Ink of Blood

(This review may contain spoilers).

When I initially saw this movie advertised, I was really intrigued by the idea, especially as over-crowded population is a very real problem faced by humanity today. And even though the science wasn’t really explained to a satisfactory level, I still thought it was interesting to see the procedures humans had to go through before being downsized. However, the movie quite clearly broke its own rules when it came to shaving body hair, as said body hair was quite conspiciously left in a specific place on the men’s bodies.

While it was good to see there was some hostility between those who were regular sized and those who had been downsized, it was really only shown in short snippets involving society as a whole and only one person demonstrated hostility on a personal level – and that was someone who was very drunk and went on about voting, rather than any of the real issues he could have put voice to. And while Audrey’s mother apparently had problems wth it, I was only told about that. It wasn’t shown. The same with the families where some people had downsized and others had stayed regular size.

I felt that this movie couldn’t really decide what genre it wanted to be or what story to tell. There were a lot of elements that could have been explored to much greater potential and even though it was good to see how things were adapted for use in the small villages, there was very little shown about the problems they faced after having been shrunk. While it was good to see that there were some much darker parts of the society, that wasn’t really explored to any extent.

I thought there was a lot of potential in this movie, but that the problems that should have been faced by the downsized people were ignored or settled very easily. I don’t intend to watch this movie again any time soon.

(This review may contain spoilers).

I was intrigued by the mind games idea when I first saw the trailer for this movie. I like Liam Neeson as an actor and I especially liked his character, Michael, in the film. While the way the movie was shot at the beginning was a good and unique way of showing his life up until that point. I did, however, get really confused by the amount of children Michael had. The shots kept making it seem like he had multiple children instead of just one.

I liked being able to see and get to know the other passengers as Michael interacted with them, but I did feel there was a lot of time spent on setting up red herrings and not really enough spent on showing who Michael already knew. As a viewer, I had even less information than Michael did.

The atmosphere of this movie was very intense and kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. I didn’t really like Joanna and I found it very hard to suspend my disbelief when it came to the reach of the company she worked for.

While there were times I felt Michael did make some pretty bad choices – especially when it came to actually taking the money in the first place – it was also good to see that he was capable of thinking on his feet and good at changing his plans when he needed to. However, given the age of the character and the fact he was no longer on the police force, some of his physical exertions really didn’t seem that realistic.

I found it easy to care about Michael, but as there was very little shown about his wife and son, it was hard to feel they were in any danger. And the whole thing with them also made it hard to suspend my disbelief.

I did find the immediate action engaging enough to keep me focused on watching the movie and I was on the edge of my seat throughout. While there were a couple of things I did see coming, the movie was still entertaining enough to keep my attention. And while I wouldn’t rush to buy it on DVD, I wouldn’t mind watching the movie again.

(This review may contain spoilers).

I’ve watched the previous movies in the Insidious series, so of course, I was interested in seeing this movie as well, as soon as it came out.

I really liked being able to see more of Elise’s past, even though I couldn’t help but feel a huge amount of sympathy for her. I liked being able to see something of her relationship with her brother and her parents…though I absolutely hated her father and even by the end, I didn’t much like him.

I thought it was good this movie didn’t focus so much on the Further, even though there were ghosts…both good and bad. There were some creepy moments in this movie, but it did also rely heavily on jump scares…and when the Further did come into play, it lacked the creepy factor it had in the other Insidious movies. And while it was good to see a tie-in with the original Insidious movie, I still felt the demon with the red face was much less scary when it appeared.

I did find Specs and Tucker to be a bit more annoying in this movie and less of the cute sidekicks they were in the other movies. Though it was good to see them both useful members of the team and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Specs during parts of the movie.

I really liked the fact that there were family elements along with the paranormal and horror elements in this movie and even though there were a lot of jump scares, there were also things I wasn’t expecting and a couple of nice pieces of foreshadowing.

In the future, I imagine I would like to watch this movie again, although I probably wouldn’t rush to buy it on DVD as soon as it comes out.

(This review may contain spoilers).

I have to be honest and say that I came very close to walking out of this movie. While I was expecting it to be hard to watch, I’d thought that would be because of the bitter history between the two peoples…not because there were so many mistakes made, I was left questioning how anyone survived at all.

While the movie did do a passable job of showing the distance between the two groups, I felt it focused far more on the relationship between Joseph and Rosalie, rather than any kind of attempts to bridge the gap between the groups.

