Reading/Watching Log #88

This was a month of FINALLY finishing shows that I started ages ago and then neglected to finish in a timely manner, as well as a slew of children’s books, a trip to the Court Theatre, a couple of graphic novels, and two fantastic, absolutely-recommend movies.

Naturally I’ve seen the second season of Shadow and Bone, but I’ll hold off talking about it until I can write up a proper post in its honour, but believe me when I say I live in fear of it being cancelled. I’ve no idea how confident Eric Heisserer is about his proposed Six of Crows spin-off, but he clearly set up for it in this season (somewhat to its detriment) and adapting the Ice Court heist is blatantly the reason he came on board in the first place. If Netflix doesn’t come through, then I think it’ll be the end of streaming services for me. I’ve been burnt too many times by cancelled and unfinished stories that I just don’t have the energy to care anymore.

Easter is also on the horizon, and I’ve decided to make it Eighties Fantasy month: that means I’ll devote the long weekend to Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, Ladyhawke, Legend, The Princess Bride, and maybe The Dark Crystal – though I’ve been planning to watch that one in the context of all the most recent books, graphic novels, and (cancelled) Netflix show, so we’ll see.

Sense and Sensibility (Court Theatre)

I had been looking forward to this one for a while; a Court Theatre production of Sense and Sensibility as performed by six women in alternating roles (plus two largely invisible stage-hands, also women). It definitely skewed on the comedy side of things, which was perhaps inevitable when women were taking the roles of Brandon, Edward and Willoughby, but the bones of the novel are very much intact, and the focus kept coming back to the bond between the two sisters. Elinor was calm and focused, Marianne was spritely and a bit spoiled, and everyone else alternated between the array of other characters.

Between scenes the women assume the positions of “living statues” as they move around the props and set pieces (by the time I saw it, the choreography was a well-oiled machine) and the costume changes were seamless. I’m not sure how they managed some of them, so quickly were they leaping from one role to the next.

There were some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, such as Willoughby’s entrance, in which he trots in on a large (fake) horse and ties off Marianne’s twisted ankle with his cravat while thunder rolls and his (plastic) torso is bared to the elements, or the simulation of carriage-riding, in which the cast pile into a covered seat and bounce up and down uncomfortably. Oh, and a large fake peacock that starts cawing in panic when the truth about Lucy Steele’s engagement comes out to Fanny (she then chases her with a pair of hedge-clippers) or the sisters getting ready to go out by simply tearing off their nightgowns to reveal the dresses beneath.

But the performance knows when to get serious as well: Elinor’s grief over Marianne’s illness is played straight, as is the moment when she learns Edward is engaged to Lucy (Marianne is playing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, the lighting goes red, and the raucous laughter from the card game in the background threatens to overwhelm Elinor).

They do swipe a couple of scenes from Ang Lee’s adaptation, as when all the distraught members of the family sans Elinor rush off to weep in their rooms while she wearily sips her tea, and her bizarre snorting/crying/happiness when Edward reveals he’s not married to Lucy after all – but the audience expects such iconic scenes, so you may as well steal from the best.

As the writer pointed out on the theatre’s webpage, the book “is still wildly relevant; a widowed mother trying to provide for her family of girls faced with a wage gap and respiratory infections, all in a time of extreme housing uncertainty? 1811 starts to look a lot like 2023.” (And yes, they had Elinor say “it’s a crisis out there.”) There are a few overt feminist statements thrown in, regarding how impossible it is to provide for a family when you’re not allowed to work for a living, but for the most part the original story does the work for them. Marriage isn’t something these women can do for love or comfort, but which exists as an essential pathway out of poverty and social scrutiny. They’re lucky if they find someone they don’t have to compromise themselves over.

It was a great night out; the crowd was receptive and the actresses knew what they were doing. It must be exhausting doing it every night for several weeks, but they showed no signs of slowing down.

The Pathfinders Society by Francesco Sedita and Prescott Seraydarian and Steve Hamaker

I’ve had such a good run of graphic novels for kids lately, that it was something of a surprise to realize I didn’t really enjoy this one. And yet, it sounds great: a Goonie-esque adventure in which five kids solve a centuries-old mystery with a dash of time travel in an eerie little town? That’s got my name all over it. Even the titles are great: The Mystery of the Moon Tower, The Curse of the Crystal Cavern, The Legend of the Lost Boy. And yet...

For starters, it seemingly starts off in the middle of a treasure hunt, only for this to be revealed as a sort-of hallucination/day-dream/flashforward experienced by the protagonist on his way to camp. Which, okay, fine – except he has no real reaction to it, and it never gets explained.

Kyle is being dropped off by his mother at a summer camp with a treasure-hunting/orienteering theme, a place founded by one of the town elders, Henri Merriweather. He’s befriended by Beth, Harry, Vic, Nate, who are your standard teen archetypes (friendly nerd, practical joker, smart cheerleader, and other guy).

Windrose Valley turns out to be a mysterious place, with features such as the Moon Tower and strange-smelling gases that emit from the earth. Having left behind a treasure buried somewhere in the area, Merriweather spent the last years of his life putting together clues that would lead campers to its location, found in places such as his old mansion, a massive amphitheatre, underground tunnels, and infrastructure that would have cost millions of dollars to set up. As the teens follow the markers, they start getting visions of the past (something that’s treated with complete nonchalance).

You’ll be unsurprised to know that even though people have been searching for this buried treasure for centuries, our protagonists pull it off without a sweat on their first day. Mmkay.

