"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles (2016)

Count Rostov is a rooted cosmopolitan and a gentleman. A gentleman is an optimist. An optimist seeks to master his circumstances lest he be mastered by them. A gentleman has his most valuable possessions always on him at all times: memories, friendships, languages, and logical structures. Rostov lives as if there were tomorrow.

Like Starbucks, like a product of many a multinational, the Hotel Metropol is an Embassy of Civilisation. It is a whore---the best one money can buy. It is an education. It is where life comes to expose herself to you if are too busy to live or are otherwise engaged.

A rooted cosmopolitan, Amor Towles cherishes the language, for he knows---just as his protagonist does---that the journey will be a long one, and that language is a dependable companion, especially when spoken with Nicholas Guy Smith's versatility.

But Towles delicately blows his own cover. He does not bow down before fate. He celebrates a moment of supreme lucidity accompanied by an opportunity to act.

Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (2019)

This vulgarly titled mini-series is an alien's look at a man who thinks, a species that is on the brink of extinction in public life but is probably still familiar first-hand to most viewers. The species also reads. And then reflects on what it has read. Which is supposed to be a shocker, as is Gates's admission that he does not seek to inspire but rather to be effective, to optimise. Nor is the failure to eradicate every single case of polio or to solve the world's energy problem is Gates's personal failure---or indeed a failure at all. There are guiding problems in mathematics, in science, and in each individual's life, which are not meant to be solved but rather to inspire and direct smaller victories.

The series is worth watching if only to observe Gates's fast, incisive mind and his superior interior designs. Gates is intelligent and erudite enough to salvage any conversation. His offices are cosy, conducive to work, and rivalled only by the views of Washington. The ever-in-the-frame troop of Coca-Cola cans is a reminder of Gates's proletarian allegiances. He optimises all that which is both a necessity and a luxury for each of us: a toilet, a drink, an operating system, electricity.

Westworld (Seasons 1, 2 and 3)

The series is concerned with the noblest of all pursuits: the pursuit of immortality. The show has its moments, which are mostly concerned with winning lighting and Ed Harris. While the entire show appears to have been written by a sizeable committee, Season 2 was likely crowdsourced on Amazon's Mechanical Turk, with contractors majority-voting on each scene and every directorial decision. A team of copywriters must have been charged with writing not-too-tired one-liners, to be pasted on buses and, if good enough, fed to Anthony Hopkins's and Ed Harris's characters, as their contracts must have specified. Speaking of contracts, it seems that starlets view sex as career sinking and violence (if delivered, not received) as career enhancing, and make sure to craft their contracts accordingly. The audiences have to suffer through the consequences, of which Season 2 the worst offender.

Overall, what's missing in Westworld is a vision and passion. Instead, the show is a well-connected machine held together by professionalism.

Devs (2020)

In his blog, Scott Aaronson has nailed Devs as a "cultural appropriation," which, all things considered, is a compliment. Aaronson was referring to the culture of quantum computing in particular, but much more is appropriated and is aptly summarised---again, by Aaronson---as existential musings of Aaronson's eleven-year-old self.

Alex Garland (writer, director, and, according to credits, "creator") comes across as a team player, but, on this project, he has denied himself a team. This handicap notwithstanding, the series endures, in large part thanks to its visuals and Sonoya Mizuno's physique. The words she's been programmed to utter fall flat, but her body knows how to be present. Thankfully, the director knows that it knows.

Two facts redeem the series. First, the eleven-year-old Aaronson used to ask good questions; one can look for answers elsewhere. Second, the shortcomings of the story line and the dialogue, flat and stereotypical characters, and factual errors can all be written off as a noisy simulation of a simulation of... Noisy, but still worth living or, at least, examining.

Anne with an E

The series is a cliched soap opera saved by the great Canadian acting. Every character, no matter how minor, is played by an actor worthy of being a lead. Indeed, the lengthy format that is the series enables the creators to dispose of the traditional notion of a lead character. Almost.

As the tenets of a soap opera demand, there ought to be no end in sight. There is plenty of room for season 4.

Columbus (2017)

Some cities are so small that they loom large—over its populace, who sleep at 9pm, over the streets, dark, deserved, over the indoors, belonging to someone else, over the air, indifferent and transmitting the sounds that would only be heard in a place where sounds visit but rarely stay. There are cities so small that they loom large by virtue of embodying the dreams of a man (or a handful) who cared and who faced few obstacles in a place not sedated by tradition.

There are people so large that they need to come to a place that is small in order to rewrite themselves uninhibited and with purpose, instead of being haphazardly overwritten by a metropolis. There are people so large that they need to escape a city that is small in order to write not one but several stories each of which would comprise a life.

Little Women (2019)

There is no one correct way to live one's life. If one is struggling to decide whether to devote one's life to the career, the family, or idle hedonism, one is likely not to be wrong whatever one chooses. In the short term, by virtue of near indifference, one should not be disappointed by any choice. In the medium term, one is unlikely to be able to adhere to the wrong choice for long and will soon reconsider. In the long term, one can find consolation in having lived a life that is, if not optimal, then at least interesting and unconventional. One's many selves (e.g., as viewed from the temporal perspective) likely disagree on what optimum is anyway. Whatever one chooses is likely to please some selves and upset others. The pleased self ought to be promoted.

The cast has been chosen masterfully. Even Meryl Streep's overacting seems oddly appropriate for her episodic part. Actors and actresses have not been chosen for their Hollywood looks. As a result, it is left to the story---not to assortative matching---to reveal who will end up with whom.

The dull persona of Friedrich adds ambiguity to the story. A Frenchman trying to pass for a German or a humourless German trying to pass for a Frenchman---we are never told---he is the one that Jo settles for, as an afterthought, to universal delight. As she admits it to her editor, her first choice had been taken. She may end up being a better writer for that, more open to the world.

The picture is timeless, for its story celebrates the universal: freedom and the plurality of aspirations.