Project Hail Mary (2026)

I usually try to avoid comparisons between novels and the movies based on them, not for any particular noble motives but because I don’t often get to books before I see the movies (indeed, if I ever even get to them, looking your way Traumnovelle). This case is an exception—I know Andy Weir’s third novel is reviled by a certain cohort of SF cognoscenti and equally beloved of other readers who may favor entertainment in SF over heavy themes. I can understand how Weir’s jokey, heavily online voice can put off people looking for intellectual heft, but a friend pressed Project Hail Mary on me earlier this year and it turned out to be just what I needed at the time—funny and entertaining yet satisfyingly full of scientifically plausible and complex ideas. Alas, the movie, even at its punishing length near three hours, necessarily simplifies a lot of what is easily the greatest strength of the novel. A mysterious space algae has begun to consume energy directly from the sun, in enough quantity that it will affect the climate on Earth, cooling it to a degree that will likely wipe out human life if not all life. A whole region of the Milky Way has been affected, except for one star about 11 light-years away. A suicide mission is slapped together, sending Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) with two others to investigate and report back—report back via smaller probe ships, that is, because there’s only enough fuel for a one-way trip. There Grace encounters another ship on the same mission. The two throw in together—ultimately Project Hail Mary is a first contact story approximately cubed—and accomplish the mission, though not without many bumps in the road. The movie keeps its explanations lucid but truncated—I have a sense the people who will get the most out of the movie will come into it having already read the book. That’s what I suggest, noting that the movie is not really necessary. You’re probably better off reading the book again, but there’s enough Hollywood magic going on here to make it worth your time. Gosling is just plain good, as always, even in these obvious paycheck blockbusters he’s inclined to do. The story is fun but also realistic about scientific possibility and quite creative and imaginative in addressing the limitations. I mean, that’s mostly Weir, and it’s mostly better in the novel. But if you like movies you’re sure to have a good time here if you already know and like the book. Good with popcorn.

Batman: Year One (1987)

I had a pretty good time revisiting this Barman story written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli. I happened to have the four Batman comics on hand (#404-407) as opposed to any of the later graphic novel reprints. It was interesting to see all the extras—advertisements, promotions for other comics, and letters from readers (which often included street addresses!). But the print job was murky and often difficult to read. The main arc is about the arrival of Commissioner Gordon to Gotham City, where eventually he makes his alliance with Batman. It also shows how Bruce Wayne developed and took on the role of Batman. Miller’s narrative style is brooding, dense, and creative. I don’t think he came up with some of the best ideas himself, but he uses them well. One narrative thread, in boxes colored yellow, is Gordon’s internal dialogue. Another, in white boxes with cursive lettering (particularly hard to read), represents Batman’s and/or Wayne’s thoughts. Lots of basics to the legend are here: the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents in a street crime, the whole “I will become a bat” scene, and some focus on Catwoman. Robin would not come until after this first year. Probably because Miller is involved, Batman’s fighting style is loaded up on martial arts technique. Mazzucchelli’s art is evocative but almost primitive, with simple lines and heavily saturated color. It’s possible it is better in one of the graphic novel treatments. I don’t like Year One as much as the previous year’s The Dark Knight Returns, written and penciled by Miller with his Daredevil inker Klaus Janson. I also liked it more the first time I read it many years ago. But it is solid Batman fare even if some of its elements are overused by this point. Year One was an important part of the renaissance of the dark Batman, signaled in many ways by the attachment of “the” to his name: the Batman. It’s worth looking into because Frank Miller’s work is genuinely worth looking into. If I say I’m a little tired of the Batman now it’s mostly because this dark Batman has been so overdone in the years since, in the movies as well as the comics. I miss the goofy Batman that predated the 1966 TV show, which was also goofy but in a different, “campy” way. For the dark Batman, Year One remains essential.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Furiosa is a worthy addition to the Mad Max franchise, which now also includes comic books and graphic novels, video games, and soundtrack albums. For me, it’s also where the franchise veers close to becoming an exercise strictly for continuity freaks, the people who insist not only on seeing all the Marvel or Star Wars or whatever movies, but also in a specific prescribed order. Furiosa, fifth in the franchise, is a prequel to the previous, 2015 installment, Mad Max: Fury Road. I feel like I already know much more than I want to about such geographical points of interest as the Citadel, Gastown, the Bullet Farm, and the mysterious Green Place. Don’t get me wrong. I may sound tired and cynical, but there are plenty of stunts and much glorious action in Furiosa. It pairs well with popcorn. Tom Holkenborg’s score is as moody-good as he gave us in Fury Road. Furiosa attracted stars such as Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit, The VVitch, Last Night in Soho) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor movies, Avengers movies, etc.). Tom Burke gets the designated Mel Gibson role. Furiosa is a young girl living in the all-women (mostly women?) Green Place who is kidnapped while out in the desert. It was important to Green Place people to keep their location secret. This young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) is captured and held for years by one Dementus (Hemsworth). Then she grows older and becomes the fierce and big-eyed Taylor-Joy. There are new vehicles here to enjoy and some impressive new stunts too, as I say. But it’s kind of the same old thing—racing down desert highways and fending off attacks. There’s usually a reason for going from one place to the other, but I kind of lost track of them here. The beauty of Fury Road is the simple clarity of it. Furiosa has complications that don’t bode well for the franchise. On the other hand, George Miller is the creator, director, and single indispensable figure in all this, and he's 79 now, even older than Donald Trump, so we’re not likely to get a lot more from him. It’s possible he will sell it off to Disney or something, but in that case probably only the continuity freaks will stick around for more. Here's my stack-ranking of the five Mad Max movies: 1) The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2, 1982), 2) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), 3) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), 4) Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), and 5) Mad Max (1979). Unusual franchise in that the first is the worst by far.

