Tag: rant

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025)

I was disappointed with this movie for two reasons, one general and one personal:

  • The ending didn’t feel final, after so much buildup.
  • There was entirely too much water.

To elaborate on the lack of emotional finality: Some reviews say the ending was a gracious and moving send-off that tidily wraps up the whole movie series with meaningful callbacks and clever retconning. That is, of course, what they are supposed to say, so even if such assertions are sincere, they sound hollow. It’s an expensive movie, made by experienced people; naturally, we are expected to like and approve of it. But other reviews agree with my view: whatever the moviemakers may have been trying to do, it didn’t work as well as one might have hoped.

To elaborate on the excess of water: Classic case of “Well done, thanks, I hate it.” I personally hate underwater scenes. Hate hate hate them. They make me disproportionately anxious. I do not find them fun and entertaining, unlike other forms of danger (e.g., precipitous heights, car chases). I enjoy action movies in general, and action movies are exciting because the fictional hero (and in the case of Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan, to an unprecedented extent, the actor playing the fictional hero) is placed in life-threatening danger. But I hate water scenes. And this movie had one that went on for… I dunno, 20 minutes? I Googled and couldn’t immediately find the duration online, but one article said there was a single take in the movie that was 4 minutes long, so I don’t feel like 20 minutes is an unreasonable guess!

Canvas poster on display at my local movie theater, Wanda Cinema Yuhang.
We watched MI:8 in the biggest cinema hall the evening after the movie opened in China. Sadly, the theater was mostly empty. (Where my Chinese Tom Cruise fans at???)

More thoughts on Final Reckoning below, including plot spoilers.

Continue reading Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025)

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

Previously, I read Childhood’s End in 1999. I vaguely remembered some sort of mystical transformation of humankind at the end. In fact, I remember a book cover (which maybe doesn’t exist) that was black and asymmetrical with a looming red/orange/yellow embryo symbolizing humanity’s next phase of existence. I think I was confusing it with a bluish cover for Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two.

I saw a cheap used paperback with a spaceship on the cover on my trip to the US in December and decided to buy it and read it again. I had the vague idea that maybe the book would have some relevant things to say about the transformation of society that some are predicting will occur as a result of the development of artificial intelligence.

I was disappointed.

See below to find out why.

Continue reading Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

When and Why I Read Childhood's End

Read it once before. Got a cheap copy in Atlanta December 2023. Wanted to read it because it's about the future of humanity, and the AI people keep talking about the future of humanity. This had nothing relevant to say though.

Genre: science-fiction
Date started / date finished: 30-Mar-24 to 31-Mar-24
Length: 218 pages
ISBN: 0345347951
Originally published in: 1953/1974
Amazon link: Childhood's End

Barbie (2023)

If you think Barbie was well done, you and I have a different idea about what a well done movie does.

My reaction in this case was not “Well done, thanks, I hate it.” That’s more or less how I felt about Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012), which I wouldn’t have watched if I had known it was horror sci-fi and not sci-fi. That’s on me.

Nor am I objecting to the fantasy premise, which is that someone in the real world is adversely influencing a Barbie in Barbieland, thus that Barbie has to go to the real world and do something to fix the situation.

Nor is my negative reaction rooted in culture politics. By all means, be overtly didactic and feminist or whatever, but for the love of cheesecake, have a coherent, positive message.

Much like Frozen, Barbie was immensely entertaining, but the longer I thought (and thought and thought) about it, the less the characters, plot, and theme made sense.

Spoilers below.

Continue reading Barbie (2023)

Educated by Tara Westover

I am not practiced in evaluating biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. I don’t often read them. In fact, I only just learned (by asking Google) that the difference between an autobiography and a memoir is that the former generally consists of key facts about a person who just happens to be the author, whereas the latter is more about “emotional truth”.

So what do I think of the emotional truth of Tara Westover’s memoir Educated? I’m not sure. I could go at it one of several ways. Maybe it’s an indictment of a backward Mormon family. Maybe it’s the story of the triumph of a determined individual over uniquely challenging circumstances. Maybe it’s the literary equivalent of a sordid reality TV-show. Probably it’s a little bit of all those things. See below for more on what I thought of the book and why.

Are there spoilers in the post? Well… memoirs don’t have plot, and you know that Tara became a successful author in the end, so… no. Not really.

Continue reading Educated by Tara Westover

When and Why I Read Educated

I don't usually read memoirs, but people keep talking about this book.

Genre: Memoir
Date started / date finished: 22-Mar-20 to 23-Mar-20
Length: 384 pages
ISBN: 9780099511021
Originally published in: 2018
Amazon link: Educated

The Many Worlds of Albie Bright by Christopher Edge

I’m glad I got The Many Worlds of Albie Bright from the library rather than the book store. Didn’t like it. Why? See below.

If you’re looking for middle-grade science-fiction/fantasy involving physics and a child who goes on a quest to find a lost parent, you can’t go wrong with Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 classic A Wrinkle in Time.

