Book Review: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“The Poisonwood Bible” is a strange novel that would probably fit into the historical fiction genre. It starts in the Belgian Congo in 1969. Yes, Belgium still controlled the Congo in 1969. The story follows the Price family as the evangelical father, Nathan, packs up his family and moves them from the U.S. to the Congo to convert the natives to Christianity. The novel is broken up into a few sections, each of which starts with a chapter from the mother Oleanna’s point of view at a time after she has returned to the U.S. These chapters are foreboding and foreshadow horrible things to come for the Price family in Africa. The rest of each section is then told from the point of view of one of the four Price sisters; Rachel (15), Leah (14), Adah (14), Ruth Mae (5).

Much of the beginning of the book is dedicated to the Price family’s travails in adjusting to Congolese life in the village of Kilanga. It is, needless to say, distinctly different from life back in the States. This part of the book, I found mostly dull and without much interesting to say. It then moves on to the Price girls somewhat starting to fit in to the village and interacting with its inhabitants while around them the Congo is slouching towards a very messy independence. Things start getting interesting here as it dawned on me what year the novel takes place and I recognized the horrible messiness that is to come. It was more than just that, though. When the children actually start acculturating, it is a learning experience for the reader as well. This section of the book is a very enjoyable read. Then all the foreshadowed bad things happen and the rest of the book follows the girls, now women, through their adulthood. I have huge problems with how things get here. Major turning points are either unexplained or poorly explained, I am not sure which. Despite that complaint, this section is also pretty interesting as the women go their separate ways and scatter throughout Africa and the United States.

I did enjoy Kingsolver’s use of the different voices for different chapters for the most part. The Adah portions I loved with her palindromes and reading styles, though by the end it got a little stale. Adah was still my favorite character, though. Leah’s life was the most interesting to read about. Kingsolver did a pretty good job of bringing the mind of the 5-year-old Ruth Mae to life as well. Then there was Rachel whom I absolutely hated. She would use the incorrect words constantly and never learn or grow. I know there are people like that, but they rarely come from the same family in my mind. Maybe I’m wrong. Her story arc was interesting, though, despite my dislike of her character and how it was written.

It is possible that much of the book is lost on me not having grown up with sisters and thus not really understanding the sisterly dynamic. I do not think so, though. The books flaws are deeper than that. It’s still a decent read, though. Not sure I agree with all the acclaim surrounding it. That might just be the Oprah effect, though.

Movie Review: Incredibles 2

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Incredibly weird introductory short. Main movie has moments, but often feels lost. The Jack Jack stuff is fun and inventive as is the final fight sequence.

Let’s talk about “Bao”, shall we? There’s going to be some pretty big SPOILERS here because I don’t know how else to talk about this short without revealing the big moment so skip this paragraph if you’d rather not know. “Bao” is the introductory short that has become a mainstay of the Pixar universe. Boy, is it weird. And depressing. A Chinese woman makes bao (Chinese dumplings) for her husband who quickly devours them and leaves her to go to work.Feeling ignored and sad, she eats her bao alone. Her last Bao suddenly comes alive and anthropomorphizes. She raises the Bao from infancy to adulthood in a series of touching vignettes. When the Bao brings home a white girlfriend and is going to leave with her to start its own life. She begs and pleads with the Bao to stay, but the Bao insists on leaving. Instead of allowing this to happen, the woman eats the Bao. Holy crap, yes, she just ate the Bao! WTF?!?! She immediately regrets it and is super sad about it, but the damage is done. The Bao is gone. It is all then revealed to be a dream as her real son who looks very much like the Bao comes home with his white girlfriend and mother and son reconcile and they all make bao together. There is so much to unpack here. First off, let it be said that I am not remotely “Bao”‘s target audience; no kids, no plans to have any, and I abhor parental possessiveness as if children are something you own. But while the plot did not speak to me, there is a lot to learn from the short. Chinese culture permeates “Bao”. There’s the woman’s marriage, the woman’s possessiveness, the woman’s downright rancor at the son going out with a white girl, and I’m sure many other aspects that I just don’t understand. The best thing about “Bao” is how refreshingly honest it is. It is also the first Pixar short directed by a female, which is awesome/sad. Out of 20 films, just one woman. Maybe that will change now.