Beast in View (1955)

This very short novel by Margaret Millar won an Edgar Award in 1956 for Best Novel, but I’m really not so sure and even have some impulse to argue with various internet reviewers who also think it’s great. For one thing, it’s full of the usual outdated midcentury ideas such as a woman’s life is over if she reaches the age of 30 without being married and having kids. It’s easy to take potshots at stuff like this, but it’s hard to avoid the temptation here. Another complaint was that people in this story were hearing from old friends on the phone but never recognizing their voice. It’s possible that can be explained away by the reveal at the end, but it doesn’t help the issue before that. Probably the worst thing to contemporary sensibilities is the treatment of a gay man, presented as more like mentally ill. The reveal of his sexuality is apparently meant to explain all his erratic behavior, except it doesn’t really. Nevertheless, Beast in View won one of the most prestigious awards for mystery/suspense fiction. It’s also included in the Library of America two-volume series of suspense novels by women crime writers. I can’t explain it, and for that matter have to say I didn’t find most of the eight suspense novels in the series that good, although one or two (notably Mischief) are great. This is one of the weakest. There are also some mumbo-jumbo plot devices here about multiple personality disorders, which were not understood well in 1955. But they made handy devices in more novels than just this one. Seems like Jim Thompson turned to them frequently as well. This is the second novel by Millar I’ve read—maybe I’m not getting to the best because neither one did much for me. I’m more surprised actually that these LOA choices are coming up so short because its American Noir series is often stellar and has no duds. Millar was married to hardboiled detective writer Ross Macdonald (aka Kenneth Millar) and won a lot of praise in her own right, more reason for surprise she has been disappointing so far. I didn’t think the characters or situations here were much believable. It’s possible Beast in View is better than a lot of mystery/suspense stuff written by men in the ‘50s but I still didn’t think it was very good. It may not be bad as a document of bad takes from the era, but that’s about its only utility as far as I can see.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

The Iron Gates (1945)

[spoilers] This is the first I’ve read of Margaret Millar and by all signs it’s not one of her best. But it’s not bad, just eccentric or maybe a bit of a failed experiment. I found it tucked into the back of one of those Alfred Hitchcock-branded anthologies of the ‘60s, Stories for Late at Night. It’s labeled (fairly) as a novel even if it is a short one, under 200 pages. It’s also listed on ISFDB, in fact the only novel there by Millar, who wrote more than two dozen in her career. ISFDB is notably finicky (if also inconsistent) about “non-genre” literature so, along with the Hitchcock placement, I half-expected something supernatural. As it turns out, not so much. The main character, Lucille, has some vivid dreams, is institutionalized, and eventually commits suicide. It turns out she is a very bad person, though I have to say she’s more likable than many others here. Millar had written a handful of novels by this point and has a good sense for putting the story together. The characters all defy expectations. Lucille is basically a psychopath—we find out that she murdered her friend with an ax so she could marry her husband, the widower. The stepchildren never liked Lucille. And they were right to feel that way. Yet they are a couple of miscreants themselves. There might be elements of psychological realism but I’m not always sure when Millar knows it. There is also a detective in a starring role, Inspector Sands, from an earlier novel, Wall of Eyes. I would call The Iron Gates workmanlike and professionally done but not very inspired. Millar has her own reputation so I’m sure there’s much better out there. I wonder how editor Robert Arthur came to include it in the Hitchcock anthology—sounds like some Southern California story. I like the themes this one takes on and the way it goes for psychological depth, but it never really builds up much steam. Lucille and the Morrow family all certainly have their problems. It uses a diary to tell a key part of the story. It worked but also felt gimmicky. But being gimmicky, as a mystery story, also makes it comforting, though it never quite jelled for me. Mixed bag.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Music: What Happened? (3rd ed., 2012)

