Asking the Wrong Questions

Without really planning it, all of my recent film and TV writing has ended up at Lawyers, Guns & Money , while the book-related writing has ended up here. I'm not entirely sure why that happened—I tend to divide posts between the two blogs based mostly on vibes, so I guess things just broke that way. But because I know that some of these posts will be of interest to AtWQ readers, and out of a general desire to maintain a proper record, here are some of the media posts I made over at that blog in the last few weeks: First up, a review of the National Geographic/Disney+ series A Small Light , a biopic of Miep Gies, one of the people who concealed eight Jews, including the family of Anne Frank, in a secret annex in an Amsterdam warehouse, and who discovered and preserved Anne's diary after the annex was betrayed and its inhabitants taken to the death camps. I found a lot to admire about the show, while also wondering whether it was capable of facing up to the true, awful real...

Spring has sprung, and with it a whole bunch of movies I want to watch have arrived at the movie theater (as well as this bunch, see my recent review of Snowpiercer at Strange Horizons ).  Though I haven't exactly been suffering, there's certainly a somewhat fannish slant to my recent moviegoing that verges on the embarrassing--I need to get around to watching some grown-up films, pronto.  Of course, it being the end of April these are nowhere to be seen, and by the time fall and its award-bait movies roll around I'll probably have forgotten this resolution.  In the meantime, here are my thoughts on some the films I've seen recently. Veronica Mars - The Kickstarter-funded return to the world of the beloved TV series proves two things.  One, that it was always a mistake for the show's second season to pick up immediately where the first season left off and try to recreate its "mystery in a high school" plot.  And two, that while the world of Neptune, C...

A catch-all post encompassing films watched months ago and just this weekend, at theaters and at home. Charlie Wilson's War (2007) - Forget about director Mike Nichols or star Tom Hanks, this for me was an Aaron Sorkin movie, his first chance since the abysmal failure of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to demonstrate that the man who created The West Wing was still in there. Charlie Wilson's War has all the stylistic hallmarks of a Sorkin work--breakneck dialogue, wry humor, and, most refreshingly, the sense that here, for once, is a film that expects a certain level of intelligence from its audience--and certainly the subject matter--the true story of a senator who orchestrates a covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by arming the mujahadeen--seems to play to Sorkin's strengths. It gives him the opportunity to return to one of his most beloved themes--the belief that with power in their hands, smart, well-informed, driven people can make the world a better...