Search
Search results
Weather Widget+ Free
Weather and Utilities
App
*******Full Support for apple watch******* Weather Widget+ is the new generation of weather widget...
Kristy H (1252 KP) rated Force of Nature (Aaron Falk #2) in Books
Mar 2, 2018
Suspenseful (2 more)
Tense and fascinating
Intricate characters
Sucks you in immediately
Aaron Falk doesn't receive the voicemail until the morning. It's mostly garbled anyway, but he feels like he hears the strains of "hurt her" at the end. He doesn't think much of it until the woman who left the message, Alice Russell, doesn't return from a corporate retreat. Alice and four of her female colleagues went into the woods together. But when the women come out--bruised and battered--Alice isn't with them. Their stories don't quite match up about what happened, either. Aaron joins the investigation about Alice's disappearance as she's related to a case he's working with his partner, Carmen. He quickly realizes that nothing is as it seems deep inside the bushland. But is Alice simply missing, or worse?
I absolutely adored Jane Harper's first Aaron Falk novel, The Dry, and was really excited to see Aaron back again. He's a wonderful, complex character. Indeed, all the characters in THE DRY were so intricate and deep. Here, I was definitely sucked into the world Harper created again. I won't lie, beyond Aaron, most of the characters in FORCE OF NATURE are not easy to like. The five women who head off on this retreat are often despicable, whiny, and just plain mean. But, as the novel continues, we learn more about their motives and what drives them to act as they do. They may still be, well, despicable and mean, but there's a reason for it. There is no unformed character in a Jane Harper novel. Each comes with a backstory and a reason for every action.
It's nearly impossible not to get sucked into this book. The chapters alternate between the present, from Aaron's point of view as he tries to unravel things, and then flip to the near-past, slowly ticking down the events of the women at the retreat. The result is a nearly unbearable suspense at times, where I found myself wanting to scream, "What happened to Alice?!!" It's a slow, tense, fascinating build as we watch things fall apart for the group--getting lost in the deep woods--and seeing events unfold from there. We also see Aaron figuring out his own chain of events. The format works quite persuasively. Even better is that we get Aaron and Carmen's financial investigation thrown in as well. It adds a nuanced layer to the plot and the overall apprehension.
Overall, I really enjoyed this one. The characters are complex, and I really liked how their intricate personal lives intertwined. I'm not sure I loved this one quite as much as THE DRY, but part of that is because you can never quite replicate the joy and surprise of discovering a new, talented author again. Nonetheless, this is a great thriller that keeps you guessing with its nuanced characters. I certainly hope Aaron will be back for a third book.
I absolutely adored Jane Harper's first Aaron Falk novel, The Dry, and was really excited to see Aaron back again. He's a wonderful, complex character. Indeed, all the characters in THE DRY were so intricate and deep. Here, I was definitely sucked into the world Harper created again. I won't lie, beyond Aaron, most of the characters in FORCE OF NATURE are not easy to like. The five women who head off on this retreat are often despicable, whiny, and just plain mean. But, as the novel continues, we learn more about their motives and what drives them to act as they do. They may still be, well, despicable and mean, but there's a reason for it. There is no unformed character in a Jane Harper novel. Each comes with a backstory and a reason for every action.
It's nearly impossible not to get sucked into this book. The chapters alternate between the present, from Aaron's point of view as he tries to unravel things, and then flip to the near-past, slowly ticking down the events of the women at the retreat. The result is a nearly unbearable suspense at times, where I found myself wanting to scream, "What happened to Alice?!!" It's a slow, tense, fascinating build as we watch things fall apart for the group--getting lost in the deep woods--and seeing events unfold from there. We also see Aaron figuring out his own chain of events. The format works quite persuasively. Even better is that we get Aaron and Carmen's financial investigation thrown in as well. It adds a nuanced layer to the plot and the overall apprehension.
