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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Terminator (1984) in Movies
Feb 18, 2018 (Updated Feb 18, 2018)
Undoubted leader of the pack when it comes to post-punk low-budget SF movies is, let's be honest, highly derivative, but makes up for this with sheer inventiveness and economical storytelling; unusually grim tone helps, too.
Future warriors from post-apocalyptic future arrive in 1984 Los Angeles; one is intent on killing hapless young waitress, the other seeks to protect her. Time travel plot is cleverly retooled as the basis of gritty action thriller; performances are much better than you might expect, too - you can't imagine anyone being more perfectly suited to their role than Arnold Schwarzenegger is here (and I don't say that very often). Every other film and TV series in this particular franchise ultimately does nothing but diffuse the impact of this brilliant movie.
Future warriors from post-apocalyptic future arrive in 1984 Los Angeles; one is intent on killing hapless young waitress, the other seeks to protect her. Time travel plot is cleverly retooled as the basis of gritty action thriller; performances are much better than you might expect, too - you can't imagine anyone being more perfectly suited to their role than Arnold Schwarzenegger is here (and I don't say that very often). Every other film and TV series in this particular franchise ultimately does nothing but diffuse the impact of this brilliant movie.
Awix (3310 KP) rated Flash Gordon (1980) in Movies
Feb 12, 2018
Post-Star Wars high-camp reimagining of the famous Alex Raymond sci-fi comic strip. Ming the Merciless, Emperor of the planet Mongo, terrorises the Earth; a mad scientist, a football player and a travel agent rocket themselves into space in an attempt to make him knock it off.
One of those movies where the ostensible leads are the least well-known people in it - everyone else has a great time overacting: the gold medal goes to Brian Blessed, who steals the entire movie as Vultan, Prince of the Hawk People. Visually lavish, with a strong script, lots of well-staged action for younger viewers, and tongue-in-cheek jokes aplenty for older people who ought to know better. Point knocked off for some inappropriately nasty violence; put straight back on again for Queen's soundtrack.
One of those movies where the ostensible leads are the least well-known people in it - everyone else has a great time overacting: the gold medal goes to Brian Blessed, who steals the entire movie as Vultan, Prince of the Hawk People. Visually lavish, with a strong script, lots of well-staged action for younger viewers, and tongue-in-cheek jokes aplenty for older people who ought to know better. Point knocked off for some inappropriately nasty violence; put straight back on again for Queen's soundtrack.
Merissa (11800 KP) rated Bound by Oath and Honour in Books
Dec 17, 2018
Tala is an American in England, checking on her ancestral home, before returning to the States. When she spots an intruder, she doesn't think but chases him off the property. Before she knows it, she is lost in the woods with people chasing her. This is the start of her adventure, delving into the unknown.
Involving time travel, romance, flirts, guardians, ancestral lines, there is something here for everyone who enjoys a fantastical romance. The story is swiftly-paced and yet it flows with a steady rhythm. You are not left wondering just what is happening to whom and when, it is all very clear.
With clear descriptions, this book is vivid in your imagination, as Tala and Micah face danger to do what's right. Definitely recommended.
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Involving time travel, romance, flirts, guardians, ancestral lines, there is something here for everyone who enjoys a fantastical romance. The story is swiftly-paced and yet it flows with a steady rhythm. You are not left wondering just what is happening to whom and when, it is all very clear.
With clear descriptions, this book is vivid in your imagination, as Tala and Micah face danger to do what's right. Definitely recommended.
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Cori June (3033 KP) rated The Queen of Swords in Books
Jun 23, 2020
Maude and the Daughters of Lilith (1 more)
Characters
This book is full of strong women and great supporting characters. I hope this isn't the last book of the series but if it is I'm ok with it.
This follows most of the format of the previous two book in that it is multiple points of view. There is information about the Daughters of Lilith and a bit of time travel back and forth between Maude and Anne Bonny the Pirate Queen. It also goes out side of Golgotha and into the wide world, Maude's daughter, Constance, is taken from Golgotha by her grandfather and then kidnapped.
Maude is a mom who won't let anything or anyone get in the way of her finding her daughter and woe to any who get in her way
This follows most of the format of the previous two book in that it is multiple points of view. There is information about the Daughters of Lilith and a bit of time travel back and forth between Maude and Anne Bonny the Pirate Queen. It also goes out side of Golgotha and into the wide world, Maude's daughter, Constance, is taken from Golgotha by her grandfather and then kidnapped.
