Reading: DEATH IN A BUDAPEST BUTTERFLY - Julia Buckley

Though mysteries - and particularly cozy mysteries - have been one of my biggest loves as a reader for some time, in the last couple of years I've gotten more ... picky about my tastes in the genre; to me, only a fraction of cozies I read today give me the same satisfaction they used to, mainly because of what has become fairly generic/formulaic plotting, the lack of real clues that build up to a logical conclusion as to the identity of the killer (I was spoiled by Agatha Christie since age 12), or - worse - the intrusion of a romantic storyline that, instead of being an extension of the main character's life or world, becomes almost more important than the mystery. So imagine my relief and excitement when a cozy comes along that breaks these negative trends; one with good plotting, characters I truly care about, and writing that comes off engaging and fresh. Such is book one of the Hungarian Tea House mystery series, a wonderfully-written mystery that finds Hana Keller playing amateur sleuth when a customer in her family's tea shop drops dead, poisoned - with spiked tea served to the victim in Hana's newly-acquired treasure, the one-of-a-kind Budapest Butterfly teacup. I immediately loved Hana and her family, in particular Hana's tea leaf-reading grandmother - an old-school, no-nonsense lady from Hungary who may or may not have psychic ability. Everything flows so naturally and wonderfully in the book: Hana takes up the investigation as amateur sleuth to defend both her family's reputation and avenge the use of her precious keepsake in the murder, and even when she finds herself attracted to the lead detective investigating the crime, never ever does this budding romance overtake the story or intrude on the book's central mystery. Indeed, again, all the character's here come across so real on the page, it's as if I knew them - or would like to. The police investigation, as well as Hana's own poking around in the case, reveal clues that build logically and realistically to a satisfying reveal of the killer and motive behind the murder. Best yet, author Julia Buckley has tied nearly every aspect of it all into Hungarian folklore and/or the backstory of more than a few of the Hungarian characters in the book, making the cozy come off not just original but genuinely interesting a read. Death in a Budapest Butterfly is nothing short of a terrific opener to a new series, a fresh and solid debut that guarantees this reviewer's place at the head of the line for future installments.  4.5/5 stars 

Reading: DEAD AND UNBURIED VOL. 1. ZOMBIE AT LARGE - Jocelyn Boisvert (writer), Pascal Colpron (illustrator)

Colorful artwork and well-drawn characters with a comic touch add greatly to this first-in-a-series graphic novel starring a young student named Yan who is enjoying all life has to offer, when suddenly that life is taken away. With school almost over for the summer, being on the verge of going into production on a new horror movie with his best friend, and a new baby sister on the way, the last thing Yan expected or wanted is to be the victim of violence. But while trying to help someone else, Yan is stabbed to death by a hoodlum - and unlike with most people, life doesn't stop there when a year later Yan wakes up in his coffin, now one of the undead. Once free of his grave, Yan decides that being green and half-rotten away shouldn't deter his friends or family from welcoming him back, and sure enough his best friend is quite accepting (once the shock wears off) - as is the girl, with her own issues, crushing on him - but when Yan makes his way home and learns how much his family has changed (not for the better) since his death, he leaves before being discovered, determined to find a way to put them back on the right path. As said, this is a first-in-a-series, charming and well-executed and darkly funny enough that this reader found himself a bit irritated at the abrupt ending of the book, eagerly wanting more and rooting for Yan all the way.  4/5 stars

NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Watching: ANNABELLE COMES HOME

