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Fiction

New Indie Thriller: The Edge of Sleep

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Night watchman Dave and Matteo leave work early to catch a party and find three friends dead, apparently overdoses. They take to them to a nearly vacant hospital and find more people who have died the overnight. The trigger in every case is simply sleep. Within a couple hours, they find two more people who are still awake and begin to wrestle with how to survive a threat that may have killed the whole world.

I learned of this indie suspense thriller over the weekend. The Edge of Sleep started as a podcast with the same principal actor, Mark Fischbach, a popular YouTuber. Actors Franz Drameh, Lio Tipton, and Eve Harlow round out the main characters, and they all turned in good performances. Writers Willie Block and Jake Emanuel created both video and audio productions.

I didn’t intend to the watch the whole thing Saturday afternoon, but with each episode being 20-25 minutes, I couldn’t put it off. I’m sure a limited budget is the main reason for the short run-time. The core concept is strong enough to stretch it out to 30 minutes each. I’m curious what material they wanted to shoot (or maybe did shoot) that couldn’t make it into the show.

The Edge of Sleep has good tone, good intensity and pacing. I don’t want to say it’s a bit like Stranger Things, but a couple scenes could fit easily in that series. The characters and actors were natural, even though some of the dialogue grated on me. I mean, if you believed you were the only people alive in your city and perhaps the nation–maybe the world–taking a few minutes to stare on the window would be natural. Crying or panicking would fair game. So, why would the characters constantly ask each other, “Hey, you good? You gonna be okay?” I think we would be past that at that point.

Also, let me say episode one opens with something of a spoiler scene. I recognized it afterward, but while watching the series, that scene raised an unnecessary question for me and took the bite out of some later drama.

I enjoyed The Edge of Sleep and hope it gets funding for a second season, if not more. Season one raised good questions, so let’s have some answers by producing more episodes.

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Amazon Prime film review: ‘The Snowman’

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Okay, I’ll just start this semi-review by mentioning (in case you’re new here) that I have a dysfunctional relationship with the genre called “Nordic Noir.” Much as I love Norway, I find myself unable to get in the spirit of the boom in Scandinavian mysteries that persists today. I find Nordic Noir – in general – depressing and nihilistic. I’ve tried to enjoy Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole mysteries, but I have trouble sympathizing with – or even believing in – a police detective who’s so desperately alcoholic that it interferes with his work, and who yet manages to keep his job and even be an asset to his department.

But I checked out the 2017 film adaptation of the Harry Hole book The Snowman on Amazon Prime. It’s not a film I did translation for (indeed, it’s not even a Norwegian production, but Swedish along with other countries), so I can say what I like about it.

I gave the novel a less than negative review (for a Nordic Noir) here. I guess I feel pretty much the same about the movie. Which seems to mean I liked it better than most people.

How very odd.

Michael Fassbender plays the role of Harry, whom we first observe, after a prologue, sleeping off a binge in a bus shelter in mid-winter. When he gets to work he meets a new partner, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), whom he finds annoyingly fresh and spunky. They investigate the disappearance of a young mother. Over time they discover that there have been a string of such disappearances, in different places over a long period of time. When the bodies are discovered, they are decapitated, the heads placed on snowmen. Harry’s difficult relationship with his ex-girlfriend’s son, who sees him as a father figure, provides a subplot that will eventually merge with the main plot.

The best part of the movie – as is often the case when they’re filming in Norway – is the scenery. There’s some spectacular footage here, especially as characters drive along the causeways of the famous Atlantic Road. J.K. Simmons, who always elevates any production, is on hand as a sleazy businessman/politician, an easy character for good Socialists to hate.

I can also see the problems in the film. One is a very dark plot, including one particularly awful surprise. Another is the odd presence of Val Kilmer, playing a now-dead character in flashbacks. He looks barely functional, and indeed was recovering from a stroke during filming. All his dialogue is dubbed but still hard to understand.

My big problem was a fairly heavy-handed message about abortion.

Still, I found the movie watchable, and it kept my interest.

Semi-recommended, but with cautions (language, sexual situations, brief nudity, disturbing violence) and without great enthusiasm.

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Amazon Prime film review: ‘The Outfit’

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I watched an interesting movie, on a friend’s recommendation, and I think it’s worth reviewing.

The Outfit, which I watched on Amazon Prime, is a production that looks as if it was adapted from a stage play, because pretty much everything happens on just one set. But it’s not; it’s just an extremely focused drama, and it works effectively that way.

Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) is an Englishman who runs a tailor shop in Chicago in 1956 – though he insists he’s not a tailor, but a “cutter.” Tailors, he says, just mend clothing.

His shop is located in the territory of an Irish criminal gang. The big boss is his most important customer. Although some of the people he makes suits for are anything but savory, Leonard is a complete professional, treating them all as gentlemen, studiously ignoring what they do for a living.

But what they do for a living doesn’t ignore him. They’ve installed a sealed drop box in his shop, and from time to time they leave letters and packages there for retrieval. Leonard pretends it’s not there. A worse intrusion is the attention the big boss’s son Richie (Dylan O’Brien) has been paying to Leonard’s young receptionist, Mable (Zoe Deutsch). Leonard has paternal feelings for her, and is concerned.

Then one night one of the other gangsters, Francis (Johnny Flynn) shows up with a wounded Richie. Richie has been shot by a rival gang, and he needs to lay low until their enemies have gone away. Francis demands Leonard stitch Richie’s wound up, and demands he hide a briefcase. He says the briefcase contains a tape recording made by some “rat” who’s betrayed them all. He leaves Richie there with Leonard, and the two talk.

That’s all I’ll tell you about the plot. Speaking as a writer, I wasn’t entirely happy with the plot. It’s one of those stories where a character creates an intricate plan that fools both their opponents and the audience. However, just one small miscalculation here would have been fatal, and in real life something always does go wrong. Too tight a battle plan is a recipe for disaster, as any good general knows.

Nevertheless, if you suspend your disbelief on that point, The Outfit is very impressive. Ryland is pitch-perfect as the cutter – one of those quiet men who’s got a lot more going on under the surface than anybody guesses. All the performances are excellent, though.

Cautions for language and violence. Recommended.

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Amazon Prime viewing report: ‘Vinland Saga

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My curiosity got the better of me. I couldn’t resist sampling Vinland Saga, a Japanese anime series about Vikings set at precisely the point in history I’ve been writing about in my Erling books. What follows isn’t exactly a review, because I don’t think I’ll be finishing the series, but it’s certainly interesting enough to tell you about. You may be surprised to learn that I have a lot of positive things to say.

When we think of Vinland and the Norse discovery of America, the name we generally think of is Leif Eriksson. But in many ways the real hero of the saga (at least in one of its two versions) is another man, an Icelander called Thorfinn Karlsefni (the nickname means “quite a guy” or “manly stuff”). Though it’s not plainly stated, I’m pretty sure the Thorfinn portrayed in Vinland Saga is that guy – but during an imagined childhood and youth.

As the series tells it, Thorfinn is the son of Thors, the Troll of Jomsborg, a former Jomsviking (a legendary order of Vikings based in Poland) who grew to hate war and deserted, fleeing to the peace of Icelandic farming. A friend of theirs is Leif (Eriksson, one assumes, portrayed here as a wandering blowhard rather than chieftain of the Greenland colony, as he actually was), who regales Thorfinn with tales of the rich soil and mild climate he encountered when he visited Vinland, years ago.

Then the Jomsvikings show up at their home, extorting through threats of violence Thors’ agreement to join them in enlisting in the army of Svein Forkbeard of Denmark in his conquest of England. Thorfinn stows away on the ship, eager to see war. On the way to England, Thors (who’s all but invulnerable) is murdered by the pirate leader Askeladd (a name borrowed from a figure from Norwegian folklore, something like Jack the Giant Killer). Improbably, Askeladd is amused by Thorfinn’s attempts to avenge his father, and keeps him with his army, promising to kill him in a proper duel when he’s old enough.

The next episodes deal with the Danish conquest of England, as Thorfinnn grows to be a feared warrior. At that point, I kind of lost interest. Not that the story wasn’t interesting, but the whole thing got too weird for me. I think there’s a whole artistic sensibility surrounding anime as an art form that I’m too old to adjust to.

Nevertheless, I have to say that there were elements of surprising authenticity. I’d say Vinland Saga is at least 50% more faithful to history than the History Channel Vikings series. Costumes and props are surprisingly good in a lot of cases. The history follows actual chronology. Real persons show up all the time – though sometimes in bizarre ways. Thorkell the Tall is an actual giant here. King Svein’s son Knut, later to become King Canute the Great, is presented as a guy who looks like a girl (and how they’re going to develop that story line I have no wish to discover).

In short, you can learn some genuine history by watching Vinland Saga. I did not expect to be able to say that. If you appreciate anime as an entertainment form, you just might enjoy it.

