Top Ten Movies of 2018

As with books, movies made up a big part of my 2018 and I was able to see at least five a month between January and December. Here are my 10 favorites. But first a few honorable mentions: 

*Loveless, dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev: A movie technically released in 2017, but not seen by me until this year, this bleak Russian tale is an unsparing look at a crumbling marriage in crumbling society, and the innocent kid in the eye of the storm. 

*Searching, dir. Aneesh Chaganty: A taut thriller that not only makes its gimmick work but uses it to its advantage to show a tense few days in the life of a grieving father, this was one of 2018’s unexpected hidden gems

*Avengers: Infinity War, dir. Russo Brothers: While too soon to say this was a panacea for super hero fatigue, this character piece disguised as an ensemble juggernaut renewed a sorely lacking sense of urgency in these movies and made me excited for its culmination next year 

10. Burning, dir. Lee Chang-dong: A daunting work at 150 deliberate minutes, this South Korean film based on a Murakami story is a haunting, elegiac experience centered on loss of control, dreams deferred and the creeping horror that can overtake our lives at any moment, embodied by a creepy Steven Yeun. Despite its pacing I found myself riveted. 

9. The Old Man and the Gun, dir. David Lowery: The director of last year’s best movie offers up something different but no less enjoyable with this lighthearted, easy going tale of an aging bank robber. And much like last year’s Lucky, the sense of melancholic acceptance in what is supposedly Redford’s final performance packs a serious punch. 

8. Eighth Grade, dir. Bo Burnham: While it would be easy to shoehorn a boatload of social commentary into this movie about one shy girl’s last few days of junior high, Burnham does not do that and instead crafts a painfully relatable movie filled with awkward encounters, parental miscommunications and brushes with very adult themes. Very funny, with a central performance by Elsie Fisher being one of the best of the year. 

7. Revenge, dir. Coralie Fargeat: A much needed fresh take on a subgenre that has offered very few “good” movies, this story of one woman’s journey from victim to hero expertly subverts expectations, from its violent switch halfway through, to its final fight and to its overall hopeful tone. That, along with the two central performances of Matilda Lutz and Kevin Janssens, this movie brings some much needed talent and skill to the rape revenge subgenre. 

6. Mandy, dir. Panos Cosmatos: Nicolas Cage is full of surprises. For every DTV schlock fest you get something like this that plays right into crazed hands, offering up a schizoid journey of revenge filled with purple hazed acid trips, deformed biker gangs and a chainsaw fight. It helps that its direction is impeccable and has what is easily the best movie score of 2018. A lot of people did not like its slow first half, but I found it effortlessly eased the viewer into its warped world. 

5. You Were Never Really Here, dir. Lynne Ramsey: This, along with We Need to Talk About Kevin, firmly establishes Ramsey as one of world cinema’s foremost auteur directors. This story of one broken man’s journey to save a victimized young girl presents startling visuals and a strange nonlinear structure that makes everything that happen feel like a nightmare composed of a troubled past and an uncertain future. And Joaquin Phoenix gives his best performance and one of the two best of the year. 

4. First Reformed, dir. Paul Schrader: Speaking of that other best performance of 2018, it is here, with Ethan Hawke’s troubled and helpless priest whose mortality and loss of faith have crippled him emotionally and spiritually. The film as a whole feels like an artifact from a half century ago, echoing the films of Bresson and Bergman as well as Schrader’s own filmography, and has the air of a late masterpiece from one of cinema’s forgotten giants. 

3. Blindspotting, dir. Carlos Lopez Estrada: In a year where many similar themed movies were released and praised, this one easily stood out the most. It has an energy I felt others like it lacked, as well as an overall upbeat tone that many movies that share similar subject matter rarely have the courage have. In its seamless mixture of heavy themes coexisting with some of the funniest scenes of the year reminded me of Do the Right Thing. High praise, sure, but this movie really earned it. And Rafael Casal gives the best supporting male performance as the volatile Miles, whose quick wit and aggressive demeanor has faint echoes of Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas. 

2. Suspiria, dir. Luca Guadagnino: A remake of Suspira had no business being even remotely good, let alone great, but this reimagining of a horror classic just might be the best horror remake since John Carpenter’s The Thing. Using the story from the original as a jumping off point, this extended fever dream is filled with historical allusions, a trio of immersive performances by Tilda Swinton and set piece after set piece of violent, grotesque beauty. It leaves a haunting, profound mark, something I never thought I would say about a horror remake. 

1. Hereditary, dir. Ari Aster: These past few years have brought a minimum of one horror movie a year that promises to change the game. Some are better than others, but this one is undeniably the real deal, the kind of horror film filled with original, iconic moments that I predict will stand the test of time. With its pitch perfect direction, a quartet of frenzied performances headlined by the great Toni Collette and bloodcurdling visuals and events underscored by a perverse sense of humor (something I only noticed on a second viewing), this movie makes a case that the great American horror films should be viewed as simply great American films. Hereditary surely is one. 

Top Ten Books of 2018

Top Ten Books of 2018 Another year is almost done, and with that comes my annual compiling of the movies and books I’ve seen in the past 52 weeks into a concise and tidy list. Since I met my 1,001 goal this year I scaled back what I read, reading only 50 this year instead of the usual 100 +, so I scaled down my list too, with only one consisting of 10. Here they are:

