Some Other Movies From 2013

The top 5 highest-grossing movies of 2013 were Frozen, Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (yawn), and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (double yawn, but Jennifer Lawrence is FINE).

As far as the award-winners go, it was an excellent year.  12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club and Her all came out that year.  I liked Gravity too, but I thought it was a bit overrated.

My favorite movies of that year are probably Gangster Squad, Upstream Color, The Iceman, Fruitvale Station, The Conjuring, August: Osage County, Prisoners, Inside Llewyn Davis and all of the award-winners mentioned in the paragraph above this one.

I doubt few would champion The Lone Ranger, which I consider the worst movie of that year.  You would think that after this movie studios would have stopped giving piles of money to Johnny Depp, but somehow studios never quite learn their lesson.

Some Good Ones

1. Dark Skies

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not."  ...but see the part of that quote the filmmakers failed to include was "Both are equally terrifying."  I guess it sounded scarier without the second sentence.

In Dark Skies an American family endures a Poltergeist-style alien invasion.  Aside from wondering if and when someone was going to end up in the living room TV, I enjoyed it.  It's by no means classic, but it builds up a fair amount of suspense over its 1.5 hour runtime.

2. Welcome to the Punch

James McAvoy and Mark Strong face off in this stylish British crime thriller.  The script was declared "one of the best unproduced British screenplays" prior to its entering production, and I'd have to say that yes, it made for a very good film.  After the success of Get Out it's slightly jarring to hear supporting cast member Daniel Kaluuya speak in his native British accent, but Welcome to the Punch is a solid action film along the lines of Michael Mann's Heat.

3. Trance

Hey there's James McAvoy again.  In this one he appears with Vincent Cassel (yay, Vincent Cassel!) and Rosario Dawson.  Danny Boyle directed.   The title refers more to the hypnotic state and less to the type of music.  One could make a convincing argument that this movie is a case of style over substance, but even so it's very stylish, and very entertaining.

Fun Fact: McAvoy's fellow X-Men alumnus Michael Fassbender was originally cast in the lead role.

4. The Internship

It's not hilarious or anything - and that strip club sequence exists only for the sake of tits and ass - but The Internship is... ok.  Vince Vaughn is about 50/50 for me, and Owen Wilson is about 25/75, but they're both relatively engaging in this movie about two older guys who want to work at Google.

5. Java Heat

Are all Indonesian police stations and prisons really so shitty?  Or is this some kind of movie trope, to make their characters seem tougher?

I'm guessing the fact that someone greenlit this movie had something to do with the success of The Raid.  But I could be wrong.  An American gets caught up in a bombing, and the plot ventures into Lethal Weapon territory from there.  Oh, and Mickey Rourke of all people shows up as a Malaysian (?) Muslim (?) terrorist (?).  There's some out-of-the-box casting for you!

The action scenes are stricly B movie fare, but the setting makes it more interesting than would otherwise be the case.

6. Lone Survivor

A team of Navy SEALS waste thousands of our taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan.  Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster and Taylor Kitsch are excellent in this movie, and the characters are very engaging throughout.  My only complaint is the movie's title, which gives the ending away.  I think Peter Berg, who directed this one, is very underrated as directors go.

This movie also gets extra points for Eric Bana.

7. Out of the Furnace

Braddock, Pennsylvania.  Maybe it has some nicer parts, but in this movie it looks like a real shithole.

Christian Bale and Casey Affleck star as two brothers who cross paths with a gangster played by Woody Harrelson.  It's a good movie, but more of a cat and mouse game between Bale and Harrelson would have made it better.  As it is it just kind of... ends, and all the great buildup prior to that point is wasted.

8. The Counselor

Michael Fassbender leads a star-studded cast as a lawyer mixed up with Mexican drug cartels.  Director Ridley Scott took Cormac McCarthy's script and ran with it, so you know this one's going to get DARK.  Depending on your love (or lack thereof) for McCarthy, the result is either a harrowing portrait of greed and human frailty OR a pretentious movie full of awkward dialogue.  For my part I loved it, and I'll probably watch it again soon.

So Bad It's Good?  So Good It's Bad?

1. Himmatwala

You've heard the Donna Summer version of "Thank God It's Friday," but have you heard the Telugu version?  A local badass returns to his hometown to confront an evil land baron.  In between the opening credits and his inevitable victory the (very beautiful) love interest sings songs, and the guys try to out-macho each other.  My favorite part is when HE GETS INTO A FISTFIGHT WITH A TIGER.

