TV And Films

The shows and movies I like (or don’t).

📚 Future Imperfect by L.A. Graf

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51/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Part two of this trilogy involves a lot of time travel, or dimensional travel, or both, which occasionally makes it a bit difficult to keep track of who is where/when, but for the most part tracks decently.

The back cover blurb is somewhat closer to the plot of the book than with the first book in the series, but still has some notable differences. Maybe the blurbs were written much earlier in the planning process, before rewrites and editorial adjustments? The cover image also has no relation to the story.

Michael holding Future Imperfect

📚 Present Tense by L.A. Graf

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50/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set directly after “The Naked Now”, the Enterprise decides to use their extra three days to do a low-stakes check on an away team on a boring planet. Suddenly, everything goes wrong! The first book in a trilogy, so nothing gets wrapped up here, but it’s the usual Trek adventures. Some extra points for having cave exploration scenes that were claustrophobic enough to wig me out a little.

Weirdly, the summary blurb on the back of the book (and thus, on this site) is entirely unrelated to the actual plot.

Michael holding Present Tense

🎥 The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Well, it’s definitely a Gilliam film, and I do tend to like those, even when I don’t entirely “get” them right off the bat. His tendency to slip in and out of reality at any given point always engages well with me, and this is no exception. I’m just not sure what the actual theme of this one is; I may just need to rewatch it again.

I will admit that, as much as I enjoy both Gilliam and Pryce, casting Pryce as a Spaniard is questionable at best. But then, Gilliam does fall into the realm of “problematic fave” for me, and this is one more instance why.

🎥 War of the Worlds

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War of the Worlds (1953): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Holds up incredibly well. I mean, sure, part of that is the charm of early ‘50s sci-fi (weird red-hot meteor lands, so of course the local service station guy whacks it with a shovel, and when the scientist’s Geiger counter clicks like mad due to radiation, he casually says they might want to think about keeping people a little further away). But it’s also really tightly written, and still pulls me right into the story. Absolutely a classic.

🎥 Repo Man

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Repo Man (1984): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: It had been decades since I’d watched this, which was great, because there was so much I’d forgotten. Gloriously weird, with a killer soundtrack. It’s one of those films that is really good, even though in many objective ways it’s really bad, but it’s not a “so bad it’s good” situation, it’s just a superimposition of the two.

🎥 Top Gun: Maverick

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Top Gun: Maverick (2022): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: While definitely still a flashy and impressive recruitment film, is a much better film than the original, in that there’s actually a somewhat reasonable amount of plot and character development between money shots. Also lots of entertaining callbacks — the opening few minutes are practically a shot-for-shot redo of the opening few minutes of the original, just with modern equipment.

🎥 Thor: Love and Thunder

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Thor: Love and Thunder (2022): ⭐️⭐️: It was…okay? I mean, it more or less held my interest. There were amusing moments, and I wouldn’t really say I was bored through much of it. But the tone was just weird. It felt less like it was done by the same director as Ragnarok, and more like it was done by his understudy who almost but not quite understood what made Ragnarok work so well.