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sallyannandrew
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Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
A fun love letter to Eurovision
I am a Will Ferrell Fan and quite biased towards his work, but I really thought this was a lot of fun. I am also a big Eurovision fan and this is just such a love letter to all the camp and kitsch that is Eurovision. I thought it captured it all the crazy perfectly without ever being particularly mean spirited. Will Ferrell was his usual zany self and it was fun watching the always versatile Rachel McAdams being nutty with Will. It's not perfect but it is so enjoyable.
Artemis Fowl (2020)
Why?
I know I'm jumping on the hate bandwagon here, but I just can't understand why you would adapt a beloved book series into a film and completely ignore the what is in the books?! Do production companies just care about drawing you into see the film, and not care that we are all going to hate the film? Do they not care about actually making a decent film anymore?! Is it just all opening numbers and profit sheets and as long as they lure enough people in initially to pay for the stupid movie, they don't care whether we like it or not?!
And why change it? What metrics do they use that suggest to them that completely changing the characters and storyline is a good plan? I know not everything in a book can be adapted
to film and things need to be shortened and changed a little to make it work, but honestly, why change the whole thing?! Do they truly think they can do it better than the source material? How often does that work?! The book is almost always better.
This is not Artemis Fowl, this is 'loosely based' on Artemis Fowl, they have completely changed the character, his motivations and most of the things that make this book series so fantastic. It's boring and by the numbers. It must be so disappointing for authors like Eoin Colfer to see their books turned into these terrible films! If only every author had as much clout as JK Rowling.
I have given this a couple of stars only because some of the performances were good, despite the terrible script and story they were working with. Josh Gad and the actress playing Holly did a solid job trying to work with this terrible mush.
I hope this doesn't make Disney buckets of money just because it's going to draw in fans of the books, they don't deserve it.
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Good but conflicting
This was a very conflicting film for me. I have read both 'The Shining' and 'Doctor Sleep' and loved both books for different reasons. I also count Kubrick's 'The Shining' as one of my favourite films. I had heard though that, given the enormous popularity of Kubrick's film, and the fact that more people would be familiar with that than the original book, this was to be a sequel more in line with the original film, than with the original story. So based on that (although I had to see it because I am a completist) I didn't walk into this expecting to enjoy it. Good film adaptations of Stephen King's books are few and far between.
Perhaps because my expectations were so low, I then ended up being pleasantly surprised and really quite enjoying this. Doctor Sleep is a big book, with lots of characters, quite a few consecutive narratives and a lot of detail. Those who wrote the screenplay did a good job I thought of 'trimming the fat'. For most of the film, the basic structure of the original story is held together but not tampered with significantly which I appreciated, I could get nerdy and whinge about a few things but I won't. I don't mind when things are left out, it's a necessity - books are considerably longer than films. I DO hate it when things are changed though, which is why I did not love the ending of this film.
As we get towards the end, things go off on a bit of a tangent in order to follow on from Kubrick's film. The proper ending of Doctor Sleep is abandoned in favour of a final showdown at and with the Overlook. I have all kinds of problems with this and how it was handled. I suppose if I was coming to this film as a fan of Kubrick's film and not having read either book, I might have appreciated the ending more. However I have read the books, and I would have done things differently.
Ultimately, this is pretty good, the cast is great (even if Rose the Hat and Crow Daddy are just a little bit younger in the film than they should be). I found the ending disappointing, but it's certainly one of the better adaptations of a King book I have seen. If you are going to watch this having no connection to any of the source material or have just seen Kubrick's film, this is probably a very good high-brow horror film.
Scooby-Doo: Return to Zombie Island (2019)
Disappointed
So disappointed. I wasn't expecting much though to be honest. 'Scooby Doo on Zombie Island' and the few films that followed it - 'Scooby Doo and the Witches Ghost', 'Scooby Doo and the Alien Invaders' - were actually GOOD. But 'Zombie Island' was far and away the best. They updated the whole Scooby Gang, filled them out a bit, gave them something a little more three dimensional to work with, modern clothes, careers etc. But best of all, was the writing - it was solid, and entertaining and even as a grown up person, I still enjoy watching those movies. So then they go and do THIS. I'm being very generous giving this a 5. It is a typical, cheap, slap up sequel that distorts the original story, has no continuity - it is just plain old lazy. The animation is cheap and tired, the gang are back in their frankly ancient garb again. This is a vastly inferior offering.
Look, Scooby Doo is part of my life, it's like comfort food. I am a fully grown up person now, bordering on middle age. I have small children, and I would follow Scooby and Shaggy off a cliff. Their enormous sandwiches make me laugh every.darn.time even though the gag is so over used. But honestly, don't tarnish a timeless classic by churning out these cheap, poorly written, tired old straight to DVD jaunts that bank on people watching them simply because we love Scooby Doo. Take a good, hard look at the original zombie island film and take notes - THAT is how you keep a franchise like this going. Please, please, no more cheap, badly written, badly animated sequels.
