Search

Search only in certain items:

ICED MALICE Detective Kendall Halsrud #2
ICED MALICE Detective Kendall Halsrud #2
Marla Madison | 2015 | Crime, Mystery
5
5.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Suspense (0 more)
Iced Malice Marla Madison

When I started reading this book I wasn’t aware that it was part of a series, but it became apparent that I was missing a lot of back story to fully understand the content of parts of the story, especially between Ryan and Brynn, and Kendell and Nash.
 I would recommend that others do start this series with the first Detective Kendall Halsrud novel “Relative Malice” I imagine this will set the scene for Iced Malice as this is book 2 out of 4.
Even with having to work with missing plot keys I found Iced Malice to be an enjoyable crime mystery. I found it easy to get sucked into the mystery of the stories as they are more than one case happening during the course of the story. I’m not sure if it’s with me not starting with book 1 but I seemed to keep getting lost and in a permanent position of confusion.
I may have to come back to this again after I find the 1st book. It will not be for a while as I have a pile of books that I need to get through before any rereading takes place. So at present I feel I can only give Iced Malice 5/10
  
Awake (2021)
Awake (2021)
2021 | Action, Adventure, Drama
1
1.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating
This movie stars Gina Rodriguez aka Jane the virgin as Jill, a young mum who also seems to be a prescription drug dealer!?! Anyway, one day after work Jill gets into a car crash with her kids in the car, at the same time as a power cut. When she goes to the hospital, patients who were in a coma start waking up and staff are busy wondering what's happening. It is soon evident that the world is unable to sleep except for Jill's daughter matilda. They need to find a way to be able to sleep before everyone turns crazy and matilda is the key.
This film really confused me, I thought the whole being awake thing had happened during the power cut, but the way people were behaving it was like they'd been that way for a while. Jill mentions she had only been awake for 4 days, so was everyone effected at different times? How long has it been going on? Nothing made sense and I lost interest quickly. I watched to the end to see if all these answers became clear, but they didn't. That's an hour and thirty five minutes of my life I never getting back.
  
The Gentlemen (2020)
The Gentlemen (2020)
2020 | Action, Crime
I checked up on the BBFC about language allowed in the different rated films. A 15 may have frequent strong language, "the strongest terms may be acceptable if justified by the context", it also says that "aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable."

Language has never really been something to bother me unless it's used in a malicious way, and even then the "standard" words still don't have much of an effect, but I had reports back from friends that there was a lot to deal with in it... so I decided to try and keep count. I can't guarantee that I caught them all (or that I managed to add them up properly) but I think the count for f*** was 56 and c*** was 21, I'm fairly certain that half of C was saved specifically for Colin Farrell in one scene.

Mickey is looking to get out of the drug business, he's built a thriving empire, well hidden, well connected, and now he just needs to find an interested party to take it all off his hands. After a couple of meetings one of Mickey's labs takes a hit, it can't be a coincidence. Luckily there's a lead, but it might be a bit more complicated than they'd hoped.

I had some fun watching this but I don't feel like it was quite what I'd been hoping for. There were some bits that I frustrating and some that were just plain annoying. The highlight for me was the relatively small part of Colin Farrell as Coach. When we first meet him it's a great scene and gets across the sort of man he is. A significant portion of the swearing is saved especially for him and it sits quite easily with his parts of the script.

Ask yourselves this, was this sort of role suited to Henry Golding? I'm not sure. In the trailer he looked a little on the cartoonish side and that didn't work for me, sadly the full performance didn't work for me either. At moments I was almost on board, it felt believable and a comfortable bit of acting, but then the over the top characteristics would come back and I'd be lost again.

Matthew McConaughey is a very good actor, I still think that after seeing Serenity, and this is definitely a role he took in his stride. I thought it suited him well and he was very comfortable with everything from love to hate. Good job Mr M.

*deep sigh* Hugh Grant. Fletcher is quite a character and there's no denying that Grant filled out the role well, his happy-go-lucky demeanour combined with the strange hybrid accent began to grate just a little, it was at least broken up by the rest of the story... some days you just don't need peppy, you know? The main issue I had with Fletcher is the strand of storyline that he brought that capped either end of the film, it didn't quite make sense to me and felt entirely dispensable, its only purpose seemed to be getting viewers to use the word "meta" when talking about it.

I don't know how I feel about the 18 rating here. The violence definitely could have had it at a 15 and while the language was all "okay" and jokey in its use it wasn't really needed, I imagine that's where the 18 came from. My screening was very busy, and lots of people were telling me the same thing about theirs too, I think this plugged a gap in cinema offerings and while I'm sure it could easily have been toned down to fit a 15 I'm not sure that would have been much of a boost to it.

While there was a lot that was enjoyable about The Gentlemen (the only thing I excluded from the review that I loved was the music video in the middle) I didn't come out with a desire to see it again instantly. If it was on I'd probably watch it but I wasn't hyped enough for this to be an instant win.

Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-gentlemen-movie-review.html
  
PL
Patti's Luck (Sleepover Friends, #1)
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
My rating is based on how much I would have liked this as a ten-year-old. For some reason, I never read any books in the Sleepover Friends' series, even though it's a kind of a cousin-once-removed to the Baby-Sitter's Club series. So when I saw this and another one at a recent library book sale, I figured, why not?

This book has a little of everything most girls like: sleepovers (duh), junk food and baking, talk of boys, games, makeovers with purple hair gel, movies, the paranormal, school fairs, field trips, new friends, and who knows what I've forgotten! Plus, a moment when Stephanie's father cross-dresses as fortune teller at the school fair. That gave me some thoughts about secrets in that family. Maybe that's why they moved from "The City." There's some moments of suspended belief, the biggest is when Patti and Lauren chase after a car (homework was put on the bumper and apparently it stuck real good :P), Lauren (the narrator) loses track of Patti, gets back to school and tells their teacher that Patti's lost. The teacher, being told of a new student unaware of the area being lost, says not to worry(!), that someone will point her back to the school. What?! All I'm thinking is good thing this isn't the real world! Abduction, anybody? There's also a lot of baking these fifth-graders do, they talk surprisingly well, probably better than I do, and have heaps of common sense, but hey, it's a harmless kids' book that I would have gobbled up when I was that age. Overall, it's a cute book that I think even girls today would enjoy.
  
40x40

Ben Foster recommended Husbands (1970) in Movies (curated)

 
Husbands (1970)
Husbands (1970)
1970 | Classics, Comedy, Drama
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Male camaraderie, male love, is a difficult subject to show on film. What does it mean to have one of your best friends pass away? When that unit dies, how do you deal with it? I’m not a married man but I’m sure that when I’m married and have kids I’ll see Husbands in a new light. It’s regular guys trying to make sense of this life, having a good time while they’re doing it; running from their own lives and trying to distract themselves with hookers and gambling and drinking, and they all have families to go back to. They just don’t wanna leave the party. It’s male camaraderie at its most loving and brutal: these guys are terrible to each other, but they’d do anything for each other, and that kind of friendship, those values, mean a lot to me. The way they shot the film, the way they lost funding — there’re these wild stories of how to make a movie that you care about. They lost financing. As the story goes, they put the last bit of money — and they’re half way through the film, they’ve been shooting for six months — they put all the money to throw a party. They got dancers and girls and piano players and I think there was like an elephant, and they invited all these studio heads to come to this party sequence that they were filming — and when they studio saw the scene they said, “This movie’s huge, it’s wild, we’ll cover the rest of the film.” They got the rest of the financing. The scene’s not in the movie — it was never planned to be. So that spirit still excites me. The camaraderie feels familiar."

Source