Female Victims, Male Abusers, ... in the Very Boring, Very Politically Correct Girl on the Train

National Review ^ | October 14, 2016 | Armond White

[EveningStar]

Full title: Female Victims, Male Abusers, Revenge of the Sisters in the Very Boring, Very Politically Correct Girl on the Train

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The Girl on the Train, last week’s top box-office film, is so thoroughly lousy that it augurs a horrible future for the American movie-going plebiscite. This woman’s revenge story (dramatized in triplicate, with Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, and Rebecca Ferguson as suburban white women who suffer psychic abuse by a male) promotes perverse “feminist” sisterhood...

In [André] Téchiné’s new film, Being 17, a white French youth falls in love with an Algerian teenager while contending with adolescent urges and stress that are not all biological. Both boys are outsiders, and while Téchiné wittily acknowledges their physical similarities, their class differences are more intriguing: Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) is the only child of a doctor and a military officer; Thomas (Corinten Fila) is the adopted child of a farming couple...

In The Accountant, blatancy overtakes sincerity. Ben Affleck plays a CPA on the Asperger’s spectrum but with a special difference: His clients are global terrorists laundering their filthy lucre. They don’t scare this accountant, whose martinet father schooled him in self-defense; plus, his commissions provide him with military-grade weaponry (and a secret stash of original Renoir and Pollock paintings). As absurdly convoluted as The Girl on the Train, this film stays blatantly politically correct, with its subplot about a woman-of-color (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) hunting down the secretive accountant and rising through Treasury Department ranks...

[EveningStar]

ping

[pinkandgreenmom]

I thought the novel The Girl on The Train was pretty dreadful as well.

[longfellow]

Bj thought it was girl pulls a train.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Agreed. I read it, just to see what happened. It was Meh. Everyone was pretty much nuts, LOL!

I’m really starting to doubt reviews for books; it all seems so phony and staged these days.

Yes, yes. I know Publishing is a ‘machine’ but I’m more apt to take book recommendations from friends now, versus on-line.

Speaking of which...have you read anything recently that I should NOT miss? I am an avid reader with usually 2 books going at a time. :)

Right now I’m reading, ‘How The Light Gets In’ Louise Penny - the latest in her murder mysteries set in Canada, and also am re-reading, ‘A Thousand Acres’ as it’s a great depiction of ‘King Lear’ and Jane Smiley is a terrific writer, and we just went to see, ‘King Lear’ this late summer at American Players Theater.

[jonno]

I don’t know, the previews for ‘The Accountant’ look pretty good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBfsgcswlYQ

[jonno]

Fuller preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmKtb-Pvpf4

[MarMema]

I thought the novel The Girl on The Train was pretty dreadful as well.

Me too.

[rellimpank]

--saw it strictly as an "action" movie-

-enough Hollywood style gunplay etc., to provide me with a couple hours of escape--

--several scenes inspired laughter from the audience and it had a real twist at the very end---

[rellimpank]

--saw it strictly as an "action" movie-

-enough Hollywood style gunplay etc., to provide me with a couple hours of escape--

--several scenes inspired laughter from the audience and it had a real twist at the very end---