On to “Incredibles 2”! I have less to say about this one. It was, at points, fun, but there was a lot of setup and the plot is kind of see-through. It is definitely one of Pixar’s lesser endeavors. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching, though. Everything with Jack Jack is hilarious and well choreographed. The family dynamic is interesting, if a little stereotypical. They get into the inherent sexism of that stereotyping, though, which is nice. The final fight scene is pretty darned cool as all the various Supers use their powers in interesting ways. Of course, we have to ignore that there was a much simpler solution to the entire problem to see it all, but whatevs!

Somewhat surprisingly, the children in the theater (of which there were unsurprisingly many) really seemed to dig the movie despite what I considered slowness. At least one parent also really liked the movie as she laughed loudly at just about everything. Her laughter was often more funny than what was occurring on screen. So yeah, kids like it, parents like it, I thought it was fine and worth seeing. Even Pixar’s poorer attempts tend to be good enough to be worth seeing. What else is there to say?

Movie Review: Deadpool 2

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

Bottom Line: Cheekily recreates the magic of the first movie. Cable is awesome.

As is explained very early on, “Deadpool 2” is a family movie. Given, you should almost certainly not take your family to go see it given its copious swearing and mindless violence, but a family movie nonetheless. Also given, the family Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) surrounds himself with is kind of dysfunctional, but they are the people he chooses to be with and not the people he was born to. This is a very important lesson. Family is what you make of it, not who was able to insert tab A into slot B. And sure, some family will inevitably get hit by a bus or fall into a wood chipper, but that’s just life. You enjoy your chosen family for the time you have with them.

I was very skeptical going into “Deadpool 2” whether they would be able to pull off the pure magic of the first “Deadpool“. They did. Some of my friends even say that the second movie is better than the first. I disagree, but it is certainly the first’s equal. It has the same smarmy Ryan Reynolds and wonderful writers. He is joined this time by Cable (Josh Brolin), who is one of the cooler villains produced by the Marvel Universe. I am unclear about how pretty much everything Cable is actually works, but it’s pretty cool! Plus Brolin’s Cable plays a pretty effective straight man to Reynold’s Deadpool.

It is unfortunate that the movie starts with the women in refrigerators trope that is all to common in comics as well as mainstream movies, but no movie is perfect (Also, you should totally watch all of Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes vs. Women” series. She is awesome.). From that unfortunate and lazy plot point, the movie moves to firmer ground of mother and daughter in refrigerators in order to introduce Cable. Sheesh, people, women don’t have to die for men to do stupid or heroic or evil things. Let’s re-retcon “Deadpool 2” for the lazy writers, shall we? Ok, Deadpool, having been told by the love of his life, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) that she wants to have a baby with him but is uncertain of his ability to be a father, swears to prove that he is a capable father by teaming up with Vanessa, who also has super powers of her own, to…the rest of the movie. Hey, this is easy! Alright, Cable! Cable, seeing how much death and destruction one human being has caused and not wanting his wife and daughter to join that ever growing death count travels back in time to kill Hitler. Done! Academy Award please! See, women don’t have to die to further a plot.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, go see “Deadpool 2” because it really is fun. There are certainly “Deadpool” marathons in my future because both will definitely hold up well for repeat viewings.

Movie Review: The Death Of Stalin

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: The strangest topic for a comedy possibly ever. Legitimately funny after a slow start, though probably not for everyone.

