Review of "The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell

An uneven and somewhat unsatisfactory book. Bits of are beautifully written and compelling. The different chapters have different narrators and occupy different time periods; part of the point of the book is that some of the supernatural characters live very long lives and experience time differently from ordinary mortals. Some of the ordinary-mortal characters are well drawn, and either very funny, or very creepy, or sometimes both. The final dystopian chapter, set in a part of Ireland that I have visited (Sheep's Head in West Cork) was mainly very good, and almost stands alone as a piece of writing.

But the overall supernatural frame story wasn't interesting or compelling at all, and the elements of horror (which Mitchell seems to like - see "Slade House" - were a bit repulsive without being interesting.

Review of Howl's Moving Castle

I so wanted to like this - Studio Ghibli, a bit steampunk...but I didn't much. The narrative was confusing and muddled, a bit dreamlike but not in an interesting way. The characters developed relationships with each other, but there didn't actually seem to be any development. One minute they were scared of each other, and then they were best friends and lovers.

It looked great, of course, but that wasn't enough.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of Paris:13th Arrondisment

A black and white, moody and somewhat disjointed French film, about young people and their relationships. For most of the film these seemed doomed and hopeless - lots of energetic casual sex without love or any kind of emotional connection. One of the story threads is about a young woman who is mistaken for a cam girl who performs sex online, and is humiliated by her fellow students as a result.

Surprisingly, but not entirely implausibly, things sort of work out for everyone in the end.

Watched on BBC iPlayer

Review of The Holdovers

A really enjoyable and sometimes moving film about an unlikely subject - the boys who have to stay behind at Christmas in a posh New England private school and the curmudgeonly classics teacher who gets lumbered with looking after them.  Good acting, clever script, some unexpected plot developments, and art direction that convinced my friends who watched it with me that it really was made in the 1970s - rather than being made in 2022 but set in the 1970s. It even had the old-style "British Board of Film Censors" insert at the beginning.

Watched at Lansdown Film Club, and even though the film was two hours long it went by quickly, with no napping at all.

Review of What's Love Got To Do With It?

An arranged marriage romcom that wants to have its cake and eat it - to first make the case for arranged marriages and matchmakers, and then to undermine it, unsatisfactorily, with a plea for true love however incompatible the the lovers seem to be.

Some funny observations about the British Pakistani community, and some nice comic touches every so often. A long middle section in Lahore which felt like it was at least approved, and perhaps funded, by the Pakistan Tourist Board - Lahore looks wonderful and everyone is kind and happy.

Watched on BBC iPlayer. It's theoretically possible to watch iPlayer directly on our internet-connected TV, but in practice it's easier to watch it via phone, app, and Chromecast.

Review of The Boy and The Heron

Miyazaki's comeback film, the one he made after he'd retired. Not entirely sure he should have bothered. It's beautiful to look at, of course, and some of the fantasy landscapes and interiors are amazing. But the narrative and the plot are hard to follow and increasingly silly. A world populated entirely by giant carnivorous parakeets? Vicious pelicans that exist only to devour airborne souls on their way to earth for reincarnations (or is it just incarnation?)?

It's a bit like listening to someone tell you their dream, which is really important to them but makes little sense.

There are lots of explanations online, but none of them feel particularly satisfying.

Oh, and long too, and feeling even longer. 

Review of Joy

Nice film about the team who developed in vitro fertilisation ("test tube babies), showing the resistance they faced from the medical establishment, the press and the public. Bill Nighy good as one of the doctor researchers, and lots of nice art direction to reproduce the 60s and 70s.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of "Slow Horses" by Mick Herron

I'd seen the TV series first and loved it, but was still able to enjoy the book. It's mainly straightforward spy-thriller fiction, though every so often there is a little flash of stylistic excellence. There a few minor differences from the series, and in almost every case the book is more cynical and nastier about the security services - and the TV series was already pretty nasty. Very good, very subversive.

Review of "Shy" by Max Porter

Another short but powerful book from Max Porter, this time about a troubled young man in the care system. As with the other books, the typography and layout are important, so that the book is almost a piece of visual art. But just before I read this I saw Max Porter do some of it as a performance piece at the Stroud Book Festival, backed by two drum and bass producer-DJs, and with a young man taking the part of Shy...not saying any of the words, all of which were performed by Porter, but altering his posture on stage in response to the narrative. It sounds a bit pretentious, but it was actually amazing.

The book, and the performance, alternates between Shy's own voice and those of all the people around him - his mum, his stepfather, the therapists and care workers...

I rarely queue up after the event to meet the author and get a signed book, but I had to do it this time, because I wanted to tell Max Porter how great he had been...I was especially moved by the fact that in his "chat" session at the festival he referred to the Ceasefire vigil taking part outside the venue (none of the other authors seemed to have noticed it) and said that he'd joined for a while and had noticed the Jewish participants. 

Ruth read the book after me and wasn't as affected as I was, or as she had been by the other books, which makes me think that the experience of the performance was important in shaping my reading.

Review of Let Go (spoilers)

Surprisingly decent Swedish film about a family on the point of break-up...the husband is having an affair
and is poised to leave his wife, the teenage daughter is going to a pole dancing competition, the grandmother is controlling and passive-aggressive, the son has a demanding coeliac condition that is hard to manage. Halfway through we learn that the mother has terminal cancer but isn't telling anyone for fear that the family will fall apart.

It doesn't sound much fun, but it's actually thoughtful and good to watch, with a redemptive happy ending.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of How Do You Know?

A dreadful rom-com, made slightly more tolerable by Owen Wilson's horribly narcissistic character, who demands gratitude every time he does anything even vaguely decent. But it's mainly ghastly, and predictable, and dull. I had heard that Reece Witherspoon has some sort of control over what she appears in...maybe that was after this film was made, in 2010. But what was Jack Nicholson doing in this/

Watched on Netflix.

Review of "On Java Road" by Lawrence Osborne

A noire-ish thriller set in post-handover Hong Kong, set against the background of the student protests of 2014, and made all the more poignant because we know, as the characters in the novel can only expect, that the protests will go nowhere and achieve nothing, but destroy the lives of many participants.

It's very atmospheric and I liked the settings and the characters, but it's rather let down by the plotting. It takes a really long time for the mystery - the disappearance of a young wealthy student protester, who is having an affair with the super-wealthy frenemy of the journalist first-person narrator - to get started. She doesn't actually disappear until two thirds of the way through the book, and after which there's a lot of suspense and threat, but not much really happens. 

I'm aware that Lawrence Osborne, the writer, has written a Philip Marlowe novel with the blessing of the Raymond Chandler estate, and I couldn't help thinking that Chandler would have got the basic scenario set up much more quickly/

So I sort of had mixed feelings about the book. But the next novel that I picked up wasn't nearly as well written, so I retrospectively like it more than I did straight after I finished it.

Review of Gettysburg

I watched this mainly because Facebook reels kept showing me clips of it, and the "prequel" Gods and Generals. 

There are lots of bad reviews, but it seemed a fairly decent battle picture, not prettifying war though perhaps investing it with more grandeur and dignity than it deserves. We do see men die and get wounded, but we don't see the after-effects or the gruesome battlefield amputations or deaths from festering wounds. 

It is very very long - four and a half hours. I treated it like a series and watched it in chunks.

There were a few map shots at the beginning but I think I would have appreciated a bit moe about the strategic significance of the battle, and some understanding of how the war went on for so long after this "decisive" battle.

Watched on a USB stick via informal distribution.