Book Review: Blake Crouch – “Dark Matter”

“Are you happy with your life?” 
Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. 
Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. 
Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe. (Source: amazon.com)

 

It’s been a long time since it felt right to do another book review on here, but this book captured me so much that I feel like I have to, to share my opinion of this exceptional piece of literature with the world.

So…Yes. Yes. Yes. And Yes again.

This book is the one I enjoyed the most from all the books I’ve read recently, and the one I had the most difficulties with putting it down. Plus, it was SO much better than the first book of Blake Crouch’s “Wayward Pines” series (which was the only one of the trilogy I read).

First of all – the main character. Jason Dessen is, despite working in a profession I was a loser in at school – physics – one of the most sympathetic characters I had the pleasure to read about. You’re thrown right into the story from the beginning, and you get to know everthing about Jason and his family that you need to know. I love the banter between him and his wife, and with his old college friend Ryan Holder only hours before things change for him. It’s all described in such a normalcy that it’s easy for the reader to picture every single situation in their own head, because it could be easily you or me finding themselves in that scene. What I especially liked so much about Jason is his integrity; his one and only aim keeps being his wife at all times, no matter what people or problems he’s confronted with, or in what situations he’s being pushed, deliberately or not. Jason’s the kind of person one like me would love to be one day.

All the other characters have their very own charm, too, as I mentioned before, and that’s the only tiny thing that I didn’t like about the book: the fate of one of them, someone a reader like me might come to like at a certain point, is being kept in the open. Maybe it’s exactly what Crouch intended, to have his readers’ minds still alert after finishing the book, wondering what happened to that one character. It certainly left me with that thought, and there’s a part inside of me, that, despite all the satisfaction this book left me with, that would love to know what happens to him/her (no spoilers here!)

Blake Crouch manages to find just the right balance between the technical side of his story, with all the physics stuff, and the suspense he’s building up with every single sentence. The short sentences in general really catch the reader – you read them down, a feeling inside your gut building that something big is going to happen, something scene-changing…and even if it may not, it doesn’t kill any of its overall suspense. If anything, it raises said suspense even more. And although the chapters are quite long, it doesn’t diminish any of the effects they have on the reader; they are enjoyable to the fullest, and reading them, with everything that happens, it seems like it’s just a blink of an eye when you finished another one.

The overall message of the book is amazing, though I am not able to find the right words to explain why.

Just the thought that somewhere in existence, with some “branch” that builds itself with every single decision we make/made in our life, there are hundreds, thousands, millions of other “us” who live in a complete different way, place, circumstance, and that with the right technical knowledge and abilities, these millions of versions of us could clash with each other in some way – it’s as much frightening as interesting as nothing else I ever thought about. It’s such a deceptive way of thinking that anything that Blake Crouch has thought up in his mind can be possible, and at the same time, it just gets more scaring when you think it about in this way: 30 years ago, nobody would have thought about a device like a Smartphone being possible, or artificial intelligence, or robots walking, working, somewhat “living” on their own, and nowadays, we view these things as normal, as “just the way it’s supposed to be”. The fact that the story revolves around the possibility for someone with the right – or wrong – motives to change his own life without changing the timeline of the world, to just simply step into a complete different dimension where one could be more successful, more satisfied, happier – even if it might be at the expense of your loved one’s or friends’ lives, – is strangely intriguing, and leaves the reader with the thought: “What if I had those possibilities? Would I go for it or am I satisfied with the way my “branch” reaches out?” And of course, one other, more important thought:

Will that technology one day be possible in our dimension?

So all in all, “Dark Matter” is one of the most exceptional books I had the honor and pleasure to read during the past year, and knowing that it’s going to be made into a movie in 2018 is just another sign of HOW exceptionally good it is. For people who love books having the theme of “What if…?”, this one is the perfect choice.

 

Top 5 Movies Of All Times

What makes a movie the best movie by definition? Well, for me it’s the right mixture of suspense, emotion, wit – and just pure entertainment to the edge of “I need to see that one again right now!” These are the characteristics that all of the 5 following movies contain for me – if you agree or not, that’s absolutely up to you, I always welcome different opinions.

