugh, the ending.  “Maleficent” should be shown in art classes everywhere as an example of how many different ways you can screw up the ending of a movie.  First off, everyone lives happily ever after.  Including Maleficent.  It makes absolutely no sense for her to live in this story, since she did die in “Sleeping Beauty”.  Second, Aurora still appears to get the Prince even though he was more a side joke in the movie instead of a driver of the story.  This is Disney, so every girl needs a prince I guess.  Third, Aurora becomes queen of the fairies because…that’s what little girls dream of I guess.  Fourth, the whole point of the movie was to drive home the point that there are two sides of the story and you shouldn’t necessarily trust the first one you hear, but in this case one of them is so obviously verifiably false since Maleficent still exists in one whereas in the other she’s dead.  If “Maleficent” were true, “Sleeping Beauty” was told by the losers and “Sleeping Beauty” happened to get out there as truth despite all evidence to the contrary.  The problem is that there has never been an instance of the losing side of a battle being able to propagate a false story.  In order to make the telling of “Maleficent” make any sense whatsoever, the story of “Sleeping Beauty” must be true except that Maleficent didn’t actually die.  Instead she was able to sneak away and eventually capture both Aurora and Prince Phillip and ensorcell them both into telling the untrue tale of “Maleficent”.  I kind of like that thought.

Book Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“Redshirts” is one of those novels that is constantly winking at the reader.  And, given the premise, how could it not?  For those of you that don’t know, a Redshirt is a reference to the hapless extras in the Star Trek series who invariably wear red shirts and whose sole purpose is to die horribly in the presence of one or more of the main cast to give some semblance of danger without having to kill off the main cast.  In “Redshirts”, those hapless extras take center stage.

The premise of the story is brilliant in its simplicity.  A small group of Redshirts discover that they are actually Redshirts and that some mysterious and all too predictable force seems to be guiding the fates of those aboard the Universal Union ship, Intrepid.  At key moments in critical situations, they find themselves doing and saying things that they don’t seem to have complete control over.  They start to call this strange force The Narrative.  And then there’s The Box, a device that can solve any problem, but only in critical situations and only in the nick of time.  What does all of this mean?  The Redshirts band together to find out before they become the next victim of an explosion on deck 6 or a Longranian Ice Shark or Bogrovian Land Worms.

With such a wacky premise and a whole mess of base material to draw from, you can probably guess that “Redshirts” is both a comedy and contains a plethora of Easter Eggs for sci-fi geeks.  The humor in the book is pretty good, but it kind of wore thin for me after a while which is much of the reason why I gave the book three instead of four stars.  John Scalzi’s writing always contains a bit of humor and it always works in smaller quantities.  In “Redshirts” it was just a bit too much.

Following the main story, there are three Codas which follow individuals who are trying to come to terms with being affected by the people they unknowingly affected after they learned that they were affecting them.  If that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, read the book and all will be revealed.  None of the three really add much to the main storyline, but they are interesting experiments in empathy.  I’m a sucker for stuff like this.  Here’s a story.  Now look how this story felt from this point of view.  And now this point of view.  And now this point of view.  This is probably like Creative Writing 101 stuff and I don’t know it, but it seldom is found in novels these days and I appreciate it.

“Redshirts” is worth reading, especially if you are a sci-fi geek.  There is some good stuff in it for non-sci-fi geeks too and I don’t think you’ll miss out on much in the book if you aren’t a sci-fi geek.  I found it to be an enjoyable light read and would recommend it to anyone with a caveat for the humor.

Movie Review: X-Men: Days Of Future Past

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: This is a movie with a fairly decent plot, a lot of imagination, and great use of special effects.

This movie has more X-Men than you can shake a stick at.  Luckily, only a few of them are actually relevant to the plot line and the ones that aren’t have way cool powers like creating portals and shooting fire and ice and absorbing mutant powers in order to charge a gun?  I don’t know about that last one, but the dude looked awesome doing it.  Their names are irrelevant and I know none of them, but I’m sure every X-Men geek was in full geek fervor at the giant lineup of mutants involved in this movie.

Surprisingly, this is a movie about time travel and the plot is not bad.  It might not be wholly internally consistent, but it does a journeyman job of making the time travel aspects work.  The basic premise is the future sucks because the Sentinels, mutant hunting robots, are doing a pretty bang up job and the mutants are quickly becoming extinct.  This leads to them using Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back into the 1970s to prevent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing the inventor of the Sentinels, Trask (Peter Dinklage) because it starts the whole Sentinel War instead of preventing it.

The interactions of the characters are interesting and the conclusions they come to are believable.  That’s always been the strength of the X-Men movies, even when the movies themselves haven’t always been good.  You get what Professor X is doing and why he’s doing it, but at the same time you get what Magneto is doing and why he’s doing it.  They are one of the better silver screen frenemies out there.

This movie also contains one of the best special effects driven scenes ever made.  I won’t spoil it, but I will say that it is incredibly inventive, satisfyingly snarky, and magnificently mischievous.  The audience absolutely loved it.

