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The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
2019 | Adventure, Animation, Comedy
The Secret Life Of Pets 2 (2019) is like three Saturday morning cartoons mashed into one.
Picture the scene: Illumination writing room, circa 2017.

Plans are well underway for the TV spinoff of “The Secret Life Of Pets” and the team have broken down around a dozen shorts to fill up the schedules when suddenly the word comes down that the studio have decided they want a theatrical sequel instead. Writer 1: Okay, shall we start from scratch?

Writer 2: *shrugs* Nah, it’s nearly lunch, let’s just jam the ideas together until we hit the magic 90-minute mark.

Writer 1: Done. Let’s get lunch.

FULL REVIEW: http://bit.ly/CraggusTSLOP2
  
This was such a sweetly written story!
 I entirely enjoyed this read. From the very captivating beginning to the mining town of San Francisco, this story gives my imagination room to breath. I loved the characters, the descriptions of them, the interaction between them, and the hopeful lead into to another book at the end. The setting was very informative and gave me a great look at life back in the 1800's. I highly recommend this book.
I volunteered to read this book from Barbour Publishing Group in return for my honest feedback. The thoughts and opinions expressed with in are my own.
  
Mindhunter - Season 2
Mindhunter - Season 2
2019 | Crime, Drama
Great Performances (1 more)
Very suspenseful
Funny score when at Tench House (0 more)
Mind hunting with intelligence.
A great second season, definitely on a par with the first if not slightly better.

Set in the late 1970s and early 80's the story follows the early stages of the Behavioral Science Unit and how they developed the profiling of criminals by talking to the serial killers who were behind bars.

Season 2 managed to top the first and also leave room got some great character development especially with the Tench family storyline. Great acting by everyone involved making it a very cerebral drama with very little action but riveting all the same.
  
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)
2021 | Action, Adventure, Horror
4
5.5 (10 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Did the first film need a sequel? Probably not.

Having found their way out of their escape room, Zoey and Ben decide to investigate the mysterious corporation behind their ordeal. In their quest for the truth, they find themselves pulled into another maze of escape rooms with other survivors of Minos.

As far as the plot goes on this, a fair bit is just new rooms to escape. And at this point we're potentially just in an eternal spiral of Escape Room films.

Though these characters all have something in common, they could not be more different. And while that's totally legitimate, it also makes the film very busy. Given the nature of the action as well, it's a lot more chaotic than I was comfortable with.

The acting is sadly, entirely average. At certain points, the ridiculous deductive powers of the group felt even more nonsensical than they would have been under normal circumstances. It was very much a snowball of acting, plot and script.

Despite the similarities, I did like the rooms that we came across. (By that I mean they're fine when you suspend several layers of belief and logic.) Some of the effects looked particularly good in them, and the transitions within the beach scene stood out for me.

What I don't like is the potential neverending spiral I mentioned. The first film was enjoyable, but I'm not sure it really warranted a second. Is there a plan? Because why would you jump straight to this point? You had four other people with stories that could have been explored before jumping back in with the same two characters from the first film, I'm a little baffled as to why, if you're going to copy and paste, you wouldn't transfer it directly, get four other films out of it before combining the world.

Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2022/03/escape-room-2-movie-review.html
  
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Julian Schnabel recommended Raging Bull (1980) in Movies (curated)

 
Raging Bull (1980)
Raging Bull (1980)
1980 | Drama

"…and it’s something that happens with Raging Bull, also. And Marty Scorsese’s notion of sound — the memory. Sound memory is so important in Raging Bull; when you see the scene where Robert De Niro shows Cathy Moriarty his father’s house and tells him about the bird — “It was a bird, it’s dead” — and what’s going on around in the street, and you realize how important sound is. The other thing is the acting: Joe Pesci and Robert are so great together. I mean, the hardest thing in the world to do is just shoot two people in a room. All these other things are very easy to do — you get 150 people, you turn your camera on, you create a situation and as long as nobody looks at the camera you can make them seem very real. [Two people in a room] is really difficult. If I think of Robert Duvall, say, talking to Al Pacino in The Godfather two, when Al says to him, “Well what’d you get my son for Christmas?” and he says, “I got him a little car,” and Robert Duvall puts his hand over the couch — these are gestures that people understand as human gestures and they bring you into the storytelling."

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Haunt (2019)
Haunt (2019)
2019 | Horror, Thriller
Over the past few years, found footage films about Extreme Halloween Haunts have kind of damaged the product a little. The Houses October Built being the best of the worst in my opinion.
Last year we had HellFest and another one that I forgot...
So I went in to Haunt with no idea what was going to happen... Nor did I really care.
Until the mayhem begun. The absolute carnage that follows these folks around is both refreshing and disturbing all the same.
These people, hidden beneath the masks of the holiday.... Yeah, fuck off. Halloween in my Christmas.... Are equally disturbing masks of self expression and self loathing.
Overall this movie shocked me into a 9 rating. It was nice to see a horror film full of "teens" who's first thought was "How do we get out?". Instead of "Hey that big scary man is pointing towards a dark room with a machete... Lets go fuck in that room,"
Smart characters are so refreshing.
Thanks modern day horror for ending the drought of dumbasses... For now.
While it wasn't a new idea.Haunt is in fact quite Haunting... Oh boy...
And it does leave the viewer... This viewer... Satisfied with 90 minutes well spent.
  
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Zach Braff recommended Harold and Maude (1971) in Movies (curated)

 
Harold and Maude (1971)
Harold and Maude (1971)
1971 | Comedy, Drama, Romance
8.6 (5 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"An early touchstone for me. One of the first art films that showed me at a young age what movies could be. They could make you laugh and also be super odd and eccentric, but there was still room for them to break your heart. It was a huge influence on Garden State. Two oddballs find love and strength within each other’s eccentricities, all set to the music of Cat Stevens. I love this movie."

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