“The Death of Stalin” is a black comedy that portrays the real life events of the behind the scenes rush to power after the, well, the death of Stalin. All the key players are portrayed as conniving and bumbling idiots and sycophants who got to where they were more because of their ability to kiss Stalin’s ass than their actual abilities to run a country. Very much like the Trump Administration only with actual death lists instead of fantasy ones.

The movie needs to lay some groundwork so it takes a bit of time to get going. There are a lot of characters and setting the tone of the movie is important if what’s to come is going to be actually funny. By the time Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) dies, the stage has been set and the rest of the movie is pretty darned funny as Beria (Simon Russel Beale), Malenkov (Jeffery Tambor), Krhushchev (Steve Buscemi), and Molotov (Michael Palin) scheme and betray their way to fill Stalin’s shoes. You would not suspect that this chain of events would make for great comic appeal, but it is done with heavy doses of irony and satire which is highly appropriate for the events of Russia during this time.

Despite a few of the cast members, this is very obviously not a U.S. made movie, but a British one. As a result, its comedy is pretty British. For those that don’t know what that means, go watch the British version of “The Office” then watch the U.S. one. One is uncomfortably funny and the other stars Steve Carell. l I am pretty sure this movie could not have been made in the U.S. because of this. Our teeth are much too perfect to write comedy like this.

This movie is not for everyone. Especially if you do not like British comedies. If you do not like British comedies, you are wrong, but comedy is very subjective and you are wrong. I was amused to discover that this movie was based on a comic book, also not made in the U.S. It makes me wonder how much good media we are missing because we live in our super-media-saturated little corner of the globe where people like Transformers movies.

Movie Review: Avengers: Infinity War

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: More superheroes than you can shake a Chitauri Scepter at. I feel like I have made this joke before… Does a good job of still not making the movie feel crowded, though. Does your favorite hero survive? Almost assuredly, yes. Unless your favorite hero happens to be…nope, not going to hear it from me!

Correction: I have been told by friends much dorkier than I that there are six infinity stones. This is an egregious error and I ask the forgiveness of all dorkdom. I have also been told that this is not the end of Marvel’s Phase 3. That will occur with the next Avengers movie. Those responsible have been sacked.

It is kind of astounding how long and good of a run the Marvel Movie Universe has had. There were a few not good movies in there, but they were also not bad. Many were terrific. “Infinity War” comes very close to the terrific scale. That they could create such an engaging movie with a scope as large as this one has is a Marvel in itself. See what I did there? Almost every Marvel Movie superhero is in this movie and while many obviously have secondary or tertiary roles, they all fit in to this giant jigsaw puzzle of a movie in an important way. Sure, you’ll probably wish that your favorite superhero had more screen time, but you have a favorite superhero and are a dork. Everything fits and everything is fun. That is kind of amazing.

For the second movie in a row, and for three out of the last four, Marvel has an actual interesting villain in Thanos. Thanos has the laudable goal of wiping out exactly half the living things in the known universe. Like any job you love, the drudgery of everyday population culling can get to you from time to time. Tired of wiping out half of the universe one planet at a time, Thanos embarks on a quest to unite the five infinity stones which, for reasons, will allow him to wipe out half of the rest of the universe in a blink of an eye, allowing Thanos to retire early and enjoy the rest of his life. And who doesn’t want to retire early? I am all for anyone who is pursuing that dream!

I wonder if all of Marvel Universe Earth is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. First, the Chitauri attack and lay waste to a good portion of New York. Then, Ultron lifts the entire city of Sokovia up in the air. And now, Thanos is on a mission to wipe out half of the universe. And that’s just the Avengers movies! Heck, 9/11 happened 17 years ago and the U.S. is still struggling through its own collective PTSD and that wasn’t even an attack by aliens! Most of Marvel Universe Earth must be complete basket cases by now!

I know somewhere out there is someone or likely thousands of someones who embarked on a quest to watch all the Marvel movies back to back in anticipation of “Infinity War” coming out. Those people are now dead from sheer exhaustion. This is a shame because “Infinity War” is a good cap to the Marvel Movie Universe. That cap will assuredly explode in more Marvel Movie goodness, but thus ends phase three of Marvel’s ultimate plan to dominate the movie box office.

