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Chris Butler recommended The Goonies (1985) in Movies (curated)

 
The Goonies (1985)
The Goonies (1985)
1985 | Adventure, Comedy

"Okay the next one, and it’s a big one, is The Goonies. I think it’s almost self-explanatory. I remember seeing The Goonies as a kid and I think it’s that sense of — it is almost like a Scooby-Doo-esque adventure become real, and I think that’s what made it so appealing to me as a kid. It wasn’t that it was raucous and loud, it was that these kids were incredibly relatable. They were real kids. They came in all shapes and sizes, they were incredibly flawed, and very funny. They were rude, they bickered; they just felt so real, and they were a lot of fun because of that. So yeah, The Goonies — huge influence."

Source
  
Am I Normal Yet?
Am I Normal Yet?
Holly Bourne | 2017 | Humor & Comedy, Young Adult (YA)
2
7.8 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
DNF@58 of 350+

This is my second book by the author and my second did-not-finish. I always struggle to get into them. They dont have that smooth quality that i like or the typical romance that i want. I may have liked that it was set in the UK but I couldn't get into it at all.

I had [b:How Hard Can Love Be?|26255907|How Hard Can Love Be? (The Spinster Club, #2)|Holly Bourne|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1447326926s/26255907.jpg|46254074], too, but it's going straight to the charity shop and I'll be ignoring all other Holly Bourne books from now on just because they really arent for me.
  
    Rae Sremmurd

    Rae Sremmurd

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    YouTube Channel

    Tupelo, Mississippi. It's the home of Elvis Presley, but even for those clued in on that fun fact,...

Skyscraper (2018)
Skyscraper (2018)
2018 | Action
A Total Lack Of Self-Awareness (0 more)
Absolute Garbage From Start To Finish
I have a pretty high tolerance of cheesy horseshit in movies - I am a fan of even the more poorly received Fast & Furious movies, - but this one took it too far, even for me.
I wanted to like this thing, I like the Rock, I like big dumb blockbusters, I enjoyed the trailers for this movie and I like Die Hard, which was clearly a major inspiration for this film. I didn't like it, any of it. From start to finish I went from cringe to cringe.


The quality of this movie is something that you might expect from something from early in the Rock's acting career, just after he broke away from wrestling and way before he was a big name in Hollywood, but this comes out now, after he has starred in movies like Fast & Furious and Moana. Not that Fast & Furious and Moana are deep, Oscar-worthy movies, but compared to Skyscraper they at lease deserve a nomination!


The only positive that I can give this movie is that it may be an okay film to put on in the background. Maybe if you have some friends over for a drink, this might be a good shout to put on in the background on low volume or if you are looking for something to have on while you tidy the house or go for a nap, then this is the film for you.


Overall, I am honestly really disappointed in the Rock for being in this atrocity, I thought he was above trash like this, but apparently I should have known better. Please, do yourself a favour and don't waste your time with this pointless nonsense like I did.
  
Paisan (Paisà) (1948)
Paisan (Paisà) (1948)
1948 | International, Classics, Comedy
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"This is another film my grandfather showed me at a very young age. It was one of the first times I ever saw reality unfold like that on-screen. The more I watch it, the more that different things pop out. When I was young, this was the first time I ever saw an interaction between an African American and a young Italian kid—and that was big for me, because when I was in Italy my mother was always the only African American around and I was this young Italian kid. So seeing both these cultures represented, and seeing the way they’re represented, made me realize cinema could reflect life—that it’s not just about entertainment, that it can be about something very real. When you really think about the postwar years, the image of Italy was very much constructed through Rossellini films. In the era of Fascism, people like Rossellini and the partisan movement were silenced, so it’s not that they didn’t exist—it’s just that they weren’t allowed to be as vocal because their lives were at stake. The fact that he gave a voice to this movement, showing that Italy did in fact have this fiercely anti-Fascist side that suffered as much as anyone, I think was very important for how Italy has been seen in the postwar years. It’s one of those rare moments when a director has this deeply personal film to make that also coincides with one of the biggest events in world history. I’m definitely drawn to this tradition of filmmaking because I grew up on these films as much as I grew up on Disney."

Source
  
Uglies (Uglies, #1)
Uglies (Uglies, #1)
Scott Westerfeld | 2005 | Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
8
7.6 (39 Ratings)
Book Rating
great narrative on today's society and how we hold Beauty Above All Else
I'd had a uglies sitting on my shelf for about 2 years now and just never got around to picking it up but recently I had quite a few people recommending that I give it a try and that I'd probably like it. I'm so glad that I did give it a try cuz I really did like the story The Plot was different and really interesting definitely reminded me of one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes which I found amazing. It really makes you think about how as a society we view Beauty as such a high standard of a person and just how messed up it is. The author did a really great job by balancing the characters and their struggles and how each one of them had an opinion about the world around them it really gave a more in-depth fill to the world.

 my only real issue I had with the book was the names for things were stupid as hell and the amount of times he use them just kind of drove me nuts and while it was necessary to the story I really never want to see the word pretties or ugly again.
  
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LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated The Mummy (2017) in Movies

May 27, 2019 (Updated May 27, 2019)  
The Mummy (2017)
The Mummy (2017)
2017 | Action, Adventure
An abrupt and poorly executed end to the Dark Universe
Since The Mummy came out in 2017, Universals planned Dark Universe has come to a shuddering stop.
After watching this movie I can see why.

The movie starts off ok I guess, the pretty standard 'tomb raiding' you can expect from a Mummy film.