Fun Fact #1: This movie is a remake of a remake.

Fun Fact #2: This movie was a huge bomb.

2. Riddick

Now that we've all contacted our personal trainers, let's bulk up and put on our tough guy clothes!

Vin Diesel says predictably manly things and does cool stuff in slow motion.  The assholes who try to kill him die predictably violent deaths.  Aliens show up - predictably.  Where have I see all this before?  Oh, that's right.  Pitch Black!

Fun Fact: Vin Diesel only appeared in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift so that he could get the rights to the character Riddick.

Not Bad or Good, It Just Was

1. Texas Chainsaw 3D

Alexandra Daddario and Scott "I'm not the actor my dad is" Eastwood work their way up the ol' Hollywood ladder with Texas Chainsaw 3D.  The results are mixed.  On the one hand it's WAY better than 2017's Leatherface, and on the other it's still not very good.  This particular sequel ignores the 2003 remake and pretends to be the successor to the 1974 version of Texas' first family.  There's some good gore on offer, and Gunnar Hanson appears in it, but aside from these two facts there's not much else to be said for this movie.

Some Bad Ones

1. Dead Man Down

It's taken Hollywood a while to learn that you don't cast Colin Farrell as the lead in your movie.  Supporting cast member maybe, but definitely not the lead.  Farrell (unfortunately) stars in this movie as a man out for revenge - essentially The Punisher - and it's hard to say whether its Farrell's acting skills or just bad writing that makes his character come across as entirely too self-possessed to do what he is doing

Terrence Howard is, moreover, completely wasted on this movie.  He plays pretty much the same character he plays on the TV series Empire, though without the frightening ex-wife and the hip hop.  To make matters worse Noomi Rapace's accent is all over the place.

But I think the biggest problem with this movie is the pacing.  The whole thing seems like it's moving at the wrong speed.  There's a good scene between Farrell and Howard halfway through the movie, but aside from that everything about Dead Man Down seems to be happening either too slowly or too quickly.

2. The Grandmaster

By turns boring and pretentious, this Hong Kong movie is part action film, part love film, and part historical drama.  It's a movie suffering an identity crisis, and despite a strong beginning it quickly degenerates into long, thoughtful glances from Zhang Ziyi and the kind of self-important dialogue that sounds ridiculous in real life.

Perhaps worst of all, this movie made me miss the kind of Kung-fu movies I grew up with.  Back before everyone was suspended from wires.  Back when there was real, perceptible, physical danger involved.  Countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and even India are still making visceral martial arts-themed movies like that, but this?  It's like watching a pale shadow of all the better movies that came before it.

3. The Fifth Estate

Doctor Strange and Baron Zemo - ahem, excuse me - Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Bruhl - star as Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, and his German friend.  It wears out its welcome quickly, and many of the graphics used detract rather than add to the story.

Fun Fact: This wasn't the only time Cumberbatch played a socially-challenged mathematician.  He would do so again in The Imitation Game.

4. Mama

This movie seemed overrated when it came out in 2013, and having seen it in 2018 I can confidently assert that yes, it's overrated.  Two girls are abandoned in a spooky old house and are looked after by a ghost.  I never found the ghost scary, and the plot is fairly predictable.

5. Race 2

Bollywood movie about a con man seeking revenge.  What I'm going to remember about this movie is the shots of dudes walking down sets of stairs into hotel lobbies.  Endless.  Shots.  Of stairs.  Of dudes.  Walking.  Into hotel lobbies.  Oh, and designer sunglasses.  Lots and lots of designer sunglasses.  The rest of the movie is sheer nonsense, and only the presence of the stunning Deepika Padukone makes it halfway bearable.

I'm tempted to put this one in the "so bad it's good" category, but I think in terms of "bad goodness" (good badness?) it's overshadowed by Himmatwala above.  You just can't beat a fistfight with a tiger.

Fun Fact #1: Padukone was a nationally ranked badminton player prior to becoming a fashion model.

Fun Fact #2: Anil Kapoor, who also appears in this movie, was the star of Race, its prequel.  He might be more familiar to Western moviegoers as the Indian millionaire in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.  He was also host of the game show in Slumdog Millionaire.  He's been appearing in Bollywood movies since 1971.

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"Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement (1954)

"...but Mesklin was not even approximately spherical.  As Lackland had long ago recognized, the proportions of the Bowl on the Bree - Barlennan's equivalent of a terrestrial globe - were approximately right."

