Venturing to the movies

As the pandemic has been finally and thankfully waning, I've started to venture back to the movies as theaters have been creakily reopening. Most of the movies out there seem to be things that are already showing on HBO Max, though, but I still managed to find a couple theater-only exclusives that caught my eye.

Back in April I caught The Unholy, a creepy PG-13 possession thriller that I found to be a little better than simply watchable. The clever gimmick here is that the possessing spirit disguises itself as the Virgin Mary and initially inspires people with healings and other miracles. Why? The answers are creative enough to keep you watching.

Even better is the film I caught this Memorial Day weekend: Here Today, starring Billy Crystal (who also directed) and Tiffany Haddish. He plays Charlie, a veteran comedy writer who still has a cool job writing for TV well into his senior citizen-ship and she's Emma, a singer whose modest career in New York has been taking off lately.  The film is about their unlikely friendship and how Emma ultimately helps Charlie through some personal and health issues. 

Don't worry, Here Today is not too heavy, is often very funny, and as a bonus includes many interesting scenes showing how television sketch comedy is created (Charlie works for a show not unlike Saturday Night Live).

Both The Unholy and Here Today aren't huge hits, but both are still in many theaters due to the fact that new films are still slow to appear.  This will probably change as we hit June and July and fresh material arrives more regularly.  But for now these two movies are worth your time if you run across them.

Dark but fun tales

Max Allan Collins is a master of mysteries of all flavors and stripes. He does historical mysteries (his Nate Heller and Disaster series), funny mysteries (the Trash 'n Treasures mysteries he writes with his spouse under their Barbara Allan masthead), violent mysteries (his Quarry novels), etc. So it was no surprise to see that his take on horror stories also feature a variety of flavors, and entertaining ones at that.

In these ten creative and fast-reading stories, we get classic monsters coupled with, respectively, a gangster plot, a tale of a real rock-and-roll legend, a Christmas setting, and an urban legend-type highway story, to name a few offbeat examples. This variety of flavors made for a fun reading experience, as I never knew what kind of mood or scenario was up next.

And while I wouldn't say that the "carnal" aspect referred to in the title is relentless throughout the book, it's certainly not understated, either (to your delight or dismay, take your pick; I guess my positive review tells you where I fell). But it, too, is done creatively. In the case of a female vampire on the rock-and-roll groupie circuit, quite creatively.

If you like horror, decent short-story collections, or both, you can't go wrong with this snappy, enjoyable book of dark tales.

 

Fighting, fighting, always more fighting

I have HBO Max, so I've been paying attention to all these 2021 movies that, due to a corporate decision in the face of the pandemic, have been premiering simultaneously on that service and in theaters. It's kind of funny that some of the movies have been Oscar contenders like Judas and the Black Messiah (a very good movie, by the way) and some of them have been popcorn fare like this. But, hey, entertainment is entertainment, whether it's serious or popcorn.

Godzilla vs. Kong is perfectly good fun, though I thought the plot was way more complicated than it needed to be for a movie about two big monsters battling each other. But it's not a huge problem and I went along for the ride. But I hope it's not a huge spoiler to tell you that, like Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the movie isn't really about the battle highlighted in the title, but about other stuff.

Anyway, this movie was decent fun, and will only be more so if you have a really big TV screen to watch it on. HBO Max also features the movies leading up to it: the 2014 and 2019 Godzilla movies and 2017's Kong: Skull Island, which I thought was good in itself, but got extra credibility due to Brie Larsen and Samuel L. Jackson doing their best to elevate the whole affair. You don't need to watch those earlier movies to enjoy this one, but- as they say- it helps.

A busy detective

In this fine, involving crime novel, Lawrence Block's unofficial private investigator Matthew Scudder takes on a missing persons case, falls in love, and on his own starts investigating a sad tragedy involving one of his friends at Alcoholics Anonymous.

All three plot lines are compelling, with the love story being particularly effective because it's interesting and sweet on its own, but also gives the reader pleasant time outs from the dark, gritty investigative details we're used to seeing in this series. Shudder has had relationships before, but Mr. Block extra feeling and depth into this one.

Also adding richness to the book is Scudder's continued efforts to remain sober, which he sees as both a challenge and something to be fascinated by. He's always thinking about his drinking days- what he drank, where he drank, why he drank, etc.- and often seems amazed that something that was so central to his existence before is now something that he pretty much is fine with doing without now. He does remain vigilant, though, and frequent participation at AA meetings are regular parts of these books.

I'm about halfway through the Matthew Scudder series now, and still very much look forward to starting each one. The entire series is available in print, on Kindle, and on unabridged audio.

Satisfying

 

Kendra Elliot's The Last Sister was a decent, polished page-turner, no more or no less. I enjoyed it, so there's nothing to complain about. I also got to read it for free on my Kindle because I'm an Amazon Prime member. Well, I do pay for Amazon Prime, but you get the idea.

A violent double murder with hate-crime overtones shakes the residents of a small town in the Pacific Northwest. When the employer and friend of one of the murder victims doesn't feel that the local police are investigating the crimes with proper diligence, she calls the FBI. 