Maude is a mom who won't let anything or anyone get in the way of her finding her daughter and woe to any who get in her way
Gareth von Kallenbach (971 KP) rated Looper (2012) in Movies
Aug 7, 2019
In the world of 2072, it is learned that time travel has been invented and is declared illegal by all the governments of the world. Naturally, the criminal elements of the future embrace the technology. Apparently getting rid of bodies and people in the future is tricky because of innovative tagging and tracking technology.
The criminal bosses of the future send a man named Abe (Jeff Bridges) 30 years into the past to serve the criminals of the future with a new type of hit man called a Looper. In the new film “Looper” Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Joe, a Looper who never lets morals get in the way of his job. He is happy to promptly dispatch anyone sent from the future without a second thought.
Joe is well paid for his work, and is happy to enjoy the drugs and women that come with his job. Yet Joe desires to leave it all one day and travel to France. For a Looper to be retired, he is forced to kill a future version of himself, and in doing so, gets a fantastic retirement payout and 30 years to live it up since that is how long it will take for time travel to be invented. Naturally an older version of yourself cannot be sent back to be killed by your younger self for at least 30 years. But the increase in retirements is a bit disconcerting for Joe.
Things change drastically for Joe when his older self (Bruce Willis), appears and manages to escape before he can be killed by his younger self. For a Looper to have his target escape is a serious infraction, and in no time, Joe finds himself not only hunting his older self, but also on the run from his former friends and allies who have made him both older and younger a priority.
At this point in the film, I was hooked, as my mind raced with twists, possibilities, and the promise of the film. Sadly the momentum grinds to a halt in the second half as the older Joe attempts to ally with his younger self to stop a future crime boss while he is a child. This quickly becomes a very blatant “Terminator” rip off as older Joe attempts to locate and kill children who may be the future crime lord while younger Joe is biding his time hiding from his former associates while protecting a young child and his mother from his older self.
It does not take much thought to see where this is going but sadly the remainder of the movie is underwhelming and disappointing as the film recycles scenarios that we have seen many times before in better movies. The second half lacks any real action and climactic finale to give the audience the well-deserved payoff they waited for.
Willis, Bridges, and Gordon-Levitt do solid work but seem to be going through the motions as they never really earn any sympathy from the audience. Much like last year’s “In Time”, “Looper” has a great premise that starts well and then fails to live up to its potential.
The criminal bosses of the future send a man named Abe (Jeff Bridges) 30 years into the past to serve the criminals of the future with a new type of hit man called a Looper. In the new film “Looper” Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Joe, a Looper who never lets morals get in the way of his job. He is happy to promptly dispatch anyone sent from the future without a second thought.
Joe is well paid for his work, and is happy to enjoy the drugs and women that come with his job. Yet Joe desires to leave it all one day and travel to France. For a Looper to be retired, he is forced to kill a future version of himself, and in doing so, gets a fantastic retirement payout and 30 years to live it up since that is how long it will take for time travel to be invented. Naturally an older version of yourself cannot be sent back to be killed by your younger self for at least 30 years. But the increase in retirements is a bit disconcerting for Joe.
Things change drastically for Joe when his older self (Bruce Willis), appears and manages to escape before he can be killed by his younger self. For a Looper to have his target escape is a serious infraction, and in no time, Joe finds himself not only hunting his older self, but also on the run from his former friends and allies who have made him both older and younger a priority.
At this point in the film, I was hooked, as my mind raced with twists, possibilities, and the promise of the film. Sadly the momentum grinds to a halt in the second half as the older Joe attempts to ally with his younger self to stop a future crime boss while he is a child. This quickly becomes a very blatant “Terminator” rip off as older Joe attempts to locate and kill children who may be the future crime lord while younger Joe is biding his time hiding from his former associates while protecting a young child and his mother from his older self.
It does not take much thought to see where this is going but sadly the remainder of the movie is underwhelming and disappointing as the film recycles scenarios that we have seen many times before in better movies. The second half lacks any real action and climactic finale to give the audience the well-deserved payoff they waited for.