Hal Clement spent most of life teaching high school Astronomy and Chemistry.  Mission of Gravity is his best known book, and although he wrote throughout his teaching career his more recent books are much less familiar to the sci-fi reading public.

Mission of Gravity is an adventure story similar to Larry Niven's Ringworld.  A human astronaut visits a supermassive, oblate world, and has to rescue a lost probe with the help of alien traders.

Like Ringworld, the characters in Mission of Gravity are pretty hard, if not impossible to relate to.  They're little more than plot devices, but fortunately for them the plot's fairly interesting and their personalities are somewhat beside the point.  The most fleshed-out character is the leader of the alien traders, but his quirks regarding things like being picked up or falling down don't always add up to a picture of who - or what - he is.

If you've read Ringworld you can probably guess the overall shape of the plot.  Characters start at point A and try to get to point B, but then stuff happens, and they have to figure out ways of overcoming obstacles.  Ringworld adds a slight twist to this time-tested formula in that some of its characters are at cross-purposes, and their conflict adds an extra dimension to the story.

This said, Clement's oblate world could be an actual, physical reality, whereas Niven's Ringworld is pure fantasy.  Both books are grouped within the "hard science fiction" category, but Niven never quite bothered to think through all the implications of a ring-shaped world.  His introducing certain "modifications" in The Ringworld Engineers was, moreover, worse than not addressing the issues in the first book at all.

But hey, if you're looking for a well-known science fiction novel to read, you could do worse than either book.  Ringworld offers a better story, while Mission of Gravity is a more thorough example of worldbuilding.  Both books were very important to the development of the genre, and a familiarity with either won't take up too much of your time.

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"R.U.R. and War with the Newts" by Karel Capek (1920 and 1936)

"After that the German press began to take an eager interest in the Baltic Newt.  Special stress was laid on the fact that it was just in response to the German milieu that this Newt had developed into a divergent and higher racial type, indisputably superior to all the other Salamanders."

Karel Capek was a Czech writer active up until World War II.  He is best known as the originator of the word "robot," which was introduced in his play Rossum's Universal Robots, or R.U.R.

A lot of people like comparing Capek to Kafka.  This is because they were writing around the same time, were about the same age, were born in the same part of the world, and both wrote with a degree of surrealism.  There are definitely parallels between the two authors, but for me Capek's fiction brings to mind none other than Polish writer Stanislav Lem, another science fiction writer with whom he shared many sensibilities.  Capek isn't as deliberately intellectual as Lem was, nor was he as dismissive of other people's work, but I think that if Lem had been born a few decades earlier they would have had a lot to talk about.

In Rossum's Universal Robots a new life form comes into existence after a discovery on a tropical island.  The result of this discovery isn't really a "robot" as we understand the word today, but rather a sort of simplified, synthetic life form without the ability to reproduce itself.  As the "robots" quickly overwhelm human kind, the scientists who created them struggle to understand their invention as they monitor its troubling interactions with human civilization.

It's an easy read, and also very quaint by modern standards.  The understanding of science expressed through it is fairly childlike - or antiquated, if you will - so those looking for a precursor of Asimov's I, Robot will probably be disappointed.  It's half-comedic tone in some ways does the subject matter (Fascism?) a disservice, and I often had the feeling that there were jokes that weren't landing, or that the humor in the script suffered by translation.  I don't read Czech, so I can't say.

War with the Newts is a much better effort.  Sharing themes with R.U.R., this novel follows the discovery of intelligent "newts" on a tropical island, and then details a similar clash of civilizations after the newts rise up against their human oppressors.  It's really slow to get going, but about halfway through the author draws some amusing parallels between human-newt relations and historical incidents of his own time.  Some of the more "journalistic" asides also detract from the story, and the final phases of the "war" drag on a bit, but the last chapter of this book offers a great non-conclusion to a story that will, in essence, never end.

If you like Kafka, Lem, or still more obscure science fiction authors like E.T.A. Hoffmann you'll probably find something to like in Karel Capek.  He doesn't offer the polish of Vern or I'm-just-now-inventing-a-new-genre Poe, but his fiction still has something to offer modern readers.

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"McTeague" by Frank Norris (1899)

"After the two had drunk together Maria produced the gold tape.  Zerkow's eyes glittered on the instant.  The sight of gold invariably sent a qualm all through him; try as he would, he could not repress it.  His fingers trembled and clawed at his mouth, his breath grew short."