The main problems is that the story is disordered to the point of incoherency. The kids find clues I wasn’t even aware they had, and come to conclusions that are a massive stretch at best. Noone is very well developed, and most of the time I didn’t understand what anyone was doing.

Like, at the end of the first book they find a buried chest that contains a device that’s very important in the second book – but it’s first seen squished up in the very corner of a panel, mostly concealed by a character’s hands. In the next panel, it’s back in the chest, and in the next all the characters are leaving the area without establishing that they took it with them. By the time it came into play in the second book, I’d forgotten about it.

At another point, all but one of the kids get trapped in a cage, and the one who escaped goes into the next cavern to find a failsafe and free them. He manages to pull the lever which raises the cage but also triggers a flood. There’s only a tiny indication that the cage is rising – again, it’s squished onto one side of the panel – and in the next they’re all running for the door. Shouldn’t there be a panel where we SEE the cage rising up and the kids crawling out from underneath it?

Later they come across glowing hexagons in the wall and decide they have to “repeat the pattern.” But... what pattern? There’s been no indication of any pattern up until this point! They get the girl with the good memory to do it (she complains that she can’t because her hands are sweaty and keep slipping off the panels, which is absurd since they’re huge) and we have no idea what pattern she’s repeating. None! I went back and checked several times!

Then a robot turns up and they all get thrown back in time and there’s a flying ship... look, I don’t know. It’s a Random Events Plot.

Also, the motto of the camp is “Plus Ultra”, a Latin term that translates to “More Beyond”. It’s a quintessential case of the Tiffany Problem in that it’s historically accurate, but just sounds wrong (and dumb).

I wanted to like these graphic novels, but they contained a completely garbled story. I’m not even sure if they found the treasure. Maybe it was the friends they made along the way or something.

The Secret of Black Rock by Joe Todd-Stanton

I’m still making my way through Joe Todd-Stanton’s entire back-catalogue while waiting for Wildsmith: Into the Dark Forest, a book he illustrated that’s coming out sometime this year (his involvement paired with a title like that makes me believe it’s been written for me personally). I’d already read The Secret of Black Rock in the past, but it was fun to revisit considering I’d pretty much forgotten most of it.

Erin Pike lives with her mother in a small fishing town, and is intrigued by the legend of the Black Rock, a huge, dark, and spiky landmass just off the coast that destroys any boats that come near. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s not a scary monster at all, and a simple offer of friendship from Erin completely changes the town’s relationship with it.

As ever, the illustrations are the drawcard. The rectangular orange house Erin lives in, her yellow slicker, the size difference between her (a little speck) and the massive rock (its face taking up an entire page) in a double-page spread. There’s another of his trademark images: a single cross-section of a house in which there are several variants of Erin: listening to the conversation in the room below, climbing down the bedsheets rope, sliding down the garage roof, and setting off with her lantern. You can follow her progress on a single page.

It’s not a revelatory story by any means, but a sweet one. It vibes extremely well with Luke Pearson’s Hilda books, right down to the distinctive hair colour of its diminutive heroine (Hilda’s is blue, Erin’s is white) and I wonder if it inspired Todd-Stanton’s Brownstone books, what with the general theme of a young person befriending a not-so-scary monster.

Mallory and the Trouble with Twins by Anne M. Martin

It’s Mallory’s first book after being inducted to the Babysitters Club and she’s eager to make a good impression when she takes a job for new clients, the Arnold twins (they’re not actually brand-new, the other girls mention having sat for them in the past, despite never being seen before).

First of all, any parent that has twins and gives them matching names like Marilyn and Carolyn should be prosecuted, preferably by the kids. Ditto anyone who has about a dozen children and gives them all names that start with the same letter. I’m not kidding. That shit should be illegal.

Mallory and the girls seem to start off reasonably well, but after she makes a thoughtless comment about how they look like cute bookends, the atmosphere sours. Soon the twins have taken off their identification bracelets, are talking to each other in a bizarre “twin language” and generally being awful to Mallory.

The behaviour continues whenever another sitter has to take over, and I remember thinking as a kid how grossly unfair it was that Claudia was scolded by Mrs Arnold after the twins switched places when one had to go to piano lessons and the other had to work on her science project. How is her offspring’s hideous behaviour Claudia’s fault?

Just as things become untenable, Mallory realizes what the problem is: the twins are sick of being treated as a single entity: wearing the same clothes, living in a symmetrical bedroom, getting referred to as “Marilyn-or-Carolyn” at school. Realizing this is the reason they’re playing up, Mallory encourages them to speak to their mother about becoming more individualistic. Man, this club could make money on the side by being child psychotherapists.

It’s as easy as that, and Mallory accompanies them on a shopping trip to the mall for new clothes – Carolyn wants to dress cooler, which involves a sweatshirt with a crescent moon and stars on it, and Marilyn wants to be more grown up, which means a jeans-skirt and blouse. Bless.

The B-plot is that Mallory is also having some problems with her self-image, and desperately wants to get her ears pierced, her braces off, some contacts in, her hair cut and her wardrobe fixed. Naturally she’s only going to get two out of five of these things – but she planned for his contingency and deliberately asked for some outlandish things in anticipation of her parents relenting on some of the less extreme requests.

