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A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)
A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)
2014 | Comedy, Western
Realistically? This is only *ever* so slightly worse than 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘚𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘨𝘨𝘴, by a unit of less than a hair. I'd consider this to be about 45% funny, 55% unfunny in almost note-precise measure. Granted some of the humor does come from how jarringly wacky and final the scene-to-scene structure is - which unlike the majority I don't have a problem with because it shows how committed this is to truly trying to make you laugh, which I can respect. Though even its funniest moments are a far cry from the likes of the debilitatingly hilarious 𝘛𝘦𝘥 movies (the Gwendolyn joke is always a winner, though). Cut out the boring Theron + Neeson stuff and you could be left with a nicely lean, unique little comedy. I admire that this tries to be more than your average throwaway comedy by introducing like ten different plotlines but none of them ever come together smoothly at all and as a result it falls into *heavy* tedium quite regularly. My other main gripe is that MacFarlane (who does hold his weight here) plays the ultimate fucking incel - that dude who never lets people have fun on social media and swears women should just start lining up to fuck him just because he's superficially a self-proclaimed 'nice guy'. I'd hate that less if he didn't leave the ultra-talented pair of Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried to both be shoved unceremoniously to the corner as second and third fiddles who are relegated to kissing his despicable ass the entire time rather than flexing their comedic chops. Also quick side gripe, 85% of the jokes in the gag reel are funnier than the ones in the movie? Wtf?? But a mustachioed Neil Patrick Harris diarrheas into not one... but TWO different bowler hats. So its goofy streak satiated me for what that's worth. And I'll also support at least giving Wes Studi a more meatier role than all of 𝘏𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘴.
  
One of us is Lying
One of us is Lying
Karen M. McManus | 2017 | Young Adult (YA)
10
8.3 (41 Ratings)
Book Rating
I read so many great reviews about this book, so it was a no-brainer for me, whether to read it or not, and I was really enjoying this book all the way through.

This book follows lives of four seventeen-year-old students, who are accused of murdering their schoolmate during detention. McManus chose the characters for this book very cleverly, covering the main groups of students, which you find in most of the US schools. (using my experience of watching movies) Because of this great selection of characters, it is easy to relate to them and it makes them all very believable. My personal favourite was Bronwyn, I liked her story in this book and the way she was fighting all odds in her school and personal life. I really enjoyed that author was bringing up really serious topics through these characters and their stories, that created more depth and meaning in this book. Another thing which was a real pleasure was multiple perspectives, through which characters could open up to the reader and let their personalities shine.

The plot of this book was very well thought through and creatively designed, drop feeding the important information and creating impatience with every character’s story. There are plenty of turns and twists, so this book was a real page-turner for me. I was reading most of this book while I was travelling, so sometimes it was hard to follow who was who, as the characters change and mix in every chapter, but I got a hold of it later in the book.

I really enjoyed the writing style of this book with easy language and short chapters. I think that author ended this novel very nicely, giving well-deserved conclusion and hope for all the romantics out there. So, to conclude, it is a great book with very strong and diverse characters, interesting plot, and it discusses very important topics, that’s why I think it is a must read and I strongly recommend it to everyone. Enjoy 🙂
  
Purgatory Road
Purgatory Road
Samuel Parker | 2020 | Thriller
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
From the first pages I had creeps running down my spine. This story is a nerve - racking, blood – curdling, fearsome piece of art. It started like every second horror movie, couple’s car broke in the middle of nowhere and they need to survive but eventually they will meet someone who wants to kill them. Heard that before, right? But this novel is something different. There is something else lurking around, where it is very hard to explain what it is, and author kept it for your own imagination till the very last page. Was it real or was it just a fruit of imagination, I honestly don’t know. The plot of this book is really disturbing and filled with lots of violence and disturbed characters so if u have weak nerves and fear of violence save yourself from nightmares. I know I had few even though I like these kind of books.