1. Inception (2010)

This one is for me by far the best movie that has ever been released in the history of movies, although I know it slides sharply along the fine line of lovers and haters of it and is therefor definitely one of the most controversal movies out there. I know – and I can’t exclude myself from that, – that a lot of people just don’t understand that movie, with all its layers of dreams and plot twists and just generally that sickening end where the audience is left with the thought: “What? That’s…that’s it?” I agree, in some way, that end, as Christopher Nolan presented it, was not 100% satisfying. You’re never told if Dom Cobb’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) spintop, his totem, that tells him if he’s just dreaming or experiencing things in real life, collapses or not.
But for me, personally, I absolutely love that ending, because it’s just…perfect. Yes, I am going so far as to call it that. Because it is. I love that feeling when I come out of a cinema and can’t stop thinking about a movie, when I keep going back to it, trying to make sense of it, even if it drives me insane; it shows me that a movie has really touched me deep inside, which should be what all directors out there should be aiming for: leaving the audience in complete awe. The end of “Inception” does that, without any doubt. There are so many possibilities how everything has played out and would play out if the end wouldn’t have been the end, which in my opinion will never make people stop talking about it – in a  good or bad way.
And just to mention it: yes, Leonardo DiCaprio probably was the reason I loved that movie even more. Nobody would’ve been better for the role of Dom Cobb, at least not for me. He was breathtaking in every way, and I still ask myself why he never got an Academy Award for his acting. He displays the role of the delusional, desperate, heartbroken father like no one else, and there’s nothing he could’ve done better. Plus, the puns between Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Eames (Tom Hardy) are just totally priceless and give that movie the last little spice it needs.

2. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Yes, there’s a Tarantino Movie in that list. And for me, rightly so. I don’t even know where to start: from the perfectly cast roles (Christoph Waltz, Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Melanie Laurent, etc.) over the highly entertaining storyline itself to the twists, the list seems endless.
What is the most compelling thing about the movie, you ask? Well…the beginning, with no doubt. The beginning, where Christoph Waltz as the cruel, murderous Nazi-Captain Hans Landa walks into a french farmer’s house, looking for hidden jews and for 17 minutes straight, just sits at the farmer’s table, first talking to him in french (with an absolute flawless french accent that makes me, personally, melt to the ground!), then in german (in a quiet and somewhat menacing kind of way that makes the viewer’s skin just crawl), before he kills off almost an entire jewish family that is hidden beneath the floorboards…just WHOA. I am not gonna let anyone tell me anything else, it is the best beginning of a movie that has ever been made. Christoph Waltz is breathtaking in every way, and he definitely owns that movie whenever he shows up. The scene in the french café, when he sits down with Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), the only survivor of the killing in the french farmer’s house at the beginning, who seeks revenge for the extinction of her entire family, is played just absolutely flawlessly by both sides.
A movie where a villain is just so scaring and menacing that you actually feel  your own heart jumping when he gets closer to the screen, just when he shows up…this is something that has not happened to me very often. And therefor, every praise and award Tarantino or the actors got for “Inglourious Basterds” is more than justified.

3. The Pianist (2002)

Yet another movie about the time during the terror regime in the Third Reich, but nothing could be more different to “Inglourious Basterds”. What makes this movie so mindblowing possibly is the outstanding acting performance of Adrien Brody as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a jewish pianist who one day has to face the drastic change of his successful life when his family is banished into a concentration camp on polish soil (and being murdered) and he himself first manages to get into compulsory labor and then is hidden right infront of the eyes of the Nazi Regime in an abandoned house, directly in the middle of the war, only able to survive due to the selfless help of a befriended couple – and a german soldier (Thomas Kretzschmann).
This is also one of the few movies that makes me lost for words with its entire scenery. The director, Roman Polanski, is probably the most controversed discussed directors of all times, but there’s no doubt that he knows how to put up a story and set it right into the middle of things – brutally honest and excruciatingly merciless, without any try of sugarcoating (in one scene, the german soldiers are breaking into a jewish home, arresting its residents and just throwing one of them, an old men who is sitting in a wheelchair, out of the window without a blink of an eye). It seems as if Polanski knows exactly which buttons he has to press to leave his audience absolutely speechless and at the same time, gasping for air due to astonishment and admiration for such a brave way to display the horrors of the Third Reich – which in my opinion makes this movie one of the ones that is very hard to reach; it has set the bar for any following movie about this history subject pretty high.

4. Dead Man Walking (1995)

I watched that movie in school, in 7th or 8th grade, while we were discussing the subject of the death penalty in religion class – wow. As long as I can think back, that was the first movie that made me speechless and really had me swallowing hard whenever I thought about it. Surely the subject itself is a tough one – death penalty is a long discussed and very controversal thing, – but what really got me was the main character, Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn). He is one of the very few movie characters that you instantly click with, the one you like, despite what he might’ve have done. Throughout the entire movie, you hope, you wish, you pray that everything will work out for him, and just when you think it really might….it doesn’t. His death scene is one of the hardest and cruelest things I have ever watched in my entire life.
And Sean Penn is just mindblowingly flawless. You see the emotions on his face, hear his voice catching when he talks on the phone to his mom, when he begs Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon), the nun who accompanies him during his last days on earth, to help him, to save his life at the very end (although throughout most of the movie he just is indifferent about what he has done), and you feel just so much sympathy for him that it breaks your heart – that’s at least what it did to me.
What I love about that movie the most is how it leaves the audience to make up their own minds about the death penalty. Its message is not “Death Penalty is wrong” or “Death Penalty is right”. It allows the viewer to make up his/her own mind, and it does it in one of the deepest, most meaningful ways any movie has ever done.