Frank Norris was a journalist and author during the late 1880s and early 1900s.  He lived in San Francisco for most of his life, wrote for The San Francisco Chronicle, and died very young at 32.

McTeague is perhaps his most well-regarded novel, though Norris and his works have fallen out of fashion in recent years.  The novel details an oafish dentist's love affair with a friend's cousin, and bears many similarities to Shakespeare's Othello.

Norris the author was very influenced by French writer Emilie Zola, whose works he encountered while studying art in Paris.  Zola was a big proponent of the naturalist approach to literature, which explains Norris' championing of Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie.  I was often reminded of Dreiser's work while reading McTeague, given the flawed nature of the characters and the mistaken choices they often make.  A character in Sister Carrie engages in impulsive theft the same way that a character in McTeague decides that she's in love.  No one in either book really knows what they are doing, or what their choices will lead to, even though they make frequent attempts to rationalize their actions.

But where Sister Carrie succeeds in taking a step back from its characters - by not judging them for their actions - McTeague often tries too hard to make a point.  Instead of letting the drama play out, and instead of leaving conclusions to the reader, McTeague often interjects philosophical conclusions into the narrative. I think the result of this "tampering" is a much weaker, much less modern book.  Something about the way in which McTeague was written speaks to a lack of trust in the reader's judgement, and even a kind of condescension.  This condescension isn't pervasive enough to be annoying, but it did pull me out of the narrative at several points.

This, and there are parts of this book where even Norris' naturalism seems to break down, and in which his characters' actions verge on the irrational.  A young bride becomes a miser for no perceptible reason.  A young man develops an equally unfounded grudge.  It's not so much that such transformations couldn't develop out of earlier whims, but that they would proceed in stages.  Inserting them into the narrative out of the blue makes them seem less natural, rather than the opposite.

More worrying still are the racial stereotypes present in this book.  In McTeague one finds a clear divide between the Caucasian characters and non-Caucasian ones, with the latter often described in animalistic and/or negative terms.  The grasping Jew lusts after gold and exhibits "claws" (see quote above), while the resident "Mexican" is a thief and a fraud in equal measure.  The white upper-class inhabiting this book - for all their idiocy - are still superior to the Jew and the Mexican.  Othello again, but even more specifically racial than Shakespeare intended.

This said, McTeague is a well-written book that made me wonder what Norris would have come up with if he had lived longer, and if he had somehow overcome his racist mode of thinking.  He was definitely a good writer, and the portrait of old San Francisco one finds in McTeague is fascinating.  The characters that aren't stereotypes are also equally compelling, though the characters that are mitigate the quality of the overall story.

If you like Steinbeck you might find in Frank Norris an interesting precursor.  There are many parallels to be drawn between the two authors, not least among which are their naturalism, their relation to California, their journalistic backgrounds, and their concern for the working man.  Steinbeck is (of course) a far better writer, but one could argue that he wrote upon a template that Frank Norris helped set out.

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Some Other Movies From 2015

The top 5 movies of 2015 were Star Wars: the Force Awakens, Jurassic World, Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Minions.  I loved none of these movies, and I don't think any of that year's other highest-grossing films were particularly good.

2015 was the year Leonardo DiCaprio finally won the Oscar for The Revenant, though if you ask me he probably should have won it earlier for The Wolf of Wall Street, Blood Diamond, or The Aviator.  

Aside from The Revenant, other award-winning films of 2015 included Spotlight, The Martian, Room, and the forgettable Steve Jobs.  The Big Short, my favorite "awards worthy" movie of 2015, was largely overlooked.

My favorite movies of 2015 are probably Ex Machina, Mad Max: Fury Road, Get Hard, and Sicario.  Terminator: Genisys and Fantastic Four count among my least favorites.  I regard Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight as the most overrated.

Some Good Ones

1. A Walk in the Woods

Robert Redford stars as the travel writer Bill Bryson.  After his friend's death he decides to trek the length of the Appalachian Trail.  It's a very funny movie, full of Bryson's characteristic wit.  Critics were pretty hard on this film, but I think it's better than most reviews would have you believe.

2. Woman in Gold

The title of this movie refers to a painting done by Gustav Klimt.  Helen Mirren stars as a Jewish-Austrian refugee returning to Austria to reacquire a painting stolen from her family by the Nazis, with Ryan Reynolds as her attorney and confidant.  It's not bad, but the tenuous connections between Mirren, Reynolds, the Klimt painting and the Holocaust are never fully assembled into a complete film.

Fun Fact: After Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren's character) won back her family's five paintings, one of them was purchased by Oprah Winfrey.

