Tip #14: Weird horror is always good

Barbarian, which has nothing to do with Conan, is a decent, offbeat horror film now streaming in various places, following a theatrical run earlier this year. It starts off as an unsettling two-person drama but then launches into crazy horror that you won't soon forget.

Tip #15: Take vacations while watching TV

The two short seasons of HBO'S The White Lotus are literate, fun, and visually striking. Set in the first season at The White Lotus Resort in Hawaii and in the second season at its resort in Italy, you'll enjoy the various stories of the lavish resorts' guests and staff. The show demonstrates that smart can be fun.

Calm before the storm

Saw a couple of movies in the past day or two that were amiable time passers and not much more, but that's okay. It's still a novelty to be back to going to movies again. I suspect the producers, too, knew these movies were perfectly okay but not much more, hence the early spring release dates, keeping them away from the summer's heavy hitters.

The Lost City, with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, has a little romance, a little adventure, and a decent extended cameo by Brad Pitt. I liked it well enough, though it'll play much better when it's available to see via streaming, without the hassle of driving to the theater and buying an expensive ticket. It's not quite good enough to justify those two things, but as a couch movie in the near future you'll likely enjoy it just fine.

Morbius is one of Sony's superhero movies, the ones that try to compete with Marvel Studios' polished-to-the-nines superhero films, with varying success. Morbius was created in the comic books as a villain to fight Spider-Man, but here he's on his own. So Sony did what they did with its slightly better Venom movies, which also involved giving a Spider-Man villain its own movie: they made the Morbius character a bit more sympathetic than his comic book counterpart, and gave him an even bigger villain than he is to fight. 

Like The Lost City, Morbius also passes the time without too much restlessness, but again will come off as more enjoyable at home without the effort and cost to go out and see it. And I'm speaking as someone who likes getting in the car and going to see a movie.

Anyway, these two films did their jobs and helped me mark time until the big, anticipated films of late spring and early summer arrive. After all, it's like I blinked and the new Dr. Strange movie is only a few days away!

 

Dark doings at the beach

After reading six or seven thrillers about Stuart Woods' benevolent womanizer Stone Barrington ("benevolent" because Stone never seems to intend to sleep with a lot of women, it just turns out that way), I was anxious to see how author Woods handled a series with a central female character.

Orchid Beach is the first in the series featuring former military officer now police officer Holly Barker, and it's a decent read. And to build on the theme expressed at the outset, the attractive Florida police official (she is hired as Deputy Chief) is permitted to have a healthy sex life just like Stone Barrington, though interestingly Woods quickly pairs her off with a stable love interest. So Woods may not have Holly pinball around with various liaisons like his male protagonist. 

Is it sexist that Woods is making his female character more sexually conservative and prim and proper than his male hero? Maybe mildly so. But then again, this is only the first book in this series, so who knows what will happen to Holly in this area in future books?

Even more interesting is that Orchid Beach, which features a female lead, ultimately turns into more of a big, broad "men's action thriller", complete with an assault on the bad guys' huge compound, than any of the Stone Barrington books (at least the early ones I've read so far). Well, Stone did assault and destroy his enemies' yacht in Swimming to Catalina, but that was just a quick chapter or two.

The big action-packed close of the novel was fun, but I enjoyed the set-up and middle chapters, where we get to meet and know Holly and her supporting cast, more. So while I certainly recommend Orchid Beach if you enjoy Stuart Woods, I hope subsequent installments have action driven more by the cast and their personalities, and less big, broad action (ultimately featuring lots of generic cops, FBI agents, and bad-guy foot soldiers) than this book offers. Because Holly, her dad, and her boyfriend, as well as a few other cast members (including her dog!), are good characters who are fun to read about.

Lavish murders

Kenneth Branagh has been in the news lately because of his well-regarded art film Belfast, which has been nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. But that isn't the only current film he's attached to at the moment. He also stars in and directs his second Agatha Christie adaptation, Death on the Nile, which demonstrates once again he is equally at home with "mere" entertainments as he is with loftier material.

Death on the Nile is an old-fashioned murder mystery, lavishly filmed in wonderful locations, on a beautiful vintage pleasure craft (of course it isn't vintage to the early 20th century passengers), and peopled by top-of-their-game stars and character actors. And Branagh being Branagh, a little art creeps in, as well... mostly in the form of the ghosts of the past that frequently trouble master detective Hercule Poirot. Though many of the passengers on the sumptuous cruise along the Nile have their own ghosts and demons, too, also artfully and subtly conveyed.

The murder mystery itself is very clever, suitably complex but also playing fair. You can figure it out if you pay attention and have the imagination to fill in the blanks. Myself, I got halfway there: my suspicions went in the right direction but I couldn't figure out the mechanics of the crime. But that's okay, I enjoyed it when Poirot explained it all to me, which I'm sure was Mr. Branagh's intention.

Scream and scream again

Maybe it still feels like a novelty to enjoy movies at the theater again, but I enjoyed the new Scream.  They dropped the numbers after the title, but it's still the same Scream characters from the other films, though a handful of new ones are along for the ride, too. Some of the reviews haven't been kind, using words like "retread" and "nothing new here" but, I don't know, one person's dull repetitiveness is another person's comfortable familiarity.

So, yeah, I went in expecting the usual tropes of this series: Pretty people, sharp and quick pacing, decent suspense with bursts of graphic violence, and a serviceable whodunit. And I got all that. If I can think of one criticism, the movie went a little heavy on the "rules of horror movies" discussions, but then all the movies in this series give you a little more of that than you need.

Anyway, it was fun to see this in a theater with other people, as scenes with knife-wielding maniacs always are more fun in a crowd. And in a couple of years, sure, I'll be ready to sit through another Scream movie. Because, while I'm certainly not against new elements and some updating, I'm also perfectly fine with having a pretty good idea of knowing exactly what I'm gonna get.

Best Wishes

Just some quick end of year greetings from the not-very-busy but still-not-quite-dead Kindle Taproom and its cheerful creator. I think I did some decent posts in 2021, meaning I hope they were entertaining and useful, but I can still stand to do a lot more than one or two posts a month. And, of course, that will be my New Year's resolution for 2022. I was up a bit in 2021 versus the number of posts in 2020, but I can do better!

But for now, have a Happy New Year's Eve, and tomorrow consider yourself wished a Happy New Year! See you all, and hopefully more often, in 2022!