The Ricochet Reviewer: Books, Movies, and Comics

Writer / Director: Noah Baumbach Stars: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever, Azhy Robertson, Wallace Shawn, Martha Kelly As their marriage ends, a couple (Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver) struggles to remain decent and generous while in the grip of an adversarial system that is designed to pit them against each other.  Although writer/director Noah Baumbach keeps a tight focus on our two protagonists, his film is also the most scathing indictment of our litigious nature that I have seen in a long time.  Nicole and Charlie are getting divorced, but they still care for each other.  However, societal pressures do not allow them a quiet process that honors the bond that once existed.  At the beginning, they have hired a mediator to help them settle things amicably.  But soon outside influences and their own insecurities cause them to do things they never thought they would do in the fear that they will ...

by Edgar Rice Burroughs   A young college athlete named Jimmy Torrance heads to Chicago confident he can secure a high-paying job based on his personality and campus reputation, only to encounter a humbling series of setbacks.  He works a string of menial jobs before bluffing his way into a position as a factory efficiency expert despite having no qualifications.  The novel draws on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ own early struggles with employment, and that semi-autobiographical element gives the opening sections a grounded appeal.  Edgar Rice Burroughs Jimmy’s initial confidence collides with the indifference of the job market, and the episodic progression through low-status positions conveys his gradual adjustment to reality. Even without the author’s usual fantasy trappings, the narrative preserves a familiar ERB structure: a capable protagonist adjusts to an alien environment and prevails through personal resourcefulness, achieving success and winning the affection of a ...

by Louie L'Amour Gaylord Riley has built a cattle ranch with money staked to him by his former outlaw gang, and when those men come back needing help, he has to decide whether he can honor an old debt without losing the life he worked to make.  At the same time, he is pressured by a rival rancher and a saloon keeper, both of whom threaten the fragile respectability he has built for himself.  Louis L’Amour keeps the plot moving, and he gives the American Southwest enough presence that the setting feels like more than just a backdrop.  Louis L'Amour Riley’s struggle to escape his past gives the story some real emotional weight, but the novel follows a very predictable template, and Riley himself never becomes very interesting.  L’Amour gives him a traumatic backstory, but not much psychological depth, and parts of his backstory do not fully hold together.  The supporting cast does not help much, since the villain and the love interest are both thinly drawn, and th...

by Edgar Rice Burroughs Princess Tara of Helium is swept up by a sudden storm and deposited near the isolated city of Manator, where she’s captured and made the human stake in a lethal, live-action game of Jetan (Martian chess).  Gahan of Gathol goes after her, disguises himself among enemies, and has to win the game to secure both her freedom and her affection.  This installment keeps the “lone warrior chases the missing princess” structure that Burroughs used in the previous installment.  The storm-capture-rescue plot is replicated so faithfully that an experienced reader can see most of the turns ahead of time.  Still, there are highlights like Manator’s Jetan spectacle and the genuinely alien menace of the Kaldanes, who push the series toward higher-concept sci-fi/horror instead of yet another round of warring tribes.  Tara also helps; she’s more proactive than Dejah Thoris tends to be, relying on her own judgment and a concealed dagger rather than simply wa...

by Don Pendleton Mack Bolan heads to California with a Mafia contract on his head, where he recruits a small “death squad” to hit the Los Angeles family as both police and mob killers close in on him.  This second installment of Don Pendleton’s seminal men’s adventure series shifts away from lone 70s revenge thriller toward more of a Dirty Dozen vibe.  Don Pendleton There are entertaining stretches from the Mafia’s point of view in which they get increasingly frazzled and short-tempered as the siege tightens.  The frantic efforts of the police to respond to a threat they can’t quite locate, always a step behind, gives a cat-and-mouse feel to the action.  Unfortunately, the new team never fully comes alive.  They are less like characters than a set of interchangeable “skills,” and I had trouble keeping straight who was who; functionally, they operate as a single partner to Bolan rather than distinct presences with their own personalities.  "Death Wand" (Gree...