I really enjoyed what author did with the characters, they are very mysterious and all of them have their own secrets which author helps to untangle slowly, torturing with every chapter. There are amazing insights of couple’s relationship problems and hidden feelings towards each other and helps discover their own most secret realisations which they tried to suppress for some time. Characters manipulate with these feelings magnificently. The book is really fast paced and these chapters are so short, that it grips you so bad that all I could think was “OK, just one more…” and I couldn’t put it down. It is really easy to read this book, because the language used is not difficult so it just flies through. There are a lot of things going on in the book with a lot of turns and twists which made it even more interesting and gripping. The ending was really enjoyable as well not like the ones you see in horror movies. To conclude, I would strongly recommend this book to all out there who got strong nerves and would like some spine – chilling story to read.
  
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LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated The Dreamers (2003) in Movies

Dec 3, 2020 (Updated Dec 3, 2020)  
The Dreamers  (2003)
The Dreamers (2003)
2003 | Drama, Romance
Actual lines of dialogue from this movie:

"𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘥. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥, 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬, 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵-𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵."
"𝘐'𝘮 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘸𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳 [𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦]."
"𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘢 𝘣𝘪𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘧𝘧, 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵? 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘢𝘰 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳... 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴."

The far less entertaining 𝘊𝘳𝘶𝘦𝘭 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 meets... idek, the really long talky parts from 𝘛𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘰? A woeful experience - uses a ton of intellectual jargon but says next to nothing. On the one hand, perfectly emulates this sort of 20-something who thinks they're the most original being on the planet despite being another clichéd story no one wants to be around... but on the other, at what cost? These people seem beyond insufferable to be around - three pretentious, odious fucks sit around drinking wine and smoking while spewing superficial first-year-film-major histrionics, jerking off, and smelling each others' underwear. Every bit as lumbering, surface-level, and pompous as that sounds. Usually I'm all for these conceited combinations of toxic people, self-destruction, and explicit sex but this is virtual parody levels of this sort of "wants to be a 70s movie really bad" cinema. Has a few good scenes that actually find a palpable mood but otherwise exists almost solely to brag about how many old movies it's seen, uses both those aforementioned films and the real life 1968 Paris riots as not much more than mere window dressing while failing to confront whatever shred of an idea it briefly poses for a scene or two. Eva Green and the dad are the only two tolerable performances. All but begs you to find it audacious and daring with a shit-eating sneer while simultaneously gutting the homosexuality from the original text so this won't steer *too* far off the hetero curve. And then it ends with a total "who cares?". Pretty but dumb. The sex stuff is kind of decent, though.
  
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
1982 | Horror
This film has a slumber party and it also has a massacre. In that respect, The Slumber Party Massacre does exactly what is says on the tin, but actually has more to it underneath it's trashy exterior.
It may very well be another 80s slasher following in the wake of Friday the 13th, but a few things make it stick out above some of the rest.
The short 77 minute runtime means that the plot steams along at a snappy pace. The expected killer chase scenes are genuinely tense. The characters are all fairly realistic. All good stuff.

Its important to note that this film was directed by Amy Holden Jones, and written by Rita Mae Brown. The presence of two females in these usually male dominated roles is certainly noteworthy, especially in the 80s. As a result, we have female characters who aren't afraid to fight back, and who don't rely on men to save them. There's not even an obvious Final Girl candidate, any one of the main cast could have filled that role. It's refreshing to see.
However, TSPM is produced by Roger Corman, which would go someway in explaining the excessive nudity, and why the finished product is far different to what Rita Mae Brown had initially envisioned.

The practical effects are fairly minimal, but what we do get is pretty good, and there's some semi decent gore dished out by Russ Thorn, this movies antagonist. He's obviously not a patch on slasher icons such as Jason or Freddy, but he's still a weird enough dude to make his mark on the genre. (Not quite as weird as the dude who hunts snails though, what the fuck was that all about)

The Slumber Party Massacre is a straight shooting horror that may have a cheap look, but it's fun for the most part, and has some memorable slasher moments.
  
