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Charlie Cobra Reviews (1840 KP) rated Cooties (2015) in Movies

Jul 7, 2020 (Updated Oct 26, 2020)  
Cooties (2015)
Cooties (2015)
2015 | Comedy, Horror
An Irreverent Off Color Zombie-Comedy
Contains spoilers, click to show
I thought this movie was very underrated by the critic community. I really enjoyed it and felt it had exactly what I look for in a zombie movie. The premise fits well with it's genre because in real life this would be terrible and frightening. Kids being zombies, yikes. But since it's a comedy it was easy for them to set up some pretty funny scenes of them having to fight off kids that are trying to eat them. Critics saying it not being funny enough are hard for me to agree with because it had plenty of laughs for me, although some of them fell flat or were kind of lame. And that it was too ugly and violent for younger viewers, well hello, it's rated R. I do have to say that away from the premise the story or plot wasn't all too creative but it plays out well over the 94 minute film. Some critics also commented about "uninspired plot mechanics" which to me was more about some of it being predictable or cliché with zombie tropes common to the genre but I thought they fit into the plot in a good way that kept the direction of the movie going. One thing that I did agree with was that the ending was disappointing or unsatisfactory but I've learned that in zombie movies that's something you have to expect sometimes. There's not going to always be a happy ending or any kind of ending sometimes but there was a funny after credits scene where the janitor is shown for a couple of seconds. I give this movie a 7/10.


  
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James Dean Bradfield recommended 154 by Wire in Music (curated)

 
154 by Wire
154 by Wire
1979 | Punk
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"It's an album that had a massive effect on me when I was young. I remember on Steve Lamacq's Roundtable, there was a track from Journal For Plague Lovers which a member of Wire completely slagged off. So this shows how much I actually like this album, because he obviously hated us and thought were just plod-rocking, rock-dinosaur philistines. But despite that I'm still going to quote this as a really influential album for me. A lot of people pick Pink Flag and Chairs Missing as their favourite records, but for me this is the apex of their achievement: they're still fusing really blunt-edge experimental rock with really abstract notions and wild ideologues and monologues of different sorts. There's a song on there called 'The 15th' which is just an amazing song; there's another song called 'The Other Window', which has a direct lineage from some of the Velvet Underground narrated songs like 'The Gift', and it's about this guy travelling on a train and outside there's an animal dying in a barbed-wire fence. There's another song called 'Two People In A Room' which is just fucking brutal. A lot of people like Wire then they're bleak or when people couldn't get a handle on what they were saying, but I think on this you can pin down the emotion to the record, pin down the marriage of experimental edge with rock. For me, it's one of the great lost post-punk records. It's an amazing record that never really gets written about. It was produced by Mike Thorne who never did as good a record again. And I just love the cover: it's got a very… almost Mondrian kind of vibe to it. It's really strange and quite unsettling. I just love the record."

Source
  
***ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review***

4.5 stars.

I’ll start by saying I really, really, liked Riker. He might have tried to act like a hard-ass but he wasn’t. Something right from the start grabbed me about him and I went a little mushy. Awww… :P And he was hot, too!!

Nicole turned out to be quite ballsy and I liked that about her. Riker needed someone like her in his life. I liked how she told it to him straight and if he didn’t like it, then she either fought to make him listen or walked away, making him come to her.

The secondary characters were quite fun too. Hunter, the head of the MoonBound clan, made me smile a lot. Playing is video games and saying some of the stuff he did. Myne, a fellow member of the clan, was another favourite. He might have come across at the beginning of being some rather scary ass vampire but by the end, he’d grown on me.

I feel I have to mention that first sex scene. It was HOT!! As was the second. Crikey, Larissa Ione knows how to write passionate scenes between her characters.

The storyline was different, with vampires being slaves to humans and I wondered how it was all going to work out. I wasn’t disappointed, it was a hell of a journey. I was happy, sad (I almost cried a few times), and angry at various points in this. But to me that made it goooood. Really good.

If you’re a fan of Larissa Ione then this isn’t to be missed. If you like steamy paranormal romance, again, this isn’t to be missed. I highly recommend it.

P.S. I am so going to look up what an origami vampire looks like :P
  
Absent Friends by The Divine Comedy
Absent Friends by The Divine Comedy
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Neil Hannon, for me, is the greatest living songwriter that we have, apart from Paul McCartney probably. I think the guy’s an absolute genius. Lyrically, he’s a complete master. The attention to detail is just extraordinary. Absent Friends starts with a great song that name-checks all his inspirations and then there’s 'Leaving Today' which I can really relate to; it’s a song about how he wakes up and his girlfriend is clinging to him like the morning dew, saying, “Don’t go, don’t go off again”… it’s this kind of heart-melting song about how he’s got to get up, get in a taxi and bugger off. 'Our Mutual Friend' is probably the best story I’ve ever heard in six minutes. With that song, it’s such a perfect pop song, we asked Neil about it, when he came and did something with Keane a few years back. Tim [Rice-Oxley, Keane keyboardist] asked him, “What is it about 'Our Mutual Friend', why couldn’t that have been a single?” He said, “I just couldn’t cut the song down to make it any shorter for the radio”. And it just illustrates that thing about how fucking annoying it is, that peoples’ attention spans are only three minutes long and you can’t have anything longer than that on the radio, unless it’s 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. It really annoys me that a song like 'Our Mutual Friend' will never find its place even though it deserves it. I think the same can be said for most of Neil’s writing, if pop music was a more intellectual pursuit, which maybe is a contradiction in terms, but if it were, then Neil would be lauded as the King."