Overall, I really enjoyed this one. The characters are complex, and I really liked how their intricate personal lives intertwined. I'm not sure I loved this one quite as much as THE DRY, but part of that is because you can never quite replicate the joy and surprise of discovering a new, talented author again. Nonetheless, this is a great thriller that keeps you guessing with its nuanced characters. I certainly hope Aaron will be back for a third book.
Daniel Radcliffe: The Biography
Book
Daniel Radcliffe went from shy schoolboy to the world's most famous boy wizard overnight. Aged just...
Kyera (8 KP) rated Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3) in Books
Jan 31, 2018
Clockwork Princess is the stunning conclusion to Cassandra Clare’s the Infernal Devices trilogy. The pacing of the third book is much brisker than its predecessor and immediately drags you into the plot. There are also significantly more scenes with action in them, which help to break up the scenes that steadily move the story along. As with the previous books, the story is very character-driven and continues to bring further depth to each character’s personality.
Will continues to be my favourite focus of any scene with his witty comments and sense of humour. It was nice to see him play off his sister at times, because normally only Tessa can manage Will. Although they have been apart for many years they still have a wonderfully authentic relationship, like how easily she is able to get under his skin. Will and Jem’s parabatai relationship, as it was in the previous books, is so real that you can easily imagine the love they have for one another, the pain each feels when the other is hurt, and how they would do anything for each other.
It was nice to see the continued development of characters that we’ve grown to love, as well as the new faces that have joined the familiar at the Institute. The number of important characters does not ever feel overwhelming or confusing, as each has been given the time to become established and grow in the world that Cassandra Clare has created. I love each and every one of the characters because they are not only true but integral to the story as a whole.
Despite having read this entire series before and knowing what will happen – it is still so brilliantly written that it elicits myriad emotions throughout. Each character feels real and their lives affect your own. A tear slips down my face as one character experiences unbearable pain, while another comes at the thought of losing a character I’ve grown to love so much. A grin overtakes my face in light of the overwhelmingly happy news. The books that I have grown to love are the ones that speak to you, change you, and will forever stay with you.
Clockwork Princess is quite possibly the best series finale that I have read and certainly the best final book in a trilogy. Despite the book causing me to cry, multiple times, I never felt dissatisfied with the conclusion. The story comes to a climactic end, then Cassandra Clare takes the final chapter to pull everything together and the prologue to make me cry again. I loved re-reading this series so much and hope that you are inspired to read it as well.
Will continues to be my favourite focus of any scene with his witty comments and sense of humour. It was nice to see him play off his sister at times, because normally only Tessa can manage Will. Although they have been apart for many years they still have a wonderfully authentic relationship, like how easily she is able to get under his skin. Will and Jem’s parabatai relationship, as it was in the previous books, is so real that you can easily imagine the love they have for one another, the pain each feels when the other is hurt, and how they would do anything for each other.
It was nice to see the continued development of characters that we’ve grown to love, as well as the new faces that have joined the familiar at the Institute. The number of important characters does not ever feel overwhelming or confusing, as each has been given the time to become established and grow in the world that Cassandra Clare has created. I love each and every one of the characters because they are not only true but integral to the story as a whole.
Despite having read this entire series before and knowing what will happen – it is still so brilliantly written that it elicits myriad emotions throughout. Each character feels real and their lives affect your own. A tear slips down my face as one character experiences unbearable pain, while another comes at the thought of losing a character I’ve grown to love so much. A grin overtakes my face in light of the overwhelmingly happy news. The books that I have grown to love are the ones that speak to you, change you, and will forever stay with you.
Clockwork Princess is quite possibly the best series finale that I have read and certainly the best final book in a trilogy. Despite the book causing me to cry, multiple times, I never felt dissatisfied with the conclusion. The story comes to a climactic end, then Cassandra Clare takes the final chapter to pull everything together and the prologue to make me cry again. I loved re-reading this series so much and hope that you are inspired to read it as well.
