Books vs. Movies: You Were Never Really Here

Stories about violence against children test the limits of what art should show and what it should withhold. You Were Never Really Here exists at that tense edge. Jonathan Ames’ lean novella sketches a traumatized fixer named Joe who kills to rescue trafficked girls, then erases his footprints so completely that witnesses doubt he was ever there. Lynne Ramsay’s film translates that premise into a somber, fractured mood piece anchored by Joaquin Phoenix. Both works avoid graphic depiction while refusing to soften the harm, and the distance between those choices becomes the central question: does restraint protect us, or does it make us complicit in looking away? The result is a rare case where medium isn’t just a container for plot, but the message itself.

The book opens with a quiet, procedural rhythm. Joe’s paranoia feels earned: burner calls through a Queens bodega, surveillance of a brownstone that hides a “playground” floor, and a methodical entry that solves problems with a hammer. Ames gives us just enough texture to feel how this underground economy operates without glamor. The most harrowing beat arrives when Joe interrupts an assault mid‑act; it’s brief, but the implication lands harder than any blow. The novella also clarifies two key mysteries the film leaves oblique: why the girl counts under her breath and why the title matters. She counts to measure endurance; Joe makes sure he’s “never really here” by design. Those clues ground Joe’s ethos and make the sparse prose feel precise rather than thin.

Ramsay’s film narrows the lens to sensation and aftermath. Phoenix plays Joe as a man whose body carries every memory like shrapnel; the camera stays close to his breathing and hands, cutting away from the worst violence and showing the silence that follows. Some changes heighten discomfort, like aging the girl down and renaming her Nina, while others push the thriller into myth: a governor replaces a senator as the rot at the top, a confession arrives from a dying man, and the girl’s final act turns her from victim to agent. Most striking is the suicide sequence by the lake, where Joe nearly follows his mother into the water before the image of Nina pulls him back. The film withholds explanations about counting and title, trusting mood over exposition, which can feel poetic or opaque depending on your tolerance for ambiguity.

Power operates differently in each medium. The book builds a chain from local fixers to political ambition, indicting a system where a father sells his daughter to gain office, then hires a rescuer to quiet his guilt. The film points higher, suggesting clean‑suited evil that performs its own death and controls the news. Both grapple with complicity: the delivery man, the silent neighbors, the voters who never ask where money comes from. And both rely on New York geography not as postcard, but as infrastructure—brownstones with secrets, watery borders, highways to Albany—mapping how exploitation moves along real streets. These choices echo the ethics of depiction: show the machine, not the spectacle.

Endings define memory. Ames ends on a knife’s edge: Joe kills the architect of harm and drives toward Pennsylvania to recover the girl, and we’re left suspended between hope and dread. Ramsay offers a fragile counter‑image: a diner table, a shocked man, a girl who says she’s okay, and a future that might exist if they keep walking. Neither lets us forget the cost. For me, the book wins by a hair. Its clarity about motive, counting, and title deepens character and stakes, and its procedural spine keeps tension high without the drag some viewers feel in the film’s reveries. Yet the film’s restraint and Phoenix’s bruised presence linger, proving that sometimes looking away is a deliberate, unsettling artistic choice rather than a failure to confront.

Books vs. Movies: Sandcastle vs. Old

The conversation opens with a clear framing: Sandcastle, the 2011 graphic novel by Pierre Oscar Lévy and artist Frederik Peeters, and its 2021 film adaptation Old by M. Night Shyamalan. Both works share the same nightmarish premise: three families, a couple, and a lone outsider arrive at a secluded beach and realize time is aggressively accelerated—aging them years in hours. From there, we start mapping how each medium handles mystery, explanation, and ethics. The book leans into ambiguity, sprinkling hints—like a watcher with binoculars and a hotelier’s son—then abandoning them to deepen unease. The film pulls those threads tight, turning the watcher into an organized observer and the hotel into a recruiting mechanism, fully paying off early cues. One path favors mood and dread; the other insists on coherence and causality. We found ourselves asking: when does supplying answers protect the story, and when does it puncture the spell?

Casting and character structure amplify those differences. The graphic novel keeps adults of similar ages and gives both main families a son and a daughter. The film reshuffles: Gael García Bernal’s family skews younger; Rufus Sewell’s character has a much younger wife, adding vanity and fragility to his arc. A refugee in the book becomes a rapper in the film (Mid-Sized Sedan), which shifts audience perception and dynamics among the group. These tweaks aren’t just cosmetic; they alter who drives action, who absorbs suspicion, and who evokes empathy as bodies change and stakes rise. We noticed how a single choice—like removing a brother in the film—simplifies relationships, avoids troubling implications, and narrows focus to the core philosophical question: what’s left of identity when time outruns memory and experience?

