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Stand By Me | 100 Movies Bucket List

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  This was another recent re-watch. I watched this movie for the first time last year and loved it, so I was really happy it was on the Bucket List so I could watch it again. Although funnily enough, my first ever experience of it was a Family Guy parody, in the same episode where they parodied 'The Shawshank Redemption', so that episode definitely had an impact on me! But anyway, I was really excited to see the film again. And for some reason, I loved it even more the second time than the first time. Everything was just perfect. The acting, the story, absolutely everything.  Even though I already knew everything that happened, I was glued to the screen and completely fell in love with the characters all over again. I understand why a lot of the movies on the Bucket List are considered classics, but so far this is the most deserving of that title to me (with Shawshank a very close second). There's not much more to say about this - it's a perfect film. If you haven't

Book Review #125: Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

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When Bea gets a job working for NASA she is thrilled - even if that means working with her grad school nemesis, Levi. But when her equipment starts going missing, and no one listens to her, she finds that Levi starts to become an ally and, even more shockingly, a friend. But is friendship the only thing on Levi's mind? I bought this book last year after reading and absolutely loving 'The Love Hypothesis' by the same author. I liked it so much I wanted to check if it was a fluke, or if I just love this author. Thankfully it was not a fluke, because I loved this book too! At first I felt like I was reading about the characters from TLH, and that was a bit jarring (it was almost like reading fanfiction about them), but it was also nice because it allowed me to have a level of comfort with the characters from the very beginning. But eventually this feeling went away and this story became its own thing entirely, while being equally enjoyable. It was very predictable, but that

Groundhog Day | 100 Movies Bucket List

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  Next up was Groundhog Day! This was a weird one for me. I only saw this for the first time last year. I was unwell, up at 3am with nothing to watch, so I put this on and enjoyed it. I didn't love it, but I had a really good time with it and knew that I'd probably watch it again with or without the Bucket List. This time around though, for some reason, I liked it a lot less. I don't know what it was. The concept was fine (and I generally tend to like time-loop movies), but I just couldn't gel with the characters - particularly Phil, who I hated this time around. I don't know what it was! And while I should probably give it another watch, I don't know if my feelings are going to change again. And that being said, I do like the story, and the first time I watched it I did like the characters (although I never really had a soft spot for Phil). I can kind of understand why it's on the Bucket List (though as I've said before, the amount of romance movies on

Night Swim | Film Review

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  When a family moves into a new house, they soon find that the house's history has led to hidden terrors in the depths of the backyard swimming pool. I'll always give Blumhouse movies a chance, especially because so many of them are the reason why I love horror as much as I do. So even though I wasn't 100% sold on the premise, I definitely wanted to see it. This film was what I thought it would be, in that it wasn't good at all. It never makes the audience care about the characters - it got to the point where the only character that I could actively root for was the evil pool! Because the pool was the only thing about the film that wasn't bland. None of the characters were interesting, and the events of the film weren't particularly interesting either. One of the reasons the characters didn't work was because there wasn't a lot of effort put into their backstories. So when the film tried to make us care about them, it was too late. While the film is und

The Oscars 2024: My Wishes and Predictions

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I'm so happy to be back writing Oscars posts! I took a break for the last few years, mainly due to the pandemic, and then found it hard to get back in the groove. But this year I decided to get back into it and I'm so glad! So as I've done previously, I'll be going through some of the categories (only the ones where I've seen most (if not all) of the nominated movies) and going through what I think will win, what I hope will win, and why. And as usual, I'll start by ranking the Best Picture nominees according to my personal preference. Click each nominee to be taken to my review of the film. 10. Barbie 9. The Zone of Interest 8. Maestro 7. Oppenheimer 6. American Fiction 5. Anatomy of a Fall 4. Past Lives 3. Killers of the Flower Moon 2. The Holdovers 1. Poor Things This year has been a bit of a weird one in that I gave so many of these movies the same, or very similar, scores, so many of these rankings are interchangeable. It's definitely been a great year

Alien | 100 Movies Bucket List

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Next up for the Bucket List was Alien. This was technically a re-watch, but I'd only seen it once a really long time ago and remembered nothing, so it was more like a first-time watch. I've mentioned before that sci-fi isn't really my genre of choice, so I wasn't particularly looking forward to this one (though I did want to watch it). Unfortunately I found it just okay, and it might be worth re-watching in the future. I liked the film once everything actually got going - the acting was great, the idea was great and the design of the alien was iconic. But I found the first hour of the film quite slow with not much happening, and because of that, it didn't really hold my interest. That being said, I did enjoy the overall film, and completely recognise how important it has been for the sci-fi genre (and for final girls - Ripley is one of the originals!). I might watch some of the sequels, but for this as a standalone, it wasn't my favourite.  

Bottoms | Film Review

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  Best friends PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) start a high school fight club to meet cheerleaders and lose their virginities. I'd heard so much about this film before seeing it. I missed it at the cinema but thankfully it's now on Amazon Prime Video so I could catch it! I had really high expectations and couldn't wait to see it. Unfortunately, I didn't like it as much as I wanted to, or as much as I thought I would. Though I did really like the premise. It took me a while to connect with the characters. And while I did end up connecting with some of them, there were others that I found really unlikeable the whole way through. Though that said, the supporting characters are underrated and generally funnier than the two main characters. There are a few genuinely funny moments, but I didn't find the overall film as funny as I wanted to, and I think that humour is really necessary for a story like this. So that was probably one of the reasons I didn't l