'BEFORE YOU WERE ANNE'....GENERATIONS OF MYSTERY, MURDER AND DEEPLY EMOTIONAL DRAMA.....FROM TOKYO TO SEATTLE....

  Before You Were Anne by Emiko Jean  (2026)

     My reaction to this book felt like the same reaction I had to "The Return of Ellie Black, the first of author Emiko Jean's 'Chelsey Calhoun' mysteries. I could practically post the same review all over again.......because my take on this book is identical. (which you check out in my post on 'Ellie' from 5/7/24....)

     In other words......blown away. Completely awestruck. With "wow" as the first operative description I can think of, just as in the first of this series....

     Once again, Asian-American Detective Calhoun probes a murder and kidnapping that reveals the heartrending backstories of victims and the overwhelming evil that entraps them. And this time it's a case that spans decades, generations and the misfortunes of young Japanese women who sought a path to America. But it's a path strewn with deceptions, betrayals, tragedy and ultimately violence. A journey requiring monumental courage and determination to survive......which some do not.

     Among those who didn't - Seattle single mom Rika Takahashi, found stabbed to death and her teenage daughter Naomi missing. Chelsey Calhoun's investigation into Rika's life and death uncovers secrets and crimes that stretch across Pacific ocean......from the bright lights and sleazy nightclubs of Tokyo to the seemingly peaceful suburbs of Seattle. Chelsey, herself an adoptee, recalls her own childhood memories as she races to locate and rescue Naomi, who may have stumbled into the worst parts of her mother's tortuous past.

     It's rare that I come across a book that works so brilliantly to combine its mysteries with the insightful view of its characters that you'd expect in literary fiction. By the time "Before You Were Anne" reaches the finale,, there's satisfaction in the closing of the case, with answers revealed, but with the lingering sadness of the emotional trauma and heartbreak left behind.....that's what stays with you.

      And for me, that's what pushes this one all the way to 5 stars. (*****).

'UNTAMED COAST'.....ALASKAN ADVENTURES AND MYSTERIES.....SPANNING DECADES AND GENERATIONS......

  Untamed Coast by Kevin C. Morris (2026)

     What an ambitiously grand debut for an author this is. A book that functions on multiple levels......and does them all well, drawing you into three seemingly unrelated stories and timelines that all take place along the stunning rugged coast of Alaska. There's heartfelt drama, mystery, suspense and the high adventures of navigating those treacherous waters surrounding some of the world's most striking natural wonders.

     In 2017, lonely widower Marconi Franco takes his boat wandering through that rough, frequently storm-tossed coastline........ breathtaking voyages he'd hope to take with the late wife he still pines for. A mayday call, a plea for help from a lost desperate woman sends Marconi on an obsessive but fruitless search for her. In 1938, Joe Baxter works his job of receiving and sending out radio messages at a remote coastal outpost. But he's also busy, along with two conspiring partners, skimming and stashing away the gold from a corporate mine. In 1982, Anya Baron struggles to help her husband operate their fishing boat. Not an easy task as she suffers through the agonies of her drunken husband's frequent beatings.

     Author Kevin C. Morris completely enthralled and fascinated me with all three of these storylines, their characters, and the unpredictable reversals-of-fortune they encounter and endure. And as the book moves toward its final chapters, there's a cascade of twists and reveals as these timelines begin to connect into one multi-generational saga. Also, for armchair travelers, you can practically sit back and lose yourself amid the crashing surf, rocky shores and spectacular wildlife of Alaska.......but you might want to put on a life-jacket first.

     An impressive, immersive start for a new storyteller and I for one can hardly wait to see what he comes up with next. One of the all around best reads of this Fall season.

     5 Stars (*****).

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "DOLLY'S LEFT US....YET HE STILL LIVES ON" EDITION.......

 Further proof that life is cruel and unfair......Dolly Parton and Tim Curry are gone....but he is with us still....

BQ visitors, have a great weekend! Back with you next week....

Trumpanzees: Make plans to visit Lake 'America' real soon. Consider taking a nice long swim across the length of the lake.....without life jackets.....

'DECEIVED'.....A MOLDY GOLDIE OLDIE FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF PSYCHO THRILLERS......

 Deceived (1991)

     We've previously spoken of our lingering affection for the psychological thrillers that enjoyed their heyday throughout the 1990's.

       Many of them laboriously stuck to the template set by "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" (Innocent family terrorized by someone posing as normal, but really nutso....nanny from hell, cop from hell, neighbor from hell, doctor from hell, etc, etc.)

