Category Archives: Reviews

Book Review: Peter Pan by James M. Barrie

Jean-Paul’s Review: 5/5 stars

Continuing my effort to read children’s books I somehow missed as a child, now comes “Peter Pan”.  Sadly, most children’s experience with Peter Pan is from the Disney movie.  I don’t remember much about the movie, but I do know one thing for sure:  Peter Pan was not a complete ass in it.  In the book?  Peter Pan is a complete ass.  This was both shocking and delightful.

There is a mantra that gets repeated in the book that only people who are “gay and innocent and heartless” can see Peter Pan.  In otherwords, children.  That was another big surprise about the book.  Barrie describes children as sociopaths.  It’s beautiful.  There is a line in the book that I can’t remember exactly, but it basically says that as long as there are mothers to come rescue their children, the children will take advantage of that and be complete dicks about it.

As is becoming a theme with the old children’s books that I read, “Peter Pan” is both racist and sexist.  Gender stereotypes are strictly enforced throughout.  The sole purpose of both Wendy and Tinker Bell is to be mother and/or pining female.  Wendy doesn’t take part in the fighting and the killing and adventures like the Lost Boys do, she just takes care of them.  Oh, and you read that right, the killing.  Peter and the Lost Boys do quite a bit of killing of pirates and Indians and, though it’s not explicit in the book, it is implied that the Lost Boys suffer quite a few deaths as well and Peter just refills the ranks.  The racism is mostly in the description of the Indians.  Yeah, Indians.  It’s funny how bad that sounds when I read it now.  It’s your usual stereotypical nonsense about them being savages, etc.  It should be pointed out that Tiger Lily, the daughter of a chieftan, despite pining over Peter the way every female in the book does, is the person in charge of the Indians.  I’m not sure if that was progressive of Barrie or just a recognition of the different roles that women played in Indian culture.

Another delightful thing about the book that I have not seen repeated elsewhere is the use of vocabulary.  Barrie is not against using more complex words, but when he does so he then brackets an easier synonym of the word immediately after it.  He also does this with idioms.  What a wonderful way to expand children’s vocabularies.  How has this not caught on in every children’s book known to man?  I almost want to start doing it in my blog posts just for giggles.

Once you get past how much Barrie thinks children are horrible little monster, he captures the sense of freedom and wonder that is being a child like very few people ever have.  Dare I compare him to Bill Waterson and “Calvin and Hobbes”?  Yes, yes I dare.  I would not be at all surprised if Watterson’s inspiration for Calvin was in part due to Peter Pan.

In conclusion, “Peter Pan” should be required to be read to every parent’s sociopathic gay and innocent and heartless children.  It should also be read by non-spawning adults so they can relive the wonderment that was being a child.

Book Review: Hard Times: An Oral History Of The Great Depression by Studs Terkel

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

A quick note about typography.  I read “Hard Times” in ebook form.  By the amount of typographical mistakes, it was obvious that minimal effort was put into converting it from book form to ebook form.  It’s as if they simply scanned it and never edited the ebook version for errors.  There were so many mistakes it was actually distracting.  So many misspelled words and 1’s in place of I’s.  Ugh.  I greatly appreciate the effort of The New Press for bringing old books deemed insufficiently profitable back in print, but please put just a little more effort into your ebooks.

The premise of this book is quite simple.  Find a whole bunch of people who lived through the Great Depression or are children of those who lived through the Great Depression and ask them their thoughts on the time.  All walks of life are represented from those hit hardest to those who barely even recognized the Great Depression was even happening.  This method of history keeping is both informative and eye opening.

There is the old expression that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it and boy, howdy are we repeating much of the Great Depression now in the Great Recession.  The same people who were blind to the bread lines of the Great Depression are blind to the necessity of Food Stamps now.  The banks who are robo-signing foreclosure notices illegally taking away people’s houses without due process were doing so during the Great Depression.  And the beat goes on.

What I found most intriguing about reading “Hard Times” was how completely the Great Depression shaped the American identity for generations to come.  Families came out of it determined for their children never to “have not” again.  Our present day overconsumerism can likely be tied to the “never again” attitude that was installed in many individuals as a result of living through the Great Depression.  And who can blame them?