For years, as it waited for me faithfully in my bathroom, I took the title of Scott Miller's history of rock 'n' roll as a playful goof on the Elvis Presley bodyguard tell-all. But reading through it more carefully I realize it's genuinely wistful (and possibly despairing) about the passing of a worldview of pop music rooted in Buddy Holly and the Beatles. Miller was a musician first and recording engineer / producer close second, leader of the bands Game Theory in the '80s and the Loud Family in the '90s, friend to Mitch Easter and Chris Stamey, college roommate of Steve Wynn. Thus he brings a unique and interesting point of view to this rock criticky project of telling the history with annotated lists. Miller goes year by year, from 1957 all the way to 2011 for the third and final edition, listing about a CD's worth of songs for each—they are like personal mix tapes. He has some rules. It's countdown style so his absolute favorites are listed last. The first song is one he feels is somehow emblematic of the year (and he doesn't always like it). And while he complains about rock critics—sometimes with very good points, sometimes not—he more often acts like one, in the stubborn contrarianism of his picks and dimming view of music industry developments. For Miller, it all went bad in the '80s, and while "I Feel Love" shows up on one list it is the various dominations of disco (and then techno) that are his main culprits by name, along with a handful of technical terms such as "DX7." I've heard the complaints about dance music before from other working musicians, but it does make me sad he couldn't hear so much music that I like. On the other hand, he shows an alarming penchant for Broadway show tunes so maybe that makes us even. He also likes R.E.M. a whole lot more than me. But at a certain sweet middle—Beatles, Bowie, Big Star, and This Year's Model—our tastes are well in synch and I see how inspired and acute his picks can be. I was also struck by an idea I've been thinking of as "vectors," the way tastes start at fine points of agreement and then explode into outer space in all directions. For the '50s, '60s, and '70s it's easy to follow along with Miller and I often agree with him emphatically. We part ways at the '80s on disco and R.E.M. and by the 21st-century years I have only some idea what he is talking about. Many of the names I do know—Belle and Sebastian, Guided by Voices, Aimee Mann, the Posies—have been of only marginal interest to me. He loves Tracy Chapman and never mentions the Pet Shop Boys, so whatever. Sometimes I feel quite peevish with him, but I wish he were still around updating. He chose to take his life instead. R.I.P.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic (looks like it might be hard to get at the moment).

Tropic of Capricorn (1939)

It's hard to know what to do with Henry Miller. He can be as exhilarating as he can be exasperating, often in the same (very long) paragraph. Caution: this book contains paragraphs that go on for pages. (I know I'm not one to complain about a lack of paragraphing.) Wikipedia calls Tropic of Capricorn "a prequel of sorts" to the more widely lauded Tropic of Cancer. Where Cancer riffs on Miller's life in Paris in the 1930s (his "bohemian novel," a friend calls it), Capricorn dances around his life in New York City in the 1920s, scrabbling to get by and write. These books are called "novels" because that's closer than "memoirs," but really they are something else apart entirely. They make me think most often of poetry, paintings by Picasso, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring—modern, bracing, alive. They are iconoclastic, electrifying the humdrum with holy charges. Miller even name-checks J. Krishnamurti in both—!! I often have no idea what is going on from page to page, but the sentences and vocabulary have their own charming magnetism, and in the confusion there are vivid and concrete moments of joy and desperation. It's fully energized with life, which might sound trite, but Capricorn is no pep talk jive. If Miller is fully engaged with joy he is also fully engaged with despair. One of the recurring themes is the life-sucking soullessness of most full-time jobs and their necessities. I also find the treatment of sex interesting, given the book's history of being banned until 1961. There aren't many sex scenes as such, but sex is a frequent topic of discussion and the language is raw, with animal urgency. It's not pornographic. It's hard to imagine it turns anyone on but I might be wrong about that and/or it's a generational thing? He's as matter-of-fact about getting laid as he is about eating. Both can be sensual delights and to some degree (arguable on sex, I know) both are necessities. So there tends to be a deep everydayness to his treatment of sex and an anecdotal quality to his experiences that makes them as interesting (and necessary too) as good conversation. As for organization, I don't know what to say. There's one chapter-like break, a few line breaks scattered in at random, and lots of the paragraphs go sprawling across pages. Sometimes the copy editor in me stepped forward and idly attempted to break these monsters up. But that is where I discovered how good Miller is. My presumptive exercises only showed how tightly woven together it all is, with everything including transitions packed in there basically the way it should be—the way it must be. Miller blows my mind and amazes the hell out of me sometimes. I wonder which one I should read next, and if I can even take it.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.