 10. I Hear Your Voice by Young Ha-Kim: This crazed, energetic look at youth on the fringes of modern South Korea has qualities that echo talents as various as Auster, Ryu Murakami and Bret Easton Ellis. It can be gross, heartbreaking, but wholly unforgettable, and easily found its way onto my top ten lost.
 9. King Zeno by Nathanial Rich: The first book after I read after meeting my goal (and the first new book of 2018 I read) is a brilliant, alternate history period peace that tackles police violence, racism and the birth of the modern world with intrigue and ambition. Like the music at its heart, it whips you into a frenzied state and never lets you go until it wants to.
 8. A Shout in the Ruins by Kevin Powers: After being blown away by The Yellow Birds, I did not think Kevin Powers would publish his second novel so soon: that tiny book felt like a summation. I was wrong and I am glad, because his sophomore effort, while covering very different ground is no less enthralling or affecting. It is a complex yet inviting tale of the long claws of our brutal history.
 7. Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine by Kevin Wilson: The best short story collection of the year and one of 2018’s biggest surprises. What Wilson lacks in the long form he makes up for in fragments, with many in this collection, like the innovative “Wildfire Johnny” and the quietly devastating title story being mini masterpieces of what is quickly becoming my favorite storytelling art form
6. The Labyrinth of Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: This massive 800 page book was 2018’s purest delight: an enveloping, exciting and sometimes scary story that kept me on my toes to its last page. It’s a rollicking page turner, but also a heartfelt love letter to reading, love and the power of the human mind.
 5. McTeague by Frank Norris: One of my promises I made to myself once I reached my goal earlier this year was to read more books published by authors born pre-1900, and of the two I read, this one stuck with me the most. For a book 120 years old it feels rather fresh and immediate and no less disturbing than it was when it was first published, with reprehensible characters, an intriguing plot line and a famously downbeat ending
4. Encircling 2: Origins by Carl Frode Tiller: With this second installment of a not yet translated trilogy, Tiller wrote what is easily my favorite international book series. Like the first one, the story focuses on the unseen David as three more people enter the picture to give their opinion of David, whether it is true or not. Interesting and thought-provoking with a keen twist at the very end, I am eagerly awaiting the third and final book.
 3. There There by Tommy Orange: A debut novel that not only announces a stunning new literary voice but a book that attempts to rewrite our preconceived notions about a certain type of writing. Orange’s novel offers a new kind of Native American experience through his use of multiple narrators: one informed by folklore and marginalization and in a tug of war between tradition and modernity, climaxing powerfully ambiguous climax.
 2. Throat Sprockets by Tim Lucas: One of the strangest books I have read is also one of the most pure horror stories I’ve encountered. Anybody with a strange obsession that unwilling separates themselves from acceptable society, whether that is pop culture or something much more private will find their reflection in this strangely hypnotic and undeniably erotic tale of when said obsession comes to light.
 1. Some Hell by Patrick Nathan: The most self-assured debut of 2018. We have had a handful of gay-themed books come out in the past few years, but none, I think, possess this book’s immense power to disturb and move on the same level as Scott Heim’s Mysterious Skin. With weighty yet savory prose, a few disquieting scenes and an impending sense of doom made painfully real in the book’s perfect ending, this was easily my favorite time reading in 2018.

Review: "Lake Success" by Gary Shteyngart

American author Gary Shteyngart is someone who rarely made a blip on my radar, a kind of lesser well-known writer in the vain of a Michael Chabon or Jonathan Lethem and his second novel, Absurdistan, the only book of his I have read has easily slipped from my memory since I read at the tail end of 2010. And now, 8 years later, his fourth novel Lake Success offered in little in the way of expectation for me, but after finishing, it left me surprised, entertained and unexpectedly moved in some scenes. It’s imperfections are glaring and impossible to ignore or talk about, so while as a whole it peters out, fizzles and comes back to life in rapid successions, it’s high points, little scenes that try and mostly succeed to offer a fictionalized account of our country’s current moment, the book has the potential to be mesmerizing. At the center of this novel is Barry Cohen, a self-involved egomaniac who manages nearly a billion dollars worth of hedge funds. With his failing marriage to his much younger wife Seema, the recent autism diagnosis in his son Shiva and the threat of being indicted after a few shady financial dealing, Barry is on the verge of a total meltdown, which boils over after knock down drag out fight with Seema, where Barry, along with his collection of priceless watches, hits the road by bus to reconnect with his college sweetheart. I was afraid early on Shteyngart was going to make Barry easy to hate, but thankfully he doesn’t. His bubble of wealth taints his inner monologues, which come out hopelessly sappy, misguided and foolish, but we never forget that he means well and that his pain is valid, like his flashbacks to his home and school life and one particularly great chapter where Barry reconnects with a fried employee. As I said, the chunks where it doesn’t work tend to be laughable, like the book’s longest chapter that ends in a ridiculous and tawdry manner that reads like a character betrayal and needless rock bottom for an already battered Barry. But the book redeems itself with a beautiful ending, where Barry finally learns something useful. This is a funny, sometimes heartbreaking novel about finding hope in troubled times. 
Rating: 4/5

Review: "Impossible Owls" by Brian Phillips

Impossible Owls, the first book by American essayist Brian Phillips is a wonderfully strange and brutally brilliant book that tries and mostly succeeds in filtering our modern American consciousness down to it’s finest and purest distillation. I knew little about Phillips before I picked this book up, but FSG Originals has a pretty good track record, more so with its nonfiction than with its fiction, and with this book, it does not disappoint. Covering a wide variety of topics and subject matters, from people to places, contained within these playful and heavily researched essays is a snapshot of desires, hopes and despairs that are familiar and somewhat alien, painfully honest and finally, transformative. Much like I would do with any short story collection I read and review, I will be picking out my favorite pieces from this collection, and while I like some more than others, there was not a weak link in this book, which is a good because all of these range in length from 30 to over 60 pages. It’s starts off amazingly with “Out in the Great Alone” where Phillips flies to Alaska to cover the 2013 Iditarod Dog Sled Race. When Alaska comes to mind, I, like most people, think of the stories of Jack London and how cut off the state is from the what is seemingly the rest of civilization (Phillips talks about it’s paltry population density, which plays right into our preconceived notions), but in following the “mushers” by plane with his guide and two eccentric Frenchman, he expounds on the importance of the race to a nearly abandoned village, what mushers hallucinate while on the trail and the types of people who end up winning. Throughout this and other essays in this collection, like “Sea of Crises”, which links sumo wrestling with the suicide of Yukio Mishima and “The Little Gray Wolf Will Come” about Russian animator Yuri Norstein, whose volatile career is defined by an unfinished cartoon based on Gogol’s “The Overcoat”, I was reminded of the nonfiction (and fiction) films of Werner Herzog, who is mostly interested in people with odd obsessions who go beyond what is humanly possible to excel at something very few people are even familiar with, let alone are good at. Phillips also attempts in roundabout way to pontificate on our current time, with both “Lost Highway” about Route 66 and the Roswell incident and “Man-Eaters” about his trip to India to visit a tiger preserve having references to Trump’s election (thankfully, these feelings don’t override the narrative of each essay). But where Phillips really shines for me is in his personal recollections, like “In the Dark: Science Fiction and Small Towns”, where a trip to see Wraith of the Titans, his love affair with Star Trek Enterprise and his troubled love of The X-Files are ways, both cynical and optimistic, to reflect on who technology has changed all of us and “But Not Like Your Typical Love Story” the star of the collection, where the Phillips recounts the life of his childhood home’s most famous resident and connects it with his own mixed feelings about living there, and living in general. These are pitch perfect essays, both fascinating and full of life, wit and tons of heart. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Foe" by Iain Reid