Willis, Bridges, and Gordon-Levitt do solid work but seem to be going through the motions as they never really earn any sympathy from the audience. Much like last year’s “In Time”, “Looper” has a great premise that starts well and then fails to live up to its potential.
Reggie Watts recommended The Ice Storm (1997) in Movies (curated)
Lou Grande (148 KP) rated The Endless (2018) in Movies
Jul 20, 2018
I saw Benson and Moorhead’s Resolution (2012) back when it was released, so I was excited when I saw they would be teaming up again for The Endless. Especially when it was marketed as Lovecraftian with a cult theme. Maybe I built it up too much in my mind, because I was really disappointed.
Two brothers have escaped from a UFO Doomsday cult and participate in deproframming while eking out a meager existence. Until they receive a cassette with a message from one of the cult members. They decide to return to “Camp Arcadia” to “get it out of their system.”
The Endless is a slow burn that ultimately fizzles. It involves time travel and something vast and infinite in the woods. Normally I’d be right on board, but this movie was really...boring. I’ve never seen a bunch of white guys that looked so similar, and the setting gets monotonous after a too-long run time of 112 minutes. There are callbacks to Resolution that answer questions for that film, but raise more for the one you’re watching. The effects (when utilized) were meh. I expected cosmic horror and got—well, nothing, really.
Two brothers have escaped from a UFO Doomsday cult and participate in deproframming while eking out a meager existence. Until they receive a cassette with a message from one of the cult members. They decide to return to “Camp Arcadia” to “get it out of their system.”
The Endless is a slow burn that ultimately fizzles. It involves time travel and something vast and infinite in the woods. Normally I’d be right on board, but this movie was really...boring. I’ve never seen a bunch of white guys that looked so similar, and the setting gets monotonous after a too-long run time of 112 minutes. There are callbacks to Resolution that answer questions for that film, but raise more for the one you’re watching. The effects (when utilized) were meh. I expected cosmic horror and got—well, nothing, really.
Paul Morrissey recommended The Leopard (1963) in Movies (curated)
Jamie (131 KP) rated The Shining Girls in Books
Jun 4, 2017
Ambitious & unique story line (1 more)
Handles the web of time paradoxes well
Mash-up of genres is disjointing (2 more)
Romance is distracting at best
Repeated murder scenes gets wearisome
A cool time travel thriller
The Shining Girls follows Harper, a crude serial killer from the 1930’s that can hop through time; and Kirby, the spunky young woman that got away. This book was incredibly ambitious in its premise and I spent a great deal of my time reading the book wondering if it could deliver and I can happily say that I wasn’t disappointed.
The story is a heavily character driven dive through recent American history, from the Great Depression in the 1930’s all the way up to the early 1990’s. I was impressed by the amount of research that was put into this book, each decade having enough detail to get a good feel for the era. Many of the characters were pretty well fleshed out for such short chapters, and I found myself liking many of them.
My favorite part of the story, though, was the tragedy that was Harper because of how very flawed and human he is. He views himself as commanding, charming, persuasive, but to many of his victims he’s just downright creepy. He thinks himself calculating yet he makes mistakes left and right. He has a drive to rise up from the trenches of poverty and starvation from his own era, to be powerful. His choice of victims are all women in a great act of femicide, because he has this dire need to feel masculine. He chooses women that he views as invincible, that shine with ambition in order to assert his dominance by snuffing them out. He thinks he has this divine purpose, a destiny to fulfill because he wants it so desperately, even though the reality is that it’s simply senseless violence with no real meaning. He obsesses over the murders, returning to the scene of the crimes over and over to get off. Harper is pathetic. It was a refreshing change from the stereotypical smooth, genius archetype that glorifies killers. I didn’t know right away that this book was meant to be a feminist novel, but that’s what I took away from not only Harper’s struggle with masculinity, but with the strong and fiercely independent female characters all throughout the book.
There were a couple of problems with the book, however, that I feel need to be addressed. The mash up of genres is both a good and bad aspect of the story. The middle chapters where romance comes into play to me was really distracting and feels out of place. The tagline describing the novel also states that “the girl who wouldn’t die hunts the killer who shouldn’t exist” but honestly, it didn’t feel much like Kirby was really hunting the killer. Looking for connections with other murder cases and investigating some wild hunches, yes, but really she spends most of the book developing her bond with Dan. I would have really liked for this to be more of a cat and mouse type of hunt between Kirby and Harper.
