Review-tastic

[alobear]

Movies

Money Monster:
There's not a huge amount to this film - angry punter takes George Clooney's finance TV pundit hostage over a bad investment, while Julia Roberts looks on from the control room - but it ticks along quite nicely throughout. The performances are good - I particularly liked the dynamic between Clooney and Roberts - and it has good tension, interspersed with some very funny moments. I wasn't too keen on the ending, but I'm not sure how else it could have gone, and overall I enjoyed the film.

Warcraft:
Empire described this as "at once empty and impenetrable" and was rather scathing throughout their review, but I really enjoyed it - more so than Love & Friendship (five stars from Empire) and Money Monster (four stars from Empire). It may have had something to do with expectations but, contrary to Empire's experience, I was certainly drawn into the story, I cared about the characters, and I had no trouble at all following the plot. Bits of it felt rather brutal - but then it was about the origins of a major war, so I guess that was to be expected. I particularly liked the character of Cadgar, who added both humour and heart to the story, and I would happily watch more in the series if they decided to continue with the franchise.


Theatre:

Ragtime
On Tuesday, we went to see an amateur production of Ragtime at the Bishopsgate Institute. This place is a great discovery in and of itself, as it has a very good restaurant, a pleasant library, and a whole schedule of interesting classes, talks, and shows.
The musical itself was very well staged (it took place entirely on a long catwalk of a stage with no set other than a few wooden chairs) and well performed, with great energy and talent by a diverse cast.
It felt a bit fragmented to me, and some of the lines were a bit difficult to make out (they apparently had a last minute change to the sound system to help with this), but I was invested in the characters by the end, and bits of it were quite moving.


Audiobooks

Blue Lily, Lily Blue:
This is the third and penultimate book in the Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, the slightly diminishing returns have continued. I still enjoyed it (the series has a particularly good narrator in Will Patton), and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens in the concluding volume (which only came out in April), but it didn't grab me as much as the previous two. The biggest problem was that one of the sub-plots (involving one character taking his father to court for physical abuse) felt truncated - there were two scenes relating to it in the book and they both cut off before reaching any conclusion, so I felt rather cheated of an outcome on that point. However, the introduction of Colin Greenmantle as the main bad guy was inspired, as he was unexpectedly hilarious. On coming home to his wife, Piper, one day, he removes his trousers in the kitchen:
"Piper's lust was like a single bear trap laid in the forest. It was impossible to find if you were looking for it, but you wanted to be prepared in case you came across it by chance."
Greenmantle and Piper change the tone of the whole book when they appear, and I loved them - unfortunately, they weren't in it much, and the rest of the book did suffer a bit by comparison. Still - very much looking forward to the conclusion.

Every Heart a Doorway:
This is a novella by Seanan Maguire, which I thought sounded intriguing. I've read some of her other books, but not really got on with them - however, the premise of this one drew me in. It's about a school for children who have travelled in magical worlds and are having difficulties readjusting to the real world on their return. The concept and characters are both glorious, and a lot of the psychology is really interesting, and quite heartbreaking. I did feel, though, that the introduction of a murder mystery part way through was somewhat extraneous, and detracted rather from the beauty and tragedy of the characters' situation. I didn't feel the book needed the additional plot - just following the protagonist, Nancy, on her journey to the school and experiencing it with her, would have been enough for me.
However, I would very much recommend this book to lareinemisere, nezumi_sama, and prunesquallormd, as I think they would all like it a lot.


Books

Luckiest Girl Alive:
I joined the Thinking Bob Book Club recently and this is the third book I've read for it (previously, I've liked one and not liked the other, but didn't get to go to the meeting for the book I liked).
This one is a sort-of thriller by Jessica Knoll, which tells the tale of Ani, as she prepares for her wedding and taking part in a documentary about something that happened at her school.
The book is a prime example for the debate over whether something is good overall or not, if it's awful all the way through and then has a fantastic ending. Up until the last fifteen pages or so, I absolutely hated it. I never would have finished it if it hadn't been for book club (well, I never would have started it if it hadn't been for book club, but still...) - I thought all the characters were vile (especially the protagonist) and everything that happened was unpleasant or unpalatable. Then, the ending took me completely by surprise and turned my whole perception of the book, the protagonist and the author on its head, leaving me positively reeling.
So, I'm really not sure what to say about this one!

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year:
This is an anthology put together by Jonathan Strahan every year - this one came out in 2015, so I guess the stories were all originally published in 2014. There was a large range of styles, genres and subjects, and I mostly enjoyed the stories.
However, what took up most of my attention throughout the collection was counting up author versus protagonist gender - the stats for which were as follows, out of a total of 28 stories:

Male author, female protagonist - 10
Female author, female protagonist - 12
Male author, male protagonist - 3
Female author, male protagonist - 3

So, overwhelmingly female in terms of character focus - I don't know if this is showing a trend in science fiction and fantasy in general, or a preference for Mr Strahan, in particular. As an aside, I would say about 75% of the protagonists were also specified as non-white.