Even more than a year after reading it, Iain Reid’s first novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things still haunts me. It’s quiet power, and it’s subtle dread are like guideposts to my most worried and fevered nightmares that both scare me and draw me in and make me look a little more deeply at my personal fears. And with his second novel Foe, Reid seems to be at the helm of this new kind of horror, one not built on monsters in closets or maniacs with sharp objects and instead built around some of our most fundamental and terrifying questions like: what is my place in the world? What am I to those around me, to the ones that I love? And most of all: is life and everything in it worth anything more than what we prescribe to it. These are questions I think all of us ask ourselves when we are alone in the middle of night and they are questions we really do not have any answers for, at least ones that are intrinsic. And Reid confronts these questions in weirdly wonderful ways that are both scary but also undeniably heartfelt. This second novel is a change of pace from his last one with a more tangible plot and it’s events a little less shrouded in ambiguity, but still cloaked in a web of terrifying mystery. It focuses on a couple, Junior and Henrietta, a couple in the near future who live an isolated life on a farm. One night, they are visited by mysterious man named Terrance, who says he works for a company that is exploring the possibilities of space travel. He says that Junior has been selected from a lottery he was not made aware of to be shipped into space and stay there for years at a time. But in his place, Terrance says, will be a replicant of Junior, whom Terrance promise will be exactly like him. The majority of the novel deals with the implications of such circumstances. Henrietta becomes distant and morose, a state heightened once Terrance comes to live with the couple once Junior has been selected. Terrance is the closest thing this book has to a boogeyman. His motives are never made clear. He is oddly polite but bureaucratic in his duty to his company, and every word he speaks makes your skin crawl. Reid’s dialogue is effortless and real, making us care for the strange plight of these two individuals and giving the weight of what is going on a horrifying absoluteness. Reading through this, this felt more like a speculative fiction story than a horror story like Reid’s first novel, and that is a good thing. Instead of thinking of Ramsey Campbell I was thinking of the late Harlan Ellison and stories like “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” where realty is skewed in brutal yet unnoticeable ways. It’s ending is not as impactful as his first, but the lingering sense of unease it will illicit out of some after reading the last few pages is one they, and certainly I, won’t forget so soon. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Mirror, Shoulder, Signal" by Dorthe Nors

One of the deceptively simple yet most brilliant touches in Danish writer Dorthe Nors debut novel in English is that Sonja, the book’s neurotic main character, is a translator of those bloody and convoluted Nordic Noir books that have captured the world’s imagination. It’s wonderful device that contrasts with the book’s banality, but on a deeper level it works as a reflection that most anyone can relate to. This seemingly simple book treats the everyday things we have to overcome with a gravity that is instantly recognizable to us: the struggle to get from hour one 1 to 24, to improve our lives in the most basic of terms, and, of course, the way things cannot go our way and the healthy and unhealthy ways we deal with the anxiety created by such circumstances. And Nors does this quite effectively with her use of flashbacks that blend in seamlessly with the fraught present (one reviewer called Nors the “queen of conjunctions”). It is a device that takes a short while to get used to and some readers may lose track of what is tangible and what is a memory and forced to read and reread, but Nors natural, dry sense of humor and odd choices keeps the reader’s attention. As mentioned, the book focuses on Sonja, a middle aged woman who seems to be on the cusp of disappearing from the world. Despite her nice gig as a translator, she has very little to look forward to in her life. She recently got out of a relationship with a man named Paul on humiliating terms, she has shaky relationships with her friends and family and, as suggested by the title, she is having a real hard time trying to get her driver’s license due in part to a pair of instructors that make her uncomfortable and her hidden diagnosis of positional vertigo. Sonja goes about her days between classes getting massages from her friend Ellen, who senses her real life stresses through the knots in her body and her interactions with her other Molly, a married psychologist who has a weakness for charismatic, new age cult-like men. Her desire to get her driver’s license comes from a need to escape Copenhagen and move back to her home town of Balling, which is shown in those flashbacks mentioned earlier, where we learn about Sonja’s shaky relationship with her sister Kate, the stable one on the family with a husband and kids whom Sonja struggles to even contact throughout the book. There is no linear plot, although it is less episodic than I thought it would be near the beginning, with a failed camping trip with a group of Ellen’s female friends covering a handful of chapters. It is only near end of the book that I realized what it was building towards, demonstrated in a show stopping climax that moves from a rail car to a bench that portrays a glimpse into Sonja’s future where the optimism and pessimism are left ambiguous. This is a small book with a big heart about what it means to be truly free and the costs and benefits of such a way of living.   
Rating: One of the deceptively simple yet most brilliant touches in Danish writer Dorthe Nors debut novel in English is that Sonja, the book’s neurotic main character, is a translator of those bloody and convoluted Nordic Noir books that have captured the world’s imagination. It’s wonderful device that contrasts with the book’s banality, but on a deeper level it works as a reflection that most anyone can relate to. This seemingly simple book treats the everyday things we have to overcome with a gravity that is instantly recognizable to us: the struggle to get from hour one 1 to 24, to improve our lives in the most basic of terms, and, of course, the way things cannot go our way and the healthy and unhealthy ways we deal with the anxiety created by such circumstances. And Nors does this quite effectively with her use of flashbacks that blend in seamlessly with the fraught present (one reviewer called Nors the “queen of conjunctions”). It is a device that takes a short while to get used to and some readers may lose track of what is tangible and what is a memory and forced to read and reread, but Nors natural, dry sense of humor and odd choices keeps the reader’s attention. As mentioned, the book focuses on Sonja, a middle aged woman who seems to be on the cusp of disappearing from the world. Despite her nice gig as a translator, she has very little to look forward to in her life. She recently got out of a relationship with a man named Paul on humiliating terms, she has shaky relationships with her friends and family and, as suggested by the title, she is having a real hard time trying to get her driver’s license due in part to a pair of instructors that make her uncomfortable and her hidden diagnosis of positional vertigo. Sonja goes about her days between classes getting massages from her friend Ellen, who senses her real life stresses through the knots in her body and her interactions with her other Molly, a married psychologist who has a weakness for charismatic, new age cult-like men. Her desire to get her driver’s license comes from a need to escape Copenhagen and move back to her home town of Balling, which is shown in those flashbacks mentioned earlier, where we learn about Sonja’s shaky relationship with her sister Kate, the stable one on the family with a husband and kids whom Sonja struggles to even contact throughout the book. There is no linear plot, although it is less episodic than I thought it would be near the beginning, with a failed camping trip with a group of Ellen’s female friends covering a handful of chapters. It is only near end of the book that I realized what it was building towards, demonstrated in a show stopping climax that moves from a rail car to a bench that portrays a glimpse into Sonja’s future where the optimism and pessimism are left ambiguous. This is a small book with a big heart about what it means to be truly free and the costs and benefits of such a way of living.   
Rating: 5/5

