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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
4
4.9 (32 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
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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Lee (2222 KP) rated The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018) in Movies

Sep 16, 2018  
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
2018 | Fantasy, Horror, Mystery
6
7.2 (73 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
After losing both parents in a car accident, Lewis travels to New Zebedee, Michigan to live with his uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) in his large, creepy house. Jonathan's neighbour, Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) seems to spend most of her time there too as they are old friends. The house is full of clocks and, as you've probably guessed from the title of the movie, an even more mysterious clock lies hidden somewhere within its walls. Lewis discovers that Johnathan is a warlock, Florence is a good witch and that the house once belonged to a powerful warlock, who intended to use the clock as part of a catastrophic evil plan.

Directed by Eli Roth, the movie oozes style and creepiness. It has scares that will terrify younger children, but entertain the parents and it has a good amount of humour throughout. For me though, it felt like all style and not much substance. Despite being based on the first in a series of 12 books, with this first story being published in 1973, the movie version just feels like an amalgamation of things we've seen many times before in recent years. Harry Potter, Miss Peregrine, even the trailer made me think of the Goosebumps movie.

I'm probably being a little harsh, and the latter third of the movie did turn out to be a lot more enjoyable than the first two. I guess I was just hoping for something a bit more.
  
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Ross (3284 KP) rated The Change 2: New York: The Queen of Coney Island in Books

Nov 2, 2020  
The Change 2: New York: The Queen of Coney Island
The Change 2: New York: The Queen of Coney Island
Guy Adams | 2017 | Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Very odd
The second book adds no real substance to what exactly happened in "The Change", I think I am just going to have to accept that "things changed".
In the first New York book, we meet Grace, who is trying to reunite with her brother, an inmate of Rikers before The Change. Trying to get safe passage up the Hudson river, she has to ask the Queen of Coney Island for a boat and permission. On the way to do so, she meets up with God (as you do), and enters the former Coney Island amusement park. It is populated with odd people and creatures, some of whom are real, some of whom are formerly real and brought back to life due to the change, others are physical embodiments of ideas and film characters.
Grace and God are given a seemingly simple task to achieve before being given safe passage, but it inevitably turns out to be a very difficult and dangerous one.
The book has a very different feel to the first, London-based one, with a very odd Alice in Wonderland feel to it, with crazy characters helping the one seemingly normal one to her goal.
The one thing that is consistent with the London book is the feeling of wanting more at the end. This time the character had a goal and (spoiler alert) she didn't achieve it by the end of the book.