I also found it very hard to care about the characters or form an emotional attachment to them. While it did seem like some attempts were made to provide some depth to Joseph, at least, I found it hard to see him as a good man. In fact, it was hard to see much good in any of them – and while Chief Yellow Hawk was supposed to have once been dangerous, there were no hints of that and I thought his son demonstrated more of that.

While there were parts of this movie that were difficult to watch, that was really more to do with the action than any real emotion attached to any of the characters. And at times, some of the supporting characters seemed more like mouthpieces to talk about the hostilities.

I did also guess pretty early on who was going to die. And when the action did actually occur, it moved too quickly for anything to be really absorbed. Because so little of the characters’ personalities were shown, the people who died just became nameless corpses.

The movie would have been a lot better if the characters had actually interacted with each other and more had been made of Yellow Hawk’s comments about being stronger together, at least in my opinion. A much smaller group of characters would have been easier to focus on and care about – and more than just talking about past hostilities would have made emotional connections much easier.

The ending was one I saw coming several miles off and was really a disappointing finish to a movie that really didn’t live up to its promise. To be honest, I won’t be watching this movie again.

(This review may contain spoilers).

I’ve just watched The Greatest Showman for the second time now. And I enjoyed it just as much this time as I did the first time.

The very start of the movie was enough to draw me in straight away. I loved the first song…and my favourite song in the movie is a toss-up between The Greatest Show and This Is Me. I like and have listened to both of those multiple times.

I’ve seen Hugh Jackman in innumerable movies to date, but the last musical I saw him in was Les Miserables; and his performance was good, but I still remember seeing the theatre version of the play…and the singing in the movie wasn’t nearly as good. Here, though? I was not disappointed.

I really liked the opportunity to see Barnum and Charity grow up writing letters to each other. The montage of them doing so might have been cliched, but I still felt it worked and by the time I saw Barnum as a full adult, I felt like I’d got to know the two main characters almost as well as watching an entire movie focused on them growing up. I did, however, feel that Charity’s parents were one-dimensional characters. At the beginning, I wasn’t even sure it was her mother teaching her to be a lady.

I really liked Barnum’s relationship with his children and his wife, but it was very clear as the movie went on that he was losing sight of what should have been more important. By the time Jenny Lind came into the picture, I was very disappointed in the way Barnum was treating the people he’d persuaded to come and work for him.

Speaking of Jenny…I really disliked her. By the end of the movie, she seemed like a petty person who decided to try and tear a marriage apart simply because she’d been rejected. At least that was how the movie portrayed her; I can’t really say if the movie provided any kind of accurate representation of the real people from history.

I really didn’t like the whole scene when they visited the Queen, as I felt, even for a movie that wasn’t really historically accurate, that required a huge amount of suspension of disbelief.

Watching the movie for the second time, I found it just as intense as watching it the first time through. I liked the relationship between Philip and Anne and felt people’s attitudes were quite realistically portrayed.

This is a movie I definitely wouldn’t mind watching a third time and I fully intend to buy it on DVD when it’s released.

(This review may contain spoilers).

I thoroughly enjoyed the original Jumanji movie and while I sometimes find another movie in a franchise can be disappointing, when I saw the trailer for this movie, I was very excited about seeing this film.

I really enjoyed this movie. I felt the actors who played the original versions of the characters did a really good job of showing their personalities and I especially liked Jack Black playing a teenage girl; I thought he did a fantastic job of playing a teenage girl. Karen Gillan was good, too…but I couldn’t really connect Kevin’s portrayal with Fridge as shown at the beginning. And it was hard to imagine Dwayne Johnson as really being a teenaged boy. I just connect him too much to being the confident action hero and I felt that persona came across more.

The aspects of the computer game were quite cool and a bit more unique, with the three lives and the NPCs. There were some aspects that didn’t really get expanded upon, though, such as the game telling them to keep their health up.

It was really good to see the relationships form between the characters, especially in regards to the interactions between Bethany and Alex. It was good to see that, even though they could access the skills they had in the game, they still had the doubts and weaknesses of their true personalities.

While there was a lot of good humour in this movie, I also felt there was a good balance of serious moments along with that. And by the end of the movie, it was really good to see the way all of the characters had their parts to play.

I did like the fact that this movie had a few nods to the original, even though no one knew the origins of the game. And it was good to see the usage of technology…and also how the events of the movie changed the characters by the end.

I definitely enjoyed watching this movie and it was one I would like to watch again in the future.

(This review may contain spoilers).

This was another movie I had some quite mixed feelings about. While it was good to see there was some acknowledgement of the repeated plot devices, such as the riff-off, it was disappointing to see none of the male characters from the previous movie put in an appearance.

