[A Pleasurable Headache] stop being human
As is tradition, I present the books, TV and movies I enjoyed the most in 2022.
Books
My book reading took a hit this year. I tended to favour physical books this year over eBooks for some reason. All that said, it’s hard to read a physical book (heck, any book) with a newborn in your hand and a bottle in the other. So, the memorable books from this year for me were:
Motor Spirit: The Long Hunt for the Zodiac by Jarrett Kobek
I devoured this book and it’s sequel How to Find Zodiac in very few sittings. Motor Spirit takes a look at America in the late sixties, specifically California and the subsequent souring of ‘The American Dream’ - focusing primarily on the Zodiac, but also bringing in the Manson family and the dark underside of hippie culture on the West Coast. Kobek’s skill comes in tying all of these disparate, evil and chaotic events together to shine a light on something insidious at the heart of American culture as the seventies dawned.
The book’s sequel, How to Find Zodiac, focuses on Kobek discovering a new Zodiac suspect. He then attempts to dissuade and discredit this suspect through further research, never really getting to the point where he can entirely discount the suspect in question. This one delves further into Zodiac lore/minutiae than the first book, so the original is easier to recommend. However, both books shed light on an important aspect of American culture and the zeitgeist as the counter-culture gave way to Neoliberalism and the Regan years.
Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence by James Bridle
Another year, another book by Bridle, another winner. This time around Bridle examines the concept of ‘intelligence’, specifically in non-human systems and organisms. What emerges is the idea that we as a species have a very limited view of the concept, only viewing such systems throught he prism of our own human experience. Bridle also speaks to the fact that many Artificial Intelligence projects are geared around the same approach, when there are far more practical examples that could be used from nature and elsewhere.
Blindsight by Peter Watts
The above brings me nicely onto Watts’ novel of first contact. The book follows the crew of a ship sent to investigate a signal at the edges of the solar system. Watts’ books tend to be hard sci-fi and Blindsight is no different. The crew of the ship includes a synthesist (the book’s narrator, an informational topologist who acts as a kind of conduit between the crew and what they find), a linguist whose brain has been partitioned into several personality cores and even a vampire.
However, this being Watts, the latter crew member is again rooted in science. The explanation of the vampire’s aversion to crosses is particularly great. Watts presents the intelligence the crew meets as supremely alien. There is very little in the way of reference points for the human crew as to exactly how the lifeform operates or even it’s motives. The book could be considered dense in some of its detail. But, if you’re a sucker for that kind of thing, you’ll find a lot to like here.
Razorblade Tears by S.A Cosby
After Blacktop Wasteland, Cosby became an author who I will immediately buy when he drops something new. This time around Cosby has produced an octane fuelled noir with retribution at its heart. The book follows two men, one black, one white, as they form an uneasy alliance to get revenge on the killers of their sons. Said sons were married and killed for reasons unknown. Both men are burdened by their own prejudices. But, as they delve deeper into the motives behind the murders they begin to shake off some of their old thinking.
The book is heavy on violence and righteous anger but also offers the hope of redemption. Cosby though, posits that such a road is never an easy one, especially for men with a penchant for violence as their solution to everything. Seek Cosby’s work out wherever and whenever you can.
The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell by Brian Evenson
I’ve become a real fan of Evenson’s work (both his short and novel-length prose) over the last few years to the point where I think I own everything he has written up until now (save for some licensed tie-ins he has done under another name).
This latest release is another collection of his short prose. I won’t go into too much detail about the individual tales here (if you’re a fan of horror/weird fiction, you will enjoy it). However, the thing I admire most about Evenson is his ability to get across feelings of despair, horror, paranoia and revulsion whilst using such minimal and terse prose. His writing style isn’t flashy or ornate. It’s the equivalent of a calculated assassin wielding a scalpel. It ain’t much, but boy will you feel it.
TV
Andor
Probably my favourite TV show of the year. I was ready and waiting for new episodes to drop every Thursday on Disney Plus. People more talented than me have espoused the merits of this show so I’ll keep it brief. It’s not hyperbole to state this is probably the best Star Wars has been since the original trilogy. What Gilroy and team have done is strip the story of its usual trappings of ‘space wizards’ and prophecy and focus on what it takes for both an empire and a rebellion to succeed, dialling in on the ‘boots on the ground’ and the human cost of such endeavours.
Yellowjackets
Everyone knows I love Lost. Yes, even the ending. Yellowjackets is perhaps the closest spiritual successor to the show. It follows a girl’s football team in the nineties that crashes in the wilderness. Before long, schisms begin to form in the group as they try to seek rescue. On top of this, supernatural elements soon come into play with some of the group falling under a nefarious influence. The show has two narrative strands with one following the girls in the immediate wake of the crash and another following the survivors in the present day as they still struggle with the events that transpired.
The cast is superb with a really excellent parity between the teenage and adult versions of the characters. Right now the first season is nigh on perfect, but the real proof will come with subsequent seasons and the pacing of how the show’s mysteries are doled out.