3. American Ultra

You know those big black and white graphic novels that cost a fortune?  Written and drawn by someone you've never heard of?  The kind a certain friend is obsessed with, but which fail to impress you?  American Ultra is just like that.  Jessie Eisenberg stars as a sleeper agent on the run in small town America, with Kristen Stewart as his girlfriend.  If you're bored enough it's ok, but I wouldn't seek it out.

4. Trumbo

Bryan Cranston stars as the legendary screenwriter accused of being a communist spy.  Cranston is excellent in the role, and Helen Mirren is particularly memorable as Trumbo's sometime adversary.  

Fun Fact #1: Louis C.K. is in this.  Trumbo was released two years or so before his sexual misconduct scandal.

Fun Fact #2: Dalton Trumbo also wrote and directed 1971's Johnny Got His Gun, excerpts of which appear in the video for Metallica's "One."

5. Concussion

Full Disclosure: I'm an (American) football fan and I probably would have liked this movie regardless of its quality.  I'm also a Steelers fan, and that compromises me even more.

The above said, the actor that plays "Iron" Mike Webster probably deserved both an Academy Award and a bigger role.  Will Smith?  Not so much, especially as  Albert Brooks and Alec Baldwin upstage him at every opportunity.  Even so, Smith is... acceptable as the Nigerian doctor who made the rather obvious discovery that getting hit in the head thousands of times during your football career can give you brain damage.  The movie's chief flaw is that it simply loses steam during the second half, and events which ought to have been momentous just aren't.

One of the more jarring things I about this movie is the courtroom scene in the beginning.  Not to nitpick, but if anyone had hemophilia that serious they would have needed regular blood transfusions, and their condition would have been obvious to all.  It's not the sort of thing a doctor surprises a jury with in court.

6. The End of the Tour

I read Infinite Jest not long ago, so I was a bit surprised to come across a movie featuring David Foster Wallace so soon after his death.  Jason Segel stars as the famous author, with Jesse Eisenberg as the Rolling Stone reporter interviewing him.  People not into books will probably be bored by this movie, but I enjoyed it and thought it was very thought-provoking.  Eisenberg was also much better used in this film than in American Ultra.

7. Dope

Ok, so if he really wrote a letter like that for Harvard there's no way he's ever getting in.  Not even with the check cashing guy's dubious assistance.

But aside from that Dope is a funny and engaging movie, even if it starts to drag once the hero starts dealing drugs.  There are also two achingly beautiful women in it, so beautiful I had to go look them up on the Internet afterward.

Fun Fact: One of those achingly beautiful women is Zoe Kravitz, daughter of Lenny.  She appeared in Mad Max: Fury Road the same year.

8. Irrational Man

A philandering philosophy professor takes Crime and Punishment a bit too seriously.  I'm still not a Woody Allen fan, but Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone make this movie better than it ought to be.

9. Stonewall

A young man runs away to New York and gets involved in the struggle for gay rights.  It's on the long side, but the characters remain interesting throughout.  I couldn't help but tear up a bit when the protagonist's mother and sister show up at the pride march.  Critics got worked up over the racial aspects of the film, but in my opinion they were overthinking it.

10. Legend

Tom Hardy stars as twins taking control of London's underworld.  The first half of this movie is awesome, but the second half is somewhat boring.  Of the two brothers played by Hardy the insane one is much more interesting than the sane one, and the insane one doesn't factor into much of the second half.  

Fun Fact: This is actually the second film based on the infamous Kray twins.  The first was 1990's The Krays.

One Which is Good, But Which Will Probably Make You Uncomfortable for Any Number of Reasons

1. The D Train

Jack Black stars as the chairman of his alumni committee, trying to organize a 20-year high school reunion.  James Marsden co-stars as a classmate who sought fame and fortune in Hollywood.  Black gets serious points for trying - there are some truly cringeworthy scenes in this movie - but the ending is something of an anticlimax.

Some Bad Ones

1. Blackhat

I think Michael Mann was out of his depth, and Chris Hemsworth's uncharacteristic lack of screen presence isn't helping matters.  Blackhat is the story of one hacker trying to catch another, burdened by unnecessary cgi sequences in which the virus "takes hold," and a ridiculous romantic subplot involving Hemsworth and Tang Wei.  The U.S. law enforcement officials are all thundering idiots, and Hemsworth's character is seemingly the only person in the movie with half a brain.

