Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

ENEMY (2014)

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In Denis Villeneuve’s ENEMY (2014), a mild-mannered, socially awkward college professor discovers he has a doppelganger, which leads to the two men meeting with dangerous consequences. Though lacking in answers, Villeneuve’s brilliant direction produces a story that is tense, moody, and haunting.

In the opening scene, we see a woman about to crush a live tarantula at an erotic show at an underground club. A man (Jake Gyllenhaal) watches.

Cut to Adam Bell (Gyllenhaal), a history professor who lives a monotonous life on spin cycle in a spare, shabby apartment, and whose only meaningful relationships are with his judgmental mother (Isabella Rossellini) and girlfriend (Mélanie Laurent), who drops in now and then for a tryst. After renting a movie, he discovers a bit actor in it, Anthony Claire (Gyllenhaal), and is immediately struck by something strange. They look exactly the same.

This leads to Bell reaching out to Claire, who decides how best to take advantage of the situation, unaware Bell might just do the same.

While all this is happening, we see some, uh, tarantulas.

This is clearly an art film. The slow burn, ever-present sepia tones, odd spider motif, the question of whether they’re doppelgangers or somehow the same person, the jarring ending–all of it is oddly affecting yet in the end is completely open to interpretation. I came up with one, and it fits, though for me it’s one of those cases where the mystery is sweeter than its solution.

Overall, ENEMY is a strange visual experience, unlike most films I’ve seen. I liked it a lot. I’m still not sure if I loved it, but it’s certainly affecting, it’s definitely distinctive, and I’d say it’s worth a watch if you’re in the mood for a strange and haunting slow burn.

BOILING POINT (2021)

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In BOILING POINT (2021), personal and professional crises threaten to destroy everything a successful London head chef has worked for on one busy night. I loved this one.

As Christmas nears, it’s one of the busiest nights in a popular upscale London restaurant. We see head chef Andy Jones (played to perfection by veteran Stephen Graham) heading to work, where we learn he’s estranged from his wife and trying to get his life in order. Meanwhile, at the restaurant, a grueling health inspection discovers the distracted Andy has not been taking care of business. We meet some of the members of his staff, his stalwart second Carly (played so well by Vinette Robinson I said to my partner during one of her scenes, “Where did they find her!?”), assistant chefs, servers, manager, and so on. After they organize for the night, the customers start filling the tables, some pretty obnoxious, and they include Andy’s old partner, a celebrity chef (Jason Flemyng producing just the right amount of smugness) and his date, a brutal food critic. Along the way, we see the staff play wack a mole with issues and squabble, and we finally get to the root of Andy’s problems.

The film is audaciously shot in a single take, always an impressive feat, especially for this film, where the result really feels like you’re a fly on the wall in a restaurant. This could have been be a show-offy gimmick, but in this case, it really ratchets the tension, which periodically releases only in the storytelling, not in the camera work. Otherwise, it’s pretty cinema verite, and it works here. Stephen King, I think it was, once wrote that people enjoy reading about other people doing work, and I have to admit that’s true, especially in this film. Much of the action is the staff coming together and apart while dealing with workers showing up late, there not being enough of certain ingredients, tedious but necessary safety regulations, dealing with asshole customers and coworkers, juggling too many demands in too little time, and finding a moment for some quick kidding and a laugh. (Anybody who’s ever worked in a restaurant–I worked dish washing jobs all through high school back in the day–can relate, and my partner, who once worked as a bartender, ended up having a stress dream set at her old job after watching the movie.) Interlacing it all is the fact Andy isn’t on the ball, his life is crumbling, and it’s disrupting the entire operation, which provides a subtle central conflict that slowly unravels until the big reveal.

The result is a really solid film. From the skilled direction to the excellent, natural acting and world building, I found it quite compelling for a story about work. My only criticism is when things go bad, the story really goes for it. Everything makes sense, when the final punch is revealed, though it might have been more effective to contrast that punch with a big success. Overall, though, again I enjoyed this one a lot, and I’ll be keeping an eye on the director (Philip Baranti, who befriended Graham on the set of BAND OF BROTHERS) for his next feature.