Darren (1599 KP) rated The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) in Movies
Oct 2, 2019
Characters – Lisbeth Salander is the famous hacker that will stand up against any man that is causing a woman abuse, she will leave her brand on them. She is called for difficult hacking jobs, which sees her take something from the Americans, this makes her a wanted suspect in Sweden and her on the run looking for answers to clear her name. Mikael Blomkvist is still the only person that Lisbeth will trust, he tries to operate from a distant and investigates the trust behind what is happening. Ed Needham is the American that has his system hacked, a government man, he heads to Sweden to get it back and finds nothing but barriers from the Swedish government. Camilla Salander is the long lost sister of Lisbeth, she thought to be dead, but now she is involved in a criminal gang known as The Spiders, targeting Lisbeth for what she wants.
Performances – Claire Foy does feel mis-cast in this role, she doesn’t seem to have a tough enough look to make this character effect as the two previous stars. Sverrir Gudnason had large shoes to fill and he doesn’t do a strong enough job in the Mikael role, while Sylvia Hoeks does what she can with her role without being anything overly special, while LaKeith Stanfield doesn’t seem to feel like the character he is meant to be playing.
Story – The story here is the fourth story in the Dragon Tattoo world, the second in English and is the first not written by the original author. We follow Lisbeth who once again finds herself needing to take on secret organisation that what something that could put the world in danger and this time it becomes more personal, with her sister being the enemy. This story does feel like it has borrowed from many other films and while it still puts Lisbeth is an anti-hero role, we only seem to find ourselves in one direction where Lisbeth is always one step ahead of everything happening, despite the fact we get to see just how twisted the Spiders are, it paints one image of them only to leave us facing a different softer enemy.
Action/Crime – The action was pretty much all given away in the trailer, we have the motorbike chase across the ice, the car chases and shoot outs, each feels very similar and doesn’t have the suspense required in a thriller.
Settings – The film does try to bring everything back to Lisbeth’s backstory with the settings showing the off the grid life she current lives compared to the one she could have lived, the snowy roads add a little to the chases, but not that much overall.
Scene of the Movie – Ice lake escape.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The Spider’s not hinting at wanting to do to what they did to the guy without a nose, to the new Lisbeth group.
Final Thoughts – This does feel like a cash grab on a franchise that has never taken off on the American side of things, we get everything scaled back leaving us feeling disappointed by the end of the film.
Overall: No thrills to be seen here.
Performances – Claire Foy does feel mis-cast in this role, she doesn’t seem to have a tough enough look to make this character effect as the two previous stars. Sverrir Gudnason had large shoes to fill and he doesn’t do a strong enough job in the Mikael role, while Sylvia Hoeks does what she can with her role without being anything overly special, while LaKeith Stanfield doesn’t seem to feel like the character he is meant to be playing.
Story – The story here is the fourth story in the Dragon Tattoo world, the second in English and is the first not written by the original author. We follow Lisbeth who once again finds herself needing to take on secret organisation that what something that could put the world in danger and this time it becomes more personal, with her sister being the enemy. This story does feel like it has borrowed from many other films and while it still puts Lisbeth is an anti-hero role, we only seem to find ourselves in one direction where Lisbeth is always one step ahead of everything happening, despite the fact we get to see just how twisted the Spiders are, it paints one image of them only to leave us facing a different softer enemy.
Action/Crime – The action was pretty much all given away in the trailer, we have the motorbike chase across the ice, the car chases and shoot outs, each feels very similar and doesn’t have the suspense required in a thriller.
Settings – The film does try to bring everything back to Lisbeth’s backstory with the settings showing the off the grid life she current lives compared to the one she could have lived, the snowy roads add a little to the chases, but not that much overall.
Scene of the Movie – Ice lake escape.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The Spider’s not hinting at wanting to do to what they did to the guy without a nose, to the new Lisbeth group.
Final Thoughts – This does feel like a cash grab on a franchise that has never taken off on the American side of things, we get everything scaled back leaving us feeling disappointed by the end of the film.
Overall: No thrills to be seen here.