So the book culminates with the club going to the mall and everyone except Kristy and Mary Anne getting their ears pierced – that traditional rite-of-passage, that threshold into womanhood, for all pre-teen girls. I vividly remember an advert when I was a kid about a little girl who was counting down the days to getting her ears pierced, and walking out of the store with her younger sister looking longingly up at her newly impaled earlobes. 

This was one of the books I had as a kid, and I must have loved it as the cover had fallen clean off. I remembered most of the story beats, but also the little observations on human nature that Anne M. Martin was always so good at strewing throughout. This also brought back some memories about the twins I went to school with – Amy and Melissa, and the fact that whenever I went over to their house, the twin that hadn’t invited me wasn’t allowed to interact with us. Such were the intricate rules surrounding the life of a twin.

Jessi Ramsay: Pet Sitter by Anne M. Martin

It’s Jessi’s second book, the twenty-second book overall, and there’s the sense that Martin is struggling a bit for fresh ideas. This one has Jessi look after a household of pets, even though the very first book featured Kristy babysitting two St Bernard dogs and vowing never to allow animal-sitting in the club again. Relaxing the rules for the Mancusis runs the risk of setting a dangerous precedence – but if that were the case, then there’d be no story.

For whatever reason, the Mancusis don’t just send their dogs to the kennels, and when their scheduled pet-sitter falls through at the last moment, they call the Babysitters Club. Unlike Mallory, who has triplets for brothers and therefore had a point of entry into understanding the twins in the previous book, there’s no real reason why we should equate Jessi with animals. Wouldn’t Mary Anne have been more suited? But that’s neither here nor there; Jessi takes on the responsibility and... well, just looks after a menagerie of pets for a week. Three dogs, some cats, plenty of rodents, a few birds, and a snake (which of course, escapes at one point). Not much happens beyond the other sitters taking advantage of the private petting zoo the Mancusis provide for their charges, and the inevitability of one of the animals being strangely lethargic and overweight, and turning out to be pregnant.

Also, the Siamese cat is called Ling-Ling. Oof. Looking forward to seeing if they’ll keep THAT in the reprints.

Unfortunately, the B-plot is all about yet another stupid fight among the older girls, and honestly, this is not the first time the two ELEVEN YEAR OLDS have demonstrated more maturity than their so-called elders. This time the girls are fighting over not liking their roles in the club, which is kickstarted by Kristy’s truly insane desire to have everyone mark off a roster to prove they’re reading the club notebook. I don’t know what’s dumber, that she demands proof for this, or that everyone else doesn’t just shrug and agree to check it regardless of whether or not they did.

(Of course, I’ve little doubt that Kristy would then conduct quizzes just to really test whether they’ve been reading the notebook, so it’s a good thing they didn’t capitulate).

This sets off everyone else: Dawn doesn’t want to be treasurer, Mary Anne doesn’t want to be secretary, Claudia doesn’t want to be vice president, even though that last one doesn’t involve anything except hosting the meetings in her room, and occasionally dealing with callers who don’t ring during club hours (at which point all she has to do is tell them to ring back later). Kristy decides to put it all the to the vote, and of course, everyone votes to keep themselves in the roles they’re already in. Sigh.

But the Mallory and Jessi friendship continues to be the best one in the series. There’s a cute moment when they’re talking on the phone over the drama taking place in the club, and Mallory says: “are you scared too?” Jessi thinks to herself: “This is what I love about Mallory. I suppose it’s why we’re best friends. We know each other inside out, and we’re always honest with each other. Mal knew I was scared. And she admitted that she was scared. She could have easily just have said, ‘Are you scared?’ but she said, ‘Are you scared, too?’ which is very important.”

And the final sentence is: “I’ll call you tonight!” I shouted to Mal as we separated. Best friends have to talk a lot.” Aww.

Sweep: Volume 2 by Cate Tiernan

The second volume of Cait Tiernan’s fifteen-part Sweep saga contains books four to six (Dark Magick, Awakening, Spellbound), and is probably the highpoint of the series in terms of drama and suspense. I suspect that Tiernan had a clear idea of where her story was heading for the first nine or so books, but after that things started to unravel a bit – not necessarily in an irredeemable way, but the plotting and content of these “episodes” (it’s so tempting to call them that given their format) is probably the series at its best.

I started re-reading these books back in October, and it’s taken me this long to finish the second volume thanks to the deluge of library books I’ve had to get through – and there’s still plenty more to go, so Volume 3 probably won’t be completed for a while yet.

Morgan Rowlands has recently learned she’s a blood witch, adopted as an infant after her parents’ deaths in a fire. Her new boyfriend Cal has been the one to introduce her to the mysteries of witchcraft, and her incredible natural aptitude for magic(k) has made her the centrepiece of their newly-formed coven, as well as attracting the attention of Cal’s beautiful and powerful mother Selene.

The book opens straight after the last volume’s cliff-hanger, in which Morgan has used her magic to attack Hunter, Cal’s half-brother and a member of the Council of Witches, during his attempt to apprehend Cal in his official capacity as a Seeker. Morgan’s power sends him flying over a cliff to an unknown fate in the river below, and naturally she’s crippled with guilt and fear about what she’s done. Cal assures her that she acted in self-defence and that there’s no need to involve the police, but if you were reading the previous books carefully, you may have picked up a few red flags in the behaviour of Morgan’s otherwise-perfect boyfriend.

An underrated component of this series is that Cal – who is initially presented as the dream boyfriend of any YA fantasy – is a gaslighter and a manipulator, tasked by his mother to seduce Morgan so that they can take her power for themselves. This is initially done without any hint of underhanded tactics by the author, which makes it cut all the deeper when Morgan realizes Cal’s true nature. We can’t blame her for falling for the ruse, since it’s more than likely the reader did too.

