Every book I read and every movie and TV series I watched in January
* A slightly different version of this piece appears in Esquire.
What I read
Transcription by Kate Atkinson. A new novel by Kate Atkinson is reason to cancel all appointments, turn off the phone and stay in bed reading the book in your pajamas. Coming after what may be her finest novels, Life After Life and A God In Ruins (Though you can make a case for her Jackson Brodie detective novels), Transcription has a high bar to clear, and it wisely does not attempt this. This spy novel set in World War II has a throwaway quality, almost as if the author were talking to herself. The naïve 18-year-old heroine Juliet is warned about trusting coincidences, which pile up as the story careens to an end. But it is wonderfully entertaining, even if it is now mixed up in my head with another novel with a female spy, Restless by William Boyd.
I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal. Yes, I’m still on my Central European reading list. For this I blame the New York Review of Books reissues of almost-forgotten works, which hypnotized me with their solid-colored spines and beautiful covers. Hrabal, Krudy, Szabo, Prus…So I went to Central Europe and wrote a travel book. Please buy it.
Once and Forever by Kenji Miyazawa. Odd fables the length of an elevator ride that will haunt you for days.
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. I imagine the prompt was: If you could learn the exact date of your death, would you? The four Gold siblings of New York got the dates when they were kids. This is what happened next.
What I watched.
You must watch this.
BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee. I cannot believe that this is the first Oscar nomination for the man who made Do The Right Thing and 25th Hour.
Pose by Ryan Murphy (TV series, 8 episodes). Set in the New York ballroom culture of the 1980s (like the documentary Is Paris Burning), it’s really about people cast out by their blood families finding other outcasts and forming their own families. One minute you’re laughing at the shade, the next minute you’re tearing up at the way these fierce bitches support each other. It should be cheesy, miraculously it is not.
The Favourite by Yorgos Lanthimos
Zama by Lucrecia Martel. (Spanish with subtitles)
Bitter Melon by H.P. Mendoza. A sharp, intelligent film about a Filipino-American family in Oakland, about horrible men, and the women who enable them. The most disturbing thing about the family in Bitter Melon is how typical they are.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Marielle Heller. I saw a lot of movies in January, and this is the one that gut-punched me. Based on the autobiography of Lee Israel, a writer who couldn’t get a book deal, who ended up forging letters by famous writers. Her fake letters from Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward sounded so authentic, they fooled everyone. Melissa McCarthy is genius as the hard-drinking, caustic Israel, and Richard E. Grant is delightful as her only friend. I think of this as the horror version of my life, down to the cat. When she takes her ailing cat to the vet, who refuses treatment unless she pays her outstanding bill, it nearly killed me. Her loneliness is an almost physical pain. You think the writing life is romantic? Watch this.
You’ll like this if you…
Love Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. Green Book by Peter Farrelly is reverse-Driving Miss Daisy with elements of Crash, in which racism would be solved if everyone just got into the same car.
Love Ruth Bader Ginsburg. RBG, a documentary on the rise of one badass lawyer in a world that questions her right to practice the law.
Love Robert Redford and wish he wouldn’t retire from the movies. The Old Man and the Gun by David Lowery. With Sissy Spacek and Tom Waits, who disappoints me by not singing one of his many ditties which are so right for bank-robbing.
Hate Dick Cheney and the Bushies/Enjoy Christian Bale’s dramatic weight gains and losses (Please stop, it’s bad for your health)/Love Amy Adams (who will probably still not win an Oscar for this). Vice by Adam McKay.
Love pop culture references (Darlene Love, Charles Manson, etc) and the many-characters-stuck-in-one-place format/Enjoy watching Chris Hemsworth shake his hips while wearing jeans so low-slung they might slip off. Bad Times at the El Royale by Drew Goddard, a.k.a. Cabin in the Woods but not as fun.
Loved those Choose Your Own Adventure books (whose publisher is suing the producers). Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
Love Matthew Goode. A Discovery of Witches (TV series, 8 episodes), which is part-Harry Potter, part-Twilight, and mostly silly, but is also set in libraries and in Venetian palazzos.
Love Matthew Goode and Alfred Hitchcock. Stoker (2013) by Park Chan-Wook.
Love 80s pop. Pop, Pride and Prejudice, a documentary on how musicians like Erasure, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and George Michael helped break down the closet doors.
Love Tom Cruise on a plane, and CIA conspiracies. American Made by Doug Liman.
Love Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot and want to get angry at how the filmmakers have futzed with canon. The ABC Murders (TV series, 3 episodes) starring John Malkovich.
Want to participate in the ongoing discussion about serial killers and the people who stan them. You (TV series). I watched the first episode, in which handsome, articulate bookstore manager Penn Badgeley is revealed to be a stalker and a murderer, and I thought, “Uh-oh, the viewers are going to fall for the bad man.” And they did.
This’ll pass the time if you’re bored
Red Sparrow by Francis Lawrence. Trashy spy thriller with dodgy Russian accents.
Close by Vicky Jewson. A ludicrous script, but effective action scenes and Noomi Rapace, always a credible badass, whether she is stapling her stomach shut in Prometheus or guarding a spoiled heiress in this one.
Leap Year by Anand Tucker (2010). How is it possible to make a romantic comedy with Amy Adams and Matthew Goode in which everything falls flat? Ask the director of this stinker. I only watched it for Goode (above).
February 3rd, 2019 at 22:04
It’s usually this time of the year that we get to see Oscar-nominated movies but what we get in cinemas now is…Bato. Bwiset.
Loved Cynthia Erivo in Bad Times at the El Royale! That was a wonderful performance. She was good in Widows, too.
February 6th, 2019 at 11:09
“The category izzz… Realnesss!”
“These legs are real, these cheekbones are real, this whittled waist is real.”
I wanna be as real as Angel ha ha ha.