Tropic of Cancer (1934)

I tried reading this Henry Miller novel in my 20s. It seemed to be considered his best, or at least most notorious, but I soon abandoned it as ridiculously rambling and pointless. I was mystified. I picked it up again more recently and finished it this time—still found it rambling, but now somehow it had become an advantage. Or at least a serviceable platform for the language, which is so vital and exuberant. If it's "about" anything, it's about Miller's survival in Paris in the early 1930s, including his sources of shelter, food, income, and sex and how he acquires and loses them. It's thoroughly bohemian, practically a novel-length definition of bohemianism. Karl Shapiro's early-'60s introduction (shortly after the book finally became free of censorship problems in the US and elsewhere and thus "legal") asserts upfront that Miller is not a poet. "I do not call him a poet because he has never written a poem; he even dislikes poetry, I think," Shapiro writes. Well, maybe, because Shapiro then goes on to make the key connection of Miller with Walt Whitman. Which, indeed, Miller himself makes in this so-called novel, loudly extolling the great American poet's virtues. Miller's language appears rambling, but his word choice can be remarkably precise, and he has a vocabulary. His sentences can be long but his sense of rhythm rarely fails. The whole thing rushes pell-mell ... to nowhere ... and yet it's easy to hitch along for this ride, even for someone like me who resents a little the labor of the nonnarrative literary arts (including most especially poetry). Miller's world is one of much boozing and whoring in Tropic of Cancer, deeply and bluntly sexist in many places, but the bracing honesty redeems it—really. Or something does. I want to say it's the language winning me over, which is often sublime, but more than that I think it's the sense of a soul just behind the words, a real soul. This soul is stuck here like mine is (or there, in Paris), making the best of things. Raging against the futilities and stupidities of civilization at large, yet crucially able to let go of rage for the sake of having a good time—restorative to all souls. Giving up rage, resentments, depression is one of the most profoundly positive and even subversive actions we can take in a way, when we can. Tropic of Cancer is a kind of undirected how-to manual, filled with implicit case studies. As someone who may (or may not) allow himself to let go and have a good time often enough, I appreciate the practical advice here. Miller feels like someone I might be able to keep going back to.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.

"Luella Miller" (1902)

This story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman is bland and sneaky-good. It's just one woman telling the story of another in a folksy kind of low-key way. The storyteller might have some animus toward Luella Miller, but it's to be expected in the circumstances. All the details don't sink in right away. The monstrousness is so diffused you almost, perhaps, have to go through a period of denial, which lingers. I mean, is it really so monstrous here? Luella Miller may be some kind of demon, or merely an extremely manipulative person ... and that might not be much difference. One of the story's strengths is that it never really labels her, only reports events as they happened. It's not even certain Luella Miller has anything directly to do with the deaths. She's a kind of princess, self-possessed in her sense of her own privilege. She expects to be cared for and looked after. She's even a bit helpless. She doesn't do much herself. Somehow others around her rally and pitch in and do the chores—scrubbing the floor and dusting, washing the laundry, cooking, and so forth. She expects it as her due and she is not unduly ungrateful. People want to help her. Then they die—generally of mysterious wasting-away episodes, which might make her a vampire. The story is mostly told by her neighbor across the way in a small village in New England, who saw Luella Miller move into the house and steal her man. She helps Luella Miller and dies like all the others. This ability of Luella Miller to manipulate is a given. We never see how she does it, only that people fall in line. It's almost not uncanny at all, but a little frustrating, the way it is to watch people who don't deserve it getting their way over and over. She feels more oblivious about exercising her will than calculating. We've known people like this. Donald Trump often looks like it. She simply expects to be served and many volunteer. She can force the issue. She is seen fussing a few times when she is inconvenienced, which reminds me that the story also passes the Bechdel test. Freeman was self-consciously a feminist writer, weaving the themes into her mainstream novels, her works for children, and her supernatural stories too. This story is effective with its litany of deaths like a steady drumbeat and Luella Miller's perverse refusal to give in to drudgery (an echo of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," which has always felt a little uncanny). Freeman manages to stay within the lanes of Puritan credibility, with a nice steady rolling tale of some kind of insidious life-sucking horror that's hard to know what to call.