Movie Review: I Feel Pretty

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A wonderful comedy with a wonderful story and a whole bunch of wonderful actors.

Oh, Amy Schumer is a national treasure! In “I Feel Pretty”, she plays Renee Bennett, your average American woman with your average American woman’s self-esteem issues. Having been bombarded since childhood with messages that tell her she should be thin and perfect at all times, Renee wishes that she were so. A very unfortunate and hilarious bump on the noggin later and Renee believes that she has been magically transformed into a bombshell even though she looks exactly like she always did. This gives her the confidence that she needed to do whatever she wants while also teaching us all valuable lessons about beauty and confidence and image and how even the most beautiful of women are poisoned by our absurd demands from women.

While Amy Schumer is hilarious in this movie, as she always is, if you are paying attention to her at any time when there are others in the scene you are missing the movie. Everyone around her is equally hilarious and while they definitely don’t have as many speaking lines, their facial expressions are absolutely priceless. Vivian (Aidy Briant) and Jane (Busy Phillips) are the most remarkable and have the best expressions as Renee’s best friends. Smaller, but equally emotively funny parts are played by Sasheer Zamata, Emily Ratajkowsi, Rory Scovel, and Tom Hopper. The person who absolutely steals the show is Michelle Williams as Avery LeClaire. After the movie first introduces her character, I was grinning every time she showed up on screen. Her speech, her mannerism, her movements, all absolutely golden. This is not a movie that garners awards, but Michelle Williams’ role should be up there with the best supporting comedy roles ever acted. She is such a delight!

The movie does suffer some in the comedy cliche part where Renee becomes her worst enemy, but it doesn’t last too long and gets back on the laugh track soon enough. The main message is also kind of diminished by the fact that Renee works for a makeup company and her breakthrough moment comes as she’s hawking a makeup line for average women while at the same time saying women don’t need those things, but I look at that as an ironic choice by the writers than a flaw.

The movie appears to be going through a very heavy disinformation campaign by what I can only assume are incels and misogynists so please ignore any poor ratings you may see. This is a wonderfully funny movie and I believe it will stand up to repeat viewing and still be funny.

Book Review: The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

“The Name of the Wind” is book one of most likely three books in “The Kingkiller Chronicle” series, the third book not having been released yet. Its composition is split into two timelines. There is the present time where an older and somewhat broken spirited Kvothe recounts the stories of his youth to a Chronicler named Devan Lochees whom Kvothe stumbles upon while dispatching some otherworldly spider creatures. Then there is the past where a majority of the text takes place as Chronicler dutifully records the events of Kvothe’s youth in Kvothe’s own words.

This is a wonderfully paced book with rich and full characters. The most delightful thing about the book, and where most fantasy novels fail miserably, is that there are also a number of well written and fully developed female characters as well. Mad props to Rothfuss for accomplishing this seemingly insurmountable feat. I joke. Slightly. There’s still the token love interest, Denna, but she is far from your normal fantasy love interest, though of course, she’s those things as well. Denna is smart and talented and ambitious and making her way in this male-dominated world the best she can. But there’s also Devi, a morally questionable and powerful moneylender, and Fela, a shy and possibly crazy woman who exchanges gifts with Kvote that contain delightful, if only imaginary, wishes and dreams hidden in them, and Fela, whom Kothe kind of cruelly uses to get what he wants, There are also male characters galore, of course, and they are also well written, but they mostly play second fiddle to the women.