The rest of the book is basically the FBI working with the town's police department to solve the murders. After some initial resentment, the local sheriff and police department end up working well with the Feds, which made the book more enjoyable. Federal and local law enforcement don't always have to knock heads. Also, a romance blooms between FBI agent Zander Wells and local resident Emily Mills, the young woman and diner owner who discovered her friend/employee and her husband dead at their home when her friend didn't show up for work at the diner.

Anyway, I can go on about the story, but you'll enjoy this fast, enjoyable thriller more if you discover its modest pleasures for yourself. Besides the crime investigation and the romance, the story has a decent array of colorful supporting characters (mostly among the town's residents) and the town has some dark history, including an old violent crime that might be connected to the new ones, which lends additional mood and drama to the proceedings.

Apparently The Last Sister is currently book one of three of the author's Columbia River series. Again, this one was good, so I'll probably check out the other books in this series before too long.

Barefoot in the house

I tend to drink inexpensive though always passable wine at home, and spend a little more for wines by the glass when I'm out. I guess when I'm home I'm watching TV or reading and my full attention isn't on the wine, so something simply crisp and refreshing is fine.  And since I usually drink white wine, the fact that it's always nicely chilled can distract from any shortcomings, as long as they aren't egregious.

Barefoot, an economical California wine, is a decent wine for my at-home purposes, and I buy the winery's Chardonnay a lot.  The other day at the liquor store, however, I saw that Barefoot is now getting a little ambitious and is now offering a new "Buttery" Chardonnay along with its regular one.  So of course I had to buy it, and of course I had to do a little comparison tasting using the dregs left from my existing bottle of regular Barefoot.

The result? I can't say there is a huge difference between the two. Regular Barefoot Chardonnay is crisp and refreshing, maybe a little fruity. And Barefoot Buttery Chardonnay are all those things, but maybe a little less crisp and a tiny bit more smooth. It certainly didn't taste all that buttery. But maybe that's a good thing: sometimes less expensive wines take short cuts to get a tasting note they're after, usually by simply adding an artificial flavor rather than complicating the fermentation process. So Barefoot could have simply added some artificial buttery flavor, but based on the lack of obvious butteriness, I don't think they did.

In the end, I guess I like both and will probably alternate between them, based on what I'm in the mood for and, let's be honest, which one might be one sale. For drinking at home, though, I'm basically fine with either a crisper wine or a smoother wine. And for what it's worth Barefoot's Pinot Grigio is pretty good, too, and definitely crisper- and more tart- than either of its Chardonnays.

Large (1.5 liter) bottles of Barefoot usually top out at $14.99 per bottle, but are often on sale (at least here in Pennsylvania) for $10.99 to $12.99.

Last call

When The Sacred Ginmill Closes is Lawrence Block's sixth Matthew Scudder novel, and another fine, interesting reading experience.  This 1986 entry in the ongoing saga of the unofficial PI who roams the streets of New York was a little different from its predecessors, however, but not in any bad ways. Just ways that made it, well, again, interesting.  Anyway, here's what's different:

1)  Unlike the previous five books, which took place one after the other, this story goes back in time a bit to tell an untold story from Matt's drinking days, which had finally (and pretty inarguably, fortunately) started to come to a close at the end of the last book, Eight Million Ways To Die. It's all very clear, though: a still-sober Scudder at the outset tells us that he's going to talk about a period of time from his drinking days, a time when several notable things happened to him. Once it's clear that Scudder hasn't relapsed since the last book, we can sit back and enjoy this story from his more out-of-control days.

2) The novel is richer, longer, and more literary than the others, which weren't exactly fast, mindless, slam-bam action thrillers, either. It features Matt working three different cases (two more than usual), moving back and forth between them, with the glue holding the novel together being many, many conversations in bars among Matt and his friends and colleagues.  While the cases are often the subject of these conversations, they're also frequently about, well, life, the universe, and everything. Hence, the literary feel. It's also sort of a deliberate tribute by the author to the one undeniably good thing about being a heavy drinker who hangs out with other heavy drinkers: the camaraderie and wonderful conversations.

3) This is the first novel to recycle a plot from a previous work, namely one of the author's more entertaining short stories: By the Dawn's Early Light. One of the three cases Matt works on here is the same case from that short story. Not a similar case, not somewhat adapted from that case, but the same case, right down to the dialog during the investigation. I mean, it's not a big deal, the short story was a good one (it's free for customers to listen to on Audible.com, by the way) and Block probably wanted to give the story the wider audience of a novel. It was kind of interesting, in fact, to see how Block doled out the story in small helpings throughout the novel instead of giving it the full, uninterrupted attention of a concise short story.

4) The novel ends by again reminding us that this story was being told to us from a point in the future, and many years in the future we're finally told, when Matt's young sons (a frequent fixture in the past novels) are now grown up and in college and the military, and Matt's ex-wife Anita has remarried. Again, just kind of interesting. I guess that means that the rest of the Scudder novels I need to read (and any others Block may write) might also be looks back to particular times in Matt's career, during both his drinking and non-drinking days. Or maybe not. The rest might be about the older Scudder who narrates this story. It'll be fun to see!

In any event, When The Sacred Ginmill Closes was another great visit to the streets of New York of decades past (the mid-1970's when we're fully into the flashback), with Matt Scudder again walking those streets and figuring out what needs to be figured out, as we get all the pleasure and entertainment.