The Big Book of the Masters of Horror, Weird and Supernatural Short Stories, pub. Dark Chaos
Read story online.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Australia / USA / South Africa, 120 minutes

Director: George Miller

Writers: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris

Photography: John Seale

Music: Junkie XL

Editor: Margaret Sixel

Cast: Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Nathan Jones, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Melissa Jaffer

Mad Max: Fury Road defies expectations in a number of ways, but producer, director, and cowriter George Miller has pretty much defied expectations all along with the Mad Max franchise. The first installment, 1979's Mad Max, is arguably the weakest of them all, a rare feat in the annals of movie franchises. It's a fairly conventional rape 'n' vengeance tale with little of the inspired postapocalyptic science fiction trappings that make the best of these movies soar. That best would be the second movie up (in the position usually reserved for "weaker"), 1981's Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, which feels like a positive revelation and seemed unlikely to be matched in our lifetimes. The third, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, from 1985, took the traditional position of third movies in franchises ("weakest" and/or 3D), a largely empty blustery star vehicle for Tina Turner (and what's-his-name) and an obvious attempt to cash in on the popularity (though it must be noted Beyond Thunderdome is still entertaining enough).

Then followed some 30 years of radio silence. Miller has always been worth checking on in the interval, with interesting attempts at this or that: a pretty good episode in Twilight Zone: The Movie ("Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"), a decent family drama-of-the-week in Lorenzo's Oil from 1992, and another inspired sequel with 1998's Babe: Pig in the City, which is also arguably better than the first movie in that franchise. Not that I'm making that argument, but Pig in the City is way better than people usually give it credit for and one of the better sequels you're likely to find. But if you want to entertain the notion that Miller is somehow very good at second movies, you'll also have to consider what he's done with Fury Road, which is quite possibly the best fourth movie in a franchise ever made.

"The Misfits" (1957)

Story by Arthur Miller not available online.

In my rambling internet research on Arthur Miller's story, which in 1961 became a movie with Marilyn Monroe, I found it characterized as a novella (what I read was less than 20 printed pages), found unsubstantiated word of a 2002 novel version, and more often had to pick through information about the movie, for which Miller wrote the screenplay. I know the movie pretty well, and Miller's stage productions to some degree, but I was surprised by what I found in this short story. I'm sure this betrays my own stereotyping (is it the Clark Kent glasses Arthur Miller wore?) but it's way more outdoorsy and, um, masculinist than I expected. It focuses on a degraded mustanging operation of the three principals, all men (the most studly of them is named Gay, for what that's worth). Roslyn is a simmering presence who remains off stage. But she's on Gay's mind—Gay is her 46-year-old boyfriend who worries she might be sleeping with others, including his friends. In the movie Gay is played by Clark Gable and Roslyn by Marilyn Monroe—she is definitely on stage. (As a point of interest, The Misfits was to be the last film for both of them.) The short story details the round-up procedure used by the men, scaring wild horses with a plane diving at them and herding them to a rocky plateau where they can be picked off one by one with a pickup truck and a shrewd if cruel strategy. They get even fewer horses here than they did in the movie. It's pitiful. The horses are pathetically outmatched—and all they will bring from the rendering plant comes to about $100, divided between the three. They feel vaguely ashamed about what they're doing, but Gay keeps trying to cheer them with his motto, "Better than wages!" Yes, they all agree, it's better than wages, but they are still vaguely ashamed, even (or especially) Gay. What surprised me is how much, once into it, "The Misfits" has the structure and rhythms of a nature story. More specifically, it's on the order of a hunting story, but the hunt has been debased by the superiority of their technology and the weakness of the animals (there is a colt here that particularly breaks everyone's heart). This is much less like James Fenimore Cooper and Natty Bumppo and much more like Sarah Palin emptying automatic weapons into wolves from a helicopter. The only possible justification would be financial, and that is shown up for what it is in this story. Even in 1957, a hundred dollars split three ways was barely adequate for three days' work. In its sense of tragedy, "The Misfits" feels like something an East Coast playwright might come up with. But even that is a remarkably subtle element here. This is good stuff.

American Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Raymond Carver and Tom Jenks

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986)

It's more important than ever nowadays to keep your Dark Knights straight so here's a way to help you remember. This is the original and this is the best. No other comic book, let alone any movie, touches it. You don't have to think about anything else but this. When you have finished it, go ahead and try some of the others. If you start to feel confused again, return immediately to this one. It's really as simple as that. All those post-'60s-TV-show attempts to salvage Batman from the insipid pop culture mainstream that catapulted him to exactly the wrong renown (such attempts usually signaled by a heavy-handed insistence on the definite article, e.g. "Looks like trouble, we'd better get the Batman") came to naught—as worthy as they were, notably when Neal Adams started illustrating them—until Miller definitively reimagined the strangely enduring figure as a washed-up, middle-aged, has-been alcoholic, suffering the aches and pains of too many late-night fistfights, too many bone-crushing falls of failed acrobatics, and way too much boozing. The Robin in this adventure is a punk-rock chick with various problems. The Joker is a stone-cold psychopath. Superman is a contemptible do-gooder. And our old friend Bruce Wayne is slow, angry, thickened up in the middle, and not always thinking straight. At a stroke, Miller returned the Batman to everything people used to claim he should be. I was skeptical going in, I had heard this before, but this graphic novel is practically guaranteed to change the way people think, and it worked for me. Miller followed this up with Batman: Year One, which reimagined the origin story with equal potency and locked in the modern conception of our favorite superhero with no superpowers. Everybody since then has just been trying to keep up, whether that's Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan in the movies, or the rafts of writers and artists for the comic book and its rejuvenated potential for spinoffs. In this conception, likely best known now from the Nolan movie adaptations, Batman has become more of a psychopath himself, albeit one ostensibly for our side, a loner and vigilante who never recovered from the trauma of seeing his parents killed in a street stick-up, who comes most alive at night attacking prowlers and other bad guys. He's not fun, but he's often impressive, awe-inspiring even, which can get to be just about as good as fun. Miller's story and art (with inks by Klaus Janson, his future partner on the Daredevil franchise for Marvel) are never less than compelling, with their bleak, unified, and nearly perfectly realized vision of a media-saturated Gotham City in decline, and the scary grizzled drunk in cape and cowl who has appointed himself judge and jury of the place after nightfall.

In case it's not at the library.

Capote (2005)

USA/Canada, 114 minutes
Director: Bennett Miller
Writers: Dan Futterman, Gerald Clarke
Photography: Adam Kimmel
Music: Mychael Danna
Editor: Christopher Tellefsen
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Chris Cooper, Bruce Greenwood, Mark Pellegrino, Bob Balaban, Amy Ryan

If you are a collector of Oscar-winning performances you must be familiar already with Capote. A prestige picture practically by definition—classy, ponderous Oscarbait with one foot in tony cultural history (Truman Capote! Harper Lee! Wallace Shawn!) and the other in lurid quarters of popular culture (conservative Midwestern ennui, mass murder, and crime scene photos)—it is chiefly distinguished by the titanic central performance of the redoubtable Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote. Hoffman took home the Best Actor prize for his troubles, in the process lending the project enough momentum to also win nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Catherine Keener), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Hiding behind the mask of biopic (another winning Oscarbait gambit), it is actually less biopic proper than rote myth-making about a book, In Cold Blood, trying to make of it a Thing That Killed Men's Souls. Capote is precisely the kind of project that can tie me up in knots attempting to assess. It is an empty careerist vanity project in many ways, going through familiar awards season motions, yet incidentally packed full of indie cred signifiers that make bells go off in my head: Truman Capote, '60s fashion, New York City, senseless crime, Catherine Keener, To Kill a Mockingbird, period literary hauteur, Bob Balaban, empty Kansas plains (with wind blowing). Cool! Not cool! How do I decide?