It also should be noted that politics hasn’t changed much since then either.  Much of Roosevelt’s plans for getting the country out of the Great Depression were fought with just as much ferocity by Republicans then as the present day Republicans are fighting now against Obama’s Great Recession agenda.  The only difference is today Republicans are resorting to drastic measures to fight against Obama whereas then Roosevelt resorted to drastic measures to fight against Republicans.

Another surprising similarity between present day and the Great Depression is the amount of people that are simply unwilling to see that things are wrong with society.  A few of the people Studs Terkel interviewed got through the Great Depression without even recognizing that things like bread lines even existed.  How do you do that?  That these same people are the ones that also tend to have a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality is hardly surprising.  Such is the life of those who live with blinders on.

This is one of those books that should be required reading for everyone.  It gives first and second hand accounts of the most economically devastating time in our history.  It is unbiased and straight forward in its presentation.  I sincerely hope someone is working on a similar book for the Great Recession.

Movie Review: Captain Phillips

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 Stars

Bottom Line: An intriguing story of a real life event.  More Somali pirate background should have been included.  Some editing would have been nice.  Damn, Tom Hanks is a good actor.

“Captain Phillips” tells the true story of a massive container ship hijacked by Somali pirates and the ordeals that the ship’s crew and the eponymous Captain Phillips endure.  The movie starts with two opening sequences that establish the main characters.

We see Captain Phillips getting ready for his trip to take command of the Maresk Alabama and driving to the airport with his wife.  He’s just an everyman going to his job discussing issues of the family with his wife.  It’s a beautiful scene and the interactions with his wife make you believe the two have beem married for years.  Captain Phillips’ life is familiar to us so it doesn’t take much time to establish his character and it certainly helps that you have as talented an actor as Tom Hanks doing so.

We also see Muse, a Somali pirate gathering a group of men to go looking for ships to hijack.  You get the feeling that almost none of them want to be doing this.  But threats of violence from the local warlord and a bit of drugs and a bit of competition and they are raring to go.  I wish they had spent more time establishing Muse’s background.  What does he do when he’s not hijacking ships?  What is his family situation?  Barkhad Abdi does a really good job of establishing Muse’s humanity throughout the movie, but his life in Somalia is so foreign to us he and his fellow pirates might as well be aliens.

The events leading up to the eventual hijacking of the Maersk Alabama are fairly taut as are the events that take place on the ship as well.  When the pirates escape the ship taking Captain Phillips hostage, things kind of slow down.  A good ten or fifteen minutes could probably have been cut from this portion of the film without any loss of cohesion.

The ending scene is absolutely riveting.  Tom Hanks will just blow you away when you watch this part of the film.  After everything that has happened, Captain Phillips is understandably in shock.  Tom Hanks captures this so heart-achingly beautifully.  I don’t think this is an Oscar caliber movie, but if they could give an Oscar for a single scene performance, Tom Hanks would win it hands down.

As with all movies that claim to portray real events, there is a bit of a controversy if things happened as they did in the film.  A lot of people blame Captain Phillips for putting the ship in the position to be kidnapped in the first place.  This is somewhat portrayed in the movie, but kind of glossed over.  It just goes to show, history is not only written by the victors but by the heroes on the winning side.

Movie Review: Gravity

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

Bottom Line: Go see this movie.  Go see it now!

There is a theory as to why we haven’t been visited by being from another planet.  It goes something like this: When an intelligent species first makes its way into space, they so pollute their orbit with debris that it ends up making space travel impossible thus dooming them to life on one planet.  Something tells me that the idea for “Gravity” came from that premise.

“Gravity” is an absolute visual and aural feast for the mind.  There are times when so much is happening that you can barely breathe.  The soundtrack is pitch perfect always.  As if seeing someone twirling out of control isn’t panic inducing enough, the music gives it that extra oomph to really get your heart into your throat.  But at the same time, you can not help but be in awe of the majesty of the backdrop they find themselves in.  Fear and awe come together like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

The science in this movie is pretty solid as far as I can tell.  Things move like they should move in microgravity.  I thought that maybe Earth was rotating a bit slowly in some of the backdrops, but it was hard to say for certain given the various angles that were used to terrific effect.  I do wonder if the space suits could have taken some of the abuse they did.  There was also a bit of overuse of the decompressing airlock popping open leaving the astronaut to hang on to the hatch for dear life which I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to do in a space suit.  And I don’t remember for sure, being so much in awe as to what was going on, but I believe the space shuttle post-accident was not spinning nearly as much as it should be.