The North Water
A BBC/CBC production following a 19th century whaling expedition to the Arctic. The show’s main character (played by Jack O’Connell) is the ship’s surgeon. Through flashbacks we learn he has a past he is hiding/running from. Unknown to him and most of the crew the ship’s captain (the always excellent Stephen Graham) has conspired to sink the ship for insurance purposes. As the ship’s journey continues the pressure cooker environment gives way to violence, conspiracy, rape and eventually murder.
Whilst the cast is fantastic across the board, the real standout is an almost unrecognisable Colin Farrell. Farrell plays Henry Drax, a harpooner aboard the ship and the walking embodiment of aggression and toxic masculinity. The show leans heavily into these themes, as well as touching on aspects of corruption and colonisation.
Movies
I somehow watched a lot of movies this year, albeit not as many as 2021 (which is to be expected). For the second half of the year many of these were watched in between feeds, during feeds or in snatched moments in the month or so following Florence’s birth. As ever, this list includes movies that released in 2022 either via the cinema or streaming debuts.
5. Confess, Fletch
I’ve never seen any of the Chevy Chase movies or read any of the books. That said, this is a delightful crime comedy that seems destined to become a cult classic. In days gone this would be exactly the kind of movie you would catch half way through late at night before desperately seeking it out. Despite an absolutely stellar cast (including an excellent Jon Hamm in the lead role) and a crackling script, the studio buried this movie, shuffling it to VOD.
The movie follows Fletch as he tries to unravel a kidnapping, a murder and a case of stolen paintings. The movie is eminently quotable and there are plans afoot to adapt more of the books moving forward with the same creative team. In a year that also gave us the second Knives Out movie I hope the powers that be see sense and that we see many more Hamm fronted Fletch movies.
4. Saloum
A Shudder exclusive. Part horror, part war movie, part Western. Often a melange of genres means incoherence. Here it sings. This Senegalese set/made movie ultimately coheres as a commentary on revenge. The limited budget means some of the effects grate a little, but you will hardly notice it. The performances and the sheer ingenuity and passion on display here dispel all doubts that this is a beaut of a movie. I cannot wait to see what director Jean Luc Herbolot does next.
3. Kimi
Despite coming out early in 2022 this movie was number one in my list for a very long time. Soderbergh has a crack at a Hitchcock-type thriller, infusing the tale with modern touches such as the dangers of surveillance capitalism and the isolating and debilitating effects of the Covid pandemic. Zoe Kravitz (also great in The Batman) plays Angela, an agoraphobic tech worker whose job is to sort through audio clips from Alexa style devices. When she hears what she thinks is a murder during the course of her work things start to unravel.
This is the kind of paranoia-tinged thriller they pumped out in the early two thousands and the nineties that no one seems to make any more. God bless you, Steven Soderbergh.
2. Nope
It’s hard to talk about this movie without full on spoiling it. All I’ll say is that this is Peele’s ode to early Spielberg and the spectacle of cinema married with the kind of wide canvas and attention to detail of Kubrick. This was a divisive movie on the back of two straight wins for Peele, but for me he is three for three right now. Daniel Kaluya is great as always, Keke Palmer leaps to the top of my ‘Actress I’ll watch in anything’ list, and the movie also heralds the return of the gravel voiced titan Micheal Wincott.
1. Prey
I’ll admit that Nope seemed destined to be my number one. But I thought about the movie that I straight up enjoyed the most this year and it had to be Prey. The fact I have watched this movie three times now also speaks volumes. As you all know this is the latest entry in the Predator franchise and a kind of (much needed) ‘soft reboot’ of the series.
Stripping the narrative back to basics (large parts of this movie operate without dialogue and are all the better for it) ensure the movie has a mythic air to it. The set pieces throughout are effective, building and building to a climactic battle in the mist before a final showdown that echoes the original movie whilst also forging it’s own path.
Honourable Mentions: Lost Bullet 2, Ambulance, RRR, X, Emily the Criminal, Significant Other, Carter, A Wounded Fawn, Barbarian and of course Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Links
A real sparse one this time around. This is par for the course as people go away/log off for the holiday season. That said, I found this piece by Cat Valente a great read. Taken from her newsletter, the piece looks at the corporate land grab of the internet over the last three decades with a particular emphasis on social media.
“Prodigy was upset that people were, by and large, using the free communication service they tossed on there just to have more content and not their weird Random Garbage You Don’t Need Storefront. And in many ways, that complaint has only gotten louder over the decades. Stop talking to each other and start buying things. Stop providing content for free and start paying us for the privilege. Stop shining sunlight on horrors and start advocating for more of them. Stop making communities and start weaponizing misinformation to benefit your betters.
It’s the same. It’s always been the same. Stop benefitting from the internet, it’s not for you to enjoy, it’s for us to use to extract money from you. Stop finding beauty and connection in the world, loneliness is more profitable and easier to control.
Stop being human. A mindless bot who makes regular purchases is all that’s really needed.”
The article also ties nicely into this piece on quitting social media by Cory Doctorow and this link on the danger of ‘walled gardens’ on the internet.
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I’m off to knuckle down and write like a son of a bitch. See you in two!