Continue reading The Many Worlds of Albie Bright by Christopher Edge

When and Why I Read The Many Worlds of Albie Bright

I am reading this for the Middle Grade / Young Adult Fiction Book Club. Even if nobody else is. Borrowed the ebook from the Singapore library system.

Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi
Date started / date finished: 21-Mar-20 to 22-Mar-20
Length: 176 pages
ISBN: 9781524713584
Originally published in: 2016
Amazon link: The Many Worlds of Albie Bright

Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones

I have nothing good to say about this book. I do not understand how it can possibly be a bestseller.

I’m not the only one who feels like it’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Here’s an excerpt from a PW review of Wintersong that encapsulates my objections succinctly:

“The plot meanders, the stakes are ill-defined, and the characters lack depth and verisimilitude.”

If you think I’m cherry picking and only this one snooty publishing gatekeeper disliked it, yes, I am cherry picking—but here are some notes from an editor and book blogger who was similarly underwhelmed.

If you want to know more about why I didn’t like Wintersong, dive in to the rant below.

Continue reading Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones

When and Why I Read Wintersong

I am reading this for the Middle Grade / Young Adult Fiction Book Club. It is marketed as a retelling of the 1986 movie Labyrinth.

Genre: young adult fantasy / romance
Date started / date finished: 13-Jun-19 to 17-Jun-19
Length: 448 pages
ISBN: ASIN B01C2TAATC
Originally published in: 2017
Amazon link: Wintersong

The Ship by Antonia Honeywell

In a world ravaged by ecological disaster and ruled by digital tyranny, a father buys and stocks a ship so that his daughter can live in ease and comfort among 500 specially selected people, out of reach of the collapse of civilized society. Are the girl and her mother really on board with this whole plan, though? Read The Ship to find out what’s in store for those on the ark.

Or don’t. Personally, I can’t recommend it. See below for why.

Continue reading The Ship by Antonia Honeywell

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The cover of Ready Player One says “Enchanting. WILLY WONKA meets THE MATRIX.” —USA Today. I thought it was more like Second Life meets Speed Racer meets Surrogates.

OASIS, the book’s highly advanced and therefore seemingly magical virtual world, in some ways resembles Second Life, an online platform where user avatars can interact with one another in a variety of digital settings for business, education, entertainment, or personal reasons. In both cases, the world is fake but the social and economic relationships inside it are very real.

The book embodies modern liberal values such as the superiority of science over superstition, the urgency of the need for alternative energy sources, the right to online anonymity, the idea that information (and thus education) wants to be free, the equality of all races, genders, and sexual orientations, the importance of inner beauty, the protection of basic human rights, and, of course, the inherent evil of money-grubbing mega-corporations run by villains who, like Speed Racer‘s E.P. Arnold Royalton, will not hesitate to take with deadly force whatever their obscene piles of cash can’t buy.

To the extent that the book has a message, it’s that of the mediocre 2009 Bruce Willis movie Surrogates: the real world should be more important to humans than any substitute. However, the whole of Ready Player One seems to argue the exact opposite: “The digital world is really cool, guys! We can use it to live in our own retro-futuristic fantasy worlds, like, forever!” The moral of the story thus seems not just tacked on but insincere.

What, then, is the point? The novel is an unsubtle homage to the pop culture of several decades set in a technologically superior “dystopia”, though anything with so much baked-in wish-fulfillment can’t possibly be properly dystopian, if you ask me.

But hey. At least there’s a Firefly reference in there.

See below for more thoughts on the novel as well as a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

When I bought The Good Earth from the Amazon Kindle store, I had to choose between buying it by itself for $7.50 or buying the whole trilogy for $15.39. I’m glad I only bought the first one. One was enough.

The style of writing is simple in a kind of old-fashioned, grand, Biblical way that grated on me long before I reached the end. Long compound sentences rolled along relentlessly, one after another, connecting each thought or action with the previous one. Never have I read a book that contained so many “and”s. Moreover, those “and”s didn’t seem to be building towards anything in a meaningful way. The novel had a straightforward timeline and virtually zero tension, zero plot.

See my Backlist books post on The Good Earth on Asian Books Blog for more thoughts on this Pulitzer Prize–winning historical novel set in 1920s China.

When and Why I Read The Good Earth

This book was chosen by Rachel of the Hungry Hundred Book Club for June 2018.

Genre: fiction (historical)
Date started / date finished: 23-May-2018 / 27-May-2018
Length: 225
ISBN: ASIN B008F4NRA8
Originally published in: 1931
Amazon link: The Good Earth

A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

This ambitious film adaptation of a ground-breaking children’s sci-fi novel was faithful to the book in fits and spurts, and in some ways it was better. Still, I agree with the box-office receipts on this one: not a winner.

I’m biased towards the book because I read it growing up and remember it vividly. Since screenplays can’t accommodate as many details as even the shortest of novels, liking this movie was going to be difficult in any case. That being said, the movie has some real flaws, about which, more below.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/a-wrinkle-in-time-2018/id1353642886

See below for some comparisons with the book and a list of reviews as well as a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading A Wrinkle in Time (2018)