The Best and Worst of Last Year's Pastimes

I barely played any video games this year, and definitely nothing new. With nothing to discuss there, we'll just move on to the other categories.

BOOKS

23 books this year, almost evenly split between fiction (12) and non-fiction (11). Unlike 2021, there wasn't any marked difference in what time of year I read one or the other. I usually had enough of both to alternate.

Starting with the worst, on the non-fiction side I'd say Unexplained Mysteries of World War II. It's probably not terrible for what it's trying to do, but there were a lot of coincidences chalked up as "mysteries", and I admit I was thinking Breuer would have some research to provide plausible answers for the mysteries, but no. It was the one non-fiction book I read this year I felt I didn't get anything from. Supplementary "worst" to the sections of Knight's History of the Mexican Revolution where he goes on about how a Marxist interpretation is so obviously the wrong approach. Dude, I don't care. Settle your pissing contests on your own time.

For fiction, I would have figured early in the year it would be The Predator: Hunters and Hunted, but I think it did what it was trying to do successfully. The desperation of the soldiers came through. Natural Selection was completely ridiculous, but I read the whole book in one night, I can't say it didn't keep me engaged. I think I have to go with Shadow Moon. Granting that swords and sorcery are not really my bag, it's the one I recall being the closest to a slog to get through. Probably didn't help being the first book in a trilogy, so it had to do a lot of establishing and the heroes have to be on their back foot most of the time, but I just wasn't that invested in the story or the characters.

That's the dross, let's get to the boss! Does that work? No, it's terrible. Well, whatever. Non-fiction, Jonathan Meiburg's A Most Remarkable Bird. I didn't know anything about carcaras, but Meiburg made them come alive as a group, tied them into larger ecological or evolutionary processes, and never let the reading get too dry. Beyond that, probably Knight's 2-volume History of the Mexican Revolution. It certainly dragged in places and could have used some useful maps, but I wanted to know more about the revolution and I definitely know more now.

Fiction, I really liked The Polish Officer. Furst was able to give an effective sense of setting and mood, while creating a main character who isn't bad at what he's being asked to do, but perhaps isn't best suited for it. Whether he is or not, the impact his work can have on the war at large is rather limited, and all that mixes together into frustration and depression for Captain de Milja. Other than that, the collection of Raymond Chandler's pulp stories. I didn't particularly care about the plots, and frankly, I'm not sure how much Chandler did, either. But the guy knew how to turn a phrase.

MOVIES

Only 50 movies this year, and not nearly so many horrible ones. Let's hear it for skipping posting on Thursdays sometimes!

Which is not to say there were no horrible ones. Not that lucky, or that discerning, if you prefer. Dark Passage was built around the first-person POV gimmick, but that kid of neutralizes the Bogart/Bacall chemistry for the first half of the film. Fistful of Vengeance probably would have made more sense if I'd seen the TV series that precedes it, and the special effects detracted from the fight scenes, which were about all it had going for it. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was not terribly well-paced and scenes drug on way too long, but still better than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which didn't do the necessary work of setting up any of the emotional beats it expected to pay off near the end. There were a lot of other duds - Ghostbusters Afterlife, Once Upon a Texas Train to name two - but I don't know if those were lousy so much as just mediocre.

I think it has to come down to Super Mario Bros and Boo. I even knew Super Mario was gonna be bad, but it was worse than I remembered. It still feels like they had some unused Blade Runner or Total Recall props lying around and thought, "eh put 'em in the kids' plumber movie." I feel so bad my mom went to the theaters to see that with me. Boo felt like it was trying to be a splattercore horror movie, maybe almost a parody based on the acting, but the story didn't really line up with the presentation.

OK, wash the taste out, get the good stuff. The whole thing between Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea's characters in Ride Clear of Diablo was pretty interesting. Likewise, Screamers was not a movie I had high hopes for, but it wound up having some decent ideas in it. I think the top 5 would come down to R-Point, The Harder They Fall, Project A, Vivarium, and The Deep House. Despite the lack of Jackie Chan fighting pirates on a ship at sea (a real missed opportunity) I can't fault Project A's action sequences, even if the plot is a bit threadbare. Not usually watching those movies for story anyway.

R-Point and The Deep House both use the idea of being trapped in different ways, the latter a bit more obviously in the ever dwindling air supply, while with R-Point, it's that feeling that place is actively trying to make them stay long enough to destroy themselves. The Harder They Fall and Vivarium are probably at the top of the list. They have somewhat stronger stories, and give their characters more room to breathe and grow. I think each movie utilizes their settings and especially colors well, to create memorable places and scenes, and The Harder They Fall has some excellent musical choices.