Nightmares from the Deep™: Davy Jones, Collector's Edition HD (Full)
Games and Entertainment
App
Reveal Davy Jones’ darkest secrets and defeat the nefarious sea devil once and for all! Museum...
Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated Glass (2019) in Movies
Feb 1, 2019 (Updated Feb 1, 2019)
First 2 acts are interesting (1 more)
MacAvoy is great
A Textbook Example On How Not To End A Trilogy
Contains spoilers, click to show
Glass is the 3rd movie in M. Night Shyamalan's pseudo superhero trilogy following Unbreakable and Split. Unfortunately it is probably the worst movie out of the three and doesn't live up to the twenty years of build-up it has had going into it. Full spoilers will be present through this review as it's kind of hard to discuss the film without spoiling anything.
The movie opens with what is essentially a condensed version of both Unbreakable and Split. We see Bruce Willis' Dennis Dunn stalking criminals in his poncho and we see James MacAvoy's Kevin Wendell Crumb keeping four young girls captured in an abandoned warehouse. The old 'unstoppable force meets immovable object,' trope plays out and the two of them wind up getting caught by Sarah Paulson and her team, who apparently specialise in investigating those who have delusions about having superhuman powers.
She brings the two of them to a mental hospital where she is keeping Samuel L Jackson's Mr Glass. Sarah Paulson's character then spends the next chunk of the movie trying to convince the three that the powers that they believe they possess is actually in their heads and there is a real-world, logical explanation to everything that they can do. This part of the film is actually pretty interesting in the ideas that it poses and I liked where the film was going at this point.
Then the third act happens and we are reminded why Shyamalan so desperately needs an editor to keep his ideas in check. There is this huge build up that takes place teasing an epic fight between Dunn and The Beast at the top of some huge brand new building in the middle of the city. Unfortunately we never get there and instead we just get some mediocre action choreography in a medium sized car park between the two. The whole thing ends with the fairly contrived retcon twist that Kevin's dad was in the same train crash that Dunn survived and Mr Glass caused, thus making Mr Glass the 'creator,' of both superheroes. Then the three characters die in an extremely anticlimactic fashion. The Beast breaks a couple of Mr Glass' bones and he falls out of his wheelchair and dies, (even though this is something that we have seen happen to him in Unbreakable and he survived it.) Then a sniper randomly shoots Kevin even though the beast is tamed by the appearance of Anya Taylor-Joy's character, Casey from Split. He just gets shot once and dies with hardly any fanfare. Then David Dunn is drowned in a puddle as Sarah Paulson explains that she is part of a secret organisation that hunts people who believe that they are superheroes, determines whether or not they really are superheroes through a pretty drawn-out process and then proceeds to kill them if they do in fact possess superpowers. We also see that for some reason this group apparently only meets in crowded public restaurants in the middle of the city centre in broad daylight and have to wait until any non members of this super secret club, (that just killed 3 people in a public car park in broad daylight in front of cops and family members,) have left the restaurant before they can discuss business. Then it turns out that Mr Glass leaked the footage from the hospital security cameras online so that people would see that superheroes really do exist.
If you are someone that hasn't seen the movie and doesn't care about spoilers so you just read this review anyway; your brain is probably falling out of your ear after reading my description of the third act and that's because on paper this whole sequence of events is absolutely ludicrous and the fact that no one pointed this out during the movie's production is mind-boggling.
What a waste after two solid movies and a decent two first acts worth of build up...
There are some positives I took away though. It is as much of an absolute joy to watch James MacAvoy play so many totally different characters convincingly in one scene as it was in Split, maybe even more so here as we get to see even more personalities emerge and in even quicker succession. He is an utterly phenomenal actor. It is also cool to see Mr Glass and David Dunn after twenty years to see where they are at in their lives and how they have been spending their time since the events of Unbreakable. There are also some nice shots and camera angles in the film, (more so in the first two acts of the story,) and some nice colour scheme aesthetics going on in certain compositions that made some shots more interesting to look at.
