A movie and a book

The latest book I've been reading from the public library is House of Spies: a Novel by former journalist Daniel Silva. It's the 17th book in the spy series about art restorer and Israeli agent Gabriel Allon. I've read all the books in the series and enjoyed them all. This one is very good so far. Here's an interview with Silva about the book on the Today show ...



My latest movie rental was The Mummy ...

a 2017 American action-adventure film directed by Alex Kurtzman .... It is a reboot of The Mummy franchise and the first installment in the Universal's Dark Universe. The film stars Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, and Russell Crowe.

As you will recall, the earlier Mummy films starred Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, and told of a treasure-hunting soldier who collaborates with a librarian to unearth Egyptian relics, one of which is a sarcophagus containing a still living and supernaturally dangerous mummy. This new film modernizes the story but basically follows the same path.

Sadly, the film got pretty bad reviews - I think part of the reason some critics didn't like it is that they didn't realize that many of the script choices were based on the earlier Mummy film. Here's a review from The Guardian: The Mummy review – Tom Cruise returns in poorly bandaged corpse reviver. Anyway, I enjoyed it. Here's a trailer ...