Even when the clues do start to appear – he pressures her into trying things she’s not ready for, he’s good at getting his own way – it’s easy to imagine that many young readers would handwave them away since they’re very much in the realm of how “romantic, forcefully masculine love interests” behave in your average romance. In hindsight, even his initial approach to her comes across as text-book love bombing, complete with effusive praise and extravagant gifts. It’s a surprisingly subversive, carefully seeded twist in a YA series, especially for back in 2001 – or at least, I’ve always considered it so.

Unfortunately, quite a lot of its power is undone in Tiernan’s portrayal of Hunter, who comes along as the “true” love interest, and is therefore rude, stand-offish, overbearing and condescending. Sigh. Rather than steadily building a rapport between these two characters, especially in the wake of the horrific betrayal and near-death experience that Morgan underwent, they become an item extremely quickly, despite Morgan having serious reservations about his job as a Seeker and (outside of magic) their lack of common interests.

The supporting characters are far more interesting than the ostensible leads, including the villains – it’s a shame Selene and Cal are dealt with so quickly. In fact, I’ve always felt Morgan to be a bit of a drip as well as something of a Mary Sue – and no I don’t use that term lightly. Her bloodline is what makes her so incredibly powerful despite being completely untrained, and in this volume she performs what’s called a tath meanma brach with an older, more educated witch in order to absorb all of her knowledge and experience. So now she possesses all of the innate power and necessary bookwork without any of the effort! Convenient!

But long-running series do have the potential to build deep and elaborate worlds filled with an extensive cast, and it’s quite cosy to see Morgan’s circle expand: Hunter’s cousin Skye is a great character, and we’ve got Morgan’s extended family, the witches at the magick shop, her growing coven under Hunter’s leadership, her friends at school and so on. Book six also sneaks Alisa Soto into the mix, who will become much more important later on.

This is why it’s so tempting to describe the series as episodic, as certain characters and their subplots come to the fore and then fade away again across the course of the larger story – including Morgan’s gay aunt moving into a new neighbourhood and facing discrimination from some homophobic teens, Morgan’s little sister trying to extract herself from a rapey boyfriend, or one of the proprietors of a local witchcraft store dabbling in dark magick as a way of staving off foreclosure. They’re not badly written, but they do feel a bit like padding.

Each chapter also begins with a diary entry whose author is not immediately apparent (especially since they sign entries with their magickal names) and it’s up to the reader to discern who is talking and what it means for the current-day situation, especially when some are dated decades ago. It’s a fun detail. I’m enjoying myself with this re-read, so hopefully I’ll get to Volume 3 sooner rather than later.

The Secret of the Treasure Keepers by A.M. Howell

The fourth and final historical mystery I’ve read by this author in the last three months, this one being set just after WWII in 1948, and inspired by two treasures hoards. The first is the Mildenhall Hoard (now on display in the British Museum) and the second the Hoxne Hoard, which contains the Roman Empress pepper pot described in this story.

While her mother is in a job interview for the museum, Ruth fields a call for her potential employer, Mr Knight. On the other end of the line is a woman identifying herself as Mary Sterne, who is asking about a potential treasure found on her farmland.

Since Mr Knight is leery about hiring a woman, mother and daughter come up with a plan: they’ll go to the farm, excavate for more artifacts, and hopefully impress Mr Knight enough to secure a job. You’ll be unsurprised to know that mysteries are afoot at Rook Farm, though I have to admit that the obvious one – that farmhand Joe had deliberately buried the treasure to prevent the farm’s imminent foreclosure – was the wrong one. Perhaps I was just thinking of that Parks and Recreation episode.

As ever, Howell provides a good protagonist in Ruth, and I especially liked the fact she offers to stay on at the farm while her mother is away on business to help out. She has nothing else going on, so why not make herself useful to those in need? That her parents are getting an amicable divorce, having grown apart during the war years, was another interesting wrinkle, though Howell doesn’t nearly go into enough depth regarding how frowned-upon this would have been at the time.

There are some slightly annoying idiosyncrasies in her writing, like ending multiple chapters with a sum-up of what the protagonist is feeling, no matter how obvious.

Some slightly annoying idiosyncrasies in her writing, like ending chapters with a “sum up” of what the protagonist is feeling, even though it’s perfectly obvious. “Her jaw clenched with frustration at the mounting problems that needed solving and she strode back into the kitchen to put on her outdoor clothes.” “They had to do something to try and find out what had happened to the treasure and this was the only idea she had.” “Ruth was filled with fresh hope too. They had something that was feeling like a plan, which could solve both their problems, and while she hadn’t worked out the full details, she realized then she didn’t have to. Joe was there and they would work this out.”

It gets almost amusingly repetitive after a while.

The story wraps up rather neatly, though not exactly to Ruth’s perfect wishes, in keeping with the theme of the inevitability of change. It’s a solid read, and possibly the best of Howell’s work so far.

Bob by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass

This is a very short, simple story that’s essentially a variation on E.T. Livy arrives with her mother at her grandmother’s house in the Australian outback, where everyone is suffering through an extended dry-spell. Livy has very few memories of the place as a child, but things gradually start coming back to her, including the fact there’s a strange creature living in the closet, who still remembers her from when she was five years old.

