10 favourite novels

 I read Betsy Byars' "The Eighteenth Emergency" at junior school and is my first favourite novel that I still love. Byars' books often present the melancholy of childhood with irreverent humour. This was my very first experience of writing truly speaking to me.

First read Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" at school. Its tale of domestic horror, of what people in a household do each other ladled with a dash of Gothic has an unforgettable cruelty and atmosphere. Everyone goes on about Heathcliff and Cathy, but that's only half the story as it is also about their poisonous legacy. Romantic? Pfft.

It seems that George Orvwell's "1984" will always be prescient. 

Marlon James' "A Brief History of Seven Killings" is a brand new favourite. Its multi-prespectives and prose are often breath-taking.

It was only on a second read that I realised the humour in "The Remains of the Day", and how truly sad it is in conclusion, speaking of a life lost to repression. Maybe that's to do with getting older?

When I was studying Holocaust fiction at university, I read a lot of devastating text, but it was Robert Frister's memoir "The Cap, or a price of a life" that made my blood run cold and my draw drop in equal measure. 

The density, plotting, era recreation and obsessive undertow of James Ellroy's work is stunning, and although his later work can verge on the impregnable, it was "L.A. Confidential" that made me a fan.

I read Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" in my early teens. I already knew science-fiction was the brainiest (that it wasn't just pulp) but Dick's work told me that no matter how dazzling the future would be, downbeat societies and human existential angst would be a constant.

Every chapter in Gunter Grass' "The Tin Drum" felt like a novel in itself. (And the film barely covered much of it.)

John Ajvide Lindqvist's "Let the Right One In" is just a definitive horror bildungsroman. (And the film couldn't cover all of it.)

Monkey Man

Monkey Man

Director ~ Dev Patel

Writers ~ Dev Patel, Paul Angunawela, John Collee

2024, United States-Canada-Singapore-India

Stars ~ Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash

 

‘Slumdog Wick’, where the earnestness of themes such as political and religious corruption blend with action movie excess-bonkersness. Quite deftly too, so it never feels as unintentionally humorous as many action thrillers do when trying to be serious. Although it does rely on Comedy Small Guy and a supercharged tuktuk for yucks. The plotting and planning of the first half are perhaps more captivating than the more fist-first approach of the second half, but it never slacks as it hurtles through its intent and genre tropes.

This is a genre that tends towards providing retaliation fantasies for the underdog, and ‘Monkey Man’ is absolutely on the side of the dispossessed and downtrodden. Patel’s “Kid”, although aligned with the legend of Hanuman, seems only to find identity in his vengeance, almost a cypher but more a street-kid robbed of his character. For intent: social commentary propping up the crunch of action – and also addresses head-on and shrugs off the ‘John Wick’ stuff. And the film is upfront in its disgust and targeting issues of political corruption, “untouchables” and caste divisions. It even has room for trans issues with its portrayal of hijras, India’s transgender and intersex community, and referencing the god Ardhanarishvara. This community is both a safe space and, ultimately, closet kick-ass warriors, perhaps indicative of how the film’s thoughtfulness gives way to outrageous action.  The film is almost soulful on the side, in that these themes seem deeply felt and not just garnish for motivation.

It’s Dev Patel’s baby (writing, acting, starring) and he makes a sympathetic and appealing Vengeance With No Name with a hurt vulnerability rather than Reeves’ suited-slacker cool or Cruise’s All American Smile sheen. Even beefed up, there’s a puppy-dog vulnerability to Patel that gives him far more appeal than written to his part. It’s swift, colourful, looks so zeitgeisty and accomplished that it is somewhat baffling that Jordan Peele apparently had to step in to ensure a cinema release. Perhaps it doesn’t pack the emotional wallop it aims for, buried under a barrage of over-the-top genre punches, and it is nothing new, but it has plenty of vibe.

Fights? The bathroom brawl and the elevator scrap for me.

 

 

Big Trouble in Little China

Big Touble in Little China

Director ~ John Carpenter

Writers ~ Gary Goldman, David Z. Weinstein, W.D. Richter

1986, US

Stars ~ Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun

 

Certainly, when I first saw it, I didn’t get the joke. Oh sure, ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ was amusing, but I was in my later teens that the mainstream and VHS were saturated with American super-machismo: Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, Segal, etc. This is before I got any nuance from the first two. This film seemed of a piece with scene and I didn’t register the satire. Certainly Kurt Russell knew the assignment and pushed more and more for this to be a send-up of the Swagger Saviour that he himself had earned a reputation with. Not least of all, with Carpenter himself, having played Snake Plissken and MacReady in ‘Escape from New York’ and ‘The Thing’.