Annabelle: Creation  (2017)
Annabelle: Creation (2017)
2017 | Horror
This damn doll just isn't scary, people - and neither is this movie, not a single time. However, for about half the time it does succeed at being effectively creepy and sometimes even sort of fun. I mean this is still just the same two or three rusty clichés and dated, predictable jumpscares on repeat but it has a lot of half-okay vignettes... which all get soured by the surfeit of nonsensical connections to other movies in the series and the insufferable "Hey, remember when THIS happened??" bullcrap. For one I wish they'd let David F. Sandberg be David F. Sandberg here instead of yet another inferior Wan clone like they do with the rest of these. And for two I'm not the first to suggest that this movie being more concerned with milking the Conjuring mythos dry of any miniscule amount of nuance it once had through attempting to spin it thin into some sort of pointless, scuffed 'cinematic universe' kills the standalone decent horror flick this could have been (as well as devalues the originals in the process) - and I hopefully won't be the last - but Jesus Christ did it have to be so fucking long too? When this script was written, did every sentence have to include at least three sets of ellipses between words? Also the non-horror stuff is worlds better than the horror stuff - personally I would have loved to have seen the movie that was pushed to the side in here about this group of orphans finding out something isn't right with Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto or the secretive demonic stuff they've been cooking up in the background after their daughter gets killed. But no, it rushes past all the intriguing stuff in favor of a competent but saccharine and generic cash grab. Far from awful but also not all that much better than the original 𝘈𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦. Did we really need a prequel... to a prequel (which in and of itself we didn't need)?
  
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
1989 | Action, Adventure
Returning to a much more balanced tone that the overly "cooky" Temple of Doom, the third Indiana Jones adventure gives Raiders of the Lost Ark some serious competition for best entry in the franchise (Raiders just about beats it for me based on the ratio of melting nazi face content).

The Last Crusade is a hugely entertaining movie from start to finish. It has a fantastic cast from the ever reliable Harrison Ford in the title role, to the convincingly menacing antagonist played by Julian Glover. Of course, Sean Connery is here for the ride this time around, as Indy's old man. The dynamic between Connery and Ford is great, and every scene with the two of them is cinema gold. Alison Doody makes for a welcome change with this films female protagonist (sort of), her character finally bucking the trend of typical love interest and having some depth, and a hell of a mean streak. Its nice to see John Rhys-Davies return from his ToD absence, and River Phoenix makes for an extremely memorable young Indiana in the movies opening flashback scene - on the subject of that scene, the transition from young Indy to Harrison Ford Indy is epic, thanks in part to another wonderful John Williams score, and is one of my highlights of the entire franchise!

The pacing is spot on - the over-two-hour runtime never once feels like a slog. The constant action is some of Spielberg's best work, and is suitably high octane. Everything in between boasts an engaging screenplay that develops all of the characters nicely, and the comedy elements are well done and sporadically placed, making the sillier moments genuinely funny (even the ridiculous Hitler scene)

All in all, The Last Crusade is a wonderful conclusion to the original trilogy, and is a genuinely fantastic adventure movie that stands toe to toe with the first film in its quality.
  
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Jimmy Fallon recommended American Movie (1999) in Movies (curated)

