Bria Lou Reviews

It's Blogmas day 1 - officially (finally) December! After a snowstorm threatens to ruin Christmas, rival Marines Blair (Janel Parrish) and Josh (Parker Young) must team up to deliver Christmas presents. This one was fine - though I do wish I had started Blogmas with something else! It's always fun having an 'enemies to lovers' story, but this only works if the enemies part is really developed, so the audience actually believes that these two hate each other, and that wasn't true here. The story doesn't really get interesting until we see the respective characters with their families, where we see them truly open up and we can get to know them. As important as it is to see them together, I think more of them with other people would have been a huge benefit. The story itself is interesting, but it does take a while to get going.  It pushes the military theme a lot more heavily than Christmas. Yes that gives it an air of originality, but no one is watching this mov...

  It's almost time for Blogmas! I really do look forward to this time of year more and more, and a part of that is definitely due to the routine I've created watching and reviewing these Christmas movies. As usual, I'll be reviewing Christmas movies for the 24 days leading up to Christmas, starting from the first of December. They're from a variety of platforms and all made in or after 2020 so hopefully there should be some good ones in there. I'm about to watch day 5 as I write this earlier than usual, and so far the movies haven't been great so I'm really hoping they start to pick up! As always I'll be ignoring my usual ratings in favour of my Christmas rating system: Title (How original? How creative? How fun?) Originality (self-explanatory) Christmas Spirit (Is Christmas integral to the plot, or could the film's events have happened at any time of year?) Christmas Music (again, self-explanatory) And that's it - only a couple days to go! M...

  In 1986, Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) take a case that ends up being their last, as they face losing everything that matters. I'm always looking forward to the next Conjuring universe film, and because this is the last one of this branch, I was looking forward to it more than usual. Even though I didn't love the last Conjuring movie, I loved the first two so much that I really wanted to see how they would wrap things up. I really liked this movie! The opening was great, it takes us right back to the beginning and roots us firmly into Ed and Lorraine's world once again. There was something about this one that felt so much like the first, and I loved that. It's reminding us why we love these people and their stories so much, and it's smart to do that by making us reminisce about past movies we've loved. Thankfully, the story itself was really interesting. Movies like this run the risk of having the scares be the most important thing, bu...

  Finally, we've reached the last film! Technically 99 out of 100 but I'm not writing another post on Back to the Future, so this is the last bucket list post of the year! I saved this movie because it was probably the one I was most looking forward to re-watching. Of all the MCU movies, this one is definitely one of the best, and one of my favourites, so I always love when I get to see it again. The first thing I have to mention is the casting. As a group, I don't think there's ever been a more fitting casting that the actors we got for this movie. Whether you like them all individually or not, they completely embodied their characters and came together so well that you really believe in this team. And in saying that, I do really like all of the individual choices too. It's helpful that we were introduced to them in separate movies, so we got a chance to really get to know most of them before they came together, which is a key ingredient of these team-up movies (an...

  When Caitlyn (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) hires a new nanny, she finds that Polly (Maika Monroe) is not who she claims to be. I was in two minds about my excitement for this film, and that's mostly due to my love for the first one. It's not the most popular film, but I saw the first film when I was young and since then it has always been an important staple thriller in my home, so as interested as I was to see a remake, I was also really apprehensive about it. And I was right to be apprehensive because I have no idea why this was made. I tried to watch it without comparing it to the original but considering it's using the same idea and the same name, comparison is inevitable. The film never takes the time to develop any of the characters. Who are these people and why should we care about what might happen to them? And that's made even worse because while we don't really know them, we also don't know what their motivations are. We know that Polly is the antagonist...

  After a mother and son get into a car wreck, they and their family find themselves stalked by a revenge-seeking mutated deer. Another entry into the Twisted Childhood Universe! I was really excited for this film. Not only am I excited for all the TCU movies, but I'd heard this one was much better than the previous three. And while I am now completely used to, and actually enjoy, watching bad movies in support of this franchise, it was a welcome change for one to get some praise. And that praise was deserved because yes, this isn't a great movie, but it's a lot better than the ones that came before it! It begins with a really intriguing, creative animation that was a great way to connect this story to the original source material. From the very start the acting is leaps and bounds above the previous movies. For the most part, you believe the characters and their dialogue works. The story was actually really engaging - I was invested in finding out what was going to happen ...