Year: 2019
Rating: R
The seventh film in the Conjuring franchise features, yet again, everyone's favorite little doll  Annabelle - who, as the film opens, is taken by demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) and encased in a locked glass cabinet in their Evil Trinkets Room (my name, not theirs) before she can do any more damage. Annabelle is so evil, in fact, that the case/room have to be blessed first, and even locked up her evil seems to effect the other evil artifacts in the room, as if she feeds them. The locks on the door to the Warren's private souvenir suite are many, and when the Warrens leave on an overnight trip they make sure to engage Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman), a babysitter for their 10-year-old daughter whom they already know and trust to steer clear of the chamber of horrors behind that multi-locked door. What they don't count on, however, is Mary Ellen's uber-annoying friend Daniela (Katie Sarife), who's read about the Warren's rep in the newspapers and has her own secret agenda; she wants in that room, and nothing's going to stop her. When she visits Mary Ellen at the Warren's home and manufactures an excuse to get her friend and the little girl out of the house, Daniela finds the keys to the locked hell-room (in a ridiculously easy way, one of a couple of eye-rolls you can expect in this film), and manages to not only unleash Annabelle but a whole truckload of evil  from that room that seems to guarantee no one will make it through the night - which, of course, also sets up the little girl as the primary target (cue horror trope). For scares, Annabelle Comes Home is actually one of the better entries in this particular series (the coin thing even had me creeped out), even dropping in a couple moments of humor to alleviate the supernatural shenanigans. Not awesome, but first-time director Gary Dauberman serves up enough scares to keep you going, even if you do sort of want to smack the crap out of the smug, annoying Daniela through most of the film.  6/10 stars

Watching: THE LAUNDROMAT

Year: 2019
Rating: R
Steven Soderbergh's latest film, for me, was an overall disappointment - but don't necessarily go by me, the film's subject matter is one I have little to no interest in and that may helped to make this one more than dry as dust to me. That said, with a stellar cast and Soderbergh behind the lens, I guess I was just expecting more from this tongue-in-cheek comedy-drama about money laundering ... that I actually found a bit depressing with its overall message that the bad guys usually win (even if it is the truth - and that's not a spoiler, btw). Meryl Streep stars as Ellen, a lady whose husband dies in a freak accident after which she discovers his insurance policy isn't worth the paper its printed on. She tries to trace it back to the company that insured him, but finds herself in a hugely complex web of fake corporations and fraudulent deals that - viewers learn - are a part of the great system of laws in this country that enable the rich to get richer by not paying taxes, while the poor get poorer and suffer the consequences of their actions. Antonio Banderas and Gary Oldman play two of the biggest con men attached to such schemes, and they narrate the film - speaking directly to the camera - in a tongue-in-cheek way of letting anyone watching know how the system "really" works, and how it's made them wealthier than God; again, not the most inspiring message to the average joe. The film is well-crafted and well-acted, but its education of how the system works - and how it works so much in favor of the rich and the criminally-inclined - is a downer of a message, true or not, that made the film less than enjoyable to sit through.  4/10 stars

Reading: LOLA: A GHOST STORY - J. Torres (writer), Elbert Or & Jill Beaton (illustrators)

Celebrating the 10-year anniversary of this graphic novel exploring Filipino folklore and grief, this edition of Lola: A Ghost Story ("Lola" meaning "grandmother" in Tagalog) releases March 24th and is the story of a young boy named Jesse whose only memory of his grandmother - a woman who, supposedly, saw visions and even fought off demons and monsters while she was alive - is of when she tried to drown him as a baby. With his family as they gather together at Lola's old home, Jesse finds himself now seeing visions, only he can't figure out whether they are good ones or monsters in disguise, and more than ever he wishes Lola were around to guide him. While the artwork and writing both take on a dreamlike, hazy quality that perfectly embodies the spirit (no pun intended) of this simple yet effective story, ultimately Lola is a tale of grief and being able to move forward beyond it; of family, and of learning that in helping others we often also help ourselves. Charming and sweet. 4/5 stars

NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Reading: LONG WAY DOWN - Jason Reynolds

All the awards and accolades attached to this novel-in-verse made me anxious to read it - but hesitant as well, wondering if Jason Reynolds's much-lauded story could hold up to the hype. But Long Way Down exceeded even those expectations; via a true economy of words, author Reynolds weaves an intimate, punch-to-the-gut story of what happens when fifteen-year-old Will's older brother Shawn is shot to death ... and Will, tucking Shawn's own gun into the waistband of his jeans, heads out to kill the person who killed his brother. Hyped-up and refusing to back down to what Will sees as his duty, he leaves his apartment and still-devastated mother and boards the elevator on the seventh floor, heading down - and it's what happens as the elevator stops on each floor, a new passenger with ties to Shawn boarding each time to provide the angry young Will another piece in the puzzle of his brother's life and death, that has the potential to shape what Will might do ... or become. The visceral impact of Reynolds's words and the portrait they paint of a young, grieving man caught up in gun violence, make this an incredibly potent and brilliant read, as well as one of my favorite books of 2019.  4.5/5 stars