It Tom Cruise that starts to tank it for me - I've always been able to take or leave Tom Cruise. Sometimes I like him, sometimes I don't, and in The Mummy, I definitely didn't. It just seems like he's playing a parody of himself at this point.

When we are introduced midway through the film to the plot device that was supposed to start linking The Mummy to future Dark Universe films - namely Russell Crowe as Jekkyl/Hyde - the movie falls apart even further, causing what little coherence it did have to slowly crumble.
Annabelle Wallace's character is reduced to someone who panders after Tom Cruise, even with his character constantly being an arsehole.
Jake Johnson's character is used as a weird exposition tool that pops randomly without rhyme or reason.
It's just all a little messy.

Some saving graces - The CGI effects or pretty good for the most part and I did quite like Sofia Boutella as The Mummy.

Maybe the first Brendan Frasier Mummy film was just a one off, which is kind of sad, as I was quite excited to see the Universal Monsters brought back to life.
  
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Ross (3284 KP) rated The Snowman (2017) in Movies

Jul 17, 2018 (Updated Jul 17, 2018)  
The Snowman (2017)
The Snowman (2017)
2017 | Crime, Drama, Horror
Style over substance
Contains spoilers, click to show
This film is aptly titled - like when making a snowman I got bored 10 minutes in and just wanted it all to melt away.
The film seems like a stylish director's first attempt at the crime/thriller genre: a genre where details matter, the plot has to build up and unravel at a certain pace, with clever twists and turns along the way. Here there is none of that, there is a feeble attempt to suggest some disappearances are linked but no revelation that the snowmen were present at all scenes (a pretty key element of the whole plot). The film is just a series of things happening, in very nice, slow, moody, atmospheric scenes, and then the plot is crammed into the last 5 minutes at pretty frantic pace. And once its revealed it really makes no sense. We haven't been given enough of the key details along the way to try to empathise with the killer or at least understand why he did what he did.
The characters are all totally disposable. A cheeky spoiler: if a character seems like a creepy killer but has no apparent link to the case - he is the killer.
And I know Val Kilmer was recovering from throat cancer surgery so couldn't speak, but the voice dubbing was so badly executed that all of his scenes were just farcical and should not have made the final cut (they added literally nothing to the overall plot!).
  
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Sarah (7800 KP) Jul 17, 2018

Whilst the book isn’t perfect, the film would’ve been a lot better had they at least tried to stick closer to the actual story!

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Ross (3284 KP) Jul 18, 2018

I haven't read the Snowman but have read a few of the Harry Hole books and would indeed expect the plot in the book to be a lot better than this. It feels like they cherry-picked bits of it, and the plot of a crime thriller is often so intertwined that you can't remove one thread without the whole thing rattling down.

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Sam (74 KP) rated The Hate u Give in Books

Mar 27, 2019  
The Hate u Give
The Hate u Give
Angie Thomas | 2017 | Children
2
8.4 (54 Ratings)
Book Rating
It’s got five-star reviews everywhere, has won so many awards, and literally, everyone is talking about it. So, of course, it’s worth a try.

Only I didn’t enjoy it to the point where I got halfway through and couldn’t finish it. I wasn’t even sure whether to post the review because I know that lots of people will disagree with me over this.

I was so excited for a book to be out that’s about police brutality in America towards black teenagers, and was surprised, to begin with, that something as serious as this was in a YA book, but also happy that it was being told to teenagers. It sounded like my ideal book.

But I just couldn’t get along with it at all. The whole idea with the book is to show what casual racism is doing to America, but at the same time on every few pages, there’s another part talking about how horrible and funny and evil white people are. If a book wants to make a stand against racism, make a stand against it from both sides, not just one. You cannot end racism by calling the other race.

I just found it really one-sided in its battle against racism. I am definitely not saying that the police shooting was right, let me just say that, and Starr has every right to hate the police for shooting her best friend. However, this does not mean that every few pages there needs to be a comment about how awful white people are.

A much healthier focus for the book would have been equality, not switching the racism to the other side in a ‘how-do-you-like-it-now’ move.
  
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Erika (17789 KP) rated The Mandalorian - Season 1 in TV

Dec 28, 2019 (Updated Dec 28, 2019)  
The Mandalorian - Season 1
The Mandalorian - Season 1
2019 | Sci-Fi
I want to say that I love this show like nearly everyone else, but it's simply not the case. It's just not amazing or mind-blowing, like many suggest.
The show is sufficiently entertaining, but I have a few issues with it. The episodes were all directed by different people (Filoni and Chow directed 2), and that may have been the issue. The styles were just too different. I'm also not sure why Bryce Dallas Howard was allowed to direct an ep, she should really leave the directing to her father and stick with acting. Howard's ep was, by far, the worst of them all.
I was bummed that the eps were so short, just over 30 minutes with the end credits. It was definitely a bummer.
My favorite (and the best) episodes were directed by Deborah Chow, who is set to direct the new Obi-Wan series. I'm even more excited for that now, because she was rock solid.
I won't say much about the story line, I don't want to spoil it more than it already has been. The episodes were kind of everywhere, and I found myself thinking after them, what the hell was the point of this ep? It was all just a little disappointing, the hype was too much for this show.
I liked Pascal's Mando, and Cara Dune (Carano) was probably my favorite human character. The Child is, of course, ADORABLE, but I need to know the mystery. A scene in ep 6 or 7 seemed to dismiss my personal theory, but I'm still sticking to it.
If you're a fan of the Clone Wars and/or Rebels, the final scene of the last ep will be a treat. Though, what the hell happened in order for that artefact to land in that person's hands??