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Station Eleven
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel | 2015 | Fiction & Poetry, Science Fiction/Fantasy
10
7.9 (29 Ratings)
Book Rating
Beautifully written and just so human.
I had this book recommended quite a few times to me I even bought it almost a year ago and just never got around to picking it up and it kept popping up in one of my Facebook groups so I thought I'd finally give it a chance since all the comment were very positive and I cannot tell you how glad I am that I finally gave it a chance. The story in itself is really simple but it's absolutely beautifully written Mandel really has a way with words that I can't even describe her whole story just flow together so beautifully I love the back and forth between the time before and after the epidemic the characters flawed and honestly it's just so human and beautiful that I couldn't stop reading. One of the things that really stuck out to me most was that when it came to Station Eleven and when certain characters had to take a life it wasn't some proud moment like it is in most dystopian books it was a heartbreaking moment it was something that the characters didn't want to have to go through and I found it so beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking. As the story progresses and you find out more about certain characters and how everything connected it was just so beautifully done and I really could just go on forever praising this book definitely one of the best books I've read this year.
  
Sweet Virginia  (2017)
Sweet Virginia (2017)
2017 |
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating
377. Sweet Virginia. Pretty great random choice by me, again. Twisted tale of a small town murder plot. Three friends are hanging out at a bar playing cards. I'm assuming they own the place, because when a guy wanders in off the street and asks for a bite to eat and a drink, one gets up and tells him they're closed and be on his way. Instead of leaving the stranger asks him, Are you Mitchell? The response is what you expect, who wants to know, blah, blah. Slightly bothered, the stranger leaves. Mitchell goes back to the card game, until the door opens once again and the stranger comes in guns blazing, and all three end up dead. It was here I thought, Mitchell should have locked that door! So that happened, the news quickly spreads through the small town, and we meet Sam, a former rodeo champ now motel owner operator, and he is having an affair with the wife of one of the dead men, yea. And oh yea, the killer, Elwood, is staying at guess who's motel? Also, guess who recognizes Sam from his rodeo days and start a pretty decent friendship. Elwood is actually a semi normal dude when he's not out killing people for money. So who hired him? Well, I can't tell you everything! It really was a well told tense tale. Well acted, Jon Bernthal as Sam, Christopher Abbott as Elwood, were pretty awesome, with Imogen Poots and Rosemarie DeWitt great as the supporting cast! Cool flick, I say, do.
  
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)
2015 | Comedy
5
6.5 (2 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has a cast including Judi Dench (Evelyn), Maggie Smith (Muriel), Bill Nighy (Douglas), Dev Patel (Sonny), and Richard Gere (Guy Chambers).

It is a sequel to the 2011 film ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, which I never saw, nor even knew existed.

The idea is that a hotel in India becomes a permanent residence for elderly retirees at their last stopping point before their journey to ‘the great beyond’.

We follow their relationships and interactions, all wrapped up in the hotel proprietors (Sonny) desire to expand his hotel into another additional location, and his pitch to the (supposedly) undercover Hotel evaluator (Guy Chambers).

Sonny is willing to go to almost any length, up to and including sending his mother as an ‘offering’ to Chambers, in an attempt to secure the financing for the expansion.

In the meantime Sonny sacrifices a bit of his relationship with his fiancé,
Sunaina (played by Tena Desae), because she is wanting him to focus more on their upcoming wedding, than his business plans.

I thought the movie was ok, it had some funny parts. My husband almost fell asleep twice during it because it moved along pretty slowly.

It wouldn’t have been my pick to see ‘on the big screen’, to me, it just doesn’t need a movie screen to tell its story.

My guess is folks in the older generation will appreciate it and enjoy it much more than we did.
It certainly wasn’t ‘horrible’, it was just slow and rambling, without enough funny parts to hold our interest.