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Toni Lynn Donald (1997 KP) rated Toy Story 3 (2010) in Movies

Apr 5, 2020 (Updated Apr 5, 2020)  
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
2010 | Animation, Comedy, Family
I love all the Toy Story movies, but I think this is the best one of the 4 movies. Andy is going off to college The toys are accidentally donated to a day care center run by an evil bear. Very funny story and I love the voice actors in the Toy Story movies, all great actors. What I love most about this movie is the ending, brought a tear to my eye.
  
PI
Passion Ignites (Dark Kings, #7)
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Lexi won't stop until she finds the Red Eye that killed her friend but in her search she comes to the attention of not only the Red Eyed, evil Dark Fae but also bad boy Dragon King, Thorn.
When the Dark Fea realise she is immune to their powers they know she is a Dragon King mate and to catch a dragon they must trap Lexi.

I don't read much fantasy but I do love this series. The Dragon Kings are brave and sexy and will do anything to protect their mate while also protecting their secret from the Humans.
I do love Donna Grants writing, she makes her books easy to read and difficult to put down.
  
Brightburn (2019)
Brightburn (2019)
2019 | Horror
Superman gone bad
I found this dark reimagining of Superman quite hit and miss.The kid is creepy enough and fully utilises his powers once he knows what he is capable of BUT the writers could have given us a little more of what motivated him to use said powers for evil instead of good.

The film wasnt to heavily reliant on the gore,though when it did it was pretty cool (the glass in the eye scene stands out) and the occasional jump out your seat scare scene did just exactly that.

Not sure if this has the potential to open up a cinematic universe with nothing but supervillains in (as eluded to in a credits scene)
  
Aftershock (Blood Never Lies #2)
Aftershock (Blood Never Lies #2)
Dianna Hardy | 2018 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Another great book from Dianna Hardy!!
The Eye of The Storm series and The Witching Pen series are both connected in this novel - you don’t have to have read them though, in order to understand what’s going on in this series. I’d recommend them anyway, just because they’re really good!!
Claire and Pete take Jasmine to the US to avoid the dangers of those who would do her harm in the U.K. To all intents and purposes, Claire and Pete ARE Jasmine’s parents, even though she is actually the daughter of Claire’s best friend, Beth, and her lover, Amil, a Trident (think: evil, genetically engineered werewolf on bad drugs - although he wasn’t really evil). They want to protect her, but it becomes increasingly difficult. Her true self, even though she’s only six years old, is beginning to be revealed due to a Supermoon. And it’s not what you think!
I love this series - I love all of Dianna Hardy’s writing. Not only is it well written, the relationships feel ‘real’, and there’s loads of real emotion and excitement (lots of ‘heart in mouth’ moments!). I do love a bit of paranormal/ urban fantasy, and this ticks all the boxes.
I can’t wait to see where this story goes in the next book!
  
The Chill Factor (1973)
The Chill Factor (1973)
1973 | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
2
4.0 (2 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Storyline (0 more)
Acting, Gore scenes (0 more)
Contains spoilers, click to show
A group of friends are out Snowmobile racing when one has a critical accident. Out in the middle of nowhere in freezing conditions, 2 of the friends go to find help and stumble across a Cabin. The Cabin looks like it was once a Religious Camp but seems abandoned; it has an upside down cross of the mantle and is just very creepy in general. They ignore this and move their friend into the Cabin. Whilst looking around the Cabin they find a picture of some kids in the 1950's who attended when the place was a Camp. Below their picture there is a scroll that says "keep the beast in the field", which one of the friends alludes to the fact that "the beast" often references the Devil. They also discover a "Devil's Eye" board, similar to a Ouija Board and decide to use it. During this, one of the friends that went out for help is killed, one has a seizure and one woman is convinced they've let something evil in; further strengthened by the fact that one of friends finds an article about a Satanic Killer murdering people around that area. Soon enough the friends are getting picked off one by one by supernatural forces, yet the critically injured man is thriving. Could the Killer have returned to the Cabin? Or could this be the work of the Devil's Eye Board?

Chill Factor is one of those typically terrible 80's Horrors (made in 1989). It's slow burning and not in a good way, it feels more like a cheesy TV drama and the murders are substandard and really nothing at all that us Horror fans haven't seen a million times over. Also, it ends in a ridiculous Snowmobile race between Woman and evil... ludicrous.
  
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
1997 | Action, Drama, Mystery
Umpty-tumpth Bond film rests on the laurels of GoldenEye perhaps just a bit too much. Evil media magnate Carver tries to orchestrate a war between the UK and China so he can sell more papers and grab a satellite TV franchise; British intelligence decides to disrupt his scheme by sending James Bond to have sex with his wife.

Well-mounted set pieces, and plenty of them, plus Michelle Yeoh gets an eye-catching role as the 'Oh, James!' character, but the problem is that the rest of it feels like karaoke Bond, without the self-awareness or attempts to move the franchise on that lifted GoldenEye somewhat - plus, it's just not as well written. The result is a mid-range entry in the series, assuming one overlooks the schoolboy error of Bond not being able to read Chinese (as any fule kno, he got a First in Oriental Languages at Cambridge). This still equates to an entertaining movie, just not an exceptional one.
  
Resident Evil (2002)
Resident Evil (2002)
2002 | Action, Horror, Mystery
Let's just brush aside for a moment that this adaption of Resident Evil bares little resemblance to the video game it's based upon and instead take a look at it as its own film, how it's comes off as a horror, and what visionary director Paul WS Anderson has to offer to the zombie genre...

