The Book Forums

Guess who finally got off her lazy butt and did something… MEEE! :) I read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children a few years ago and, although the book was tedious at the beginning, I enjoyed it. When I heard about the movie coming out I was curious, especially when I heard Tim Burton was directing it. However, I didn’t plan on going out of my way to see the movie until I heard that it goes into the plot of, not only the first book, but also the second and third books. After becoming more interested in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children , I finally checked it out this weekend and… I really enjoyed it! Probably what surprised me the most is how accurate to the book the film was. I was expecting changes going in since I knew ahead of time that Emma’s peculiarity would be changed, but that was one of the biggest changes. With that said, I found that change odd, since it basically switched Emma and Olive’s peculiarities. Both characters still existed and served ...

Hello! Come continue on My Netflix Adventure with me as we discuss two 80s movies… The Shining and Blade Runner . I went into this movie with very different expectations than what I got. For some reason I was expecting this to be a more straight forward story of a man’s decent into madness, and while you get parts of that, you also get a completely different experience— a more confusing experience. I didn’t expect The Shining to have so many layers and be so confusing. While I still really enjoyed the movie for its atmosphere and brilliant score (it’s seriously amazing), I found plot points hard to follow. But these layers add to multiple viewings and theorizing about the movie. I will definitely be looking up more information about the details that I might’ve missed and maybe even rewatch The Shining in the future. I recommend The Shining for any horror or suspense fans or just anyone who wants a great atmospheric movie. It’s also just a great classic that more people sho...

Claustrophobia, Intensity, and doomsday shelters— time to review 10 Cloverfield Lane . After hearing about the great marketing for this movie that involved filming it all in secret then simply dropping the trailer in front of a movie for everyone to go crazy over, I knew I had to check it out. I was really excited going in, and the movie did not disappoint. It was full of intensity and suspense throughout always leaving the viewing guessing about motivations and what was true or not. Even until the third act the story is constantly twisting and turning. My only complaint is that in the last ten minutes it turns into a completely different movie and gets kind of cheesy. In retrospect, I understand more of why it turned to a completely different movie but it still got cheesy. All of the performances in 10 Cloverfield Lane were great and added to the experience. John Goodman does a brilliant job of portraying this crazy guy that you don’t know if he is telling the truth or n...

Hello lovely people! Time for me to continue My Netflix Adventure with an amazing movie musical that I rented from Amazon, Sweeney Todd . Prior to this, my only experience of Johnny Depp was in the Pirates 0f the Caribbean movies, which is a good performance for the first movie but goes downhill fast. Recently I had been hearing a lot of people saying that Depp was good in other movies such as Sweeney Todd ; then as I became more interested in musicals, people told me I had to watch Sweeney Todd . I put it off for a few weeks before finally giving in and renting the movie from Amazon and I’m so glad I did! The music in Sweeney Todd w is brilliant! Stephen Sondheim’s music works amazingly throughout the movie and the cast sounds perfect in their roles! The Score adds greatly to the atmosphere of scenes and enhances the viewing experience greatly. Definitely check out the soundtrack— it’s AMAZING! The plot of Sweeney Todd is a great revenge story that reminded me of T...

Studio Producers have still not realized that splitting finales into two parts does not increase the quality of the movie— but it does increase the money in their pocket! And that’s why they’re going to keep doing it. The finale for The Hunger Games series finally here with a strong... meh! The trailers made Mockingjay Part 2 look intense and like a strong finale but the movie itself sort of fell flat. Parts were intense but the intensity falls apart by coincidences, plot holes, and characters acting out of character as soon as you started thinking about it. As soon as Mockingjay started it wasted no time letting the audience know that it would be making Gale into a war hungry butt-face. The book made this same choice but no one I know is a fan of that choice so translating it so faithfully to the screen was not the best choice. It makes me question if the rebels are letting this war get to them or not and if some of them truly had the right intentions. And I feel that was th...

Netflix is a magical thing— most people will agree with that! At the moment I’m using Netflix to catch up many movies that I haven’t seen before and want to watch now (whether it be because I was too young when it came out, or I just missed it in theaters). With that said you can be expecting some shorter movie reviews for these movies that I’m watching on Netflix. Below will be reviews for the movies that I have already watched on Netflix up to now. I have seen a few of M. Night Shyamalan’s later movies but I had never seen The Sixth Sense so I decided that it was time! I highly enjoyed the movie which was full of suspense and shock. I recommend it for EVERYONE! I watched this movie immediately after The Sixth Sense and it was everything I expected and more! It was full of intense action, with commentary mixed in throughout. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time since I actually grew to love some of these characters. I recommend Snowpiercer for EVERYONE (...

Hello my fellow readers, movie watchers, and TV addicts! So this week I had the fortunate opportunity of watching The Martian . I had been seeing posters for this movie everywhere so I was looking forward to it for a little while, so when I saw reviews coming out I rushed to go see it. And it did not disappoint. The tone of The Martian was much different than I expected, since I was expecting a more serious tone (this could be since I did not watch any trailers but I’m glad I didn’t because it allowed me to be surprised throughout the movie). But do not get me wrong, I LOVED the funny moments and I thought Matt Damon pulled them off nicely. His character actually reminded me of if Chris Pratt’s character from Parks and Recreation got stranded on Mars (with the exception of the fact that Chris Pratt’s character would fall in a crater and die in a matter of seconds… XD). The story was mostly strong as it was led by great characters. It was very interesting to see the switc...