Review: "Census" by Jesse Ball

There is a certain type of modern, usually American, writer that I do not really like, whose work is pared down, its beautiful elements plucked until the story is merely a skeleton of what it could be and the writer comes off less like a storyteller and more like a performance artist. I think of writers like Catherine Lacey, Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter who are guilty of this (mainly in their short fiction): a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of George Saunders and whatever their genre of choice is. But, after being mean, I can say that there can be merit in stories like these done the right way, and at the forefront of this aforementioned quality is American author Jesse Ball, whose most recent novel, Census, offers a menacing yet tender entry into this mumblecore genre of post modern fiction. Reminding me a lot of the work of Blake Butler, although not nearly as acidic, violent or nihilistic, this tale of the love between a father and son feels immediate, heartfelt and shot through with the pain of impending lose. It focuses on an unnamed widower who gets news that he is about to die. His main concern though is for his grown son who has Down’s syndrome and will be left alone in a cruel world once he is gone. The narrator decides to take a job for shadowy government agency to travel “up north” through towns denoted only by letter to give people a mark: a little symbol tattooed just below the ribs. What follows is a strange journey through these little towns and through the narrator’s memory.  We see what the two have to deal with in their mysterious quest, from those who offer bits of comfort to those who offer a healthy yet hurtful distrust. We also learn of the narrator’s life with his wife, a kind of performance artist/clown and whose full story is only revealed near the book’s heartfelt and emotional climax. This is a strange story, but a powerful one that makes me rethink some of my harsher literary opinions. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "In Every Moment We Are Still Alive" by Tom Malmquist

In Every Moment We Are Still Alive, the debut novel from Swedish poet Tom Malmquist reads like a grief stricken fever dream, one where the worst thing happens to you, followed by the next worst thing and in the end it is up to you to make sense of it all. This is not a novel built on great dialogue or great characters (although they can be found within these pages) but one of great moods and set pieces. We remember scenes instead of the people within them, who are given names that are easily forgotten once they have made their presence known on the page, but the scenes are written with a furious passion that kind of stuck with me even if it never quite hits the emotional high notes you’d expect from its initial premise. I di not know if this is based on a true story, but I’d bet money that it is, because the narrator and the author shares the same first name. When the book opens up, Tom’s wife Karin’s checkup becomes a frantic battle between life and death, as it shows that she has cancer and the baby must be birthed prematurely. As the baby gets better, Karin’s health quickly declines and she eventually dies. It is a premise we have seen before, but how it drifts between the past and the present, eschewing big monumental life shifts for quiet moments that run the gamut from sweet to petty, the best of which involves the sad story Tom is turning into a book, really sets this book apart from others like it. Like I said before, the other characters even Tom’s dad who plays a big role in the book’s second half seem deliberately two-dimensional, hopefully another way Malmquist is showing the narrator’s (or his) fractured state of mind. This is an energized book that is written from a dark place, but never forgets about the blades of light that seep into our lives when we need them most. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Killing Commendatore" by Haruki Murakami

I am well aware it is predictable at best and hackneyed at worst to come into this review of Killing Commendatore, the new novel by my favorite author Haruki Murakami telling you how great it is, but it is. It is a phenomenal reading experience, one that envelops the reader throughout its 690 pages and is filled with enough engaging mysteries and riddles that it is hardly a disappointment that many of them go unanswered (it is quite the opposite most of the time) and shows that he has not slowed down as the man approaches 70, with this being his second longest book, behind 1Q84 and just a tad bit longer than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which I will get too shortly). While I really, really liked it, I’m quite positive it is not going to be a “pillar” book, a work of art and artist can prop up their legacy with. Despite its length and the ideas contained with it, Murakami has tread similar ground in the past and like his other long haul novels mentioned previously, it is not a good introduction to his work. But for fans of his who have read most of his books, this is something worth checking out immediately (who am I kidding, you’ve picked it up already). The book focuses on an unnamed painter whose wife Yuzu has recently left him. After quitting his job as a portrait painter and spending a little while driving up the coast of Japan, he settles in the childhood homes of his friend Masahiko Amada, whose father Tomohiko was famous painter. In the house, the narrator tries his best to adjust to his newfound autonomy, but once he finds an old, undiscovered painting in the attic depicting a scene from the opera Don Giovanni (the titular painting of the book’s title), it sets off a chain of events that bring a strange cast of characters into his life as well as some unexplainable phenomena, such as his eccentric neighbor Menshiki, whose motives are slowly revealed and may be the book’s most noticeable tribute to The Great Gatsby, a big pit in the wooded area behind the house which might have a creepy back story, an Idea come to life in the form of one of the characters in the painting, a young, talkative 13 year old girl and a strange journey through a world of Double Metaphors that is both hypnotic and menacing. I could see how critics could tear this book apart, because a lot of the plot points have been found in other books, like the pit and the martial trouble harkening back to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the underworld excursion bringing to mind it’s futuristic cousin in Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the painting come to life recalling the symbols of Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders come to life in Kafka on the Shore,  as well as countless other references to other books, the most blatant one being to his last novel, but that was part of the fun of the book or any of his books: finding odd parallels between two or more characters, watching abstract ideas and concepts take shape and making the world a more meaningful, or at least interesting place. Murakami’s books have basically become critic proof, fans no what to expect and love what they get, and for better or worse, I am one of them. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Labyrinth of Spirits" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It is safe to say that with the number of books I have left to read in 2018 that Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s conclusion to his Cemetery of Forgotten Book’s series, The Labyrinth of Spirits if the biggest surprise of the year. I recall being tremendously underwhelmed by the (now) second longest book of the series, The Angel’s Game and so when I found out that this book was going to be over 800 pages long (805 to be exact), I really wasn’t looking forward to it. Thankfully, my doubts were shattered by the time I was 10 pages in and never once did the wonder, elation and overall joy I felt while reading this love letter of a book dissipate. It is the kind of epic book, like Justin Cronin’s Passage trilogy or Gabi Gleichmann’s The Elixir of Immortality, to name a more obscure book, where a writer of immense talent simply uses said talents to tell the kind of story that fills the world around the reader with a little bit more magic, or at least as long as they are reading the book. It is a book with countless twists and turns, an aura of the immense and characters that will find deep, finally etched space within the reader’s subconscious long after they have finished it. The plot is rather daunting to explain, so I will try my best in what little time I allow myself in these reviews. First, I would like to say that you do not have to have read the previous books to understand the plot of this one, although there are many references to the other three. So, after a few interludes where we meet Daniel Sempre and Fermin, two characters who play major roles in the story, we meet our heroine Alicia Gris, an investigator for Spain’s secret police, at the forceful hand of her mentor Leandro, becomes embroiled in the search for Mauricio Valls, Spain’s minister of culture and the former warden of Montjuic Castle, where, after the Spanish Civil War, several dissident writers were imprisoned and tortured. It is in Valls office that Alicia, along with Vargas, a cop who is forced on her but slowly earns her undying trust, finds the first clue, a volume in a series of book that shares the novel’s title written by Victor Mataix, a writer imprisoned by Valls. This tiny clue takes them from Madrid to Barcelona, where Alicia almost lost her life during a brutal bomb raid, where they encounter Fernandito, a young man with unrequited love for Alicia, the quick witted Fermin and the whole of the Sempre family, as well as many dangers in the form of an unidentified maniac who reveals themselves in the book’s most shocking death, Hendaya, a brutal enforcer in the Secret Police and a shocking conspiracy that shakes the world of every character in the book. I won’t reveal too much, but the book is full of beautiful passages, many of which are brilliantly rendered dream sequences that would make Bolano blush and a quietly moving final hundred pages that reveal the true, beating heart of this book. It is a hefty read, but a rewarding one for those who find themselves easily lost within the pages of a good story. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: Theatre Review: "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Catalyst Repertory)"

