Citizen Reader

This weekend, Mr. Citizen and I had the chance to watch a couple of movies.  And when I say "had the chance," what I mean is, "had other work to do but felt like ignoring it, and also needed a way to drown out the sound of the incessant monsoon-like rain and keep ourselves from running to the basement multiple times an hour to see if any water was getting in."

The movies in question were The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Quiet American, both of which I snagged from the library as someone else returned them, because I'd always vaguely wanted to see them.  Mr. Ripley was a thriller about a poor man stealing other's identities, trying to wiggle his way into the high life, and having to kill people as things increasingly start to go wrong.  The Quiet American is set in 1952 Vietnam, where an older British reporter meets a young American relief worker who is not all he seems, and a love triangle involving them and a young Vietnamese woman takes center stage.

Reviews in a nutshell?  Don't waste your time on Ripley; run right out and get The Quiet American.  Ripley is long and somewhat pointless and the ending annoyed the crap out of me, while The Quiet American was completely engrossing and also passed the patented CitizenReader 90-Minute Test ("if you can't tell your story in 90 minutes, I'm not obligated to watch it"). 

What's really interesting was that before watching the movies, I'd always wanted to read The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith, and was completely bored even by the thought of reading Graham Greene (author of The Quiet American).  Now I'm thinking about checking out the Greene, but have no desire to ever pick up the Highsmith, unless I do it just to see if they completely ruined it when adapting it from book to screenplay.

Yup, another productive weekend for CitizenReader and spouse.