"Daisy Miller" (1878)

Daisy Miller—the main character in this long story, as promised (or implied) by its title—put me in mind of Herman Melville's Bartleby, the scrivener who resolutely and absurdly "preferred not to." She is a kind of willfulness personified, which evidently was taken as some intrinsically American trait in the 19th century. Henry James, who is careful with language, is at pains to show us how careless Daisy Miller is. The entire touring Miller family, from upstate New York, visiting Switzerland and Italy, uses "ain't" with abandon (that's mother, little brother of 9, and Daisy herself). Even more cringe-inducing (as intended), "He says he don't care much about castles," Daisy says at one point, entirely indifferent to her verb usage. Her name happens to be one she has taken for herself, reinventing herself American style, one presumes; it is actually Annie. With Winterbourne, the expatriate gentleman who takes an interest in her, I am puzzled by the odd extremes of her behavior. She rejects polite European (and expatriate) society to hang out, as we would say now, with an Italian gentleman of little means but evidently good heart, as events transpire. Well, as events transpire, Daisy Miller dies of a lung disease contracted as a result of her typical carelessness. It's all a bit sudden, but it's not such a long story and James has little interest in dilly-dallying, which might strike anyone familiar with James's later career as rather out of the norm. "Daisy's grave was in the little Protestant cemetery, in an angle of the wall of imperial Rome"—here, I think, one may find a sense of what James is about with this otherwise somewhat inert tale, worrying the feebleness and futility of her protest against an entrenched society or culture that is nonetheless itself doomed. Daisy Miller may be a casualty but she is striking significant blows on her way down. And it is not so much that society itself, the Europeans, who work so hard to consign her to her oblivion, but rather the heirs of the original protesters, now trying so determinedly to accommodate the narrow perceptions of the empire that their own forebears once rejected so emphatically. Winterbourne may be the only one who grasps this paradoxical shallowness, and even that's not a sure bet. Daisy Miller may be the wisest one here after all.

"interlocutor" count = 3/55 pages

In case it's not at the library. (Library of America)

The Road Warrior (1981)

Mad Max 2, Australia, 95 minutes
Director: George Miller
Writers: Terry Hayes, George Miller, Brian Hannant
Photography: Dean Semler
Music: Brian May
Editors: Michael Balson, David Stiven, Tim Wellburn
Cast: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston, Max Phipps, Vernon Wells, Kjell Nilsson, Emil Minty, Virginia Hey

The Road Warrior tells the simple, straightforward post-apocalyptic fable of how a relatively cultured tribe trapped in "the Wasteland" (presumably what we now call the Outback in Australia) (no, not the restaurant chain) survives besiegement by a vicious band of outlaws, ever prowling for oil. Along the way, it offers a good many plain electrifying pleasures, which serve as something of a palate cleanser from the franchise's more tedious first effort, Mad Max. Everything is bigger and badder, chockablock with ripe end-times insignia rather than ugly hoodlums on motors. Had George Miller gone to the crossroads? The storytelling schema is throwback to another era—visuals tell the story during daylight, often across great expanses of space, and sounds tell it after dark. Most of what dialogue there is could have practically been replaced by title cards. The action is headlong, constant, and visceral, focused on the blazing energy of post-punk fashion plates in control of jerry-rigged muscle cars and motorcycles (and a bizarre helicopter as delightful as it is weird) zigzagging across sand and down decrepit stretches of abandoned highway, across which lie random heaps of wreckage, smoking and otherwise. Even the wipes that provide the transitions bristle with energy. The whole thing gets positively Biblical at points; also medieval. Many die. Dean Semler's camera rattles and rolls and shakes, just barely keeping up with much of it, underlining the explosive danger stalking these events. The stunts, on hurtling vehicles, are often inventive and daring, and always convincing. An orchestral score counterpoints the raw look and feel, lending a moody doominess if not quite achieving the lofty operatic grandiosity it seems in search of. The one misstep is a big one: Mel Gibson, who is altogether too pretty to be the least bit believable and who, as the star, occupies entirely too much screen time. That may be his latter-day baggage bothering me, I allow that. I don't remember being so annoyed by him when I first saw this, on the original release. But that was then and this is now. Nevertheless, it's a pretty good show.