Three Movies and a Book

I actually went to see a movie in the theater! My friend L and I had the entire place to ourselves Sunday afternoon, which doesn't bode well for the future of movie theaters, especially because the film we chose received good ratings. Drop was classified as horror, which is why some other friends declined to go, but I see it has been reclassified as mystery/thriller. That makes sense ~ I would call it psychological suspense. Anyway, we enjoyed it, and it reinforced our hatred of online dating. After that, I had a delicious veggie sandwich at Boudin Bakery. It is fun to leave the house sometimes, lol.

Also this past weekend I watched 99 Homes on Netflix, starring Michael Shannon, and it was entertaining, though it became a bit preposterous. It's based on the sad reality of evictions during the 2008 foreclosure crisis, but it veers into absurdity at times, such as when a super wealthy house flipper partners up with a random construction dude and brings him to high-level meetings. It has an intriguing ending however, which generated an interesting Reddit discussion.

The Residence is a popular comedy on Netflix, so I checked it out. Hated it! DNF'd episode one and will not try again. I loathe the new way of TV writing/ editing with super short scenes and random snippets of convo flickering past as if the entire show is a montage of previews. Is this due to viewers' short attention spans? It gives me a headache and also irritates me on Bachelor Nation shows. I'm never sure if I'm getting the real gist of a conversation when all they show are truncated snips. Some of the other "reality" shows I've tried are even worse (like Mormon Wives).

Behold the Monster by Jillian Lauren allowed me to check off the true crime nonfiction box on my 2025 Reading Challenge. Sort of. When I requested the book, I didn't realize that Jillian had taken great liberties of fictionalization to the point where I wasn't sure where her actual interviews with Sam Little (serial killer) ended and her imagination began. For example, were all the parts about Sam's childhood abuse real, or did she enhance those same as she did his victims' stories? I found it interesting at first, especially when she did a dive into genetics, but after a while I became bored. Jillian went into great detail about police bureaucracy and such, and I didn't care at all about the layout of buildings and offices blah blah blah. Nor did I need vivid descriptions and back stories on the officers. It was all too much, and the book was too long. I got the feeling Jillian was doing an assignment and needed to pad her wordcount. Two stars.

Weird coincidence ~ right after I began the book, Jillian Lauren (Shriner, married to a rock musician) got shot by the cops outside her own house in Los Angeles (see this article). Jillian's waving a gun at the police kind of makes sense because while I was reading the book, I got an eerie feeling that she was a bit too in sync with psycho Sam. Not every writer who creates monsters is a monster of course, but Jillian seemed to go above and beyond what she needed for the book. Case in point, she has the urn of his ashes in her garage.