Ink of Blood

(This review may contain spoilers).

When I saw the trailer for this movie, I was immediately intrigued by the idea, even though I was fairly sure it would follow the same kind of criteria as many other movies for teenagers I’ve seen.

I found it quite hard to relate to Kyle at first. Mostly because the character seemed to come across as really one-dimensional and shallow. I found some of the secondary characters intriguing, but the fact there was hardly any ethnic diversity made me disappointed in the movie.

The really unique idea of this movie was the whole idea of the Universe app, as I liked that it made what was ‘put out there’ come true. I thought it was amusing how, on occasion, what Kyle put out there wasn’t what he was expecting what would happen, but it was a bit disappointing that not much else was done with that.

I didn’t really find Kyle very sympathetic throughout the movie and even though, by the end, he had more of a real friendship with Lonnie, for a lot of the movie, it seemed like Kyle was a really bad friend to him.

I didn’t think Kyle’s sister had a lot of depth to her, to be honest. She just seemed to latch onto her boyfriend and become a completely different person just for him. To be honest, none of the characters demonstrated a lot of depth or strength; and the person I felt the most sympathy for was Kyle’ mother.

While there were some brief moments of humour in this movie, I thought there wasn’t much that allowed it to stand out. The characters were fairly stereotypical and the Universe app could have been played with a lot more.

This movie was entertaining to watch, but I didn’t feel it was anything special and didn’t really feel it was enough to stand out. There was a lot that could have been improved upon.

I don’t intend to watch this movie again, at least any time soon.

(This review may contain spoilers).

To probably absolutely no one’s surprise, I immediately jumped at the opportunity to watch Black Panther on the day it came out at my local cinema.

I liked being able to get a little bit of background on the history of the black panthers, but although the images were very visually appealing, I didn’t feel like they fit with the rest of the movie.

I really liked being able to see something of the culture of Wakanda and the cIonflicts faced with bringing technology into a society that was more traditional. I thought the hints of conflicts between the characters were good and there were some very strong elements of foreshadowing throughout.

I did feel that the trailers for a certain future movie in the franchise removed some of the tension and worry about one of the characters.

While I did like T’Challa, I actually liked his sister and Okoye a whole lot more and I felt they were shown to have a lot more depth to them, while T’Challa was more of the stereotypical hero with his own journey to go on. And I was a bit disappointed that Nakia didn’t really have much depth to her apart from being a fairly stereotypical rebellious love interest.

I didn’t think there was as much humour in this movie as Marvel usually seems to contain, but there was plenty of action and tension to keep me focused throughout.

It was good to see a cameo, however brief, of one of the minor characters -Everett Ross – from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And it was really good to see him developed a bit more and to see something of a true friendship forming between him and T’Challa.

One of the strongest parts of the movie, I felt, was the history of T’Challa’s family and how the past resurfaced in the present. I enjoyed seeing the glimpses of the culture and being able to see another character brought from the comics to the MCU.

I couldn’t really say this was my favourite Marvel movie, but I did find it very entertaining and wouldn’t mind watching it again. If you do go to see it, make sure you stay until the end, as there are two extra scenes during and post-credits.

(This review may contain spoilers).

Having watched and enjoyed the previous two movies in this franchise, I was very excited when I saw the trailer for this one, even though I try not to get too hyped up before watching a movie.

It was good that this movie went straight into the action. I found myself immdiately drawn into the plight of the characters; but this movie won’t make any sense if you haven’t seen the previous two. I’d even go so far as to say rewatch them in preparation for seeing the third.

Perhaps the best part of the movie, at least in my opinion, was the friendship between Thomas and Newt. I loved their interactions and I felt they were the strongest characters in this movie.

I felt that Frypan in particular hadn’t been developed through the three movies. I would have liked to see more of him than just being a tagalong, which was what he came across as.

I didn’t really think much of Brenda in this movie, I have to say. There was considerably less of her sense of her self-preservation and more of her acting foolishly. It’s even stated in a conversation she has that she’s acting out of character. I liked her relationship with Jorge, but I didn’t really like her.

While I felt there was some attempt to give Teresa more depth, I didn’t really like her either – and I thought that Ava’s own arc was left hanging when it could have been explored in so much more depth.

Parts of this movie were very intense to watch, but the zombie-like cranks weren’t as creepy as they had been in the second movie.

I did like that there were some small elements of humour to offset the tension and it was also good to see a return of one of the previous characters and the conflicts that arose from that.

This movie didn’t really let up on the action or intensity and even though the cranks lost a lot of their effectiveness from the previous movie, there was still enough to make me care when they were attacking the characters.

I’ve seen this movie twice at the cinema now and plan to see it a third time. I also intend to buy it on DVD when it comes out.

If you’ve watched the previous movies in this franchise, I strongly recommend seeing this one.

(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.