Hello! I hope my amazing readers had a great Fourth of July (or random Saturday for the nonamericans). I spent my day watching Inside Out , the new Pixar movie! I’ve been looking forward to this one after hearing amazing thing after amazing thing about it from online reviewers… And after having seen the movie I think that I would rewatch it when it comes on DVD. People are saying that this is the best Pixar movie and even the best movie of the year so far— I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I did enjoy it! Inside Out is full of fun characters with interesting personalities. I really liked to see these characters (or emotions ) play off of each other’s personalities which lead to great dialogue and jokes! All of the characters in this movie feel real and they were fun to watch. As I said, they play off of each other really nicely and it works well with the plot and the world of Inside Out . People are saying that this movie is more of a movie for adults and, in a way, I’d ...

So yesterday I finally got the chance to see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl ! I’ve been looking forward to this movie ever since I saw the trailer. After the trailer got me interested I read the book which was great and I’m glad I read it! (You can find that review HERE). Then the author (Jesse Andrews), the director (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon), and the two lead actors (Thomas Mann and Olivia Cooke) were at BookCon! I went to that panel and it was GREAT! Making me even more excited to see the movie! So now I’ve finally seen Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and… it was AMAZING! It captures the spirit of the book in the characters and taking the best parts of the books and leaving out what didn’t work as well. The movie stays faithful to the book in the spirit of the character and how they talk and act. It changes some things towards the end but I think that was for the better! The changes flowed well in the story making me more of a fan of the ending. The acting and the directing was al...

Hey guys! It has been a while since I’ve done a movie post so I guess it’s time for a movie review! I finally had the chance to see Whiplash , A critically acclaimed movie from last year staring Miles Teller and J. K. Simmons. The movie follows Miles Teller’s character, a drummer who joins a tough band class lead by J. K. Simmons. J. K. Simmons is an extremely tough and honestly just cruel teacher— he screams in students faces and even throws a chair at them. But as the movie goes on you see Miles Teller’s perseverance and his need to prove to himself that he can do this and show everyone else that he can too. It was a great movie and I’m glad I had the chance to see it! Part of the reason I love Whiplash so much is because it’s so relatable. I am in band so the whole time all I was thinking about was ‘what if my band director did this?’ ‘What if my band director threw chairs at people?’ luckily my band director is much nicer that. I can also relate to wanting to the need to ...

Hello guys! So this weekend I went go see Avengers 2 Age of Ultron , and I really liked it! I want it to come out on DVD already so I can buy the blu ray! (Because there’s going to be a full 3 hour cut of the movie on it!). Since I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, I think I should say that I remember enjoying the first Avengers movie but (honestly) I haven’t seen it since it first came out. But since I enjoyed The Avengers , I had high expectations for Age of Ultron , and it met those expectations! MINOR SPOILERS WILL BE BELOW THIS POINT! First let’s talk about the characters, and OMG HAWKEYE HAS A CHARACTER! I think I squealed when you saw Hawkeye’s family— I just never pictured Hawkeye having this simple life back home with a wife and kids… it was great. (I guess I have to stop making jokes about him now…) Someone else that the movie tried to develop was Natasha (Black Widow). I say ‘try’ because I feel like the movie just teases her backstory; it gives the audiences p...

Hey guys. I just got back from seeing Insurgent so you know what that means; it’s time for a review! This one is going to be pretty quick because I felt like this movie was pretty ehh. I might rewatch it one day but I won’t be rushing to rewatch it. The action in the movie looked a lot better than it did in the trailer, and the simulations looked neat (the terrible green screen aside), but sadly the characters were one dimensional and the secondary characters said all of two words. As I was saying above, the action actually looked pretty good and kept me interested. Some of the scenes could’ve actually been intense, but this leads to the problem that I didn’t care about any of the characters. All the characters were just one dimensional and had no personality. I didn’t get attached to any of them so when something almost happened to a character, I couldn’t bring myself to care too much. And the secondary characters said about two lines in the whole movie! I was so excited to ...

Hey guys it’s Meagan and today I’m here to talk about The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies . I want to start this by saying that I have read The Hobbit book but that won’t really play into if I like the movie because, it’s a movie. I also wanted to say that I have not seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, but we’ll bring that up later. So I’d say that this was a good one-time watch but I don’t see myself rewatching it for any reason unless it’s just TV and I have nothing better to watch. But I would say that it was my favorite of The Hobbit movies and the one that I had the most fun with. My main problem with the other two movies is that they have to stretch scenes that should be four or five minutes at max, out to be ten minute scenes because they need the run time to be long enough. Then by the time said scene was over, I just didn’t care about what was happening anymore because it had been going on for so long. But luckily I feel like they didn’t have near as mu...

So I'm back from seeing Mockingjay Part 1, and my initial thoughts ate that I really enjoyed it! For any of you who don't know, Mockingjay is my least favorite of the books so I was kind of cautious going into this movie but it surpassed my expectations! First, can we talk about that acting! Jennifer Laurence did an AMAZING job and her chemistry with Liam was great too! While Gale is not my favorite, I really liked getting to see their relationship grow and the two of them bond. Josh Hutcherson also did a great job of making you sympathize for his character. This movie also had a ton of character development! I feel like since everyone is just in a new situation (district 13) it causes their character to grow and develop. I can’t wait to see that continue in Part 2, as well as see more of my favorite characters! Another thing I really loved in this movie was the score. I normally don’t notice score in movies (and that’s something I’m trying to get better at) but I ...