Ethical landmines surface around accelerated puberty and consent, and both versions handle them differently. The graphic novel includes explicit nudity and sexual encounters, including minors who age physically yet raise questions about mental development. The discomfort isn’t only visual; it’s conceptual. Are these minds still six, or aging at a slower cognitive rate than their bodies? The film limits depiction, avoids sexualizing minors, and suggests naivete in Alex Wolff’s portrayal that keeps the issue present without exploitation. This is where audience thresholds diverge: some appreciate the book’s unflinching horror; others find relief in the film’s restraint. The choice reveals each medium’s priorities: the book wants to disturb; the film curates shock to serve theme over transgression.

Time logic becomes the axis where adaptation either soars or stumbles. The film enforces the rules with precision: half an hour equals a year, decomposition accelerates, and a discovered corpse turns to bone across “seven years” of beach-time. That attention to systemic detail amplifies dread—nothing escapes the clock. The book, by contrast, is looser. Bodies don’t seem to decay at the same rate, and the closing image of the surviving child—now grown—clashes with the earlier math of 24 hours equaling roughly 48 years, potentially leaving the other once-children alive longer than depicted. The film’s rigor empowers its most devastating beat: a newborn can’t survive because one unattended minute equals roughly twelve days without care. The book’s final image, the grown child calling for “mama” with a baby’s mind, is bleaker poetry but strains the rule set it implies.

Then there’s the twist. The graphic novel toys with conspiratorial speculation in a throwaway line; the film commits. A lux resort funnels guests with specific illnesses to the beach, where a hidden team measures drug efficacy across compressed time. The watcher on the cliff becomes data collection; the hotel’s kindness becomes predation; the driver cameo is Shyamalan himself, a wink and a judgment. The twist re frames the horror as institutional—efficient, clinical, ethically bankrupt. Some listeners will find that satisfying because it connects the mystery to a real-world critique of pharmaceutical exploitation. Others will see it as over-explanation, trading the existential chill of unknown forces for a neat villain. Still, the film carries its logic through to an escape and exposure, while the book leaves us stranded with questions that echo long after the tide recedes.

We closed by weighing which version lands better. The graphic novel feels like a Twilight Zone fever dream—spare, suggestive, and unnerving. It risks offense with sexual content and loose rules but sticks the mood. The film, more engineered, turns stray clues into a system and retools uncomfortable beats, tightening ethics while widening scope. Your preference will probably track your appetite for ambiguity. If you want dread that lingers without answers, the book wins. If you crave clean rules, moral clarity, and a societal target to blame, the film makes the case. Either way, the beach works as a mirror: it distorts time.

The Social Dilemma (2020)

 

“The Social Dilemma” brings up a lot of points about social media and the corporations that run them. Those corporations can all go eff themselves.

It reveals how social media is designed to get users addicted and keep them scrolling and this behind the scenes look is told to us by the people who used to work there and develop these things.

This documentary provides an interesting look at Big Tech. There is a dramatization that runs alongside the actual documentary and honestly that could have been left out.

So many experts are interviewed for this film and it is their insights and perspectives that keep things interesting. The family being dramatized alongside all the information provided bogs down the film.

\Vincent Kartheiser plays the algorithm seeking to keep two of the teens in the family hooked to their phones and more than the family dramatization, this is more cringe.

There was no need for this. There was no need for the family either, but it made more sense than the portrayal of the evil algorithm out to brainwash children.

The reality of what goes on behind the scenes of big tech is shocking enough. No need to try and hammer the point home even more.

The documentary shows how we reached a point of all time political divides in the country, how conspiracy theories are spread and the alarming rise of teen suicide and self esteem issues.

The film reminds us that we are the product being sold to big advertisers. The more we are online, the more money they make off of consumers.

We find out how exactly we are kept online and when we are doing other things, how they suck us back in so the scrolling cycle continues.

Some of the experts interviewed helped create some of the things that keep us engaged such as the "like" button. The creators intention was to spread positivity. He never imagined that the like button might cause issues with people obsessed with how many likes they get compared to others. 

Many of these experts want change to happen. They are worried about where the division could lead us. 

The end credits include ways to combat the perils of social media. They are easy tips that can be incorporated. Deleting apps, turning off notifications and not clicking on things that are recommended for you are just some of the easy ways to combat the issues presented in the film.

One Battle After Another (2025)

 

Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another takes a minute to get into. Which is an odd thing to say considering the film's action starts the moment it starts. Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), her boyfriend Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and others make up the French 75, a radical organization fighting for immigrant rights, abortion rights, and a slew of rights that you can think of.

By the time the credits stop rolling, Perfidia has betrayed the group, causing the deaths of several members and the need for Pat and his and Perfidia's daughter to go into hiding using aliases. Fast forward sixteen years and Charlene/Willa (Perfidia and Pat's daughter played by Chase Infiniti) is kidnapped as Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn) tries to ensure his acceptance into the film's KKK coded group. It's a lot happening so fast and it took me awhile to get settled in, but once I locked in, I really enjoyed the film.