Watching: US

Year: 2019
Rating: R
Having not yet seen Get Out (I know, I know; it's on the list), Jordan Peele's rep and a great cast (totally in love with Lupita!) drew me to this bizarre, tension-filled (and at times disturbing) film starring Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide, a woman who suffered a traumatic event in her childhood who suddenly finds herself thrust down Memory Lane again when her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) insists on taking them and their two kids to the very beachfront that - unbeknownst to him - his wife remembers all too well. From their very arrival there Adelaide has the growing sensation that something very, very bad is about to happen, and sure enough that same night the family is confronted by a group of four strangers in masks and red jumpsuits, just standing in the dark outside their rented home, who suddenly force their way into the house, where it is discovered - once the masks come off - that each intruder is the exact physical doppelganger of one of the family members they have come to kill (each bearing a huge pair of gold shears to do the job with, no less). Things get super-weird from here, in a plot that's not only un-explainable in the context of this review but would also contain spoilers. Suffice to say, Us is a twisty, truly bizarre horror story with a tremendous amount of subtext and a twist ending I somehow didn't fully see coming. Director Jordan Peele drops enough hints along the way, giving viewers an ending that may be a head-scratcher to those who haven't been paying attention ... but boy, is this a film worth paying attention to, and while not perfect Peele's execution of this strange, somewhat open-ended story made (for me) for one of the most intriguing, thought-provoking, and at times seriously creepy films I'd seen in some time. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack kicks ass, too.  8/10 stars

Watching: THE NUN

Year: 2018
Rating: R
HUGE fan of the Conjuring film series here, and in Conjuring 2 I thought that wacky evil nun was possibly the scariest, most intriguing character in the whole film ... so needless to say I was super-hyped to get her story, and more than anxious to see this follow-up. Here we follow a cloister in Romania, opening with two nuns - one older, one younger - evidently going to battle against the demon nun, in a cool opening scene that ends with the young nun hanging herself to keep the demon nun from taking over her body and re-entering the physical world. In response to this suicide, the Vatican sends a priest with his own checkered past (Demian Bichir), and a nun so new to the game she hasn't even taken her vows yet (Taissa Farmiga, sister of Vera from the Conjuring films) to investigate the mysterious hanging, where this dynamic duo meets up with a French-Canadian named - what else? - Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet), who originally discovered the hanging nun's body, to get to the bottom of things. A few nice, spooky sequences can't cover up the fact that this film is a letdown, three very good actors doing their best with a weak script that ultimately makes for a film not all that scary and indeed even laughable in a few spots (a scene with Frenchie in the local village tavern, for instance, seems to play word-for-word like a cheesy Hammer horror film clip) leading to a so-so ending worthy of an eye-roll or two. A shame, because darn it this was one demon nun who deserved better!  2/10 stars