What is this being? Where did it come from? There’s a nice journey through the amorphous nature of memories to find the beginning of their story together, which in turn leads to its fitting conclusion. Alternating between chapters from the points-of-view of both Livy and Bob (which gets a bit confusing if you’re speed-reading) it’s a short but sweet book about time, friendship and memory.

I appreciated that not everything gets completely explained, like the chess piece that lets Livy retain her memories of Bob: it’s unclear exactly how it works, but it doesn’t have to be anything more than a mysterious (and convenient) plot coupon. Likewise, had I not been reading a completely unrelated book that also featured this creature, I probably wouldn’t have realized that Bob was a bunyip.

It relies heavily on a childlike perception of the world, which means that the first few chapters don’t feel based in any sort of logic – it’s not until Livy starts to parse through the information she has that the story eventually starts to coalesce. It’s nicely done, and it reminded me of some of the more bizarre assumptions I made when I was a kid (like how ivy and ivory were the same thing; ergo the plant was grown from elephant tusks).

Two Girls, a Clock and a Crooked House by Michael Poore

This was a cute little Stable Time Loop adventure, in which Amy Wood is struck by lightning and discovers she now has the ability to telepathically communicate with her voiceless friend Moo (not her real name, and with a surprisingly dark backstory behind why she doesn’t speak). While Amy’s parents camp out in a field in protest of a fast-approaching mining operation, Amy and Moo manage to find an abandoned house in the woods, one that might belong to the town’s supposed witch.

After tinkering with an old clock, they discover it can transport them back in time, and after lashing it to a chair and transforming it into a rudimentary time-machine, they end up back in the far-distant past of the long-ago nineties. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that they start crossing paths with the child versions of the adults that populate the present day, and end up embroiled with the famous witch – who obviously turns out to be anything but.

The story fires off into about a dozen different directions, and some of the whimsy that’s inherent in the prose and the characters can get a bit much at times, but it all comes together neatly by the end (maybe a tad too neatly). If this is a young reader’s first experience with a time-travel book, their minds will be blown by the way everything wraps back around to the start; for a more experienced reader, you’ll see every little twist and connection a mile away. It’s a fun and inoffensive story though, and who can resist a title like that?

The Ghost Locket by Allison Rushby

This was the first of three books by Allison Rushby I’ve checked out from the library on the basis of an intriguing title and some gorgeous cover art (the others are The Mulberry Tree and The Turnkey of Highgate Cemetery).

Twelve-year-old Olivia (or “Lolli”) has returned with her adopted mother Freya to London from Singapore, in order to help friends set up a walk-through Christmas display in a historical house in Spitalfields. It sounds like a lot of fun, but Lolli is fearful of returning to the house given that three years earlier, she experienced a terrifying spirit with malevolent intent emerging from the walls.

Given her complicated childhood, Lolli is reluctant to share this information with Freya out of fear she’ll be sent to an institution, but the moment she steps foot in the house, it’s obvious that whatever restless ghost she disturbed all those years ago, is still there.

This is one of those ghost stories in which the supernatural events run parallel to the protagonist’s internal struggles and coming-of-age narrative. Rushby is sensitive when it comes to the complexities of Lolli’s brief life, but none of it really connects with the supernatural side of the tale. As it turns out, the ghost’s story bears little resemblance to the trials that Lolli is going through, and there’s an odd twist three-quarters of the way through the book (no spoilers, but it’s very The Sixth Sense) which doesn’t land because we’ve been given no reason to believe there was anything untoward about the character in question. It's a Clueless Mystery.

There are some other twists that work much better (the ghost actually didn’t die as a child, but escaped her captivity, enjoyed a rich and full life, but was then forced to return to the house after death due to unforeseen circumstances) and I liked the atmosphere of London in the Christmas season. Lolli is a nice protagonist who carefully negotiates her relationships and strives toward well-adjustment despite everything going on in her life.

There are certainly worse ghost stories out there, but something tells me this is not Allison Rushby’s best work. I’m looking forward to her other two though.

Strange World (2022)

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the profound irony of Disney expecting rounds of applause every time they allow a glimpse of LGBTQ+ representation in one of their films and then completely dropping the ball on promotional material when one of their films has a gay teenager as its actual protagonist. It’s not subtle, there’s no plausible deniability, and it’s not treated as a big deal: the character of Ethan Clade clearly and overtly has a crush on another boy.

So of course, instead of taking a self-congratulatory victory lap for actually doing what they’ve been promising to do for years now, Disney completely buries the film and it bombs at the box office.

This is hardly the best film to come out of Disney Studios, but it’s also not a film that deserves to be ignored. If nothing else, it’s utterly gorgeous to look at. At a point in which we’re still stuck with washed-out, grimdark, colourless slop on our movie screens, Strange World is a feast for the retinas. There’s every shade of every colour at every level of vibrancy you can ever imagine. There’s alien flora, wildlife, landscapes and technology, and none of it looks like anything you’ve ever seen before.

As for the characters... well, when they’re all getting along they’re great to hang out with. A nuclear family that actually likes each other? That have fun and communicate well? That work together and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses? Loved it. On the other hand, the script cannot resist forcing in a completely contrived father/son conflict in which neither want to become like the other, and honestly, who even cares? We’ve seen it a million times before and it just didn’t need to exist.