There is some second act slowness, but it is not entirely wasted as there is some interesting character development to be had in it.  Other than that, “Days of Future Past” was a very enjoyable experience and I can seem myself wanting to see it again some day.

Movie Review: Godzilla

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line:  Look, it’s a monster!  Look, we’re ineffectively doing things!  Look, we’re making extremely stupid decisions just so there is some sort of story line!

What a mess this movie is.  It has only two things going for it.  One, Bryan Cranston is in it.  Two, a lot of the effects are pretty cool.  Number one doesn’t last very long.

I get that the theme of Godzilla movies is basically man’s hubris in thinking he can stand up to nature without nature bringing down the hammer of justice, but something interesting should really be happening when making that point.  Instead, this movie provides stupid rational after stupid rational for stupid action after stupid action.  Case in point, the Yucca Mountain scene.  Yucca Mountain, if you are not aware is where the U.S. stores all its nuclear waste.  There is more radioactivity happening there than anywhere else in the world.  One of the monsters is at Yucca Mountain and is pregnant for whatever reason and needs radioactivity to feed.  Instead of staying there, she rampages across Las Vegas and heads to San Francisco because the Army is carting a single nuclear missile by train to San Francisco.  This is all to be with her mate, who she doesn’t really need because she’s already pregnant.  Now, maybe they decided to skip the funky monster love making scene for the sake of time, but come on!

Then there are other stupid decisions like running busses full of evacuees across the Golden Gate Bridge even though it is clear to everyone that the other monster is heading straight for said bridge.  Oh, and there’s also the main character (who I will just call Not Bryan Cranston) who tells his wife and child who are in San Francisco to wait there and he’ll come and get them even though he has full knowledge that there are three monsters converging there.  Come to think of it, that would have made the story somewhat interesting if he was actually trying to get them killed because his marriage really sucked.

The only thing this movie has going for it are its cool special effects.  Even that is kind of spoiled by the fact that the entirety of the monster fighting scenes are done in darkness and are most often only glimpsed at in the background while our heroes are vainly attempting to be hero-y.

“Godzilla” would certainly be in my skip it category.  The special effects are not enough to save it.  Though, it may be one of those movies that, once you recognize the ridiculousness of it, turns it into a good movie.

Book Review: The Sirens Of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Jean-Paul’s Review: 3/5 stars

“The Sirens of Titan” is Kurt Vonnegut’s second novel and you can really feel him just starting to get his unique voice in it.  It is kind of a hybrid standard novel/typical Vonnegut prose mix.  There are none of the one word paragraphs yet, but the paragraphs sizes are noticeably smaller than your standard novel.

Many of the standard Vonnegut subjects are already present in this novel.  You have Tralfamadore and allusions to “Harrison Bergeron”.  Much of the book deals with finding your place in the world and fate’s part in it.  The humor is dark, even more so than his usual fare.  I suspect that my three star rating has more to do with the fact that almost everything contained in the book has been done better by him later in his career and I read all of those first.

The book starts with the chrono-synclastical infundibulated (think unstuck in time-ish) Winston Niles Rumfoord paying one of his cyclical visits to his wife, Beatrice, and special guest, playboy billionalre Malachai Constant.  Rumfoord tells them both their future and how they will go to Mars and get married and have a kid together before heading to the Saturnian moon of Titan, with Constant making a side trip to Mercury beforehand.  Finding each other mostly repulsive, they attempt to avoid that fate by any means necessary only to have it all come true.

It all comes true in horrible Vonnegutesque fashion.  When I said this novel was dark, I meant it.  No one in this novel is a good person, except for maybe Salo the Tralfamadorian and he’s a machine.  So it goes.  I had no idea where anything in this novel was going until it went there.  None of it was out of left field either.  It was all, “Oh, that makes beautifully horrible sense.”, which is quite an accomplishment.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors and it’s really interesting to read his second novel and see his growth as an author.  If you’ve read most of his later stuff, you should totally pick up this book, but if you’re a Vonnegut virgin, there’s better to be had in “Slaughterhouse-Five”, “Cat’s Cradle” and, well, most of his other works.  That doesn’t make this book bad, it just makes it not as good.

Movie Review: Neighbors

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A fun raunchy comedy with some unexpectedly excellent chemistry between the actors.

Now, this may have been one of those movies where you go in with low expectations and it surprises you so much that you give it a better review than you normally would.  And who wouldn’t have low expectations when the plot revolves around a fraternity moving next door to a couple of new parents?  And who wouldn’t be surprised when that flimsy premise actually turns into a very enjoyable movie?

Obviously, with a plot like this, the movie is a bit unbelievable, but it does a really good job of making it as close to believable as possible.  The pranks that are pulled and the schemes that are concocted are all things that you might imagine doing if you were in a similar situation.  In fact, with the exception of the air bags stunt, which was both over the top and hilarious, it only takes a bit of a stretch of the imagination to see this movie happening in real life.

A lot of what makes this movie work is the acting.  What makes good material great material is the chemistry between the actors and there is chemistry aplenty in this film.  Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne play off of each other so well as the new parents next door.  One set of comedic talent is enough to carry any movie, but this movie has two, for Zak Efron and Dave Franco also work off of each other well as the fraternity president and vice president.