This week is the second week of Indianapolis’s annual Bard Fest, a festival where a gathering of local theater companies each put on a production of a Shakespeare Play, and Catalyst Reparatory, the company behind my first reviewed production, Arcade Fire brings us a production of arguably the bards most famous play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Unlike my first review, to give a synopsis of Romeo and Juliet would just be a waste of space for this review. If you are reading this you know the story: it was either forced on you in school, you performed in it or you have seen one of the countless adaptations of it. What I will do instead is focus on the performances of the actors and how it compares to the other productions of the story I have seen, which include Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 retelling, which shaped the idea of this play for a lot of those my age and a production my high school put on. I’m sure it is hard to present this story in a fresh way that does not come off hackneyed or unoriginal, and the director Zach Stonerock does his best, using minimal sets, basic costume design and lighting choices that let the play speak for itself. If you aren’t a fan of the play, which I am on the fence about, this play will likely not change that in its straightforward presentation. What I really took away with this play, both its good qualities and bad, come from the casting decisions and the performance of the actors. Firstly, the casting of the eponymous characters is rather spot on with Eli Robinson and Arcade Fire’s Kayla Lee embodying the youthful vigor and fatalism of the two star crossed lovers. It also helps that they look and are much younger than the rest of the cast. But this retelling’s true triumph is how it presents the story’s main conflict. The scenes with the two leads are imbued with the kind of unbridled lust felt by those just entering puberty, the kind of lust linked to series of bad choices that lead down a dark path. Their decisions come off as silly and wasteful, especially in the scenes involving the nurse and Friar Laurence, played by Beverly Roche and Kelsey Leigh Miller respectively (who give the play’s best performances, along with the actor who played the Prince, who for safety reasons cannot be named), who both seem to orbit these two young bodies that seem hell-bent on their mutual destruction. That might be the directorial intent to shed a light on aspects of this famous play that go unquestioned (for a really good analysis of this idea, watch the Nostalgia Critic’s editorials on this play and The Graduate). While this idea sets it apart, this is far from a perfect production, and its flaws could be quite glaring. The show as a whole lacks a certain gravity and emotional weight. It might have been the lack of intermission or something I can’t quite put my finger on, but I’m pretty positive it really wasn’t there. The secondary characters, such as Benvolio, Tybalt and both sets of parents left little impression on me, but the performance of Mercutio did, and in a bad way. The actor who played them, Kelsey VanVoorst, seemed too intent on chewing the scenery and overshadowing the other performers, with the Rosaline speech near the beginning coming off forced and painfully artificial and their eventual death and passionate dying words completely unearned, although their scene after the party produced the biggest reaction from the audience. Like I said before, this production of a most familiar play is not likely to change your mind about it, but it takes a few calculated risks, and I’m happy a few of them paid off. 

Rating: 3/5

Review: "Whiskey" by Bruce Holbert

Over the past few years, I have read enough books within the genre of country noir that I can confidently tell you I’m an expert of the genre: I can recognize familiar beats in stories, certain character types and a certain home grown, gritty style indicative of the genre well enough to notice deviations in a tired or true method and judge it good or bad. The genre has its high points, like Daniel Woodrell’s masterpiece The Death of Sweet Mister and Donald Ray Pollack’s The Heavenly Table and it’s lesser works like David Joy’s Where All Light Tends to Go and really, anything else Daniel Woodrell wrote. Bruce Holbert’s third novel Whiskey, rests somewhere in between. He possess Woodrell’s gift for rich yet humble prose that gives grace to savage and sadistic people but its narrative is too jumbled, too compact to really be as interesting beyond Holbert’s skilled use of language. The novel focuses on the lives of two brothers, Andre and Smoker, who, in 1991, are forced to travel in search of Smoker’s daughter when a familiar religious zealot kidnaps her. Spliced in with this account, which includes a trapped bear (which verges on the ridiculous to be honest) and a blown of finger mended with the barest essential is the story of Andre and Smoker’s lives before the book’s events, such as Andre’s tender yet caustic courtship of school teacher Claire, the ugly relationship between the brothers which gives poignancy to the book’s present day events and the violent relationship between their parent’s Pork and Peg (whose names, put together sound funny in a way I JUST noticed) which contains the stories most powerful section, which offers clues as to the book’s ending and shares similarities between another FSG MCD title (I let you find out). While it lacks a certain drive I expect from these stories, this novel is a real piece of work and a beautiful exercise in finding the fine line between beauty and ugliness. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine" by Kevin Wilson