Kvothe is a most intriguing character. He goes from idyllic childhood (well, my idea of idyllic anyway) to tragedy to being lost within himself to rekindling that fire within himself. Throughout book one, his motivations are clear, but there isn’t a hint of how he came to be as broken as he is in the present time. There are only seeds planted of the hero that he is to become, though, we are only really told that he is a hero or a villain or somewhere in between. And that gets to one of the main themes of the book: what is truth? Who is the real Kvothe? It is made clear that there is a lot of myth surrounding him, some of it true and some of it false and some of it bordering on true. Who is to judge? Kvothe? We have to assume yes, but it is also clear that he is not quite all there anymore and has been fed the tales of his own life for an indeterminate amount of time so who knows what is capital T truth anymore? Throw Bast’s little book ending adventures into it as well and danger signs go up. Truth is likely not to be found here. I do not know at all if this was Rothfuss’ intention, but incorporating truth from fantasy in a fantasy is brilliant if it was.

My only real complaint about the novel is one of pacing. Throughout, the pacing is excellent. Then, it’s thrown a little sideways by a little jaunt that Kvothe takes. The part that ends with the draccus for those who have read the book. The conclusion of it is satisfying, but the getting there part is a bit meandering and somewhat off flow with the rest of the novel.

This is a wonderful book and I greatly look forward to reading the next in the series. And the third if Rothfuss doesn’t pull a George R. R. Martin on us. (Sorry George, I love you, please finish the next novel soon!) It is a must read fantasy for those who love the genre. It even offers a lot to those who are not the typical fantasy fans.

Good news everybody! They are making the Kingkiller Chronicle into a TV series and my pretend best bud Lin-Manuel Miranda is executive producing it! No release date yet, but it’s going to be on Showtime. Which boo, but whatever.

Movie Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Wonderfully acted. Beautifully portrays small town USA life. Jumps the rails. Goes places it shouldn’t have gone. Never comes back.

Watching “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, I was thinking to myself that this is the best movie I have seen in a long time. I loved all the characters. They were real. Their motivations were understandable if not logical. It felt like life in small town USA feels. I felt that way all the way up until a very specific point in the movie, which I won’t mention because spoilers and all that, where suddenly nothing made sense anymore. My suspicion is that, up until that specific point, the movie followed fairly closely to the real events that inspired it and that after that specific point they needed a way to continue the story and give it some sort of ending so they just threw stuff together, but in a way that made it feel like a completely different movie with completely different characters.

More about that specific moment. It is jarring. Having discussed the movie with a few people, they all admit it exists. It is different for everyone, but it is there. This is fascinating to me. Even more fascinating is there is a split on which half of the movie everyone liked more. I really want to take a poll and see if everyone falls into these categories. For me, the last half almost ruined it for me. The characters went from realistic to, well, characters. Their motivations went from grounded in reality to a bit off the wall. It came close to ruining the whole movie for me.

Hands down, I will say that you will love the acting in this movie. Frances McDormand is absolutely wonderful, not that I would expect anything less from her. I have not seen all the Best Actress movies, but she deserved to be there. I am a bit unsure as to why Sam Rockwell was Best Supporting Actor, but that is more because I think he was upstaged by Woody Harrelson than anything else. Though, I do think Rockwell’s character also had the most unlikely of story arcs out of all of them, which did lead to my three stars rating the most.

Nobody I know did not like this movie, including myself. So from that perspective, I guess I would recommend it. I do love how everyone that watches it seems to get something different out of it, whether they thought it was just ok or whether they loved it. It is a wonderful movie to talk about no matter what you think of it and that is not an easy thing to come by.

Movie Review: Rampage

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: An incredibly stupid movie. Still lots of fun, though. Credit The Rock and a CGI gorilla. Oh, and the destruction of Chicago.

There is one thing you should know going into the theaters to see “Rampage”: There is more stupid in this one movie to fill up tens or hundreds of movies. How I came to still enjoy this movie is a bit beyond me, but I left the theater both laughing at its stupidity and looking back fondly at the camp and over the top acting. This isn’t even one of those “so bad it’s good” movies either. It’s more a movie where everyone seems to be in on the joke at how bad a movie it is and is just enjoying the heck out of hamming it up and somehow the formula works.

