The Book Forums

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...

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...

Hello! Welcome to the next stop on my Netflix movie watching adventure! If you don’t know what I’m talking about then click HERE and find out! This weekend I watched two very different movies, The Bourne Identity and 2001: A Space Odyssey . I actually only finished watching The Bourne Identity this weekend since I had started it the weekend before; I really enjoyed it! The action was great and intense and the story was interesting and immersive. I knew basis of the story going in so it makes me wonder how my viewing experience would have been different if I hadn’t known about the Bourne character going in. Overall, I recommend for everyone; especially fans of action, or someone who wants to watch a more grounded spy movie. I had been eyeing this one on Netflix for a week or two just out of curiosity and because it’s directed by Kubrick. This was my first Kubrick movie and I actually enjoyed it! I was worried going in that I would have trouble picking up on the plo...

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! Today instead of the usual Goodreads Monday post and talking about books that I haven’t read, I am going to show off a book that I have read! When I was looking through my Goodreads list to find a book to talk about today Me and Earl and the Dying Girl really stood out as a book that I’m still thinking about! Both the book and the movie were superb, with great characters, and unique storytelling! Jesse Andrew has such a quirky since of humor that comes out great in both the book and the movie (which was WRITTEN by him). Due to Jesse Andrews writing the screenplay, the  spirit  and themes of the book were captured SO WELL in the movie and it made a great experience for both fans of the book and movie fans alike. If you haven’t checked out Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (the book or the movie), you should go out right now and read/ watch it! You won’t regret it! Keep Reading… Meagan!

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 ...

We all have those favorite books that get turned it movies. You hear about the movie, you hold out hope that it’ll be good, but when you go see it; you are hopelessly disappointed. That has fueled my idea for a discussion today; books turned movies that deserve a second chance to be a better movie. Percy Jackson So I’m starting this one off with the obvious answer. These are fun adventure books with a great story and even better characters! The series also has a built-in fan base so it’s guaranteed to make money (and you know what executives what… MONEY MONEY MONEY!). Now the built-in fan base could’ve been the movie’s down fall to begin with because Hollywood thought, Hey! People already like this! They’ll see it whether it’s good or bad! We don’t have to put any effort into this! But if Hollywood put the effort into making a Percy Jackson movie, it could definitely be good! City of Bones My next pick should be obvious for any fans of this series. While the City of Bon...

Hey guys it’s Meagan and today I’m here to talk about something kind of difficult (at least it is for me), starting books. This applies to TV shows and movies too, but the hardest part of reading any book for me, is getting through those first few pages. But the question is why are those first few pages, or first few minutes of a movie so hard to get through? Well I believe it’s because at that point the world and characters still feel foreign to you; you, as a reader, are not familiar with the characters or the author’s writing style yet. This could have something to do with why people put so many books down so early on in them. They just don’t get far enough into them to start enjoying them yet. I often dread starting new TV shows because I know that I’m going to have to spend time getting used to this new world and characters. But, of course, that’s also a good thing because it’s new characters that you care about! Do any of you also have this problem? Comment and tell m...

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...

Hey guys it’s Meagan and THE INSURGENT TRAILER DROPED TODAY! Okay so before I get into talking about the trailer I thought I’d share a little background. I didn’t love the Divergent movie, but I definitely didn’t not like it! I thought the director and actors did a good job and it was a solid movie. I even had some hope for Insurgent ! Then the teaser trailer came out and I was like ‘Okay, they’re doing something different. That’s cool!’ But the more clips were released, the more I noticed small things (that I will get into later), but more importantly I noticed that the style felt completely different from Divergent ; there was no way this was the same guy who directed Divergent . So I looked it up on IMDB and, what do you know! It’s a new director! I looked at his filmography and it looked like a lot of mediocre and some bad. There go a lot of my hopes for this movie! But when I got home from school today, I still took out my phone and watched the trailer. Below are my though...

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 ...

Hello guys, so yesterday Rick Yancey posted this on his Instagram… Epp! This is exciting news! The 5 th Wave movie will be released on January 29, 2016! Whew! That’s so far away! But the good news is that they will be taking their time with the project! As of now we don’t have too much information; we have our writer (Susannah Grant) and director (J Blakeson). We also have our Cassie (Chloë Grace Moretz), our Ben (Nick Robinson) and our Evan (Alex Roe). Now I don’t know much about these actors except Chloë Grace Moretz, who was Carrie in the Carrie remake, and is Mia in the If I Stay movie! From what I can tell, she looks great as Mia and I’m excited to see her as Cassie! That’s all the 5 th Wave news we have right now, but I’m excited to see who else joins the cast and where they go with the movie! Who would you like to see join The 5 th Wave cast and who would they play? *All casting information was taken from IMDB.com*