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Amazon Prime review: ‘The Terminal List’

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I finally got around to watching Chris Pratt’s critically panned but commercially popular miniseries, The Terminal List, on Amazon Prime. In case you’re even slower on the uptake than I am, I’ll review it here.

James Reece (Pratt) is a Navy Seal lieutenant whose platoon is cornered and nearly wiped out in a botched operation. Returning home, he learns that the other survivor has been killed, and an attempt is made on his own life. At the same time, he starts noticing problems with his memory – blank spots and certain recollections of things that apparently never happened.

As he grows increasingly frightened of threats to his family, he starts to believe he’s the object of a conspiracy – but can he even trust his own thinking?

The Terminal List is violent and loud and full of dramatic tension and pathos. Critics have panned it, but the audience loved it, and I agree with the audience. I strongly suspect the critics reacted to Chris Pratt’s politics rather than to the story itself. Government conspiracy stories have been common since the 70s, after all, and many have come from filmmakers on the left. What the production lacks, I think, is the obligatory sermons about Woke doctrines that are expected in today’s productions.

I was expecting the final surprise, I must admit, simply based on the process of elimination.

Recommended, for adults with high tolerances for violent scenes and language you’d expect from the military.

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Amazon Prime video review: ‘Bosch, season 7’

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All good things must end, and Season 7, we are told, is the final series of Bosch, a superior adaptation of the bestselling novels by Michael Connelly. I just finished the last episode.

Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch has a motto: “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” This leads him to go the extra mile for the forgotten victims – the poor, the marginalized, the powerless.

In this adventure, Harry pursues a gang lord who ordered an apartment house firebombed, to send a message. In the ensuing fire, innocent people died, including a ten-year-old girl. Bosch is ordered to back off. His superiors tell him it’s for the greater good, but Bosch isn’t buying it.

Meanwhile, his partner, Jerry Edgar, is off his game, overwhelmed with guilt because of an act he committed last season. And Lt. Billets, their boss, is fighting sexual harassment from some of her subordinates.

It’s hard to find fault with the production. The writing is top-notch, though heavily adapted from the original stories due to a major time shift to the present. Everyone who has read the books is aware of the character changes that were made – certain characters altering not only their races, but their whole personalities. One of those, however, Commissioner Irving, swerves back closer to his literary roots this season.

So it’s really good, and gets my coveted approval. My problems with it are purely in the realm of my opinions, and do not necessarily resemble the opinions of real people, living or dead. WARNING: The following paragraphs include minor spoilers.

Bosch’s daughter Maddie expresses interest in becoming a cop. This is a common thing in cop shows nowadays (I was especially disappointed at the end of Longmire, when Walt suggests that his daughter Cady run for sheriff. This was obvious pandering to the feminists, as Cady had up to that point showed no aptitude for, or interest in, law enforcement. Quite the opposite). I honestly can’t recall whether Maddie Bosch becomes a cop in the books or not. She might have (at least she’d get some training before hitting the mean streets). I’m a fossil, I know. I still think it’s wrong to hit a woman, and (by extension) wrong to put a woman in harm’s way. And I plan to hang on to that opinion until they send me to the reeducation camp.

Also, although I admire Bosch’s principles, I wonder about the real-world consequences of his lone wolf actions. It seems to me there are always tradeoffs when you’re dealing with life or death. I’m not sure Bosch’s principled actions in this series might not cost more lives in the long run than compromise would. And is this the first time Harry has seen this kind of deal made? Never made one himself? Why dig his heels in now and not before? Has he just had his fill of compromise at last?

However that may be, Bosch is a superior cop series, and I do recommend it highly. Cautions for pretty much everything.

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Amazon Plus film review: ‘Dripping in Chocolate’

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Working hard at translation these days, which is a good thing. I’m doing a promotional project for Saga Bok Publishers in Norway, but I won’t say much about it because I don’t know what their timeline is.

Which means I have to spend some of my valuable reading time actually producing work. Hence the fact that I don’t have a book to review today.

But, as I’ve mentioned, I like to stream Amazon Prime while I’m working. Today I watched an interesting production, more recent than is my usual fare. It’s an Australian movie called Dripping in Chocolate.

At the top of the cast are David Wenham, whom you might recognize (I missed it) as Faramir from The Lord of the Rings, and Louise Lombard, an English actress I haven’t seen before.

Wenham plays Bennett O’Mara, a police detective struggling with personal issues (aren’t they all?). He’s on some kind of cleansing diet, to the amusement of his colleagues. In contrast, Lombard plays Juliana Lovece, who runs a high-end chocolate shop. The camera lingers on her cooking procedures in a sensual manner. Thus are film characters established. When a high-end call girl is found strangled in the street with the wrapper from one of Juliana’s candies on her body, O’Mara goes to see her. As you’d expect, romantic sparks fly between them, though O’Mara’s too buttoned up to do anything about it.