       Others fell into that heavy breathing, hot 'n bothered erotic psychosis pioneered by 'Basic Instinct' (and beaten into the ground by hundreds of direct-to-video cheap knockoffs.)

       But there were others that chose to forge their own paths to rev up the chills 'n thrills.....some good, some not so good.....some godawful.

       'Deceived' fell into the area between 'not so good and godawful.....

       Commanding attention immediately is the unique casting of normally bubby, effervescent Goldie Hawn as a woman distressed and threatened.  Hawn goes out of her way to prove she's got the serious dramatic chops to perform this role, but her studied low key grimness doesn't make her or the film very interesting to watch. 

        Neither does the skimpy script, filled with plot holes and senseless unbelievable incidents and behavior. 

         No great spoilers or outrageous twists to reveal here either. A simple premise......Goldie discovers her meet cute husband (John Heard) is literally nothing and no one that he appears to be. Over the course of the film, she discovers he's an identity shifting, sociopathic thief and murderer, stealing names and ending lives with equal fervor. Basically, he's a less charismatic version of Patricia Highsmith's iconic slime, Tom Ripley.

        The film does work up a measure of oncoming dread as the increasingly alarmed Hawn peels off Heard's many deceptions like layers off a rotted onion. 

        But then this all leads, as we feared it would, to Hawn and Heard's final extended mano-e-Goldie showdown. Of course it takes place in a large abandoned building, the usual psycho-thriller funhouse loaded up with locked fire door exits, corridors that go nowhere and lots of hidden corners for Heard to pop out of and go booga-booga.

       Pardon us while we suppress a deep yawn. 

       The pivotal moment is dumb as is, come to think of it, all of Heard's machinations and motives. Screenwriters Mary Agnes Donoghue and Bruce Joel Rubin either had whole chunks of their script cut out or maybe wrote it that way not giving a damn if it made any sense to an audience. 

        We'll at lease credit director Damian Harris (son of Richard) with giving individual scenes the appropriate aura of unease and danger and even at low gear, Hawn can't help but make you protectively fear for her. 

        But overall the film's a raggedy, hard to swallow mess and not among our favorites in the 90's thriller line-up. 

        Huge fans of Hawn may want to check it out. Everyone else can easily skip it.  1& 1/2 stars (*1/2)

         

'SHELTER'.......MORE GENERIC THUGS NEED STATHAM-IZING........ZZZZZZZZZ.........

 Shelter (2026)

     We don't want to spend any more time writing a review of this usual Jason Statham movie than was spent on writing its screenplay.....

       We're guessing 20 minutes tops.....maybe 30 if the writer stopped to pee or have a cup of coffee. 

       This one follows the template....."grizzled, monosyllabic ex-black ops commando comes across feisty child and whole bunches of black ops commandos out to kill him....he protects the child while wiping out commandos who regularly show up like pop-up video game villains...."

        And there you have your standard Statham product, fresh off the assembly line that pushes out these Statham sausages at the rate of one every 2 months or so. 

        Do we need to say any more?  Do you really need to read detailed descriptions of the Jason-ator shooting, stabbing, punching and kicking combat clad minions......you can almost hear the director shouting out like a Broadway choreographer.... 'One...two...three...kick! One...two...three...kick!'

        Somewhere in this sludge, you can spot a cadaverous looking Bill Nighy as the government mastermind who's sending out all the kill squads. Not that he does anything special while he's waiting his turn to get Statham-ized. 

        As for our star, it's like he turned into Rick Ford, the exaggerated lampoon of himself he played in the Melissa McCarthy comedy "Spy".....("Nothing kills me. I'm immune to 179 different types of poison. I know because I ingested them all at once when I was deep undercover in an underground poison ingesting crime ring.")

         He's still playing Rick Ford, only without the quips recollecting his prowess. Maybe if his writers and directors threw some of those zingers in, we'd start to like these movies more.....

         1 star (*) Same old, same old......

          Okay, the review's done. And we didn't even stop to pee or take a coffee break. 

       

'BAD INTENTIONS'......BACK TO HOME SWEET HOME AGAIN.......WITH ALL THE BURIED MURDER VICTIMS.....

  Bad Intentions by Iliana Xander (2026)

     Once a book starts tantalizing me with vague descriptions of past crimes coming back to bedevil its current day characters, I can't help but go all in with it, totally hooked.

     Our lead, Josie Boots has fallen victim to that singular malady that afflicts heroines of either romcoms or insulated small town thrillers......a embarrassing, humiliating misstep that's left her hated, scorned, a pariah, an outcast, and fair game for cruel memes and posts.