Inspired by Thomas Pynchon's novel "Vineland" this film is incredibly political. I'll keep my review short due to this, but I highly enjoyed it. This is Leonardo DiCaprio at his funniest. Part of the film was also shot in my hometown of El Paso, Texas and it was lovely seeing one of the big action scenes take place in downtown EP. So much love for my hometown. 

The film was a fun and wild ride and while it took me awhile to get into it, once I did, I did not want it to end. 

Bedeviled (2016)

Bedeviled is about an artificially intelligent phone app who outgrows its users’ devices and comes to menace them in the flesh. It could be a scary concept, but unfortunately there isn't much substance to it. The execution leaves so much to be desired. At least this was free to watch.

A group of friends led by Alice (Saxon Sharbino) lose a friend at the start of the film. Alice and the friend's boyfriend Cody (Mitchell Edwards) start receiving messages from her phone inviting them to join an app. Despite the fact that the friend/girlfriend is dead, there isn't too much concern for the fact that this dead girl is inviting them to join an app from beyond the grave.

The entire friend group ends up downloading the app. The app gains their trust by acting as an AI assistant. Things soon start to turn menacing. 

Mr. Bedevil (Jordan Essoe) starts menacing the teens in real life. He can seemingly manifest corporeally outside of the app. Mr. Bedevil scares his victims to death using their biggest fears. This is probably for the best as his corporeal self isn't incredibly scary.

Mr. Bedevil and his scares follow the typical horror formula. Unlike other horror terrors, there is a way to beat this one. It involves sending a virus to attack the app.

Cody is a tech wizard and he and Alice team up to destroy the app. How it all ends is absolutely over the top and ridiculous.

Books vs. Movies: The Last Letter from Your Lover

Jojo Moyes' "The Last Letter from Your Lover" presents readers with a powerful dual-timeline narrative that explores love, memory, and second chances. The 2021 film adaptation starring Shailene Woodley and Felicity Jones attempts to capture this complex story, but how successfully does it translate to screen?

The novel begins in 1960s London, where Jennifer Sterling awakens in a hospital with no memory of her life, including her wealthy husband Lawrence. As she attempts to reconstruct her identity, she discovers passionate love letters hidden throughout her home, signed only by "B." These letters reveal a secret affair and plans to leave her husband—plans that were apparently derailed by the car accident that caused her amnesia. This amnesia plot device serves as a brilliant narrative tool, allowing readers to piece together Jennifer's past alongside her, creating an intimate connection with her character's journey of rediscovery.

The parallel modern timeline follows journalist Ellie Haworth who, while researching in newspaper archives, stumbles upon these decades-old love letters. The book portrays Ellie as involved in an affair with a married man, creating a thought-provoking juxtaposition with Jennifer's story. This moral complexity adds significant depth to the narrative, forcing readers to examine their own perspectives on fidelity, love, and the circumstances that might lead someone to seek connection outside marriage. The novel doesn't shy away from exploring the societal constraints of the 1960s that trapped Jennifer in her loveless marriage, particularly after having a child.

Where the film adaptation diverges most significantly is in its structural approach and character development. While the book unfolds chronologically, allowing readers to fully immerse in Jennifer's 1960s story before introducing Ellie, the film inter cuts between timelines from the beginning. This creates a different viewing experience that sacrifices some of the novel's emotional depth but maintains better pacing for screen. Additionally, the film transforms Ellie from a woman involved with a married man to someone struggling with commitment issues—a significant character alteration that shifts the thematic parallels between the two women's stories.

The book excels in its detailed exploration of post-amnesia recovery, Jennifer's detective work to uncover her own past, and the sociopolitical context of being a woman in 1960s upper-class British society. Readers witness Jennifer's gradual awakening to her true desires and the courage it takes to challenge societal expectations. The novel also includes a fascinating subplot involving asbestos mines and corporate cover-ups that Jennifer uses as leverage to negotiate her independence—elements completely absent from the film adaptation.

Both versions culminate in reuniting the long-separated lovers in their twilight years, offering a poignant reminder that true connection transcends time. However, the book provides a more nuanced exploration of the obstacles that kept them apart, including deliberate deception by those who believed they were acting in Boot's best interest. This added layer of complexity makes their eventual reunion all the more satisfying in the novel.

Whether you prefer the more detailed, chronological storytelling of the novel or the visually evocative, parallel storytelling of the film, "The Last Letter from Your Lover" remains a compelling exploration of how the written word can preserve love across decades. It reminds us that sometimes the most profound connections in our lives deserve a second chance, no matter how much time has passed. In an age of digital communication, this story celebrates the enduring power of handwritten letters and the courage required to follow one's heart despite societal expectations.

 

Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002)