When Lovece’s chocolate wrappers start showing up at other murder scenes, things get complicated – and sometimes not very plausible. However, the likeability of the leads and their excellent chemistry keeps our interest up. The scenery’s nice too. And the final solution surprised me completely.

Dripping in Chocolate has the look of a TV movie, but it’s an enjoyable TV movie. There was sexual suggestion, but nothing explicit. I enjoyed it, and it was a fun break from old black ‘n whites.

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Amazon Prime old film review: ‘The Mystery of the 13th Guest’

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Tonight, just to shake things up, I’m going to review a very bad film, The Mystery of the 13th Guest (1943).

Aside from reading mysteries, I’ve also been watching several old B movies on Amazon Prime. This is my futile strategy for avoiding total despair. If the end is coming, I want it to catch me totally unprepared. Why should I perish all stressed out?

Anyway, I caught this old stinker, The Mystery of the 13th Guest. It stars an actor named Dick Purcell, who delivers probably the best performance of the film, which tells you nothing at all. He would later distinguish himself, sort of, playing Captain America.

The premise is that old Grandfather Morgan, 13 years ago, gathered his relatives and a couple close associates in his home, arranging them around the big dinner table. There were 13 places set, but only 12 people present. He tells them that he plans to leave his entire fortune to his granddaughter Marie, the only one of the lot who’s worth a plugged nickel. She’s only eight now, but he has entrusted his will to his lawyer, for Marie to open when she turns 21, 13(!} years from now.

Right on time, Marie arrives at the gloomy old mansion on her 21st birthday, and finds the electricity is still hooked up and the phone still working. She finds the table arranged just as it was 13(!) years ago. Then there’s a murder, and soon Private Eye Johnny Smith (Purcell) is on the case, dashing through hallways and secret rooms, running rings around the police.

What was awful about this film? The writing was terrible. The dialogue was awkward, and it got no help from the wooden actors.

The dumbest thing, however, was the portrayal of the police. One understands that every Sherlock Holmes needs a plodding Lestrade to show off against. But these cops belong in a home for the mentally deficient. If they’re the best brains on the force, the uniform guys must have trouble getting their pants on in the morning. The senior member of the team (played by Tim Ryan (also the main writer), a classic mugger who married Irene Ryan, best known as Granny Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies) thinks he’s smart, but he’s really in awe of the amazing Johnny Smith. His subordinate, played by Frank Faylen (later Dobie Gillis’s father on TV) is barely sentient and keeps dozing off. Fortunately, Johnny is good buddies with the District Attorney, so he just takes over the investigation. And they let him. He even orders patrol cars dispatched, and the police hop to obedience.

Terrible movie. Just the thing to transport me to a simpler, less judgmental time, and give me a short respite from the Apocalypse.

You’ll like it, if you have sarcastic friends to watch it with, and do an MSTK3000 treatment.

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Amazon Prime video review: ‘The Adventures of Jim Bowie’

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Sometimes, as I said when I reviewed the series, “Yancy Derringer” a while back, you can watch a beloved childhood show and be pleasantly surprised. And sometimes the show is just as dumb as you expect. Such is the case with “The Adventures of Jim Bowie,” a two-season series that ran from 1956 to 1958. I streamed it on Amazon Plus.

Simplified and sanitized for a half-hour time period and a kids’ audience, “The Adventures of Jim Bowie” is sort of Bizarro-Jim. A lot of what happens is based on actual events – but they’re usually portrayed the wrong way around.

The very first episode, for instance, explains how Jim designs his knife and gets it made by a blacksmith. His kid-friendly reason for this is given as a need to protect himself from bears. (Wilderness survival tip – this does not work.) In real life, Jim acquired his knife because he’d been in a life-and-death fight with a man and his pistol misfired. Stories vary as to who designed the knife – it may have been his smarter brother Rezin – but it probably wasn’t Jim himself.

Aside from his efforts in the Texan War of Independence, which are genuinely impressive, Jim Bowie’s main accomplishments mostly consisted of criminal activity. He and his friend, the pirate Jean Lafitte (who appears in several episodes), conspired to exploit a loophole in the laws forbidding the importation of slaves. This allowed them to effectively “launder” their human merchandise, and then sell it at a premium. (Look up the details if you’re interested; it’s complicated.) In this series, the issue of the slave trade is generally avoided, except for one episode where Jim risks his life to rescue a slave he has freed from being sold again.