This is as close to a perfect movie as you can get.  Every little element creates a depth and immersion that you don’t get to see very often on the silver screen.  Even the hour and a half runtime was absolutely perfect.  I would see this movie in the theater again and I don’t say that very often.

 

Movie Review: Rush

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Good story.  Engaging characters.  Made racing interesting.  Excellent racing scenes.  Beautiful backdrops.

Niki Lauda is a complete asshole.  Everybody thinks so.  Everybody says so too.  But here’s the thing.  James Hunt is equally an asshole, but everyone loves him.  Well, except Niki Lauda.  To Niki, James represents everything that is wrong with racing.  James just happens to be an asshole in all the socially acceptable ways while Niki is not.  In the end, they are two sides to the same coin.  Driven.  Frightened.  Crazy.

“Rush” tells the true(ish) story of the rivalry between the two men.  They are both the best at what they do and that’s drive cars at irresponsible speeds.  The two best are bound to be rivals, but I think this is fueled more from the mutual recognition that there is something in the other that both James and Niki crave.  James wants Niki’s methodical determinism.  Niki envies James’ free spirit and devil-may-care attitude.  The rivalry makes each better than they every would have been alone.

The storytelling is very effective.  You quickly get a feel for both Niki’s and James’ character.  Where they come from.  What drives them.  What their weaknesses are.  It drags slightly during the middle third but only for a while.  There is also a bunch of inside racing stuff that is sure to be fun for all the people who know more about cars than I do.  Niki Lauda was quite a mechanical genius in addition to being a top driver.  Changes he made during his time revolutionized the racing industry.

And since this is a movie about racing, something should be said about the race scenes, no?  They are top notch.  Filled with beautiful camera angles and spectacular cinematography.  You get a good feel for why someone would be stupid enough to strap themselves in to a speeding bomb and race other people in an effort to see who doesn’t blow up.  Friends who know much more about formula one racing than I do say that it was much more interesting in the 70’s than it is now.  Like all racing, more interesting means more dangerous.

“Rush” is a great effort by Ron Howard.  I don’t think it’s good enough for Oscar contention, but it’s certainly the kind of movie that generates Oscar buzz.  Regardless, it’s a movie worth seeing.

Movie Review: Prisoners

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Showed lots of promise.  Too long.  Some ineffective storytelling.  Some stupid detective cliches.  Great acting.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone to see a movie that I was actually looking forward to seeing.  “Prisoners” was such a movie.  The concept is excellent.  Children disappear and signs point immediately to an individual.  When the individual proves to be too stupid to have committed the crime and there is no evidence to tie him to the crime, the police have to let him go.  He is soon thereafter kidnapped by the parents of the missing children and “enhanced interrogated”.

The movie starts really promising.  The introduction is crisp and clean.  You get an immediate feel for what kind of person Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) is.  Hope for the best.  Prepare for the worst.  Do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.  All of this sets him up perfectly for the events that are about to occur.  More importantly, you believe him capable of the actions he performs to get his daughter back.

Fifteen to twenty minutes into the movie and the girls are already missing.  And the race begins.  Judging from the intro, I was expecting a taut, effective search for two missing girls filled with agonizing decisions and dead end leads and the all around effective storytelling that comprised the opening half hour of the movie.  What I got instead was a bunch of overly long, occasionally plodding scenes that bore no resemblance to the introduction.  At 153 minutes long, I was worried that we would be shown an hour long saccharine view of the family life of two girls before their disappearance even happened and the search for them would be shallow and perfunctory.  Now I wish that the movie was like that.  It is desperately in need of a good half hour more of scenes thrown to the cutting room floor.

