What I Watched in 2015

This last five best list is the hardest one. All of the movies listed below are terrific. The next two movies I didn’t include on this list are also pretty great. Yet, I think there is a virtue in ordering experiences and with that in mind, Mad Max beats out competitors. I’m not sure if this is a better movie than Spotlight or Ex Machina, but it certainly occupied more of my attention this year.

Mad Max: Fury Road. To be clear, this is an action film. A well-made, sincerely wrought exercise in mayhem to be sure, but ultimately this is a long car-chase. But there is something about Fury Road that, for me, goes beyond a good movie and enters the realm of myth-making. This movie didn’t work on all of my friends and I’ve seen very detailed break-downs on how Imperator Furiosa is not a new-wave feminist icon, or how the plot has major holes, or this and that. But in the end, this film stands unmarked by carping. It found a way to make action movies cool again, sketching in 120 minutes a world entire while leaving plenty of alluring blank spaces.
Star Wars: The Force Awakened. After my second watching I think I have a better handle of what this film is and isn’t. Whether or not this film entertained you or sent you into rapturous heights of fandom depends on how much faith you have that the sequels will answer the questions of Episode Seven. For me, I entered this film wanting to be convinced I wasn’t wasting my time and I left exhilarated by what comes next.
Ex Machina. This movie wants you to underestimate it. It wants you to think of it as a rip-off of half-dozen other “androids amok” movies. To a certain degree, its plot depends on you making such mistakes. Because what this movie really is about only becomes apparent in the final reel. Because what this movie is really about is information and how it’s used against us.
Spotlight. If Ex Machina paints the downside of of knowing too much, this movie effectively describes how the opposite. With strong acting, a brilliant script, and determination not to turn the drama of the story behind the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal into melodrama, this story focuses on one thing - truth and its consequences.
Inside/Out: This year had two Pixar movies but only one that I’ve seen. Funny, poignant, and thought-provoking, In/Out continues Pixar’s exploration of secret lives. Here, we see the inside of one girl’s mind, as personified by five disparate emotions. Similar to the other movies I’ve listed above, as fine as the movie itself is, the part that kept me thinking about it were the layers of invention and imagination glimpsed around the edges.

Then, of course there was television. “Game of Thrones” seemed to lose its way before giving us its best set-piece yet. The second season of “Leftovers" became a completely different show that somehow said all the same things as the first season, only better. Marvel’s small screen was far more interesting than its tent-pole movies (Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and the constantly improving Agents of Shield). I binge watched the first four episodes of “The Expanse,” pretty sure I found the next Battlestar Galactica.

Review of R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

First, a word about how I came to pick up the first novel in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing historical fantasy series. In short, after finishing "A Dance with Dragons," by George R.R. I googled what should I read next. This series came up. I mention this because it might serve as a usual gauge for what to expect from "The Darkness That Came Before;" people liking Martin's mix of history, in-depth characterization, dark subject matter, and world-building will probably like Bakker's work. People not fond of entire chapters devoted to the Byzantine political maneuvers, a dozen pages of appendices on characters, maps, and language trees, or character names with umlauts should avoid this book. Basically, the story of 'The Darkness That Comes Before," follows a warrior monk by the name of Anasürimbur Kellhus, who during a quest to find his father, becomes entwined with a Holy War against a nation of fanatical monotheists. The story is...

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation. Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...

Ancient Logic

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