Jim’s biggest scam, though, involved forging old Spanish land grants, which the US government had agreed to honor. Jim created a large number of fake grants (not very skillfully), and managed to tie up quite a lot of land titles for a long time. He eventually lost all his claims in court, but not before many innocent people lost a lot of money. In my memory, there was one episode of the show that dealt with false land grants, but in which Bowie uncovers rather than perpetrates the fraud. However, that must be the one episode that Amazon Prime skips in its rotation, because I didn’t see it here.

The knife that bore the Bowie name, his great trademark, gets flashed a lot in the show, but doesn’t actually get used much for its proper purpose. He throws it often, frequently to disarm other men. But only one opponent gets stabbed as far as I can recall, and that’s pretty much by accident.

A number of historical characters show up – John James Audubon, Andrew Jackson (whom Bowie didn’t support, contrary to the show), Sam Houston, Johnny Appleseed, Jefferson Davis. They are often portrayed in fairly authentic ways (they take particular pains to make Davy Crockett look right. The Walt Disney series was a recent memory then). You could actually learn some fair basic history by watching this show, if you discount the main character himself.

Beyond that, the writing is simple and the plots dumb. This is a garden variety TV western aimed at kids, but without revolving pistols. It’s OK for mindless entertainment, but your life won’t be impoverished much if you give it a miss.

A note on the star: Scott Forbes was an English actor who learned his southern accent from a female voice coach whom he went on to marry. He plays the party pretty broadly. According to one source, he walked off the set just before the last episode was filmed, on hearing that the show had been cancelled. They covered by hiring another actor (not a famous one) to play an outlaw who gets a pardon for going on a mission to Texas in Bowie’s place.

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Amazon Prime Video review: ‘Trapped,’ Season 2

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The second season of the Icelandic miniseries, Trapped, (I reviewed Season One below) was – in some ways – superior to the first (in my view). There were parts I didn’t care for, but I admit that was mostly due to my personal opinions and tastes.

Two years have passed since we last saw our bearded hero, Andri Olafsson (Olafur Darri Olafsson). He’s moved back to Reykjavik to be a cop there again, one assumes to be close to his daughters, who were living with his ex-wife. Only the older one, Thorhildur, has returned to the small town of Siglufjordur to be close to her friends – especially a particular boy. She is now a rebellious teenager, and in the tradition of teenaged girls in thrillers, is a complete idiot when it comes to her personal safety.

Andri is called back to Siglufjordur when a local farmer one day appears near Parliament in Reykjavik, sets himself on fire, and tries to ignite the Minister of Industries along with himself. She is, in fact, his twin sister, a Siglufjordur native who long ago turned her back on the place. He had been involved in protests against the expansion of an aluminum plant near his home, as well as with right-wing nationalist groups. Shortly after Andri is reunited with his old team of local cops, a manager at the plant is murdered, setting off a string of crimes and arrests that culminate in a kidnapping and a pursuit across the heaths.

There were several elements in the series that rubbed me the wrong way. One was the involvement of right-wing groups – though when I think of it, they were treated with surprising understanding. Another was the cliché of the predatory industry that thinks it can make money by killing its customers. Most uncomfortable of all was a subplot about homosexuals. Instead of the brief heterosexual sex scene we saw in the first series, this time we got two men involved in displays of affection – at one point in bed together. These are my principles – I care about whether homosexuals live or die. I care that they not be railroaded for crimes they didn’t commit. But I cannot be made to care whether the boy gets the boy. There is no microscope sensitive enough to detect my interest in that subject.

Another problem is the family relationships. Most of the suspects (and victims) are bound (in classic saga style, I’ll admit) by a bewildering tangle of marriages, divorces, and irregular liaisons. Everybody is a cousin or an in-law of all the others, and for the life of me I couldn’t keep it all straight.

On the other hand, there were some fine elements here. Because this story is set in the fall, we lose the claustrophobia of the snowed-in town that so permeated Season One. Now we’re treated to vistas of Icelandic heaths and mountains, herds of horses and flocks of sheep. Conscious tribute is paid to the sagas, especially in a plot thread where a local boy flees the police on horseback across the fells, looking for all the world like an outlaw of old.

The resolution worked out in the same spirit as Season One – the mystery is solved, the hostage rescued, but in a general environment of ancient injuries, unhealed psychological wounds, and the shock of an Episode 8 plot development that blindsided me (at least).

All in all, fascinating TV, and pretty watchable. Cautions for language and all the stuff I talked about.