A lot of the problems with the movie surround Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal).  It is quickly established that he is a great detective and that, in true movie cliche fashion, he has solved all of his cases.  Why then does he not make a painfully obvious deduction that links two of the characters together?  Why do they use another pathetic detective cliche of throwing things around in a fit of rage only to have a valuable clue stand out from the mess?  This is sloppy storytelling of the highest degree.

On the plus side, the acting is really top rate all around.  Hugh Jackman really brings to life a man who is all about control and completely loses it when that control is threatened.  Maria Bellow plays his wife as exactly the kind of wife you’d expect a control freak to marry.  Terrance Howard and Viola Davis play the parents of the other missing child and beautifully provide both the enabling of Hugh Jackman’s actions and the only voice of sanity.  Paul Dano and David Dastmalchian play incredibly effective creepy guys.  And Melissa Leo, oh I loves me some Melissa Leo.  No one plays earthy characters better than she does.  She is one of those people that makes me want to see a movie regardless of how good it is just because she’s in it.  If I had my way, she would be in every movie.

 

Book Review: Dubliners by James Joyce

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Forty years into my life and I have finally tackled a James Joyce book.  Sadly, I picked the worst time to do so.  My mind being occupied with disparate thoughts, I found it very hard to concentrate on what I was reading.  The rating reflects my state of mind more than the lack of talent of the author methinks.  That’s too bad because even with my severe lack of concentration I caught moments of brilliance like this: “She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed; and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.”  And this: “She was tempted to see a curious appropriateness in his accident and, but that she did not wish to seem bloody-minded, would have told the gentelmen that Mr. Kernan’s tongue would not suffer by being shortened.”  And this: “Her faith was bounded by her kitchen, but, if she was put to it, she could believe also in the banshee and in the Holy Ghost.”  Brilliant stuff, that.

“Dubliners” is a series of short stories that follow various characters in and around Dublin.  I found this to be quite clever and wondered if Joyce had ruined the titles of many a collection of short stories by being so popular.  That is the only reason I can think of for there not to be a plethora of other similarly titled books: “Chicagoans” and “New Yorkers” and “Parisians” and “Lake Titicacans”.  I’m sure there are notebooks and hard drives full of similarly themed short stories in the filing cabinets and computers of many an English major just longing for a non-Joycian title.

I very distinctly remember really liking some of the short stories but cannot for the life of me remember which they were.  Everything just blended together in my mind like word salad.  Joyce is certainly not the easiest of authors to read and should certainly not be read by an individual who lacks the necessary concentration.  At some point I will have to reread the book and give it the review it deserves, but until then on to lighter fare.

Movie Review: This Is The End

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

After seeing an absolutely hilarious rated R preview of “This is the End”, I couldn’t wait to see it.  Sadly, time and schedules got in the way and its time came and went.  Then, shockingly enough, there is “This is the End” showing in theaters once again.  I’m not entirely sure how that happened (pushing for an Oscar, I’m sure), but I was sure going to take advantage of it.

How disappointing.  I likely would have liked the movie more if I didn’t have such high expectations going in.  It was still pretty funny, but I kind of wish that I had just watched the preview again.

The concept is solid.  Everyone plays themselves and the rapture happens while they are all at James Franco’s house party.  Nobody at Franco’s party gets raptured and most of them soon die horribly leaving James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Jay Baruchel, and Danny McBride to fend for themselves in Franco’s house.  Much of the movie is spent trying to figure out what happened and then, after coming to terms with it, trying to figure out how to get into heaven.  Chaos and some hilarity ensues.

I don’t know if you would call something a cameo when everyone is playing themselves, but there were many good cameos in the movies.  These include Michael Cera as a coked out sex fiend, Emma Watson as the butt of an actually funny rape joke, and Channing Tatum as, well, you’ll see.

I was surprised at how much effort was put into the special effects.  It’s not quite what you’d expect from a comedy, but the demons and monsters are quite well done.  There are a few effects that come off as a bit cheesy, but other than that they are quite effective.

I think the biggest problem with the film was the middle portion where it kind of dragged and I got a bit bored.  The beginning was excellent, though, and it picked up again near then end.  So I’m going to say that this could have been a better than average showing if it had some of the fat trimmed.