As with most Disney films these days, there’s no real villain, which is neither a good or bad thing – but by this point, it is a lampshaded thing. At one point, three generations of the Clade men are playing a game and the youngest has to explain there’s no villain, much to the consternation of his grandfather. Yes, Disney’s inability to stop commenting on itself is another tedious trademark of its most recent films, but the naval-gazing isn’t so bad here. The villain turns out to be Disney’s favourite theme of the moment: generational trauma, even if it’s not played here with as much seriousness as it was in Turning Red or Encanto.

It'll be interesting to see if it gains viewership or notoriety in the years to come – after all, you never know what’s going to end up a cult classic. For what it’s worth, I recommend for the visuals alone.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Where do I even start with this one? So much ink has already been split on this movie, even before it cleaned up at the Oscars, so it feels like there’s nothing of value I can contribute at this stage. I can only encourage people to watch it. At least twice.

Chinese-American immigrant Evelyn Wang is going through a stressful tax audit (another staple of American life that the rest of the world finds completely baffling) when an alternate-world version of her husband Waymond pulls her into a utility closet with urgent news. The multiverse is real, she’s a key player in its imminent destruction, an endless array of counterparts in other worlds can lend her their unique abilities, and she must act fast if she’s to save existence itself.

Honestly, half the joy is watching this explosion of inventiveness and originality and hilarity play out on screen. I don’t want to give any of it away. It’s simply a movie in which every frame, every detail, every line of dialogue is perfectly calibrated to further the well-oiled mechanism of plot and characterization and world-building that encompasses the film in its entirety. The presence of googly eyes aren’t just a whimsical bit of set-building or a crucial bit of characterization for Waymond, but eventually a dense philosophical symbol of what the film is trying to convey about nihilism and hope.

And the whole movie is like this. Even a seemingly throwaway gag about Ratatouille ends up having deeper context later down the track.

I just don’t feel like I can do this movie justice by talking about it – you really have to see it for yourself.

M3gan (2023)

Hahaha! Okay, watch this one immediately after Everything Everywhere All at Once. It is so profoundly different in every conceivable way from that movie, and yet somehow good in the same way. I can’t explain or articulate that statement, only that it makes sense in my head.

Obviously it was the promotion leading up to the film’s release that got everyone’s attention, specifically M3gan’s dance-kill that ended up going viral and pretty much secured the movie’s box-office success, but what the advertising didn’t prepare me for was that the underlying premise is taken very seriously: a little girl’s parents are killed in a car accident, and her ongoing grief is the crux of the film in its entirety.

Cady ends up moving in with her aunt Gemma, a roboticist at a toy company, who is clearly ill-equipped to raise a child, much less a grieving, traumatized one. But having secretly been using the company’s funds to finance a life-sized robotic doll called M3gan (Model 3 Generative Android) she finds the perfect way to parent Cady – simply outsource the responsibilities to an artificial intelligence that will cater to her every physical and emotional need. (Though honestly, I was more interested in the theme of a woman taking on child-care despite having no desire to be a mother. It reminded me of Jessica Chastain's character in Mama, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about that particular narrative of career-women learning to become decent foster-mothers). 

There is nothing in the movie that will take even the most inexperienced horror fan viewer by surprise – everything is telegraphed a mile away, from M3gan acquiring self-awareness, to her taking lethal action against threats to Cady, to the inevitable showdown when Gemma realizes that her tech has gone too far.

But it’s still awesome. Others have spoken extensively on the sheer levels of camp in this film, and it’s conveyed with just the right amount of po-faced seriousness to heighten the hilarity. I had tears of laughter running down my face when a school bully is found dead and M3gan’s eyes peer over the window of the car door, watching the ensuring police investigation.  

And oh, the cathartic joy of watching M3gan rip the ear off that loathsome bully as she tells him: “bad boys grow into bad men.” Yes, M3gan – kill that little shit! She’s one of those villains that you unabashedly root for considering all her victims are just vile people. And she does it all in a designer pea coat! It’s wonderful, I’m literally going to finish up this post and watch it again.

Spooks: Season 2 (2003)

The second season of Spooks was bumped up from six episodes to ten, which is a sign that your show is popular (I note with some bemusement that the tenth and final season went back down to six). On the whole, it keeps true to its established formula, presenting standalone, down-to-earth stories about MI-5, making use of real espionage techniques such as tailing, dead drops, sleeper agents and safe houses, apparently with consultancy from real ex-spies.

The cliff-hanger at the end of last season is quickly resolved (the bomb doesn’t go off, but the experience inevitably ends the relationship between Tom and Ellie) and the gradual unravelling of Tom begins. You can’t really blame him; an entire episode is devoted to making the team believe there’s been a terrorist chemical attack in London that’s killed half the population, all to test Tom’s leadership skills.

Call me crazy, but I feel that putting your employees through a gruelling gaslighting mindfuck would be counter-intuitive to their sense of reality, their ability to trust, and their mental wellbeing, and sure enough, former team-member Tessa (kicked out of MI-5 due to embezzling funds) later manages to manipulate one of their agents into passing on restricted information by convincing her an elaborate test is going on. Great job, MI-5.

This season also marks the introduction of Ruth Evershed, who I was surprised to find is characterized as an awkward neurotic. I had been under the impression she was the cool and emotionless type, especially knowing she remains a regular till the end of the show’s run. There’s also Sam Buxton, a character so milquetoast that she’s already been written out by season four (which I’ve just started).

