I’ve had a mixed experience with Alejandro González Iñárritu films; I didn’t care much for Babel, loved Birdman, and thought that, stunning cinematography aside, The Revenant was overrated as hell. This gritty and raw-as-guts 2000 Mexican drama, Iñárritu‘s first feature film, landed in the “loved” basket, despite being a hard watch.
opinion
Crazy Rich Asians – Film Review
This charming and entertaining romantic comedy is proof that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel or poke fun at the genre tropes; when done well there’s nothing like Happily Ever After to override your inner realist and leave you with a big smile on your face.
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger – Book Review
There was a lot to like about this flawed but compelling follow-up to The Time Traveler’s Wife, Niffenegger’s phenomenally successful debut which must feel like both a blessing and a curse to its author. In a way, Her Fearful Symmetry feels like a time-travelling real first novel, promising a genuine talent who hasn’t quite figured things out yet. I enjoyed the setting and the atmosphere, the characters and their relationships, the story however is where I thought the book stumbled quite a bit.
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie – Book Review
In this novel, Poirot goes on a holiday in Egypt to escape dreadful British winter and has a nice relaxing cruise down the Nile, enjoying sunshine, tranquil balmy evenings and the ancient Egyptian temples. At least, that was the idea before he ends up investigating a murder onboard the river ship. Don’t you hate it when your job keeps following you around?
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie – Book Review
“Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?”
This Poirot novel was written as Christie’s response to her brother-in-law James, who had complained that her murders were getting too refined and anaemic. You’d hope that James’ craving for a ‘good violent murder’ was satisfied with this locked room murder mystery: its chief victim, a cantankerous wealthy patriarch, is found in a pool of his own blood, his throat cut, after making a noise described by witnesses as “a soul in hell” or “a stuck pig”.
The Fly – Film Review
I broke my tradition of never going out on a Monday night during a working week to watch this 1986 David Cronenberg horror film at the Astor Theatre.
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty – Book Review
This was a perfect book to spend time with while staying in bed with a nasty head cold: entertaining, fast-paced, insanely readable, deftly mixing froth and humour with heavier subjects like bullying, domestic abuse and single parenthood. My view of the novel is inevitably coloured by the excellent HBO mini-series, which I watched first, so I can’t help but compare. “The book is better” is a very routine remark about onscreen adaptations, but in this case I thought that both versions had their particular strengths and weaknesses.
