Here’s what I watched and read last week…
MOVIES
Four Rooms (1995) is featured on the Criterion Channel in a collection of films that take place in hotels. I hadn’t seen it in a long time and thought it would be fun to revisit. It’s not a very good movie. The sets and the lighting are awful—the whole thing feels thrown together and rushed. The only segment worth checking out is Robert Rodriguez’s.
Somewhere (2010), directed by Sofia Coppola, is a film about Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), a movie star going through an existential crisis. Recently divorced, he has an eleven-year-old daughter, Cleo, played by Elle Fanning. He lives at the Chateau Marmont, the famous hotel in Los Angeles. The film is slow-paced and beautifully meditative, emphasizing atmosphere over plot. It’s a great companion piece to Lost in Translation.
TV
I finished season three of Slow Horses and loved it. I don’t want to spoil anything if you haven’t seen it, but I really liked the time frame of this season. As I’ve mentioned before, there are lots of twists and turns, along with great performances. A very cool series.
BOOKS
Keith Rosson’s Coffin Road is a gritty vampire story set in the 1970s. Duane Minor has recently returned from Vietnam and is struggling with the traumas of war. He works at a bar run by his in-laws while caring for his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, who is also battling her own traumatic past. A major event occurs that changes Duane’s life forever. I love Rosson’s visceral writing style—each sentence has a film noir–like punch to it, and some of the horror is gruesome. I definitely recommend this novel, as well as his recent book series Fever House and Devil by Name.
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