 
American Movie (1999)
American Movie (1999)
1999 | Comedy, Documentary
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"This is a comedy for you movie nerds (but that’s probably why you’re on Rotten Tomatoes anyway, because you are a film nerd). This movie is called American Movie, and it’s a documentary comedy. Man, oh man, I remember seeing this film with Horatio Sanz: we were in the theater, and we were crying so hard from laughing, we were hugging each other and punching each other because we were laughing too hard. It’s about a man trying to make a horror movie. He calls it Cove–en, and it’s about a coven, but he doesn’t like the way “coven” rhymes with “oven,” that doesn’t make sense, so he calls it, mispronounces the title for his film, and calls it Cove-en. He tries to get his dad to act in the movie, and his dad is going like, “You have something to live for. Jesus told me so.” And he’s like, “All right, Dad, do it again, but your teeth are falling out.” And he goes, “Cole, you have something to live for. Jesus told me so.” And he goes, “Geez, I hear his teeth clickety clacking in the audio, it’s unusable.” I mean it is crying funny. He takes a dentist, a local dentist [who] wants to be an actor, and he’s ramming his head into a closet that he was supposed to have scored so that it easily breaks away, but he forgets to score the wood so he’s actually ramming a human’s head into a wooden cabinet. [The man] is screaming, and he’s ramming this poor man’s head into the thing. So cut, and the guy’s holding his head. He’s like, “Oh, my gosh.” He’s like “Uh, man, I’m sorry, I forgot to cut that board.” It’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It will make you cry laughing. If you love filmmaking, you will appreciate this. The two guys, the two stars of the movie, are true stars."

Source
  
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Darren (1599 KP) rated Refuge (2013) in Movies

Sep 26, 2019  
Refuge (2013)
Refuge (2013)
2013 | Horror, Thriller
7
5.6 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Characters – The characters focus on a family, Jack the father, the man that will do everything to keep his family safe, even if it means taking risks by saving strangers, he doesn’t back down from enemies or threats, but is forced into decisions he doesn’t want to make. Nell is the wife and mother, we don’t really learn too much about her though, she falls in the woman being protected circle. Birdie is the daughter that doesn’t fully understand the world and wants to just be a child in this world. Kyle is one of the people that Jack has saved in the past.

Performances – The performances from the cast are great throughout, we feel their bleak outlook on the life they are living which is what we want to see, the final act shows them at their best too.

Story – The story here follows a family in a post-apocalyptic world where the biggest threats marauders and the virus that has wiped out most of the world. This is a bleak story that helps show us just how desperate the world now is and not having any sort of zombie side to everything giving us the only enemy the human one. This keeps everything simple because it is all we need, even though it does follow the typical mistakes being made by the characters.

Thriller – This does try to keep us on the edge of our seats about whether our characters will survive and what is next in line for them.

Settings – The film keeps us in the bleak locations from start to finish, they show where people will survive and keeps us away from the big city.


Scene of the Movie – The break in.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – Just shot them.

Final Thoughts – This is one of the best looking bleak virus outbreak movies, it does have questionable character decisions but that does add to the drama.

 

Overall: Simple and effective.
  
Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
1960 | Action, Family
5
7.7 (6 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Characters – The characters focus on a family, Jack the father, the man that will do everything to keep his family safe, even if it means taking risks by saving strangers, he doesn’t back down from enemies or threats, but is forced into decisions he doesn’t want to make. Nell is the wife and mother, we don’t really learn too much about her though, she falls in the woman being protected circle. Birdie is the daughter that doesn’t fully understand the world and wants to just be a child in this world. Kyle is one of the people that Jack has saved in the past.

Performances – The performances from the cast are great throughout, we feel their bleak outlook on the life they are living which is what we want to see, the final act shows them at their best too.

Story – The story here follows a family in a post-apocalyptic world where the biggest threats marauders and the virus that has wiped out most of the world. This is a bleak story that helps show us just how desperate the world now is and not having any sort of zombie side to everything giving us the only enemy the human one. This keeps everything simple because it is all we need, even though it does follow the typical mistakes being made by the characters.

Thriller – This does try to keep us on the edge of our seats about whether our characters will survive and what is next in line for them.

Settings – The film keeps us in the bleak locations from start to finish, they show where people will survive and keeps us away from the big city.


Scene of the Movie – The break in.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – Just shot them.

Final Thoughts – This is one of the best looking bleak virus outbreak movies, it does have questionable character decisions but that does add to the drama.

 

Overall: Simple and effective.