This movie also features what has to be the biggest dong ever shown in a movie.  No, not that one.  Wait for it.  Wait for it.  Yeah, that one.  I also found myself wondering what happened to Emma Watson at the end.  Not that the dong and Emma Watson had anything to do with each other in the movie.  It was just a stream of consciousness thing.  I’ll shut up now.

Movie Review: Percy Jackson And The Sea Of Monsters

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

I went to see this movie because my brother really wanted to see it.  He greatly enjoyed the first Percy Jackson movie, “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief”,  and was looking forward to the second.  He gave me the DVD of the first movie to watch before going to see this movie.  It was enjoyable as was this one.  It is not necessary to see the first movie before seeing this movie, but having a familiarity with the main characters does help some.

Imagine if Greek Mythology were real.  The gods are real and they sometimes descend from Olympus to play on the mortal plain.  And by play, I mean make with the sexy time with mortals and produce offspring.  Percy Jackson is such an offspring, a demigod, the child of Poseidon and a mortal mother.

After coming off of the high of a successful quest to save the world from Zeus’ wrath, Percy has settled down to a life of mediocrity in his demigod training camp.  He’s definitely one of the better demigods, but he never seems to be able to win at any of the demigod games.  He worries that he may be a one hit wonder and will never be able to complete a quest again.

All that changes when the tree that provides the magical barrier for the camp is poisoned and a mechanical bull runs amok in the camp.  Without the barrier, the demigods are defenseless.  The tree must be healed and the only thing that can cure her is the Golden Fleece.  This calls for a quest!  Percy Jackson to the rescue!  Oh, wait, no, they pick someone else to go.  Percy and his friends, of course, go anyway.

The action in the movie follows a very basic formula: travel to a location, discover a mythological wonder, do something with that wonder, repeat as necessary.  It’s basic, but it’s enough.  Well, it’s enough if you like Greek Mythology like I do.  It’s doubly pleasurable because they actually seem to care about the mythology, at least to the extent I remember from my college Greek Mythology class.  This makes the Percy Jackson books and movies a great introduction to mythology for children.  I saw a girl on the train reading a Greek Mythology book and immediately wondered if we had Percy Jackson to thank for it.

I certainly have my quibbles with the movie.  Like how the whole thing with poisoning the tree ends up being a completely useless action with the sole purpose of creating a reason for the quest.  But you know, it’s a kid’s movie.  These things can be forgiven.  I think kids would find the movie very enjoyable and there’s enough to entertain mythology loving adults too.

Book Review: The Last Colony by John Scalzi

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 Stars

“The Last Colony” is another excellent book in an excellent trilogy.  The others being “Old Man’s War” and “The Ghost Brigades”.  This book is the least hard science fictiony of the three.  There are still cool new technological gadgets and such, but the book mostly draws on the science from the previous books for the most part.  It is missed because John Scalzi describes cool science gadgets really well, but it also gives Scalzi ample room to shine in his other writing talent, sarcasm and biting rejoinders.  This first half of the book is packed with them.  I found myself chuckling more than a few times and smiling throughout.

This book also delves into the internal politics of the Colonial Union much more than the other two.  Much of the plot surrounds the way the Colonial Union manages its colonies and uses them as pawns in a six dimensional chess game against the other colonizing races.  With each book, it becomes harder and harder to excuse the actions of the Colonial Union and this book actually had me rooting for the Conclave.

Like the other two books in this series, I thought the first half was quite strong, but the second half was missing something.  I think my issue is that, with each book, John Scalzi creates this complex series of events and then the solutions just seem to work themselves out in a simplistic way.  Unlike the other two books, I found the ending to this book quite satisfying, if a little far fetched.

And the “Old Man’s War” trilogy comes to an end.  There are other books set in the universe, but these three apparently stand alone.  Though I will read the other books, I will sorely miss John Perry and Jane Sagan.  I wish John Scalzi had spent more ink talking about their relationship.  It is an interesting and complicated one.  There are hints of love and hints of problems.  Neither are well explored.  None of this takes away from the story, but it’s one of those road not traveled things.  I wonder how much John Perry/Jane Sagan romance fan fiction is out there.  Not enough to actually look, but just wonder.