twenty-seven word reviews of films seen since April

The Way Ahead (1945, dir. Carol Reed, starring David Niven, Stanley Holloway, William Hartnell).   Romanticised but open-ended portrait of a range of conscripts – training, then into action: North Africa. Prompts reflections on, inter alia, stories that we told ourselves in 1945.

Passionate Friends (1949, dir. David Lean, starring Ann Todd, Trevor Howard). Less of a chamber piece than Brief Encounter (longer time-frames; Switzerland); same emotional acuity and restraint (WW2 represented as a cold wind through an open window); spell-binding.

Robocop (1987, dir. Paul Verhoeven). Hadn’t seen; overdue. Enjoyed; popcorn movie; special effects still credible; satire broad but sharp (war risks; corporate ethics; privatisation; identity vs machine). Also, Leland Palmer’s in it. 

Factotum (2005, dir. Bent Hamer, starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor). Bar-dwelling old-timer to hard-drinking protagonist: “I’ve probably been asleep for longer than you’ve been alive.” Watchable, funny, necessarily downbeat biopic of writer, drunk, occasional misogynist Charles Bukowski.

Twilight (2008, dir. Catherine Hardwicke, starring  Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson). Bella: How old are you? Edward: Seventeen. Bella: How long have you been seventeen? Edward: A while. Daughter understands she shouldn’t date vampires in high school. Fun.

Potiche (2010, dir. Francois Ozon, starring  Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu). Brightly-coloured movie starring Depardieu and Deneuve in a sitcom-like plot involving an umbrella factory, la guerre des sexes, strike action, and disco. What more do you need?

Hunger Games (2012, dir. Gary Ross, starring Jennifer Lawrence). Wife and daughter both into the Hunger Games series. Meant to be the dystopia de nos jours, but I dozed partly; didn’t connect; unthrilled. Is that terrible?

London: The Modern Babylon (2012, dir. Julien Temple). Interesting, unexpected about, e.g. Battle of Cable Street but some sections glib, overfamiliar, music choices disrespectful (e.g. Fall’s Leave the Capitol vs WW2 evacuees). Not his best.

Saving Mr Banks (2013, dir. John Lee Hancock, starring Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks). Platonic romcom (film rights =consummation); Travers (‘Mary Poppins’ author), Disney as protagonists. Nice, bright-looking film, uninvolving though. Just say no, Mrs T; Julie Andrews’ll still get work.

twenty-seven word reviews of books read since March

Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon.  Liked incursion of Nigerian folktale into Lagos-set SF; wanted to like more; found ‘putdownable’; polyphonic, magic-realist approach versus narrative drive, perhaps. Keen to read more by author.

C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Theologically, philosophically well-grounded ‘core Christianity’ explication in clear-sighted, plain prose. Helps me recommit. Good. BUT race, gender, LGBT attitudes range from dated through jaw-dropping to WTF. Hmmm.

Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage: Facing The Complexities of Marriage with the Wisdom of God. Sane, non-liberal (e.g. "headship") Christian thought and insight re-presented in full awareness of today’s context (so no WTF moments). Not scintillating but pragmatic. Religion speaks to culture.

H.G. Wells’ Ann Veronica.   Ann, adrift in London, stalked, mistaken for a prostitute, in same existential predicament as Wells’ Time Traveller in 802,701. Clammy horror good but quasi-Nietzschean sexual politics bad.

Karl-Ove Knausgaard’s A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1 (tr. Don Bartlett).   Had to get around to; compulsory (for a certain middle-aged male ‘literary’ demographic). Boring and intensely absorbing by turns (like life – good mimesis). Alcoholism, girls, father-son stuff.

John Gottman & Joan DeClaire’s Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child: The Heart of Parenting. Useful if working with families (or in one); categorisation of parenting styles as dismissing, emotion-coaching etc. is illuminating without being – as with some parenting texts - reductive.  

  

Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death. Literary sensibilities and experience of fatherhood inform author’s (i) researches into transhumanism (ii) road trip across America with Zoltan Istvar, running for President in a coffin-shaped bus.

Alex Evans’ The Myth Gap: What Happens when Evidence and Arguments aren’t Enough?. We must reconnect with our various religious/ cultural myths, esp. atonement, coming of age, to reach both inwards and outwards on climate. Mindfulness is non-trivial. Brief, recommended.

twenty-seven word review of a noticeboard outside where the home-care agency used to be; empty for a while, this unit's since been redeveloped as an antique shop called 'Presence of the Past'

Walking past homecare office for years: glossy staff photos yellowing and faded. 

Office closed, now – workers elderly, infirm themselves, perhaps. 

NVQ3-qualified, though – no-one can take that away.

Why not visit Presence of the Past if you're in town today?

we need to judge widths all the time