Reviews - And I'll Try To Be Quick About It

Ever since I heard about Francis Ford Coppola's new movie "Megalopolis", I knew that I wanted to see it, and from what I had read about it, I also knew that there was a good chance that I wouldn't like it.  And I was right.

The movie is striking visually, and Coppola used everything in his Auteur Bag of Tricks, so that is kind of fun, but what exactly is this movie about?  A guy wants to design, build, and control a futuristic city?  The evils of big money men when it comes to who exactly controls whom when someone wants to achieve something?  An allegory on the 45th President and all that he has wrought over the last ten years?  

"Megalopolis" also has in supporting roles Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, together again fifty-five years after "Midnight Cowboy".  If only Coppola could have thrown in an Easter egg of Hoffman yelling "I'm walking' here."

The most fun part of the movie was Aubrey Plaza chewing the scenery in her role as, and what terrific name for a character, Wow Platinum.

I figure that guy like Francis Ford Coppola has earned the right to do just about anything he wants to do when making  a movie, but "Megalopolis" ain't the second coming of "The Godfather " trilogy.  Trust me on that.

Word is that Coppola financed this movie himself using proceeds from his wine business.  I enjoy and buy Coppola's wines, so I guess that I am partially responsible for this one.

One and one-half Stars from The Grandstander.

British mystery novelist Richard Osman decided to take a break from his Thursday Murder Club series, which I wrote about HERE a few months back, and introduce a new series starring two new central characters, father-in-law and daughter-in-law Steve and Amy Wheeler.

Steve is a retired police detective and widower and, much like Osman's Thursday Murder Club characters, he likes to relax in his retirement, hang with his mates at the local pub, and play pub trivia every Wednesday night.

Amy is a "private security/protection specialist" who travels all over the world and is somewhat of a killing machine.  

In this one, clients of Amy's firm keep getting killed, and Amy is being framed for the murders.  To get out of this mess, Amy recruits a reluctant Steve to help her out.  There is also  horny female best selling mystery novelist (a sex-crazed Agatha Christie?) who is involved here and helps out Amy and Steve.  There are professional high level hit men involved, an elaborate money laundering scheme, and travels all over the world (in addition to England, action takes place in South Carolina, St Lucia, Dublin, Hawaii, and Dubai).  I found the whole thing to me a big mish-mash of a story, I practically forced myself to slog through it until the end.  Had I not enjoyed the author's other books, I would probably have given up on it at the hundred page mark.

I might - might - give the next installment of the Steve and Amy series a chance now that Osman has established the characters, but, mostly, I will anxiously await his return to the fictional community of Cooper's Chase and his Thursday Murder Club folks.

One and three-quarters Stars from The Grandstander.

The "Thursday Murder Club" Series

It has been awhile since I have talked about books, so let's discuss the Thursday Murder Club series of novels by Richard Osman.  Osman is a British TV personality, talk show, and game show host, which I suppose makes him the Jimmy Fallon of England.  After visiting an upscale retirement community in England, Osman had the idea to write a mystery novel that would be set in just such a place.  Thus was born the fictional upscale retirement community of Cooper's Chase in the fictional town of Fairhaven in the non-fictional region of Kent in England.

In 2020, "The Thursday Murder Club" was published and became an immediate best seller and critical success in both Great Britain and the United States.  It features four main characters:

• Elizabeth, a retired operative, aka a spy, for MI5 of the British Intelligence Service
• Ron, a retired labor leader and liberal gadfly in British politics.  He was a bit of a rabble rouser back in he day, and he hasn't lost that characteristic his senior retirement years
• Ibrahim, a retired  (sensing a theme here?) psychiatrist with a penchant for being neat and orderly that tends to drive everyone else crazy
• Joyce, a widow recently moved to Cooper's Chase who, throughout the book, records her diary-like first person observations of the goings on in the story.  This keeps the narrative moving along.

Each Thursday morning, they meet in the Cooper's Chase "puzzle room", which they have reserved for their discussions of various murders, usually unsolved ones, that are in the news.  Naturally, they tend to get involved in real murders that often strike very close to home for all of them.  There is a peripheral cast of characters that enter our Club's orbit, including Kent police officers Chris and Donna, who are continually exasperated by the four seniors' interference in their official investigations, but who soon realize that they really need the help of these four old folks.

All of the stories - there have been four of them as you can see in the photo above - offer a true mystery puzzle for the reader, engaging characters, and lots and lots of wry, trenchant, and witty comments on aging, how people view older people, and how just because you get older, it doesn't mean that you have to get old, despite what society may think of you.

Steven Spielberg's production company has acquired the rights to these novels and casting has already been done:  Helen Mirren as Elizabeth, Pierce Brosnan as Ron, Ben Kingsley as Ibrahim, Celia Imrie as Joyce, and Jonathan Pryce as Elizabeth's husband, Stephen.  All are excellent choices, and I can't wait to see the movie.

In the most recent novel, "The Last Devil to Die", one of the characters experiences a major life event that casts a darker shadow over the proceedings, but it is a natural turn, I believe, that Osman handles wonderfully.  The four novels have come in rapid succession, and in his acknowledgements in the last one, Osman tells us that while the Thursday Murder Club isn't going away, he is taking a bit of a break before releasing a fifth novel.  The good news is that he will be writing a different story, this one "about a father-in-law/daughter-in-law detective duo", and he promises us that we will like them.  I am sure that we will.

The Grandstander bestows Three and One-Half Stars on the Thursday Murder Club series.