Overall, this movie could have been so much more and in the end it throws away some really potentially interesting plot threads in favour for a few tacked on twists and gives us nothing more than a half arsed conclusion to an otherwise solid trilogy.
The movie opens with what is essentially a condensed version of both Unbreakable and Split. We see Bruce Willis' Dennis Dunn stalking criminals in his poncho and we see James MacAvoy's Kevin Wendell Crumb keeping four young girls captured in an abandoned warehouse. The old 'unstoppable force meets immovable object,' trope plays out and the two of them wind up getting caught by Sarah Paulson and her team, who apparently specialise in investigating those who have delusions about having superhuman powers.
She brings the two of them to a mental hospital where she is keeping Samuel L Jackson's Mr Glass. Sarah Paulson's character then spends the next chunk of the movie trying to convince the three that the powers that they believe they possess is actually in their heads and there is a real-world, logical explanation to everything that they can do. This part of the film is actually pretty interesting in the ideas that it poses and I liked where the film was going at this point.
Then the third act happens and we are reminded why Shyamalan so desperately needs an editor to keep his ideas in check. There is this huge build up that takes place teasing an epic fight between Dunn and The Beast at the top of some huge brand new building in the middle of the city. Unfortunately we never get there and instead we just get some mediocre action choreography in a medium sized car park between the two. The whole thing ends with the fairly contrived retcon twist that Kevin's dad was in the same train crash that Dunn survived and Mr Glass caused, thus making Mr Glass the 'creator,' of both superheroes. Then the three characters die in an extremely anticlimactic fashion. The Beast breaks a couple of Mr Glass' bones and he falls out of his wheelchair and dies, (even though this is something that we have seen happen to him in Unbreakable and he survived it.) Then a sniper randomly shoots Kevin even though the beast is tamed by the appearance of Anya Taylor-Joy's character, Casey from Split. He just gets shot once and dies with hardly any fanfare. Then David Dunn is drowned in a puddle as Sarah Paulson explains that she is part of a secret organisation that hunts people who believe that they are superheroes, determines whether or not they really are superheroes through a pretty drawn-out process and then proceeds to kill them if they do in fact possess superpowers. We also see that for some reason this group apparently only meets in crowded public restaurants in the middle of the city centre in broad daylight and have to wait until any non members of this super secret club, (that just killed 3 people in a public car park in broad daylight in front of cops and family members,) have left the restaurant before they can discuss business. Then it turns out that Mr Glass leaked the footage from the hospital security cameras online so that people would see that superheroes really do exist.
If you are someone that hasn't seen the movie and doesn't care about spoilers so you just read this review anyway; your brain is probably falling out of your ear after reading my description of the third act and that's because on paper this whole sequence of events is absolutely ludicrous and the fact that no one pointed this out during the movie's production is mind-boggling.
What a waste after two solid movies and a decent two first acts worth of build up...
There are some positives I took away though. It is as much of an absolute joy to watch James MacAvoy play so many totally different characters convincingly in one scene as it was in Split, maybe even more so here as we get to see even more personalities emerge and in even quicker succession. He is an utterly phenomenal actor. It is also cool to see Mr Glass and David Dunn after twenty years to see where they are at in their lives and how they have been spending their time since the events of Unbreakable. There are also some nice shots and camera angles in the film, (more so in the first two acts of the story,) and some nice colour scheme aesthetics going on in certain compositions that made some shots more interesting to look at.
Overall, this movie could have been so much more and in the end it throws away some really potentially interesting plot threads in favour for a few tacked on twists and gives us nothing more than a half arsed conclusion to an otherwise solid trilogy.
FluentWorlds: Learn English
Education and Games
App
FluentWorlds Description: Enjoy sparkling, realistic 3D game environments on your phone or tablet!...
Shooting Stars (Shooting Stars #1)
Book
Tess Lee is a novelist. Her inspirational books explore people’s innermost struggles and the human...
Women's Fiction Romance