Source
  
Sign of Foul Play
Sign of Foul Play
Penny Warner | 1998 | Mystery
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
All Signs Point to a Winner
Two earthquakes in the middle of the night made it hard for Connor Westphal to sleep. However, she is going about her Monday morning when she gets a message from her friend Dan telling her there is a news story at the construction site he is working at. When Connor arrives to get the scoop for her weekly paper, she finds that someone has discovered the dead body of Cullen Delancy. The working theory is that he fell to his death when the earthquake struck, but what was he doing on the site in the middle of the night?

I’ve got to admit, I roll my eyes a bit when I see an earthquake pop up in a story set in California, but I quickly got over that here since it made for an interesting set up to the mystery. There are plenty of twists and surprises to keep us guessing. I did figure a couple of them out early, but I was still plenty surprised when Connor pieced it together at the end. Connor is deaf, which sets her apart from other series leads, and I love seeing how that plays out in the story. She’s a strong main character, and the rest of the cast is wonderful as well. The story edges just a bit toward the outskirts of cozies, but as long as you know that going in, you’ll be fine. The book came out in 1998, and it is really amazing how much technology has changed our lives in the past couple of decades. This is a great second in the series, and I’m looking forward to visiting Connor again soon.
  
Big Little Lies
Big Little Lies
Liane Moriarty | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
9
8.6 (97 Ratings)
Book Rating
Diverse intersection of characters. Amazing build up of tension. Who done it based in the OZ Suburbs. (0 more)
I can't think of any other than I wish I read the book first! (0 more)
A perfect example of a who done it with added school politics!
Okay, so a small confession...
I may have watched the TV series before this book and didn't know it was actually a book before Nicole Kidman and Reece Witherspoon brought the rights.
I loved the TV show and the book certainly didn't disappoint.
It was quite relevent for me too ATM as my son is about to start reception class and I can certainly imagine all the different school politics that go on!
This book was hard to put down and whilst on holiday of managed to read it in a couple of days.
It delivered everything I want in a book and more.
(This bear in mind with me knowing what does actually happen as I had seen the series already). To read this for the first time without seeing the show I can imagine locking myself away and calling in sick to work to keep reading.
I loved the pace, tone and voice of the book and how it switched between each character and how they thought and felt.
As a mother I identified with all of the main characters at one point of another as their lives all intersect around a fatal event which occurs at a fundraising Trivia Night.
You know this from the outset, and I really enjoyed the comments from all the secondary characters throughout the chapters too.
They really did help set the scene and tension in the build up to the big event.
I loved this author so much I've already brought and started reading another one of her books and will likely be buying them all!
  
The Darkest Minds (2018)
The Darkest Minds (2018)
2018 | Sci-Fi, Thriller
A real drawback to this film is that the story line is designed to be several pieces, so you don't get a complete tale, just a cliffhanger of an ending as a lead up to the next one... but are there going to be anymore after the majority of people seem to think it was a flop? I did some vague Googling but it was next to impossible to find anything useful on the subject without wading through all the negative reviews.

I found it really difficult to rate this one. I enjoyed it a lot. I liked the action and the story idea, and the effects were very good... but... much like with the Maze Runner films it will probably stand up better as a collection of films rather than as it is on it's own.

Having only just started the book (I know, finally one I've actually begun and not just got on the shelf!) I'm not sure exactly how dark Ruby's character goes. In a desperate move to help her friends she turns on a bounty hunter who is out to get them. She turns her power loose and tells her to walk into the woods, and keep walking... which now I think about it we've seen in X-Men haven't we? How, or even if, this is represented in the book I do not know, but it's quite a dark moment for this innocent teenager who hasn't really done anything with any malice before now.

The film is somehow a little bit samey while being different all at the same time. I've been wavering between three and four stars on this one, but I think what sealed it's fate is that I would only actually buy this if I was going to be getting all the movies to complete the saga.
  
The Zombie Ball
The Zombie Ball
John Gaspard | 2019 | Mystery
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
You’ll Have a Ball
Magician Eli Marks has been hired at the last minute to perform as the opening act at the Zombie Ball, an annual local fundraiser, when the originally scheduled magician backs out. He hasn’t been going out much since his divorce, but he needs the money, so he agrees to do the gig that night. Of course, Eli quickly sees tensions going on behind the scenes, including two competing top donors who everyone is handling with kid gloves and trying to keep away from each other. Then someone is murdered, and Eli finds himself involved with the case. Will he figure out what really happened?

While this is the sixth book in the series, it is mostly set in the past, with events taking place before book 1. While I missed seeing some of the series regulars and getting some updates on ongoing storylines, I was quickly caught up in the story, and I enjoyed seeing a different side of the few regulars we did see. The body isn’t found until later in the book than normal, but I was enjoying spending time with Eli and getting to know the suspects. Sure enough, things that happened and we learned came into play once the murder has been discovered, and I was impressed with how Eli pieced everything together. The story hinges on the suspects being strong, and fortunately, they are. This story is shorter than many of the books I read, but it was long enough to tell the story, and it was nice to breeze through a book quickly. While we don’t learn any of the secrets of magic, I still enjoy the behind the scenes glimpses we do get of the life of a magician. Whether a new or returning fan, you’ll be glad you picked up this book.