     So what else is there to do but return to her small town home. It's where her ailing grandmother lives under a cloud of suspicion over the town's most scandalous past crimes.....brutal crimes of arson and murder that also hang over Josie's late mother. Not exactly the best place to piece your life back together. Especially when some anonymous caller in town claims to hold the answers to all the dark secrets of Josie's family.

     But her attempt to meet with this individual appears to come to an abrupt, violent end. Or does it? And here's where author Iliana Xander stirs up the pot (and the plot) putting an ever growing pile of clues, reveals and finally some real threats in Josie's path.

     By the time 'Bad Intentions' throws a full spotlight on every last murder in Burnville (oh yes, you can bet there's more than one) you'll have to shift into that 'stop-whatever-I'm-doing-to-finish-this-book' zone.'.....a sure sign of one irresistible mystery read.. High recommendation here.

     4 stars (****).

'MICHAEL'.....FOR THOSE WHO SEPARATE THE ART FROM THE ARTIST.......

 Michael (2026)

      We're surprised as anybody else to end up reviewing this. 

        Honestly we had no intention of bothering to see this film, even for the purpose of covering it for  this blog. We were content to forget all about the strange, weird and sordid life of pop star Michael Jackson. 

         And we were already well aware that the film covered only the glory years of his young career, with beautifully rendered recreations of the concerts and an uncanny rendition of Jackson by one of his nephews, Jaafar Jackson.

          Then last week, it became available to BQ through a free streaming sampling of movies on STARZ.

          So we watched it. Entertained? Sure thing... for the good stuff we just mentioned. Yes, the concert sequences rocked (taking up the bulk of the film's running time) and we doubt any actor could have duplicated Michael Jackson with such precision and fierce dedication as his nephew accomplished. Let's put it this way.....he's far better than AI, 'cause you know he's real......

        The rest of it?  Actually kind of antiquated in its construction. Director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter John Logan assemble the film much like a glowing 1940's movie biography. It's filled with the innocent naif Michael rising to the top as he confounds corporate execs and delights thousands with his electrified singing and dancing. There's "....and then he wrote.." montages and scenes of Michael articulating his gentle, benevolent dreams of spreading joy, love and peace to the world.  The filmmaking, in its worship of its subject, resembles how old Hollywood handled biographies of famous beloved celebrities. 

        But there is a wild card running loose through the film.....Coleman Domingo's terrifying, nightmare inducing portrayal of the infamous, abusive Jackson patriarch, Joe. Physically and verbally intimidating, Joe's scarier than any of the zombies in Jackson's "Thriller" video or even Inde Navarrette in "Obsession". Like a quaking young Michael, you flinch right alongside him when Joe gets in his son's face, enraged at the boy's effort to forge his own separate career. 

        Coleman's Joe, who's like a pop music Bond villain, clearly functions as the engine that keeps the film going somewhere other than just showing you a Vegas-style variety show. (And the film only ends when he's finally and publicly thwarted by the son whose gifts he chose to exploit rather than cherish.)

The one amusing moment we remember......an almost unrecognizable Mike Myers as CBS music executive Walter Yetnikoff, ripping into MTV for not considering to play Jackson's videos. (Gen Xers may watch this scene muttering...."What? Did MTV play actual music way back then?"

           Now let's get down to the problematic question.....is it okay for fans of Jackson's iconic music and performances to enjoy this movie purely for its ability to accurately reproduce them?

          Of course it is and in no way do we begrudge anyone who spent a couple hours with this film, clapping, dancing and toe-tapping along.  Much in the same way that Roman Polanski's vile sexual assault of a child doesn't stop us from sometimes re-watching "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby".  They still remain superb films and Jackson's  music still remains as catchy and beloved as ever. 

        Yes, the art can be separated from the artist but then the millions of moviegoers who made "Michael" a huge box office hit already proved that. 

         But let's keep in mind that doesn't improve our overall opinion of Jackson and Polanski as human beings.  Which is why "Michael" ends its storytelling well before Jackson's slide into freakish behavior, ruinous surgeries and and charges of pedophilia. 

        As far as the artistry of its filmmaking (but not the barely there script), "Michael" earns at least 3 stars (***).  But for those coming to it solely for the music and Jaafar Jackson's remarkable work, well then it's a 4 star feast. (****).  For those who under no circumstance will divorce the art from the artist.....you shouldn't have even wasted time reading this review.