One Sentence Media Reviews
I absolutely adored this hard boiled detective story (adapted from a classic Raymond Chandler novel), primarily because it was taut, exciting, cool, with great characters and stylish scenes, but equally as much because there is something irresistible and hilarious about Elliot Gould as a sardonic world-weary private eye.
Manchester hits the nail on the head with this biography of Douglas MacArthur, and I strongly recommend it to any history buff - interesting, well-written, approachable but with a great level of research and detail, and at the same time not so long as to get bogged down.
Network (1976) exemplifies what I love about 70s movies - bold, creative, hilariously written, and poignant, and altho it slows down and loses its pace a bit in the third act, I would still heartily recommend this sharp drama to anyone interested.
I think it's easy to criticize the later Anderson movies for being very stylized, often repetitively so, but to me (and I am in general a big Wes fan) Asteroid City was impressively weird, creatively constructed, and if it tried too hard in the process, well, that's an acceptable price for breaking the mold.
I would never have watched this kind of lowest common denominator mass market drek but I had covid and it served its purpose very well - entertaining, explains everything twice so you don't have to pay attention, some decent actors.
The fifth and sixth books in Erikson's Malazan series are less focused, with even more characters and oh so many intersecting plot lines, such that altho the writing and details are on par with Erikson's excellent work, the overall picture has suffered a bit.
The acting and dialogue may be kind of bland, and the plot is only exactly as serviceable as it needs to be, but none of that matters at all because the (1995's version of 2021) tech dystopia vibes are just!!!! immaculate.
All the fast paced political action of Veep, but instead of comedy it's hard hitting drama and intrigue, with a slightly predictable plot but great casting and acting to make up for it.
This self help book's ideas about beating migraines are excellent, brilliant, real, helpful, and validated in other contexts, meanwhile this short book explaining them is hopelessly padded out even despite short length and poorly translated to English.