2. True Story

Real life buddies James Franco and Jonah Hill star as a killer and the reporter interviewing him for a story.  It starts out well and the acting is good throughout, but there's not enough of a story for two hours.  It also takes a couple retarded twists near the end.

3. Last Knights

If Blackhat is a lot of action at the expense of plot, Last Knights is a lot of plot at the expense of action.  Something-something war happens and then the middle ages get played out again with a multiracial cast of characters.  Morgan Freeman struggles with some truly bad dialogue, Clive Owen tries to look heroic despite the fact that he has very little to do, and the bad guy is such a terrifically bad actor that one almost wishes they'd cast Tommy Wiseau in the part, just to make it that much worse.

4. Poltergeist

Sam Rockwell (!) takes his family to live in a haunted house.  This movie was already effectively remade much better by The Conjuring, so the stakes were high for this 2015 update of the 1980s classic.  It's less overwrought than the original, but it fails to build up any kind of tension.  It just kind of ends, and that's it.

5. Love

First shot of this movie: a woman jerking off the protagonist until he ejaculates into her mouth.  

The plot?  An American living in Paris has a threesome with his girlfriend and a neighbor, later (accidentally) has a child by said neighbor, loses his girlfriend, and then spends an unhappy day at home reminiscing over the girlfriend.  In between pretentious voiceovers he remembers all the sex they had, and yes the sex is very graphic.  The trouble is that everyone in this movie is so damn unlikable, and it's not like graphic sex is that hard to find elsewhere these days.

I liked what director Gaspar Noe did with his previous film Irreversible, and I'd still like to see his newest film Climax, but this one wasn't doing anything for me.

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"Fear: Trump in the White House" by Bob Woodward (2018)

"'Mr. President, can I show this to you?' Cohn fanned out the pages of data in front of the president.  'See, the biggest leavers of jobs - people leaving voluntarily - was from manufacturing.'

"'I don't get it,' Trump said."

Bob Woodward is the famous "Woodward and Bernstein" Woodward.  He remains an assistant editor at The Washington Post, and his career in journalism stretches back decades.  His bibliography extends from Nixon to the present day.

In Fear Woodward attempts to cast light on the secretive goings-on within Trump's White House.  He begins with the final days of Trump's candidacy, and the book ends - somewhat anticlimactically - with Trump's legal troubles and the FBI inquiry into Russian electoral meddling.

I learned about this book through American news reports, and based upon both the glowing and scathing reviews figured it would be nothing if not interesting.  To my discredit I didn't vote in the last election, and like many people I've been in a state of perpetual dismay ever since.  

I can't say that I've cultivated any serious dislike for Trump.  I can't stand to hear the man give speeches, and he seems woefully under-qualified for the job, but I generally find him to be a much less threatening, far more comical figure than Hillary Clinton.  Prior to Trump's surprise win, Clinton brought thoughts of a New World Order to mind, whereas Trump was always someone I have trouble taking seriously.  No, I don't want him to have access to the nuclear codes - or Twitter, for that matter - but Clinton seemed to portend invasive laws, and other nations continuing to infringe upon U.S. sovereignty.

So is the book good?  I don't know, I found it a little disappointing.  It's not as weighty as I was expecting.  I was hoping for a more in-depth look at the Trump administration, but what I got instead was a breezy few hundred pages on how members of his cabinet continually try (and fail) to prevent Trump from making a fool of himself.  It does make for entertaining reading, and I did learn a few things, but on the whole it feels like this book needed more detail, and perhaps - in a larger sense - the author was just too close to the events he's describing.

Living as I do in Taiwan, I'd have to say that the Trump presidency hasn't been all that bad so far.  Arms sales have increased and the U.S. has distanced itself from China, but it's hard to say whether this state of affairs is traceable to the Commander in Chief or not.  Some of it may have to do with larger geopolitical goals and military leadership in the region.  I will say, however, that the details of Trump's relationship with the Chinese were very enlightening, and one wonders how much of the current "trade war" is really Trump's doing, or if he's only taking credit for things he had little to do with.

I doubt Fear will be the defining book of the Trump presidency.  If nothing else this presidency isn't over yet, and gaining a fuller picture of it will await future developments.  Fear is a good book, but I doubt it will change anyone's mind in terms of whether they're for or against Trump.  It simply lacks the evidence to do so, and the account it offers comes off as largely anecdotal in nature.  I'd recommend it if you are, like me, fairly clueless as to what's going on with the U.S. right now, but it's definitely not as insightful as some are claiming it to be.

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