Only time will tell if “Neighbors” has any staying power as a classic raunchy comedy.  I can see myself breaking out this movie every few years and laughing all over again.

This movie also contains, perhaps, the cutest baby that was ever created on this planet, played by twins Elsie and Zoey Vargas.  Disgustingly cute applies here.  Be sure to stay for the credits where Elsie and Zoey are dressed up to look like all of the actors as their names scroll by.

Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Jean-Paul’s Review: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: More of your standard super-hero fare.  Special effects are better than average and make good use of slow motion.  Suffers from super-villan overload which is a good sign that they’re out of ideas.

But first, another rant against 3D.  I try to avoid watching movies in 3D because it tends to not add to the enjoyment of the movie and it costs a few extra bucks more besides.  Sometimes time constraints force you into it as it did with my viewing of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”.  The use of 3D was actually distracting in this movie.  Imagine your normal movie shot.  Your primary attention goes straight to the people/actions that are in focus, but there is a whole other world of softly out of focus background existing peacefully in your field of view.  Not so with this movie.  All the background was not only out of focus, but in 3D and out of focus.  It draws your attention away from the primary focus so your brain can take the time to identify what the heck these floating pixies of light are doing in the background.  It was so annoying.  Why won’t 3D die the death it so richly deserves?  Oh yeah, because it makes money.

Now on to our regularly scheduled review.  “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is enjoyable for what it is and that’s about it.  The movie takes a bit of time to get going but when it does, it sails along prettily from action sequence to action sequence and super-villan to super-villan.

Speaking of super-villans, Jamie Foxx is completely wasted in this movie as Electro/Max Dillon.  The crappy 3D in this movie had more depth than the Max Dillon character.  Electro is a super-villan for three year olds.  Spider-Man good, notice me!, now Spider-Man bad.  The movie would have been so much better if they could have given Max Dillon a compelling back story.  It’s movies like this that make me hope that Disney’s upcoming movie, “Malificent”, will do gangbusters so people will realize that evil’s where the story’s at.  One can only hope.

The other main super-villan was, once again, Green Goblin/Harry Osborne.  The good news is the story is a bit different from the first series, though the broad brush strokes are still the same.  The better news is that Dane DeHaan, who plays Harry, was very well cast if just for his looks.  He just screams evil even well before he turns into Green Goblin.

As per usual with super-hero movies, there’s very little female acting to report besides your standard Hollywood approved female roles.  There’s love interest Gwen, and sage matron Aunt May.  The angsty teenage romance between Peter and Gwen got a bit annoying, but I suppose that’s what angsty teenage romances are all about.  The Aunt May stuff is a bit better, but is mostly rushed.

“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is not necessary super-hero watching material.  It’s fun and light and you won’t hate yourself for watching it and there’s not really much showing at the moment to compete with it so you might as well go see it if you’re in the mood for a movie.  How’s that for a ringing endorsement?

Book Review: Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

I subconsciously started reading “Treasure Island” shortly before my planned trip to Grand Cayman.  I have a long backlist of old books that I want to read and it amuses me that my brain chose this book without my being aware as to why I chose it.  It wasn’t until shortly before I left for Grand Cayman before I realized, “Oh, that’s why I chose this book!”

Ahoy matey!  If you know anything about pirates, chances are what you know came from “Treasure Island”.  Almost every pirate stereotype is a stereotype because of this book.  Parrot?  Check.  Peg leg?  Check.  Drunken revelry?  Check.  Buried treasure?  Check.  X marks the spot?  Check.  You would be hard pressed to find another example of a piece of literature that so thoroughly defines a genre so completely.  That, my friends, is art.  I would go even farther and say that “Treasure Island” also inspired, consciously or unconsciously, many of the top young adult novels of our time.  Can you think of other wildly successful novels as old as “Treasure Island” whose main character is a young boy on an adventure?

“Treasure Island” has so infused our culture that even if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, you know the story.  Pirate Billy Bones comes to an inn run by young Jim Hawkins’ family.  He is hiding from some of his former pirates and he has a treasure map.  He is eventually found and dies after a confrontation with one of his brethren but not before Jim finds the map.  Jim confides in Dr. Livesey and Squire Trewlaney and soon an adventure is set up to find the hidden treasure!  The crew they hire, of course, turn out to be pirates and the rest of the book tells how the good guys survive the pirates and gather the treasure.

“Treasure Island” is an incredibly fun escapist read.  Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver are as memorable characters as you will find in literature.  Reading the book, you can not help but want to be there with Jim on his adventure.  Well, maybe without the pirates trying to kill you, but you get the idea.  Sailing a ship through the ocean in search of buried treasure, drinking rum, and singing sea shanties is awfully appealing.

If you have not read this book, you should.  I can see myself reading this book again and again.  If you have kids, you should read it to them.  There’s some material that is age inappropriate, mostly murder and mayhem, so be ye warned if you are of the opinion that children should be hidden from such realities as long as possible.