EVERY ARM OUTSTRETCHED by Phil Halton

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After reading Phil Halton’s THIS SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PEACE and finding it both courageous (it offered a nonpartisan view of the forming of the Taliban) and engaging, I checked out his other novel, EVERY ARM OUTSTRETCHED. In this novel, we see the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in the Seventies from the perspective of a guerilla. I liked this one even more, finding it again rare in perspective and highly realistic and engaging as military fiction.

It’s the Seventies, and as the economy worsens in the Central American country of Nicaragua, criticism of Somoza, the country’s horrible far-right dictator, amplifies, which leads to brutal state repression. In Managua, Paco, a street musician, and Ramon, a playboy recently kicked out of medical school, find themselves targeted by the regime during a mass arrest of suspected leftists. On the run, they find themselves in a poorly equipped and trained guerilla unit in the jungle. Over time, they become leaders of a column, Ramon the inspired revolutionary and Paco the pragmatic guerilla fighter. Together, they will build an army that may topple a brutal dictator, though every step in the revolution brings a steadily mounting cost to their humanity.

I loved this book. Reading it, I was reminded of Steven Soderbergh’s cinema verite film CHE; like Che Guevara, Ramon is a doctor and is similarly inspired in his rhetoric and thinking and innovative with his tactics. Where CHE often feels like a documentary, however, Halton’s novel goes far deeper into the anguish, decisions, and hopes of a guerilla fighter, drawing you in to experience the story and truly root for the protagonists. EVERY ARM OUTSTRETCHED is also quite believable–historically accurate without info dumping, exciting but without romanticizing violence, and with the ultimate stakes: patria o muerte–basically translating as, we will win our homeland or die trying.

These two books turned me into something of a Phil Halton fan. This former Canadian Forces officer who served in hot spots around the world offers two works of historical/military fiction that simultaneously showed me pieces of history from a different perspective and culture while providing a compelling and engaging story.

SEVERANCE

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In SEVERANCE (Apple TV), the stars align with near perfection in regards to story, pacing, casting, direction, and world building to offer a stylish, heartfelt sci-fi-ish story about work and corporate America. This was a real treat that struck me soft and hard on multiple levels. I loved it.

Mark works for Lumon Industries, a mysterious, old family-owned corporation that has a floor where the workers agreed to undergo “severance,” a procedure that separates their memories and identities at work and at home. Struck by grief after losing his wife, Mark agreed to the procedure so he could stop thinking about her for part of the day. As a result, there are two Marks with no knowledge of the other, one at work, the other at home. Mark’s work-life balance is upended when his supervisor disappears and he must take over as department chief, training a new employee (Helly) who doesn’t want to be there, and at home, he begins to suspect that Lumon is not the good place he thought it was.

When I first heard of it, I thought it might end up being another OFFICE SPACE, satire that made me laugh but stuck to one lane. Not so with SEVERANCE, which rolls out like a Ted Chiang short story, exploring a subject by peeling away every possible layer to find its beating heart. Directed with a perfectionist energy by Ben Stiller, the result is funny, serious, thoughtful, and engaging. A thinky work of art that doesn’t feel thinky, an engaging story that dodges contrivance, and funny, without taking a single easy shot, to the point where the comedy is almost subliminal.

The world building is terrific, with plenty of lore, weirdness, and mystery as a hook. The sci-fi premise feels natural and lived in–similar to ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND–and the corporation is sterile and stylish and incredibly weird while also feeling familiar. The casting is perfect, with terrific stalwarts like Christopher Walken, John Turturro, and Patricia Arquette rounding out the stellar cast and characters where each feels highly distinctive and interesting. Adam Scott, in particular, brings a lot of depth to his everyman Mark, and Britt Lower brings an excellent quiet desperation to her portrayal of Helly. Thematically, the show is an onion peeled in layers but subtly, showing corporate America as a place where you’re not your real self, driven by the petty, obsessed with control, a world that in varying ways is a sterile prison, dictatorship, religion, even a cult. It’s capitalism with a human face, a happy face that on closer inspection is pretty damn ugly. It’s our choice whether we want to wear the same happy face or insist on our humanity.

Highly recommended.

THIS SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PEACE by Phil Halton

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In THIS SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PEACE by Phil Halton, a mullah teaching at a religious school in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Soviet occupation becomes a local hero for standing up to bandits, only to be sucked into using violence as a way to end violence. Along the way, we see his students become fighters. In the local language, the word for “student” is taliban.

