Still Life With Crows
by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
So do the plot of these ever stop hinging on the world’s most moronic cops doing moronic things for moronic reasons to try to thwart Pendergast because they’re morons?
Rating: 3 stars
Mean Girls (2024) – ★★★
Worse than the original and the stage musical in every possible way but still pretty decent. I have same opinion of this as I seem to of all stage to screen adaptations, the big, unrealistic, fun stage-style numbers are great and every other song is ruined.
The last third is solid and Auli’i Cravalho is pretty fantastic as Janis. She deserves to be a star but of course I’m biased because I have a pre-Moana photo of her holding my infant in Hawaii.
I like Renee Rapp’s music but she was kinda just ok in this. World Burn is her best number in this.
Rating: 3 stars
Crossposted on Letterboxd
Watch Mean Girls on Paramount+
All the Light We Cannot See – ★★★★★
I started and quit this book on Audible back in 2014, but after seeing me read Cloud Cuckoo Land by Doerr last year my 6th grader bought me the All the Light We Cannot See paperback for Christmas. Not 100% sure why I bounced off it so quickly in 2014 (it’s been 10 years and I’m old) but glad her urging made me finally pick it up and read it now because it was a great read that I enjoyed quite a bit.
Considering how recently I read Cloud Cuckoo Land it’s hard not to compare the two. In All the Light We Cannot See Doerr employs some of the same tricks (not meant pejoratively) of telling an interweaving story from multiple perspectives and timelines he would eventually expand on in Cloud Cuckoo. This story is much more grounded in World War II and the historical fiction genre though and lacks the science fiction elements and genre bending that made me really enjoy that made me like that book so much.
Still the fantastic writing and heart and characters (particularly Marie-Laure my goodness) made this a remarkably engaging and occasionally heartbreaking read. While I didn’t like it quite as much as Cloud Cuckoo Land, it was still one of my favorite recent reads and one that will stay with me for a while.
(I have thoughts/questions on how Doerr spent an entire book getting you to sympathize with some young Nazis and then eventually wrapped up that plot line but those are a bit too spoilery for this space.)
Rating: 5 stars
Crossposted on Goodreads
Buy All the Light We Cannot See on Bookshop
Enough Said – ★★★½
This is super well written and super funny and super sweet, but I had to fast forward through probably 15% of it due to the awkward moments because holy crap they get into my bones.
Very, very highly recommended despite my 3.5 rating if you aren’t like me and don’t have an unhealthy fear of slightly awkward situations even in fiction.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Crossposted on Letterboxd
Watch Enough Said on Paramount+
Twilight of the Aesir – ★★★½
Twilight of the Æsir
by Dan Carlin, Hardcore History
I think it’s mostly on me, but I just don’t enjoy these like I used to in the old days. I used to devour them the second they come out and now they barely come out once per year and it takes me like 6 months to finally make time to listen to them.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Cloud Cuckoo Land – ★★★★★
The storyline that takes place in the library made me take forever to read this. I’d get to those chapters and just not be able to continue because they made me so anxious.
STILL I gave this 5 stars now that I’ve finally finished it all this time later and it was interesting, heartwarming, sad, unpredictable, and I just generally was quite taken with the way the vastly different settings and time periods were woven together. Super glad my kid was able to finally bully me into finishing it.
Rating: 5 stars
- Crossposted on Goodreads
- Buy Cloud Cuckoo Land on Bookshop
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire – ★½
Why does the main villain sometimes wear a white button up and a tie like he works at IBM or JCPenneys?
Just generally ugly to look at at all times. Uninteresting plot, no world building, not a single character with any personality.
Who thought they were doing a good job while making this?
Rating: 1.5 stars
? Crossposted on Letterboxd
? Watch Rebel Moon on Netflix
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again – ★★★
Why do the real actual humans they found to play the young versions of Sophie’s dads all look like bad de-aging CGI? Is it the wigs?
I mostly disliked young Meryl Streep and her friends as much as I disliked old Meryl Streep and her friends.
Andy Garcia appears to be playing his same character from Ocean’s 11 and looms over the whole movie like there is a villain turn coming any moment.
Yet, it was fun. I legit lol’d at the Titanic gag.
Rating: 3.0 stars
🍿 Crossposted on Letterboxd
💿 Watch Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again on Netflix
Light from Uncommon Stars – ★★★★
Consistently surprisingly weird (in great ways) with some extremely well fleshed out, endearing characters that I was rooting for all the way until the end. I thought the author Ryka Aoki had lost me there for a minute near the end but there’s a couple final twists that really wrap up this combo of science fiction, fantasy, classical music, and donuts with a completely satisfying ending.
Rating: 4 stars
📚 Crossposted on Goodreads
📕 Buy Light from Uncommon Stars on Bookshop
The Big Shave
This film does a good job representing how I felt every time I shaved and also why I have had some variation of a beard since Covid started.
Truly hard to watch. 😬 I kept having to hit the 10 second skip button or turn away. Which I guess means this Scorsese kid might be pretty good at what he was trying to do?
Rating: 🤷🏻♂️
🍿 Crossposted on Letterboxd
💿 Watch The Big Shave on Max