Asking the Wrong Questions

It's slightly old news by now, but as of December of last year I have joined Locus as part of their stable of reviewers. I'm still working out how this is going to work—the monthly schedule is a bit intense, and as readers of this blog know I have never felt obliged to review books as soon as they are published, which Locus prefers to do. So expect a bit of a ramp-up as I figure out how often, and on how many topics, I feel comfortable writing about for them—while, of course, continuing to post on this blog, at Lawyers, Guns & Money , and writing occasional reviews for Strange Horizons . My first Locus review appeared in issue 767 (there's usually a month's delay between print publication and when reviews are published online) and discusses Gabrielle Korn's The Shutouts , a sequel and companion volume to 2023's Yours for the Taking . Both novels take place in a post-climate-collapse US and focus on the fallout from a billionaire's plan to rescue a se...

Making a movie is a complicated, time-consuming endeavor. Releasing a movie—especially with an eye towards the major film festivals and awards circuits—is arguably even more so. The game we critics like to play, therefore, in which we grab at several movies released around the same time and try to identify a common theme, is more often the product of marketing decisions and pure chance than a true reflection of prevailing cultural trends. Nevertheless, as I watched the closing credits of Aaron Schimberg's A Different Man , I found myself comparing it to The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat) and Emilia Pérez (dir. Jacques Audiard) and asking an uncomfortable question: why is it that 2024 seems to have delivered not one, not two, but three different movies all riffing on the idea that transformation is bad, impossible, and that if you nevertheless do attempt it, you will probably die? The Substance and Emilia Pérez are among last year's most lauded movies. When the Oscar nomin...