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LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (2000) in Movies

Sep 20, 2020

Back when every studio drama wanted to be indie real bad (when we got shit like J-Lo's 𝘈𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘭 𝘌𝘺𝘦𝘴 for example) and when hyperlink movies were king. This really could have been something, but instead it leans way too close into the template for all the movies this is ripping off (one-quirk characters overexplaining the themes to the leads and - by extension - the viewers, long writerly conversations that exist solely for decoration, cloying symbolism, purposefully disappointing non-resolutions, etc.) All but completely throws aside the lives of these unique, incredibly intriguing women in favor of having their stories revolve around some lackluster romance - pretty much defining them all by it in the end. For shame. Not entirely unpleasant, of course the ensemble is stuffed with amazing talent, it has a nice cadence and some decent scenes here and there. But as far as I'm concerned Rodrigo García should be fired for continually swinging and missing by turning these potentially thought-provoking stories into underwritten, tiresome (and borderline offensive) grief exploitation.

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Leanne Crabtree (480 KP) rated Flashes in Books

Sep 6, 2019

3.5 stars.

This is something like my sixth/seventh, maybe even eighth, book by the author and I've liked some more than others.

He always writes different stories, stuff I've never seen or read before, and blends paranormal, a bit of horror/gruesomeness and a splash of romance. His books tend to be very English in language and setting, and being from England and reading most books set in America, they're a nice change.

Now for the story. I had an inkling as to who it might be from about the 60-70% mark. Things just started to add up. <spoiler>Child crying. Mum being dead. It suddenly clicked</spoiler> so I wasn't too surprised by who was behind it but the lengths he was going to go to was quite disturbing.

It was a good story as usual but because I kinda figured out the bad guy before it was revealed at the end it wasn't quite as good as some of Tim's other works which keep you guessing.