Atheist's Mass
Book
'This is as much a mystery as the Immaculate Conception, which of itself must make a doctor an...
Sherlock Holmes: Volume 1
Arthur Conan Doyle and Roger Boylan
Book
A stunning gift edition boasting the early tales of Sherlock Holmes, including 2 full-length novels...
The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories
Book
This is Don DeLillo's first collection of short stories, written between 1979 and 2011; in it he...
Departures: Seven Stories from Heathrow
Book
Seven short stories from bestselling author Tony Parsons, based on his week as Writer in Residence...
Awix (3310 KP) rated Die, Monster, Die! (1965) in Movies
Jul 5, 2020
Interesting cast, and you can tell Karloff in particular is doing his best with the material, but there's an awful lot of wandering about with not much happening, especially for a film only about an hour and a quarter long. Obviously done on the cheap, and too invested in its standard Gothic tropes - creepy old mansion, spooky domestics, cursed family heritage, etc - to make the most of the potential in the short story it's supposed to be based on. All in all, less interesting than it has any right to be in the circumstances.
Three Amigos! (1986)
7.1
Rate It
Movie Watch
In 1916, a young woman from the village of Santa Poco lures three out-of-work silent film stars to...
Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles
Book
The tragic and mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Elizabeth Short, or the Black...
LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated Jonah Hex (2010) in Movies
Feb 28, 2021
- a lot of stuff happened before that title card that it's already incoherent
- wait, Michael Fassbender is in this?
- I can't see what's happening
- ah sweet, it's the dude from Mastodon.
- wait, Will Arnett is in this?
- Megan Fox really drew the short straw on a lot of her movie projects
- is that Michael Shannon!?
- ah sweet, it's the dude from John Wick.
- wait, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is in this!?
- once again, couldn't see what the fuck was happening because of the piss poor lighting, but Jonah Hex is nearly dead again, apparently.
- Ah cool, here's a mid-runtime action heavy sequence, still can't tell what's happening.
- wait....nope, it's over.
Christ, this movie is a blurry mess that's impressively hard to follow considering its short runtime. I love the Jonah Hex comics, I tend to enjoy Josh Brolin and John Malkovich, how is this such a trainwreck?
That Mastodon soundtrack is badass though.
LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated Sound of Metal (2019) in Movies
Apr 13, 2021
Riz Ahmed rightly deserves his Oscar nomination for his performance. It sucks that Olivia Cooke was overlooked by The Academy for hers. The two of them together carve out a painfully real relationship and are nothing short of excellent.
The sound editing is absolutely top tier. It's method of forcing the viewer to experience a fair portion of the movie as if they were hearing impaired is hugely effective. It goes a long way in illustrating how terrifying Ruben's experience is. On the flip side, in characters such as Joe (Paul Raci), we are given another perspective, about how life still goes on, and paints a wonderfully positive picture of the deaf community. It results in a film that is both truly uplifting and absolutely devastating.
Sound of Metal is definitely a triumph that deserves all the praise it's getting.
Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2440 KP) rated Nowhere to Go and All Day to Get There in Books
Jun 21, 2021
Both of these stories are fast reads – I finished the collection in about half an hour. But both stories are fun and held my interest the entire way through. I was caught off guard by some of the twists along the way. I laughed along the way, sometimes at Joe and Dottie’s reactions to each other and sometimes at the situations they found themselves in. The characters also appeared in two full length novels. Whether you already know them or are just meeting them here for the first time, you’ll enjoy these two quick road trips.