 

It becomes apparent that there are two films going on: firstly the wuxia homage taking place in an American city with a huge heap of the supernatural where Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is the hero; and then there’s the film that Jack Burton thinks he’s in, being the John Wayne star when actually he’s a truckin’ blowhard that is culturally out of his depth. This where the film’s longevity and cult status comes from, as it wasn’t originally much thought of due in part to a studio that didn’t get the joke and, surely, some audiences too. If the portrayal of Chinese culture is a little broad, well this is broad strokes humour and homage and there is no meanness or condescension here. The humour is almost exclusively at the expense of the Jack Burton, although it is neither mean nor condescending towards him either. It feels more like the gentle ribbing between buddies rather than derisive mocking.

James Berardinelli’s review seems confused at the film’s irreverence and that Burton seems to get more screen time in the service of the joke; actually, he’s just louder and wants to make it all about him. Similarly Kathleen Carroll seems bewildered by its scatological nature, resorting to descriptions such as culturally specific cuisine  zingers as “stir-fried mess” and “as impenetrable as chop suey”, whatever that means. Hal Larper is more on-the-ball with “A campy, convoluted series of outrageous adventures that careens through an imaginary world for two hours before depositing you, breathless, back in your seat.”  Nobody familiar with the likes of ‘Mr. Vampire’ or ‘House’ will be surprised at the bonkers silliness, although its monster inflections and tone are more in place with the likes of ‘Ghostbusters’ .

The dodgy/dated 80s effects, ludicrous street tuff posturing and wuxia pile-ups has proven ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ more a cult favourite with time, its mash-up aesthetic sustained by a concentrated satire which perhaps proves more in tune with later zeitgeist further attuned to genre and culture medleys. Distinguished by its refusal to be mean-spirited, ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ remains happily irreverent and fun.

 

The Immortal & Gomorrah: the series

The Immortal

Director ~ Marco D'Amore

Writers ~ Leonardo Fasoli, Maddalena Ravagli, Marco D'Amore

2019, Italy-Germany

Stars ~ Marco D'Amore, Giuseppe Aiello, Salvatore D'Onofrio

 

Robert Saviano’s book ‘Gomorrah’, about the Neapolitan Mafia the Camorra, is an outraged diatribe against the influence organised crime has on ordinary citizens, the fashion world, etc, etc. There is a section about how the gangsters started imitating films; for example, how a female gang started dressing like The Bride from Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’, or how one crime lord wanted a bath like Pacino’s in ‘Scarface’. There is perhaps no better symbol for Saviano’s disgust than when he reports that he pissed upon that bath when researching.

 

The Italian TV series very loosely based upon the book is more soap opera, but despite lots of garish often tasteless jumble to symbolise wealth, there is never the sense that these people are happy or joyous. There’s little showboating because they’re too busy being morose, plotting and grim to cosplay films. There is little glamourisation of the lifestyle. Soap opera miserabilism helps to convey that this is not a life of contentment: after all, for all the garish trimmings, nearly everyone ends up dead.

 

Since the look and feel of the series ‘Gomorrah’ tended towards the cinematic by nature, this spin-off film resembles an extended episode, but for that there’s no disappointment. This film is directed by its star, Marco D’Amore, so the look and feel is of a piece. The show stuck to its staples: people facing-off constantly; men glaring into each other’s faces, close enough to kiss; women quite often toxic and enabling; men swaggering; women crossing their arms disapprovingly; occasionally characters will decry their lot or swing between declarations of loyalty and angst. Our main man Ciro (D’Amore), for example, says little but occasionally laments his existential loneliness and lack of feeling. Occasionally, the actors get to flutter vulnerability and lost humanity on their faces; and sometimes it is unintentionally amusing as posturing tends to be.

 

This spin-off tells the tale of what Ciro was doing while season four was taking place, the difference being that we get flashbacks to when he was a little proto-gangster orphan shit. It’s not a show with much sympathy, being more fascinated with the politics and betrayals with a little weepiness over male bonding. If the crucial ingredient with Ciro is that he was a mystery (but don’t cross him), then the flashbacks perhaps attempt to give him some context or motivation, but it also reaffirms that he was always thus and no crush on an older girl is truly a redeeming backstory.

 

Marco D’Amore continues smouldering as Ciro and his work as director on some of the episodes, and this certainly doesn’t scare the horses or go any deeper. This doesn’t have the outrage of Matteo Garrone’s original film, nor, for example, the deconstruction of machismo, mythology and fighting that Kinji Fukasaku’s ‘Battles Without Honour and Humanity’ series, but ‘The Immortal’ follows the format of the series. You won’t get the moral challenges of ‘The Sopranos’ or the jaw-dropping facts of 'Narcos'. But as with the series, most of the cast are scumbags so guilt levels and empathy is not a high demand; the betrayals are thick and occasionally surprising, the turn-over is high, the pace swift, the locations of backstreets and alleyways are excellent, interspersed with beatific panoramas of the city.

 

It all makes for diverting gangster soap and this film fills in the last jigsaw piece from the series.