The chapters with Harper were much more interesting, but even those became a little repetitive. We as the reader follow Harper as he stalks his victims in childhood, waiting for the right time to strike when they reach adulthood. While it was necessary for the plot to detail the characters to both connect them to the greater chain of paradoxes and to show Harper’s descent, the violence is excessive and extremely detailed, and after a while it started to feel more like torture porn. It just got tiring after a while.
Despite its flaws, I thought this book was good, and I mean really good. I loved the way that the time paradoxes were handled, time travel stories tend to be tricky and usually end up with a couple of glaring loop holes. The loops are handled in a way that I found satisfying and this book is easily my favorite time travel novel I’ve ever read. It is truly unique and a story I won’t soon forget.
The story is a heavily character driven dive through recent American history, from the Great Depression in the 1930’s all the way up to the early 1990’s. I was impressed by the amount of research that was put into this book, each decade having enough detail to get a good feel for the era. Many of the characters were pretty well fleshed out for such short chapters, and I found myself liking many of them.
My favorite part of the story, though, was the tragedy that was Harper because of how very flawed and human he is. He views himself as commanding, charming, persuasive, but to many of his victims he’s just downright creepy. He thinks himself calculating yet he makes mistakes left and right. He has a drive to rise up from the trenches of poverty and starvation from his own era, to be powerful. His choice of victims are all women in a great act of femicide, because he has this dire need to feel masculine. He chooses women that he views as invincible, that shine with ambition in order to assert his dominance by snuffing them out. He thinks he has this divine purpose, a destiny to fulfill because he wants it so desperately, even though the reality is that it’s simply senseless violence with no real meaning. He obsesses over the murders, returning to the scene of the crimes over and over to get off. Harper is pathetic. It was a refreshing change from the stereotypical smooth, genius archetype that glorifies killers. I didn’t know right away that this book was meant to be a feminist novel, but that’s what I took away from not only Harper’s struggle with masculinity, but with the strong and fiercely independent female characters all throughout the book.
There were a couple of problems with the book, however, that I feel need to be addressed. The mash up of genres is both a good and bad aspect of the story. The middle chapters where romance comes into play to me was really distracting and feels out of place. The tagline describing the novel also states that “the girl who wouldn’t die hunts the killer who shouldn’t exist” but honestly, it didn’t feel much like Kirby was really hunting the killer. Looking for connections with other murder cases and investigating some wild hunches, yes, but really she spends most of the book developing her bond with Dan. I would have really liked for this to be more of a cat and mouse type of hunt between Kirby and Harper.
The chapters with Harper were much more interesting, but even those became a little repetitive. We as the reader follow Harper as he stalks his victims in childhood, waiting for the right time to strike when they reach adulthood. While it was necessary for the plot to detail the characters to both connect them to the greater chain of paradoxes and to show Harper’s descent, the violence is excessive and extremely detailed, and after a while it started to feel more like torture porn. It just got tiring after a while.
Despite its flaws, I thought this book was good, and I mean really good. I loved the way that the time paradoxes were handled, time travel stories tend to be tricky and usually end up with a couple of glaring loop holes. The loops are handled in a way that I found satisfying and this book is easily my favorite time travel novel I’ve ever read. It is truly unique and a story I won’t soon forget.
This book is different then others I have read. For the format is in Diary setting. Though I understood the story behind it. This was great read. It told more of the history of the Trail. It about a girl that goes though the some hardships and adjustments.
Florrie and her family travel from Arrow Rock, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Florrie and her brother Jem need to adjust to having a stepfather named Mr. Ryder. You learn a lot about the daily life of being on the Santa Fe Trail back in 1848.
Most of this dairy tell you the History of America during that time. Most of the dairy is down on the trail of The Santa Fe Trail. Though that like to learn about America History, this is good for young readers.
Florrie and her family travel from Arrow Rock, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Florrie and her brother Jem need to adjust to having a stepfather named Mr. Ryder. You learn a lot about the daily life of being on the Santa Fe Trail back in 1848.
Most of this dairy tell you the History of America during that time. Most of the dairy is down on the trail of The Santa Fe Trail. Though that like to learn about America History, this is good for young readers.