Quite recently I was thinking of authors who are well known for both their novels and their short stories that I see has better at the latter rather than the former. Names like Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell and Joe R. Lansdale came to mind: authors whose work in the short form greatly outweighs their longer books (I found this more true with horror authors than literary ones). I can safely add author Kevin Wilson to that lost after reading his newest short story collection Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine. I have read three of his four books, the other two being his novels The Family Fang, which, despite its awful title I recall giving a glowing review of and Perfect Little World, which was cute but disposable and easily lost in the shuffle of similar themed books but both, I must say haven’t aged well and come off as bland and very forgettable. There is nothing forgettable about this collection, which brings to mind the two collections of author Tom Perrotta, who excavated similar material in the short form. These incredible stories are filled with familiar people with familiar desires, problems and disappointments, but somehow, Wilson, always willing to give even the sorriest character a sense of dignity and hope, pushes these stories in the strangest, darkest yet charming directions that unload the characters pathos in surprising and heartbreaking ways. I will talk about a few of the stories here, but all of them are good and even the few that in retrospect rest in the shadow of the really good stories still impress me. One of them, “Scroll Through the Weapons,” is about a shaky couple that is forced to watch over the feral nieces and nephews of the woman. Narrated by the man, it is charming and engaging but has little substance. It is a good example of what some might not like about Wilson, which is the plausibility of the situations he puts his characters in. This, along with other plot points that take center stage, like an ice cube fight in “No Joke, This is Going to be Painful” and a spontaneous home video horror film in “The Horror We Made” may be hard to swallow for some, but Wilson’s skill and empathy make them work. The first real standout is the story simply titled “A Signal to the Faithful” about a young altar boy who is suffering fainting spells who’s given the opportunity to travel with his parish priest to help in officiating the priest’s aunt’s funeral. It would have been easy (and lazy) to take an obvious jab at a timely subject, but the story is more complex and the priest ends up being the story's most tragic figure. The same kind of subversion can be found in the title story, where a failed rock musician moves back in with his widowed mom, with an ending brave enough to turn one character's success into the other character's doom. But the best story here is “Wildfire Johnny” about young boy who finds a razor that allows him to travel one day in the past if he slits his own throat. It is a silly device used brilliantly to talk about such topics as race relations and pitiful white guilt. It is damn near perfect. It is a collection like this that reinforces my love for the short form, and I hope it does the same for you.  

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Death Notice" by Zhou Haohui

It might be because it has been quite a while since I have read an honest to goodness, break neck nail you to the wall type thriller, but it is hard for me to conjure a better time reading experience this year than the one I had reading Chinese thriller writer Zhou Haohui’s debut English language novel Death Notice. Since I have slowed down my reading load, cutting it in half really earlier this year, I’ve approached the act with a keener eye, noticing subtext more often, finding hidden meanings and playing around with the themes in venues like this. With this book, I didn’t have to do anything like that. To quite Stephen King in his praise for Justin Cronin’s The Passage, I was lifted up on the wings of story and let the real world disappear. I wasn’t searching for what this book really meant. I was just enjoying it; it’s little tricks, its scheming plot and its vast array of engaging characters. This is the kind of book that will appeal to fans of Jo Nesbo and Steig Larsson as well as other international crime writers. The book and its author does for China what those authors and books did for there respective countries, which is present a thrilling and familiar plot elements in an unfamiliar setting with enough local flair and customs to create a unique kind of tension. Set in the year 2002, a few years removed from astronomical advancements in technology in Chengdu, China it opens with police officer on a few routine visits who, in the very next section, is found murdered in his apartment. This crime drudges up more than few closeted skeletons, the most prominent and the one that really connects them all, is the cyber vigilante Eumenides, who boldly announces the deaths of his intended targets before killing them, most of whom have committed crimes they can’t be charged for or crimes they got off light for committing. It sounds like a well worn narrative device (and it is), but the scenes of tension, about four or five in total are so well executed and relayed in such a smooth way that it makes for an almost unbearable reading experience (in a good way). There are scenes set in a mine, outside an office building and one taking place in a restaurant where one person holds another person and unveils their master plan that are chilling in how helpless the characters are and how helpless you feel as a reader.  There are really no central characters, with the points of view being split, but by the end the character we identify with most of Pei Tao, whose sad story ties him directly with the disturbing crimes and is, as typical of characters like him, much smarter then he lets on. The ending, taking place in a crowded airport, where something that happens that is brilliantly executed and something impossible is pulled of in a way that is not so cheap or cheating, beautifully wraps up this intense 300 page book and has me begging for its sequel to come out sooner rather than later. This is the perfect kind of thriller you didn’t know you needed so bad until you pick it up. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "Certain American States" by Catherine Lacey

Catherine Lacey is part of a new group of writers with big ideas but not necessarily interesting ones, and her new short story collection, Certain American States, is a perfect example of this. Reading her books (I read her second novel, The Answers, last year) is a very distinct experience just from how it looks and is presented. She does not use parenthesis to denote dialogue and instead uses italics, so it gives every scene she writes were two or more people talk an air of unreality or misperception, as if what is being said is being filtered through a fissured mind. It provides some of the stories here with their most memorable moments, but also, distracts from what would have been a good story. As always, I will single out a few stories that stuck out, whether they were good or bad. The first one that stands out is “ur heck box”, where a woman reeling from grief is presented with texts messages from a mute co-worker. It is a story that kind of keeps you at arms length about what it might be about, and its ambiguity would have bolstered its quality if it were put forth in an interesting manner. Lacey has a tendency to zero in on minute details, whether it is a stray hair falling off someone’s head or the act of someone looking in a mirror, and it distracts from some of the story elements I want fleshed out. But what she gets right a handful of times are endings, with the title story, “Please Take” and “The Grand Claremont Hotel each ending in haunting manner somewhere between reality and nightmare and emotion and intellect. It is thankfully these moments that are strong and memorable that I am taking away from this book, with its bad sections being easy to forgive in hindsight. 