As mentioned, there’s a check-in with Tessa Phillips, who unfortunately leaves the country and seemingly doesn’t return, even though a game of one-man-upmanship between her and Harry could have sustained several plot-lines, and a slew of familiar faces who have lost twenty years of aging: Alexander Siddig, Julie Cox, Mark Lewis Jones, Enzo Cilenti, Sophie Okonedo, Augustus Prew, Ruth Gemmell (Lady Bridgerton)... and look, it’s even Benedict Cumberbatch! He features in a single scene, several years before Sherlock came a-knocking.

Oh, and without knowing the name, I recognized Reece Dinsdale, who back in ’86 played Arthur of Brittany in Robin of Sherwood and Fearnot in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. Now it’s been over twenty years since his role in this show. Time, it flies.  

The season culminates in an elaborate setup in which Tom is made to look like a terrorist, and man do his colleagues turn on him fast. It was a bit disconcerting after all they’d been through together, and Wikipedia tells me that by the time the third series rolled around, the writers were scrambling to find a way out of the corner they’d written for the characters in the season finale.

Spooks: Season 3 (2004)

And so the great cast turnover begins, with our central trio of Tom, Zoe and Danny being written out one-by-one and replaced by new faces: Adam, Fiona and Zafir. It’s handled reasonably elegantly, and the format of the show means that the plots can keep chugging along even with such a drastic change in actors. As I understand it, Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes and David Oyelowo requested that their characters be written out, and to one extent or another, they all get fitting send-offs.

The Tom frame-up job gets resolved in the first episode, and it’s rather amusing to see the writers use him to prop up Adam as his replacement (everyone else is leery about his presence, but Tom can’t help but engage in some Character Shilling to try and get them – and the audience – on board with his presence) but by the second episode his disillusionment with the agency is interfering with his ability to do his job, and he’s decommissioned.

Zoe goes about halfway through the season, in which she’s put on trial for the involuntary manslaughter of an undercover police officer after she goads a mark into killing a much more dangerous man (the cop was collateral damage) and forced to leave the country after she’s found guilty. Finally, Danny is killed execution-style in the season finale by a terrorist after he and a colleague are taken hostage – it’s the most ignominious end of the three leads, but apparently Oyelowo asked to be killed off, and he does die saving the life of his colleague by goading them to shoot him and not her.

As the new protagonist, Rupert Perry-Jones is fine, though I’ve always found him to be a slightly wooden actor. That works out fine here, as Adam Carter is meant to be a cold professional, and as an interesting (and deliberate) contrast with Tom, he’s a married man whose wife Fiona also works as a spy. Naturally, a relationship between two MI-5 agents is as fraught with as many complexities as one between a spy and a civilian.

The show’s strength remains its commitment to realism, and though there are a few episodes that stretch credibility a little, others are all the stronger for staying grounded. A lengthy sequence in one episode depicts Adam trying to shake off several tails that are following him around London – to give himself enough time to evade them, he has to start several hours before the rendezvous is scheduled to take place, and we get to see both sides of the operation attempt to outwit the other.

Another is set almost entirely on a cruise ship, in which Zoe and Danny are tasked with assassinating a man. They grapple with what’s being asked of them, are coaxed by Adam and Harry over the phone, are forced to weigh their sense of duty against their moral compass, and eventually go through with the hit. It’s genuinely riveting television, even though it’s mostly just a series of phone calls.

Other episodes aren’t quite as good – there’s one about the kidnap of a celebrity baby that feels more like something out of a police procedural, and of course, the inevitable episode that questions the veracity and ethical implications of torture. These types of episodes, no matter what the show or film, always suck because they’re always exactly the same: our protagonists get a bit perturbed about using interrogational torture (though not enough to stop what they’re doing) the suspect always ends up telling them what they want to know, the good guys thwart a terrorist attack, and the audience is left in no doubt that the ends justified the means.

Because of course it does. Torturing someone to save thousands of other lives is clearly the right call. But it ignores the simple fact that torture doesn’t work. This has been debated and proven many, many times, and it’s a grave misstep for a show that has tried to remain as realistic as possible.

So not quite as solid as its prior seasons, but still a fun ride. Notable guest-stars include Ian McDermaid, Anton Lesser, Santiago Cabrera, Harriet Walters, Caroline Carver, Andy Serkis, Owen Teale (Alliser Thorne in Game of Thrones), Tim McInnerny (Robett Glover in Game of Thrones) and Richard Harrington (who I honestly believed was the guy playing Mon Mothma’s shitty husband in Andor. He’s not).

Crash Landing on You (2019 – 2020)

I finished it. I finally finished it! I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve been watching this Korean drama on-and-off for the better part of two years now. Why did it take me so long? It’s not like I didn’t enjoy watching it. It’s a compelling story!

Perhaps it was the run-time of the episodes (some of which hit the two-hour mark) or the fact it was on Netflix (I prefer not to watch things on my computer screen when I can download them and watch them on the television). It doesn’t matter, the point is: I finally finished.

A South Korean drama that focuses on Yoon Se-ri, a successful businesswoman who goes paragliding near the border, gets swept up in a freak storm, and crash lands on the North Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone. Not realizing where she is or how much danger she’s in, she fumbles around blindly for a while until she’s found by Ri Jeong-hyeok, a young army captain and one of the country’s elite (his father is the Director of the GPB). Understanding her predicament far better than she does – namely what might happen to her if she’s discovered by his superiors – Jeong-hyeok makes it his personal mission to get her home safely. Naturally, it’s only a matter of time before these star-crossed lovers fall for each other, lending a deep sense of poignancy to the ongoing attempts to reach the South Korean border.