...it's a terrible film, it's a shitty horror, and Anderson should just keep away from beloved franchises forever. I actually actively hate most of his films (have I mentioned this before?).
The big gaping issue with Resident Evil is it's characters and screenplay. The characters are a collection of edgy shitbags who spout one liners every two seconds and are just ripped straight from the "cliché action bastard handbook". It's difficult to care about any of them. I understand that Alice (Milla Jovovich) goes on to lead the entire franchise, but in the first entry, she hardly does or says anything, and as such, the audience doesn't get much of a chance to bond with her before the credits roll.
The script is just eye rollingly cringey. Every single line is either a "witty" quip, or lazy exposition and it becomes tiresome very quickly.

Some of the effects are ok - the zombie dogs look pretty gnarly, but The Licker (one of the only concrete connections to the game series) is brought to life with some of the worst CGI I've ever seen. To say it's aged badly would be an understatement, as I remember it looking dodgy AF back in 2002 when I was a humble 14 year old. Other than that, the whole film has that awful early 2000s aesthetic (The Matrix truly has a lot to answer for) and the inclusion of obnoxious breakbeat music cues that everyone was obsessed with at the time is the cherry on the mouldy cake. Ugh.

It's not all terrible... There are a couple of memorable set pieces, and the film manages to be somewhat entertaining here and there, but overall, Resident Evil is another garbage pile video game adaption, and the fact that George Romero wrote an unused screenplay that was much closer to the first game (and was poised to direct!) just rubs salt in this horrible festering wound left behind by Paul WS Anderson's Resident Evil. Hate it.
  
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Jackjack (877 KP) Nov 4, 2020

28 day and 28 weeks later were pretty good!!! Gunna have to watch a few of those other ones you mentioned!!

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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) Nov 5, 2020

@Jackjack to further prove that you're not the only one who disagrees with me, I genuinely lost a handful of followers on Twitter after posting this review there just before Halloween 😂

Valkyrie (2008)
Valkyrie (2008)
2008 | Drama, History, War
7
6.9 (18 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Suspense and thrilling
Valkyrie- is a good movie. Its a good suspense, thriller thats based on a true story.

The plot: Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) serves Germany with loyalty and pride but fears that Hitler will destroy his country if allowed to run unchecked. With time running out for Germany and the rest of Europe, von Stauffenberg joins a group of like-minded, high-ranking men who want to overthrow the Nazi regime from within. With everything he holds dear in the balance, von Stauffenberg becomes the trigger man in a plot to assassinate the evil dictator.

One eye patched tom cruise is a plus. It makes him more intense. Reminds me of Snake Plissken.

So i watched the trailer, and the music their were playing was the "Saw Theme", which was intresting. Cause i love that theme song, its so intense and makes things 10x more intense and intresting. Thats why i watched this film, because that theme song made the movie look really intresting and intense. Which it was. It was suspenseful and thrilling till the end.
  
See No Evil (2006)
See No Evil (2006)
2006 | Horror, Mystery
4
5.0 (8 Ratings)
Movie Rating
See No Evil is a whole big mixed bag of average. The first 20-25 minutes are abhorrently terrible. It manages to tick every mid-00s horror cliché in its opening scene. It introduces all of its eye rollingly awful characters with edgy freeze frames and name cards.
Beyond the opening third, the whole film is riddled with seizure inducing quick zoom edits, and music video quality effects, and the whole runtime is draped in a durgy shit-shaded sepia tone. The characters never become remotely likable and suffer through the cringey dialogue without any sort of reprieve, and the worst one of the bunch even survives to the end credits, which is deeply upsetting.

Despite all of this however, I don't completely hate it. The gore for one is pretty solid, and looks mostly practical which is a huge bonus considering the era (and if you completely ignore the gratuitous spaffing of atrocious CGI during the final sequence). Glenn Jacobs, better known as WWE's Kane, cuts an imposing figure as the brutal as fuck villain, and I enjoyed the plots obvious homage to Friday the 13th. It's also mercifully clocks in just shy of 90 minutes, which makes it ideal for a quick dose of bloody horror if that's what you're after.

There are a huge amount of piss poor elements to See No Evil but it's certainly not the worst slasher out there. It's very typical of it's time, so it delivers exactly what you would expect and is definitely the best WWE produced film I've seen - the other being Leprechaun Origins, so not exactly a huge feat, but hey, let's take the wins where we can...
  
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Merissa (11646 KP) rated The Tea House in Books

Oct 13, 2021 (Updated Jul 12, 2023)  
The Tea House
The Tea House
Amanda Meuwissen | 2021 | Horror, LGBTQ+, Paranormal, Romance
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
THE TEA HOUSE is a novella with a perfectly timed release - just in time for spooky season. Because that's what this is - spooky. There is some blood and gore but nothing too bad. Instead, you get that feeling of creepiness, that something is about to happen, you know it, you just don't know when.

Logan and Jaime are the perfect counterfoils for The Tea House and it starts off sweet enough. Be prepared for it to change though, and maybe not in the way you're expecting!

This is a short read that I enjoyed, but I will admit to wanting more. More from Jaime and him accepting certain things. More from Logan and his history, present, and future. And more of them together.

I did enjoy the ending, and it left me with a hopeful (evil) gleam in my eye!

A short one but absolutely recommended by me.

** same worded review will appear elsewhere **

* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *

Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Oct 13, 2021