Watching: KLAUS

Year: 2019
Rating: PG
Directors: Sergio Pablos, Carlos Martinez Lopez
The first animated feature film to appear on Netflix (after a brief theatrical release) is the long-ago tale of a spoiled, cocky young rich dude named Jesper (voiced by Jason Schwartzman), currently attending the postal academy to become a postman and follow in his family's business, whose laziness and lack of caring make him the worst student in the school's history. To combat this, Jesper's exasperated father decides to teach his son a lesson and sends him off to work as a postman at the most desolate, frozen post office in the world ... in Smeerensburg, which rests on a frozen island in the Arctic Circle. With no choice but to go or forfeit his lavish lifestyle, Jesper is sent with the goal of moving 6,000 letters out of the tiny town before he can leave, but when he arrives finds the inhabitants of Smeerensburg just as cold, unrelenting, and bleak as the town itself. The town is, in fact, stuck in the middle of a feud that's been going on for millennia, the adults all hateful and angry and vindictive and passing these traits onto their awful children - so that even when Jesper learns that hope may lie in the form of a reclusive toymaker named Klaus, who lives on the far side of the island, he must still wonder whether Smeerensburg can even be saved. How I loved this film; the animation style is very unique and old-fashioned, completely fitting with the slightly-tweaked origin story of how writing letters to Santa came to be; according to IMDb, director Sergio Pablos wanted to do a traditionally animated film, but wanted to see how animation might have evolved had computer-generated animation never come along, so he used CGI lighting techniques with hand-drawn animation - and the result, on screen, is quite beautiful, with some scenes that visually took my breath away. The voice acting is terrific (JK Simmons as Klaus and Joan Cusack as the evil Mrs. Krum are total standouts), the script walking that fine line of Christmas sentimentality vs. "too much sugar" without ever toppling over into the latter. Funny, lovely, and touching (yes, a tear or two in the eyes at the end) make this one of the best Christmas animated films I've seen in ages, and one of my favorite films seen in 2019.  9.5/10 stars

Watching: PARASITE

Year: 2019
Rating: R
Director: Bong Joon-ho
I purposefully went into watching Parasite knowing as little as possible about the film, beyond the trailer, and would heartily advise the same to anyone else wanting to see it. Deserving of the hype and accolades? Of being labeled one of the Best Films of the past Decade, let alone 2019? Absolutely. It would appear that, after directing visual and cerebral stunners like Mother, The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja, (that last one I still have yet to see), Bong Joon-ho has directed his masterpiece. Parasite follows the Kim family - father, mother, and their grown daughter and son - all of whom are unemployed and living in a tiny, rundown lower-level apartment in Korea, subsisting on government aid. When the son, Ki-woo, is offered a job tutoring a high school girl from a rich family, we meet the Parks - father, mother, teenaged daughter and young son - and within a very short time the Kim family ingratiates themselves with the Parks when each takes a job within the household while pretending to no even know each other, let alone admit they are related. But the Kims don't just take over the open positions of driver, therapist, housekeeper, etc.; no, they hatch elaborate plans to first get the people already in these positions at the Park household fired, then finagle their way in as the replacement. That's how without conscience the Kims are, even as somehow - and this is part of Bong Joon-ho's genius - you still root for them to get away with it, if nothing else than maybe in the way the poor always want to stick it to the one-percent. Things, in fact, seem to be going quite well for the Kims, who celebrate in the Park home one evening after the family has gone out of town camping about an hour into the film ... until a genuine "WTF" incident happens that turns both the film and the Kims cushy situation absolutely on its head, the rest of the film a suspenseful, darkly-funny potential train wreck you won't be able to take your eyes from. Parasite is perfectly cast, and directed with Bong's signature artistic edge (you can tell Kubrick was an influence) that makes simple shadows chilling or a sarcastic line said during the tensest moment downright hilarious. It's a film that needs to be seen more than once to pick up everything, visually and stylistically, the filmmakers imbued each line and image with, and it's certainly a film that must be seen without distraction of food or bathroom breaks or anyone talking in your ear; you have to pay attention to this one. For this reason I don't know, how this South Korean gem may work on middle-American audiences, but anyone missing Parasite is missing an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind treat that's also a masterclass in filmmaking.  10/10 stars

November Wrap-Up: Transitions

Wow, thirty days and only five books read - most of them easy-read kids' ARCs, and a graphic novel I had high hopes for - and not even a single new film watched in November. Good God, what a letdown; the year cannot end like this!

That said, my living situation is still in flux, and am currently staying with friends (soon to change). My normal lifestyle of a lot of "me" time alone, to read and watch films, is no more right now; am constantly surrounded by people and noise and distractions. Not a bad thing, it's a great family with a lot of love for each other yet still enough to share even more with a weirdo like me - but it's just not conducive for any activity done solo, such as reading or writing or watching films.

December will be different. Period!  

Please look for reviews of the five books pictured (to come), as well as some catching up from past months' reviews not yet done. Hope your November/Thanksgiving were terrific, and keep watching this page for more content; I do have some ideas brewing, especially for the new year!