But the story is much more expansive than just these two, it also encompasses Se-ri's distant parents, conniving older brothers, and distraught employees, and Jeong-hyeok’s spoiled fiancé Seo Dan, her interfering mother, and the half-dozen young men under his command. Then there’s Gu Seung-jun, a South Korean hiding out in the North to escape charges of embezzlement (and who is an acquaintance of Se-ri) and Cho Cheol-gang, a ruthless officer from the State Security Department who arranged the murder of Jeong-hyeok’s older brother.

And of course, the housewives who live in Jeong-hyeok’s village, who are immensely curious about the young woman seen on his property. At first glance they’re terribly dated stereotypes of squabbling, nosy, hen-pecking village women, but they eventually rally around one of their own and defend her against the soldiers coming to remove her and her son from their home in the dead of night. Their prior scattiness makes their loyalty to each other all the more heart-warming.

It’s quite an epic journey, all things considered! What stands out is the warmth it has for all the characters, and the underlying message that we’re not so different underneath it all. Obviously the two main characters and their love story are at the forefront of this theme, but of equal importance is the bond Se-ri forges with Jeong-hyeok’s men, the rift that mends between her and her (step)mother, the aforementioned village woman who are there for each other when it really counts, and even the self-absorbed Seung-jun learning to love someone more than himself (namely, Dan).

So despite being extremely long, and despite having an awful tendency to start playing sappy love songs over any scene that’s even mildly tender, it’s a fascinating series that I was always going to finish, despite my long hiatuses between episodes.

The Umbrella Academy: Season 3 (2022)

I started this one back when it first dropped on Netflix, and then somehow kept losing track of it. Never mind, finished now – and I had some issues. Those issues actually have a lot in common with the transition between season one and two. At the end of season one, all the Umbrella Academy reverted back into their child bodies as they were thrown back through time – something that season two promptly retconned for whatever reason.

The end of season two ended with the Umbrellas returning back from the past to find that (because of a chance encounter with the man who adopted them as infants, who found them to be disappointments as adults) he went ahead and found a brand-new group of children called the Sparrows. Now they’re in an alternative time-line, forced to contend with the presence of a completely new group of gifted students on their turf – including an alternate version of Ben, who never died in this time-line (but who is a massive jerk).

The Sparrows are a sleek, organized and well-oiled fighting machine... and they’re also barely in this season. The most important ones are Ben and Sloane; the others are killed off fairly quickly. And yes, once again the plot is all about saving the world.

There are some interesting bits: I’ve already mentioned that Elliot Page’s transition is handled very well, but I also liked the location of the Obsidian Hotel, which contains a multitude of mysteries, and the power-dynamic of Reginald Hargreeves and his children. Turns out that the Sparrows are not as subjugated as their alt-world predecessors, and Reginald is imprisoned and medicated; a captive in his own home.

This kind of bugged me, as it felt like the show was trying to squeeze out sympathy for an abusive father who clearly had some kind of as-yet undisclosed agenda for having adopted the children in the first place (and the second season revealed he’s an alien of some kind) but thankfully it’s a bait-and-switch. Just when the Umbrellas are letting their guard down and trying to form some sort of connection with the only father they’ve ever known, it turns out that he’s playing the long-con, and is still just as much of a monstrous bastard as he ever was.

(Also, I would have sworn that Anton Lesser played Reginald, but it turns out it’s a guy called Colm Feore. What is up with me getting actors mixed up this month?)

The likes of Diego, Klaus and Five get some decent material, but I was annoyed by the show’s treatment of Allison. This is a character who has finally had enough – the loss of her husband, the disappearance of her daughter, enduring the racism and discrimination of the 1960s, and all she really gets from her siblings (and the narrative, and the fandom) is the admonishment to suck it up. She’s angry and she wants what’s hers, which leads to a deal with the devil she’ll no doubt be punished for in season four.

To rub salt in the wound, the Luthor/Allison relationship self-implodes this season. I wasn’t a shipper by any means, and I can understand why real foster kids would be grossed out by a romance between adopted siblings – but at the same time, fandom is always going on about how much it loves toxic relationships and messed up dynamics... though apparently not when a Black woman is involved. They even have her skirt close to being a rapist when she uses her persuasion powers on Luthor, who has moved on with a white woman that’s all sweetness and light, in stark (and possibly deliberate) contrast to Allison’s simmering rage.

Also, isn’t there a possibility that Luthor/Sloane is as incestuous as Luthor/Allison? All the children had different mothers, but it’s fair to assume that their “father” (whatever that may turn out to be) is a singular entity. Think of Ego’s assorted children in The Guardians of the Galaxy, who consider themselves siblings. And even if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, it’s not like THEY know that yet.

More troublesome than any of Allison’s behaviour was Lilah borrowing her friend’s kid and passing it off as hers and Diego’s in order to test whether he’ll make a good father, which is so fucked up on so many levels I don’t have words for it.

Despite being incredibly leery about what was done with Allison, it’s still an entertaining show: great set pieces, soundtrack, performances and high-concept premise, so I’ll obviously be back for the fourth and final season. Yet apparently it will only have six episodes, and I honestly don’t think they’ll be able to wrap up all their dangling threads in that limited amount of time. Who exactly is their father? What is his plan? Where did all these gifted children come from? And what the hell was up with Christopher? Why was he a levitating cube? All we can do is wait.