Rating: 4/5

Theater Review: "Arcade Fire: The Redemption of Billy Mitchell" directed by Casey Ross

In 2007, a documentary came out chronicling the seemingly life or death struggle to obtain the highest score on Donkey Kong, and now, 11 years later, a local musical has been produced here in Indiana that does sincere justice to the incredible true story and to at least one of the subjects involved. Full disclosure, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is my favorite documentary. Beyond its surface level silliness and people who make it hard for viewers NOT to mock them is a classic study in what drives us, who we tend to gravitate toward and the fickle nature of success and failure. Playwright Casey Ross’s story understands it and plays right to it, with an absurd opening where Billy Mitchell, played confidently by local actor Luke McConnell gives a blunt, Darwinian speech into a large, cumbersome video camera held by a clearly uncomfortable cameraman. It showcases a few things: Billy’s high opinion of himself, his lack of knowledge toward technical advancements (with some of the play’s biggest laughs being his reactions to what people are saying about him online) and the shaky foundation of his reputation, bolstered by his hot sauce empire and a few reliable underlings. The one-hour musical concerns the accusations that Billy cheated to get the high scores on all of the games he holds records on, such as Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Burger Time. Into this chaotic maelstrom comes Billy’s old rival Steve Wiebe, played with relish by local actor Anthony Logan Nathan. Obsessive, strung out on Red Bull and a constant source of derision for his wife, played by local actor Kayla Lee, who brings the play a welcome, singular sense of levity. The crazed Wiebe, in an effort to dethrone Mitchell, manipulates the malleable and soft Brian Kuh, played by local actor Jim Banta, who imbues Brian with enough tenderness (as well as a not so subtle crush on Mitchell) to make him the musical’s sympathetic heart. Local actor Ryan Powell rounds out the cast as Walter Day, whose role and persona were not as fleshed out and pinpointed as I would like, his status as a sort of monk-like sage uninterested are glossed over rapidly in a few quick, albeit witty lines of dialogue, but Powell’s performance provides another wrinkle to the real world nestled just outside of this cloistered setting. The songs are sickeningly catchy; with the opening song “King of Kong” and “It’s a Kong Off” are guaranteed spots in your mind whether you want them there or not. The stage setup is minimal, with two blocks in the center of the stage and two arcade games on either side and it is seems very appropriate, especially when he sings “Second Place, First Loser”, why Steve’s arcade machine is Donkey Kong Jr. and Mitchell’s is the original Donkey Kong machine. And I can’t end this review without talking about my one major issue, which is the characterization of Steve. It will be hard for anyone familiar with the documentary to separate the movie with the Ross’s vision, which places much more emphasis on Billy’s struggle and tries to make him into a heroic figure, evidenced by a crucial act of altruism at the end. But what I found so interesting about the movie was how Steve and Billy were almost total opposites, with Billy this type-A go-getter whose ego-driven approach to life, hot sauce and video games garners him fame and fortune but to an outsider sometimes verges on the monstrous and Steve being this man who could have exceled toward greatness if it weren’t for his lack of confidence and a crippling sense of humility, which was brilliantly characterized by his account of choking at the baseball championship, set to the tune of The Cure's "Pictures of You". I know I should view the play for what it is, but Nathan’s maniacal Steve was distracting at best and inaccurate at worst. But for what the play is, a fun and timely romp tinged with nostalgia and heart, it is a success and should provide some comedic relief for some of the more self-serious shows at the Fringe. The audience I saw it with ate up, and there is a good chance you will too. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Early Work" by Andrew Martin

Early work, author Andrew Martin’s debut novel, will send shivers up the spines of aspiring writers, this one included. It does not tread new ground or present any new ideas readers haven’t seen in countless permutations, but it really acts as a kind of update to the “writerly” novels of the mid-20^thcentury, where overly educated, mostly white men used their hyper intellect to justify their terrible, childish behavior. It’s easy to see echoes of Updike and Roth in certain passages. I’m still wondering where its heart lies though, whether it is lampooning such behavior, the narrative voice guiding the protagonist laughing behind his back, or if it has a little more sympathy for those involved, who have overthought their way out of any kind of enjoyment, quick to always improve their situation and unable to happy where they are. It concerns a man named Peter, a man who wants to be a writer more than he wants to put forth the work to do so. He is out of college and teaching at a women’s prison. His girlfriend, Julia, a pre-med student, is overworked and both slowly fall into a habit that does not include regular sex. That all changes for Peter when he meets Leslie, a woman he assumes he has a connection with, and from there, he begins an affair with her with the expected consequences. Like I said, this book is very familiar but well written and knowledgeable, and its tendency toward self-abasement makes some part easier to swallow, evidenced by the character of Molly, a cinephile whose self-seriousness is the book’s most humorous aspect. My qualms are minor, like a sections devoted to Leslie’s previous sexual history hindering what was a rather engaging narrative and an ending that lacks profundity, at least it did for me. Far from the best novel I have read this year, but one with an interesting perspective on a formula I thought was entirely tuckered out. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" by Ottessa Moshfegh

It was easy to tell from her first novel, the chilling Eileen, that author Ottessa Moshfegh was a burgeoning force to be reckoned with. She further proved that with her short story collection, Homesick for Another World (her debut book, the novella McGlue, is creepy but flawed) and proves it once again with her second full-length novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Much like her first novel, it plumbs the depths of the female psyche in ways you have not seen before, harkening back to writers like Flannery O’ Conner and Shirley Jackson, other authors with a keen eye for the macabre and the beauty in grotesque and aberrant behavior as well as a sympathetic ear for these people, caught between feelings they know to be destructive and societies that will never, ever understand them. Reading this, and seeing it done, right made me think of other book with similar stories with women on the verge of collapse and what they got wrong. I couldn’t help but think about books like Liska Jacobs Catalina and Jade Sharma’s Problems, books that presented a woman’s downfall in stylized, almost pretty ways, where whether by their environment or the other people around them, we feel pressured to admire them. That isn’t the case here, with an unnamed narrator, whose visage and breakdown are equally ugly. Told from her perspective, it showcases a year in her life in New York City where she figuratively and literally tunes out the world. Financially stable after her parent’s deaths, she spends most of her days in her apartment, watching VHS tape after VHS tape (this is the early2000’s, years before Netflix), swallowing all different kinds of pills and sleeping for long, stretched out periods of time. Others pass through her life, whether in real time or flashback, like her friend Reva, a holdover from college who clings to the narrator out of a sickly desperation and need to coddle someone and her on again off again cold boyfriend, Trevor, who the narrator is obsessed with to disturbing degrees. It creates kind of a blur, like a ore personal version of Bret Easton Ellis’s early work, where we don’t know what is real, what is perceived correctly or incorrectly and what is a total fabrication, with long sections where the narrator describes, in great detail, something she is imagining. Moshfegh has a real talent for the morbid of the Lynchian variety, with scenes involving what she does when she is fired from the art gallery she worked at and the one where her most important appliance breaks are tense, brutally rendered and creepy as hell (as is her idolization of Whoopi Goldberg). It is a disquieting book, but one filled with an odd sense of hope in individual freedom, the perverse, sometimes good side effects of cutting yourself off from the world and how important it is to survive and value life, evidenced by its ending, which is easy to predict given its time period and location, but is no less perfect. This is a wild ride through the mind of someone hell-bent on destroying themselves, and thankfully it comes from a talent as rigorous and ingenious as Moshfegh. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "A Lucky Man" by Jamel Brinkley