While a film with so many characters couldn’t really show details about all of them, it was good to see a bit more focus on the characters like Aubrey and Fat Amy. I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for Jessica and Ashley, both of whom seemed to be characters only used as filler; a fact that might have been acknowledged by the movie, but was still disappointing to see.

I liked being able to get glimpses of the lives of the former Bellas, but Gail and John were even more annoying in this movie, if that’s possible. I can’t really say I knew any more about them in this movie than I did in the previous one.

I thought the idea of the movie, with the groups singing for the troops, was a really good one and I felt the movie would have stood strong without the need for the competition on top of everything else. Unlike the previous two movies, I couldn’t really have cared less about the competitions; and the other groups lacked any real conflict.

I really liked the songs, whether they were being performed with or without instruments. And I liked seeing Lilly have a bit more of a role in this movie outside of just being the weird girl.

I thought Fat Amy was awesome in the previous two movies, but I found her more unkind and less humorous in this, which was a shame, as I felt she was a strong character previously. And there was a lot shown about her past and what she could do that had zero foreshadowing.

I was a bit disappointed in this movie and I won’t rush to watch it again any time soon, even though I do intend to listen to the soundtrack again in the near future.

(This review may contain spoilers).

After watching this movie, I have some very mixed feelings. I did enjoy it for what it was, but I can’t deny there were certain parts that did disappoint me.

I think perhaps the strongest part of this movie was the humour. There were times I found myself laughing out loud. However, I did find the scene with Poe and Hux talking (or not, rather) at the beginning was very awkward humour, as it referenced things that don’t actually exist in the Star Wars universe.

I felt this movie tried too hard to be like The Empire Strikes Back. I have to admit, I liked Rey a bit less than I did in episode seven. I felt she didn’t have quite the same personality I’d seen in The Force Awakens.

While it was good to see some of the conflict in Kylo Ren, I didn’t really feel like he was as interesting a villai as he could be. While it was good to see some of the background between him and his uncle, there wasn’t really a lot shown about him and his parents…even though Han wasn’t in the present day.

While I did like seeing the film focus more on Finn and Rose as well as just Rey training with Luke, I was questioning the wisdom in the actions they took. Poe didn’t seem quite as responsible as he was in the first movie and I felt the other storyline could have been worked in a lot better. And I have to say, DJ was quite a disappointing character. I had the feeling he was supposed to be a rogue like Han Solo, but he just wasn’t that interesting.

I did think there were some areas where it was hard to suspend my disbelief and although I do want to watch the third movie in this trilogy, I’m not too fussed about seeing this movie again. I’m hoping the final film will pull this trilogy back to the level of at least The Force Awakens.

(This review may contain spoilers).

I did watch the first of the Bad Moms movies and enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I nearly didn’t see this movie, but then wound up seeing it with one of my friends at the cinema.

I felt the movie started off really well in showing the aftermath of what had happened and setting the scene. It was good to see that each of the main characters’ mothers had their own personality and was completely different to her daughter. However, I was disappointed that there was almost no focus on the kids and their personalities. It seemed they only appeared when it was convenient to the plot; and I couldn’t have named any of them off the top of my head.

It was good to get something of an idea of Ruth’s upbringing, even though I felt the moments of her actually caring about her daughter were few and far between. While it was clear she cared about her grandchildren, I really couldn’t see it when it came to Amy, who I felt demonstrated far more patience than I would have done in the same situation.

To be honest, I spent most of the movie thinking all three of the mothers had major faults. With the exception of Ruth, none of them interacted with their grandchildren – and apart from one brief scene, Ruth’s only interactions with hers was to give them expensive gifts that sounded like she was trying to one-up Amy.

It bears repeating, I think, that for a film about Moms, the children had very small roles to play. Rather than seeing Carla truly caring about her son – which Iris seemed to see, despite a lack of scenes with the three of them together – all I saw was a woman who didn’t care enough to even consider a Christmas present for him and did the laziest thing possible. Even by the end, there was nothing good or heartwarming shown between them.

To be honest, perhaps the strongest part of this movie was the adult humour, even though it was very cringeworthy at times. Probably the part I actually found myself laughing at was when Amy, Kiki and Carla stole a Christmas tree from the mall.

I would say that this film was fun to watch, but it wasn’t a feel-good movie in the same way a lot of Christmas films are. And in my opinion, the first movie was much better, with more of a focus on the characters being moms, rather than just bad.

I have to say, I don’t intend to buy this movie on DVD when it comes out; and I don’t have a burning desire to watch it again in the near future.