5. What’s In A Name (Le Prénom) (2012)

Who would think that a little joke, a little everyday situation can lead to a huge blow-up, resulting in a messed-up dinner, a bloody nose and a cleft family environment? Before I was forced to watch this movie during a bus travel of 5 hours to my best friend, I definitely didn’t. I had never heard of this movie before – mostly due to the fact that I just don’t like french movies. At all. Fair to say I despise them.
But this one changed everything. It’s possibly the funniest and most entertaining movie I have ever had the pleasure to watch; the actors are amazing, the story is cleverly invented and the tagline absolutely priceless. And just when you think that one problem is sorted out, that normal life can continue again, one of the family members makes a little comment, so small that everybody else would just let it go – and the situation blows up once more. I, personally, love this twist that Alexandre de la Patellière & Mathieu Delaporte, the directors, present us with, to a point where I never get tired to watch this movie over and over again.
And  even if I know this is just my personal opinion, I’d advise anybody who reads this blog to go and watch it. I promise you, you won’t regret it.

There are plenty more movies that somehow belong in here, and it kind of feels unfair to leave them unmentioned – but these are the five that inspired me the most, that left me in complete awe, in love or excitement and just pure joy. For me, they are the picture perfect examples of what movies should be like. For me, they are THE stuff that movies are and should be made of.

5 Reasons why Leonardo DiCaprio deserves an Oscar

After having seen “The Wolf Of Wall Street” and once again being blown away by Leonardo’s outstanding acting talent and performance, I decided to do what has been long overdue – at least in my opinion. Let’s go (Please note: everything I say in here is totally MY opinion and it does NOT reflect the general opinion):

1. His Age
Leo started acting when he was only 19 years old. At this age, a lot of people don’t even know yet what they want to do with their life, yet he knew exactly who he wanted to be. He started to become a shooting star in the big world of Hollywood, and unlike a lot of his acting colleagues (like Macaulay Culkin or Drew Barrymore, to only name two) who became famous even earlier in their lifes, Leonardo never struggled with drugs or alcohol problems. And no matter how many movies were added to his filmography, no matter how many nominations for academy awards he got, he has always been down to earth – and I am not scared to put it out there that one of the reasons for that is probably the german blood in his veins, his grandmother in Germany who always kept him on his two feet.

2. His Variability
Whether as the son of an abusive father, a mentally handicapped young man, a penniless nobody, a soldier in a war-torn country, a delusional former police officer, an undercover agent, a family father who’s lost touch to reality, an adolescent fraud, a ruthless slave driver or a drug-addicted, multi-million dollar broker – there seems nothing that Leo can’t do, there seems no role that he isn’t capable to play. And no matter who he represents on screen: he always does it with total commitment to his job – something that the audience can easily pick on.

3. His facial expressions
There are barely any actors out there nowadays who have managed to pull off all the different emotions a movie or series character can go through with such perfection as Leo has. He can easily switch from a love-stricken man to a person in such rage that I could not blame anybody if he’d scare them to death. Again, Leo seems to have perfected how to pull off the movements and facial expressions of a drug-addicted person as much as a sad, destroyed person who has just lost everything that kept him going. Sue me, but there has been more than one occasion where I watched him in certain scenes and just wanted to go over and hug him. (Picture credit to someone on the internet who made these three)

4.His Hotness Level
Yes, you have heard right. I mean….just look at him! Back then, when he had his breakthrough with “Titanic”, when everyone was swooning over how cute his smile was, how good-looking he was…I have to admit, it was true, though I haven’t been attracted to him so much as I am today. Leo is one of the examples that men age with dignity and get more good-looking the older they get. He’s turning 40 this year, but hell, I don’t think he has ever looked as perfect as he does nowadays. You can see his life and his age and all of his roles in his face, and still, it doesn’t make him less attractive at all. George Clooney who?

5. He just deserves a damn Academy Award!
He really does. I don’t think any actor has ever been so underrated as he is. Seriously. I think he himself has stopped counting the many times he has been nominated for either a Golden Globe or an Oscar without being fully appreciated by winning one. As I said at the beginning: THIS ALL IS TOTALLY MY OWN OPINION. Me, personally, I am happy to no end he won a Golden Globe for “Wolf Of Wall Street”, because he was outstanding in it. And I think it’s time he finally gets his well-deserved Oscar. No other actor – for me – has so many facets as he does. And yes,  I will probably cry like a little baby on March 3rd, 2014 when he hopefully gets that little golden boy. My fingers will be crossed hard until there’s no blood left in them.