While Jamel Brinkley’s skillset as a writer is unquestioned, after reading his debut collection of short stories A Lucky Man, I’m left hoping that talent would have been put to better use by making the stories a little more interesting, carried themselves with a little less gravitas and by god, not be so long. That is the big issue with this whole collection: the stories are way too long; going on 15 or 20 pages more than they really should. This might be colored by my recent habit of reading the great works of short fiction. These are far from terrible stories, and two or maybe three are quite good, but I’d like to think their ideas could be conveyed and its impact more substantial if they had left before their presence became unwelcome. Like I do with all short story collection, I will pick out a few that I really liked. The first one, “No More Than Bubble” follows two friends as they engage in a long form sloppy seduction of two women they met at a party, with intermittent flashbacks to the narrator’s lecherous father. The two ideas come together beautifully, but again, it is about 10 pages too long. “A Family” is another gem, where a man released from prison struck up a shaky romance with his late best friend’s wife, finding comfort in imperfect relationships. Another odd issue was how homogenous the narrators all were. It might not be fair for a short story collection, but each of the narrators could be the same callow, irresponsible young man. A lot of the time, they are overshadowed by a stronger character, like Fat Rhonda in “Wolf and Rhonda” or the spiritual ladies man Micah in “Infinite Happiness”. If it was meant to be that way, I can’t say it helped much with these stories. But I still enjoyed reading them. Despite being little more serious than fun, they still pack a heavy punch. 

Rating: 4/5

Top Ten Films That Should Get the Criterion Treatment

Ever since I picked up the Criterion edition of Slacker after hearing Kevin Smith discuss it, I have been hooked on this company and their efforts at making international and obscure films widely available (although not at a user friendly price discounting the months of July and November) with loads of special features. I’ve been wanting to do this list for a while now, and I have a few rules: no prior release that have gone out of print or have yet to get a Blu-Ray release, and I will try to steer clear of titles that have already been given a quality release by another North American company (Shout/Scream Factory, Arrow Video/Academy, etc.) known for stacked editions. Also, I'm steering clear of directors synonymous with Criterion, so no Bergman, Kurosawa or Wes Anderson. Those director's films will make it to Criterion whether you like it or not. But first a few honorable mentions: 

·          Audition (1999) dir. Takeshi Miike: This is more of a job for Arrow Video, since they released their own version a while back, but if they are able to get the movie rights, I’d love a scholarly commentary, an overall look at the resurgence of Japanese horror in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and a new interview with a critic like Tony Rayns or Kim Newman. 

·         The Beyond (1981) dir. Lucio Fulci: Fulci’s masterpiece is another film that will more than likely get an Arrow release, but I’d love a retrospective look at Fulci’s career, maybe an interview with FX artist Gianetto De Rossi, and a movie like this is begging for a video essay of some kind, possibly by Kat Ellinger.

·         One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) dir. Milos Forman: I just think it would be cool for Criterion to have all three films that swept the Oscars in its collection. I could see a new piece on the book and Kesey himself, a look at the history of mental health facilities and maybe a documentary on Forman’s career. 

·         Out of the Past (1947) dir. Jacques Tourneur: I also tried to steer clear of older movies, because I am sure a lot of them, like this one, will get the treatment sooner than later. I’d like to see a commentary track by Eddie Muller, a scholarly look at Mitchum’s career and a few archival interviews with cast and crew. 

·         The Pusher Trilogy (1996-2005) dir. Nicolas Winding Refn: Why this is an honorable mention can be seen in my list, but I’d like to see commentary tracks on all films, a substantial making-of feature and possibly a new transfer of Refn’s film Bleeder, not widely available in North America. 

10. Pi (1998) dir. Darren Aronofsky: Why Aronofsky hasn’t made it in the collection is kind of a surprise, but this film would be a good fit. Porting over some of the features from the DVD, new interviews with Aronofsky and Sean Gullette along with a look at the film’s editing style would be interesting. 

9. A Serious Man (2009) dir. Coen Brothers: I could see Criterion releasing Miller’s Crossing or even The Big Lebowski instead of this film, but I’d rather see this one in the collection. New interviews with cast and crew, and it would be fascinating to hear a Jewish theologian dissect the movie and some of it's cryptic undercurrents. 

8. Sideways (2004) dir. Alexander Payne: I love this movie immensely and would love to see it in the collection. I can see new interviews with Payne and all four key cast members, a look at its status as a road movie and of course, a feature on California Wine country. 

7. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) dir. John Hughes: If they can put out The Breakfast Club, this isn’t too farfetched of a release to hope for. I’d like to see a new interview with Martin, archival footage/interviews with Candy and Hughes and possibly, like they did with The Breakfast Club that famed deleted footage that pushed the film past the 2 hour mark. 

6. After Hours (1985) dir. Martin Scorsese: The true underrated gem of Scorsese’s unparalleled career would be a welcome addition to the collection. I’d love to see a new interview with Scorsese about the process of making the film, especially as it pertains to his hardships with The Last Temptation of Christ, a new interview with Griffin Dunne and a real in depth look at the possible theories about the film’s many interpretations. 

5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) dir. Tobe Hooper: After The Night of the Living Dead release, another iconic horror film joining the collection would be awesome, and I can’t think of a better one than this. I’d like it to skew more toward the scholarly route, with pieces on the filming, it’s reflection of the time in which it was made and its overall influence would make this an easy upgrade. 

4. Magnolia (1999) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson: While it was nice to see Punch-Drunk Love get a nice release a few years ago, this is the one I think people wanted more. I could see a massive 2-disc Blu-Ray packed with interviews, maybe a commentary track or two and a nice look at the film’s hidden meanings. 

3. Cache (2005) dir. Michael Haneke: One of the best movies of the 2000's deserves a really nice Criterion edition. I'm thinking new interviews with Haneke himself, Binoche and Auteuil, plus some critical material in the form of a commentary track, video essays and appreciations. 

2. The Vengeance Trilogy (2002-2005) dir. Park Chan-Wook: Easily my favorite trilogy of the 21^st century would look real nice in the collection. I’d love to see new and archival interviews, more critical analyses of each film and in-depth making of features ported over from other editions. 

1. Drive (2011) dir. Nicolas Winding Refn: My favorite movie of the century so far and the film that inspired this list, I am really surprised that this doesn’t have a really good home video release, let alone one from Criterion. I’d hope to see a commentary track, interviews with Gosling and Refn and a look at the film’s relationship with other film genres (80’s romance, noir, etc.).