The story begins with a mullah (an Islamic scholar), a former Mujahid who fought the Soviets in the Eighties. The Soviets and the reforms they introduced resonated with many people in the cities, but in the more traditional rural areas, the people balked at what they saw as a foreign attempt to change their culture, resulting in an insurgency and brutal response from the Red Army. Now the war’s over, the country is lawless and broken and even more impoverished, and many Mujahideen have resorted to banditry. When local bandits beat and rob one of the mullah’s students, he drives them away, making him a local hero. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself engaging in increasingly complex problems and escalating conflict until he and his students finally see no other path than jihad to make not only their village, but their entire country, a “house of peace.”

When I first picked up this book, my first thought honestly was, “Somebody actually wrote and published this?” Either it would serve up virtue-signaling drivel denouncing the Taliban’s founders as evil, blah blah, we know already, or it would portray them as real people deserving understanding, an idea I found proverbially ballsy. The author is a Westerner; even if he chose the latter path, could he deny his own innate biases to do such a story justice?

The answers to these questions are yeah, it’s historical fiction about the origin of the Taliban, and yes, the author at least for me did an admirable job presenting it from the point of view of Pashto/Afghan culture. The result is a story about men struggling on a righteous but increasingly bloody path where I found the characters and their mindset both understandable and alien. While the flashpoint of how the Taliban formed is historical, I couldn’t determine via Googling how much of the rest of the novel is historical versus fiction.

The author is Phil Halton, a Canadian Forces officer who served in conflict zones around the world as a soldier and security consultant. He did an amazing job presenting characters who live in a very different world than most Westerners and have a different morality, while being understandable. The mullah, for example, is uncompromising in his pursuit of righteousness, but righteous in this case means fundamentalist observance of Islamic law. To Westerners, that observance sometimes appears noble, other times strange and even brutal, especially to women.

Overall, I enjoyed THIS SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PEACE quite a bit. I admired its courage and aspirations, enjoyed the perspective of historical fiction that tried to tell it like it is without propagandizing either way, and found the narrative of escalating conflict compelling. In the end, I didn’t like the Taliban any better than I do now, which is to say not at all, but I feel like I understand them better with his story that portrays them as real people instead of comic-book villains.

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS by J.M. Coetze

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In WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS by J. M. Coetzee, a Magistrate tells a story about colonialism in a rich, elegant narrative.

For years, the Magistrate administered a frontier outpost and town as a loyal official of the Empire. Now getting old, he spends his time running things, digging up artifacts of an earlier civilization at a nearby site, and watching his body decay with quiet alarm. When secret police arrive to question a barbarian prisoner, the Magistrate witnesses the Empire’s penchant for cruelty, which boils into hysteria and war with the desert tribes. Distraught by the pointless violence and conflict, he stages a small act of rebellion that makes him an enemy of the Empire.

This is a novel about colonialism, but really it’s about the conflict between law and justice. Being a man of conscience, the Magistrate is a poor instrument of Empire, whose servants abuse their power in service to the law to the detriment of justice. The Magistrate chooses justice–chooses humanity, his own and others–and thereby makes himself an enemy, as for both the Imperial status quo and a war to work, the barbarians can’t be seen as human, must be called and be regarded as “barbarians,” a lower form of life. And by making himself an enemy, the Magistrate’s own humanity must be stripped away by the state.

Reading WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS after watching the screen adaptation, I found myself hearing Mark Ryland’s voice telling me the story, not an unpleasant experience as I love the actor’s work, particularly in this film. In the movie version, the Magistrate represents the best of human conscience, offering a human but something of a naive Christ figure. In the book, he’s much more flawed, highly focused on his aging body and relationships with women, which extends to an ambivalent sexual relationship with one of the barbarians that goes on for quite a while to the point of feeling like a long bird walk. His power over her and struggles with how he sees her and what he wants, in my view, actually kind of muddies his part in an otherwise crystal theme.

Overall, I loved the book. It’s beautifully written, has a natural first-person narration style, and is thematically striking. My only significant criticism is that it could have been much more economical in the telling. For me, the long digressions about the Magistrate’s midlife crisis and complicated relationship with women aren’t really needed and extend to the point of being distracting. In this, the film did it better in my view, holding onto the thematic focus.