Based extremely loosely on the 80s arcade game of the same name, “Rampage” is about three poor animals who are accidentally transformed into monstrous versions of their previous self after an experiment in space (conducted, of course, by an evil corporation who can’t perform the experiments on land because they’re illegal, of course) goes awry and comes crashing down to Earth and miraculously spreads across 3000 miles of the United States depositing a sealed container that can easily withstand both reentry and crashing to the earth without being destroyed, but somehow pop open when the animals look at them funny. Yes, true to the arcade game, those animals are a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator. No, not true to the arcade game, The Rock does not turn into the gorilla and there are zero scenes of him reducing down from super-gorilla form to naked man slinking off the side of the screen. More’s the pity. That would have been hilarious. No, Dwayne Johnson is a primatologist who hates humans and loves animals and takes care of the albino gorilla named, yes, George. It is George who turns into the monster. For reasons that also make no sense, the evil corporation people lure the monsters to Chicago in a way that also makes no sense so that they can gloriously make rubble out of downtown Chicago.

For fans of “The Walking Dead”, first off, I pity you. Second, you’ll be happy to see that Negan makes an appearance and you get a lot of his back story which was completely missing from the show. It turns out that before he came to rule an enclave in a zombie apocalypsed wasteland, he was an agent in a secret governmental group who, to quote Negan, “When science shits the bed, I’m the one they call to change the sheets.” From this, I can only surmise that Negan knew much more about the zombie apocalypse than he ever led on. Perhaps that knowledge led him to who he would ultimately become…

Yes, I know that wasn’t really Negan. No, there really isn’t any way to tell the difference between Jeffery Dean Morgan’s portrayal of Negan vs his portrayal of Agent Harvey Russell besides the name.

No, spilling words onto a blog has not helped me understand why I liked this movie. Just know that it’s fun and ridiculous and you get to see Chicago get destroyed. Including the Willis Tower! I have decided that it is ok to call it the Willis Tower if and only if it is getting destroyed. Otherwise, it remains the Sears Tower.

Movie Review: A Quiet Place

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Has what you want from a horror film and not much else. Very effective at that, though.

There are so many holes and so many random chance moments in “A Quiet Place” that you should see, but the movie throws you right into the action and then turns the knob to 11 and then ends so quickly that you think you actually saw a good movie. It’s not until afterwards when you think about what you just saw that you realize you’ve been duped, but duped in the same way a magician makes you believe he sawed his assistant in half. You know how the trick works, but you fell for it anyway.

The premise of “A Quiet Place” is terrific. Monsters came from who cares where. They’ve decimated the population of Earth. They hunt by sound alone. You must always be quiet. This allows director and star John Krasinski to use silence and noise interchangeably in inventive ways that really ratchet up the tension and make for fun scary moments. The movie follows the Abbott family, one of the few survivors, as they continue to make due in this new and scary world. In another awesome tactic, daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf, which adds another layer to the silence. (As an aside, I learned that Millicent Simmonds is actually deaf which makes it doubly awesome! She plays a great angsty teenager.)

The movie spans hundreds of days, but almost all of the action occurs over about one day during the horror cliche I like to call “the day you’d rather forget”. This “day you’d rather forget” is quick and fun and absolutely ridiculous if you had any time whatsoever to think about it. Good news is you don’t. Any sort of thought and you’ll realize that the system that they have devised to guard against the monsters makes no sense and the way to defeat the monsters makes even less sense. Yes, I know it’s impossible to make less than no sense, but this movie does it somehow.

“A Quiet Place” is a fun, empty horror film and sometimes that’s exactly what you want. It comes up with some inventive ways to scare you, which is commendable. It breaks a little bit of new ground, but is still, at it’s bloody ripped out heart, a horror film. You will enjoy it if you like the genre. You will not if you don’t.