Annabelle Comes Home (2019)
Entertaining enough, but disappointing
I love an evil doll film and Annabelle is a seriously evil doll. But these films are lacking something. The first one was okay, the second one was seriously scary (in my opinion) and then this one...wasn't. I enjoyed this, it was fun, but it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, it's a tad lazy. The blue demon doesn't work for me, he's frankly a bit silly - and many of the scares in this were disappointing. Lots of set up, and then, nothing. I felt like they could have done more with this. I did really like exploring the Warrens other 'artefacts' and 'The Ferryman' was a nice touch, but ultimately this was messy. I'll keep watching though, I still think there is untapped potential here.
Burn After Reading (2008)
Kooky and dark
I never know quite what to expect from a Coen Brothers film and this was no different - bizarre, hilarious and dark. I think the Coens bring out the best in George Clooney. This a a funny, strange film and after it ends I sat very still for awhile thinking about what had just happened. It has a stunning effect! Worth seeing.
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Beautiful but messy
I loved parts of this, it's beautiful to look at. The segments with Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum were hilarious. It's a great cast, BUT, it just misses the mark I think. The story is a little disjointed, there are lots of stories flying around but nothing is particularly fleshed out. Lots of funny little jokes poking fun at the golden age of Hollywood, but the rest of it was just a bit of a mess for me. I liked it, but it's not my favourite from the Coen Brothers.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Not my favourite, but still brilliant
Oh look, it's hard to fault the Coen's - they are brilliant, everything they do is gold. This wasn't my favourite Coen film, but it is still marvellous, the music is beautiful and the sub-text compelling. There is ALWAYS hidden meaning in a Coen bros film, I adored the cats. A tad slow and gloomy but typically Coen.
The Neon Demon (2016)
Suspiria this ain't
So this has been compared with Suspiria which is one of my all time favourite films so I had to see this, although I doubted the comparison was apt. No one can do Argento. And sure enough, this is no Suspiria. Yes, it is stylish. I liked the colours, I even kind of liked the music. It has a eerie, haunting quality that I also liked - but the huge, enormous problem with this, and the reason I don't think it can be compared with Suspiria is that it takes itself pretty seriously! There is clearly meant to be some kind of subtext here, and boy, has it been done - the modelling world, Hollywood, LA is soulless and shallow, women are, well quite literally here, chewed up and spat out. Well ho hum, we know right?!
And this isn't a redeeming film, in fact it is exploitative. The males in this film have all the power - the sleazy, rapey hotel owner, the sleazy, rapey photographer, the sleazy, rapey designer. Ugh, and the women in this film just grovel before these men, completely submissive, and then they turn on one another! So, no empowerment here. Honestly, Abbey Lee, who for some reason signed on for this even though it is kind of an insult to her and her kind, is 29 and still modelling, still successful, still looks amazing, and yet, in this film it's the same old same old 'You are past it once you hit 21' line.
Not sure why everyone is so offended by the necrophilia scene - I thought that was about the only self-aware scene in the whole film, the only scene that acknowledged this is a pretty silly movie.
So, this is definitely not going to knock Suspiria off it's perch any time soon. Argento knew he was making trash, he embraced it and Suspiria is a classic for just that reason. It didn't try to be something it isn't. See this for the colours and the costumes, mostly it just bored me.
Pacific Rim Uprising (2018)
Dull and irritating
So, so dull. I assumed it would be bad since Del Toro wasn't involved, but I really hate sequels that just completely crap all over the characters and story set up in the first film. It is insulting that filmmakers think that the audience will just accept major changes to characters and story without question. We are not stupid. And, by the way, one of the things I loved about the first film, and it's a pretty significant and obvious thing, is robots fighting Kaiju. Why in the name of all that is holy would you just pretty much leave out the Kaiju?!?!?! Isn't that the whole freaking concept of this?! If I want to see robots fighting robots I'll watch the first Transformers film. This was bad, boring and irritating.
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Perfection
There are just not enough stars to express how much I loved this movie. Wes Anderson has done it yet again.
Hereditary (2018)
Amazing and genuinely scary
Very best horror film I have seen in a long, long time. This is old school horror, it's very much in the style of Rosemary's Baby and The Sentinel, but even better. More story, less jump scares and gore. But it's still seriously scary, but the scares are earned, and necessary. I cannot say enough good things about this movie. Bravo.
Game Night (2018)
Fun
Really fun. Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman have great on-screen chemistry and it elevates the whole thing.
Red Sparrow (2018)
Exploitative and boring
This looks good but it's exploitative and boring. If you are not interested in seeing Jennifer Lawrence take her clothes off repeatedly, then there isn't much else to hold your attention.
Johnny English Strikes Again (2018)
Mostly bad
Apart from one extremely funny scene involving virtual reality, this was not very good. It's about the same as the last two. A bit of a waste of the talent that is Rowan Atkinson. Even he doesn't like these films very much.