Bria Lou Reviews

Hey Guys x This is another film that I watched on a whim after seeing it on Netflix, so if you want to check it out, you know where to find it! I don't usually review every single film I see, and I didn't think I'd be reviewing this one. But after watching it twice, there's a lot that I want to say. Former policeman and single father Phil Logan (Patrick Flueger) gets a job as the superintendent of a New York apartment building. However, when the building's residents begin to disappear with no explanation, it falls to Logan to discover the truth. First of all, if you couldn't tell, this film is a horror movie. In many horror movies, the opening scene sets the tone for what kind of movie it will be, how scary the movie will be, and whether the director is servicing scares or a story. The opening scene of this movie was so well done! As someone who spends a lot of her time watching horror movies, the opening scene pulled me right in and definitely made me...

Hey Guys x This is the third year in a row that I've done this post, and I'm no less excited to watch the award show on Sunday night/morning. So, as I've done before, in this post I'll be giving my opinions and predictions on who should and will win the big awards come Sunday night. And I'll be talking about the films that I've seen at least a majority of the films, so some categories are getting left out. I've seen and reviewed all the Best Picture nominees, so I'll be ranking them here and, if you click each one, you can go to my review of it. 8. Vice 7. Roma 6. Bohemian Rhapsody 5. BlacKkKlansman 4. Black Panther 3. The Favourite 2. A Star Is Born 1. Green Book This was really hard because in all honesty, 6-1 could have been in any order because I really loved all of those films! Best Picture Prediction:  Roma Wish:  Green Book, A Star Is Born or The Favourite I picked three because I couldn't decide. To be honest...

Hey Guys x Although this isn't nominated for Best Picture, I thought I'd get it up before the Oscars (this Sunday!). I'll also be putting up a post all about the Oscars before Sunday, so look out for it! 'If Beale Street Could Talk' tells the story of Tish and her fiancé Fonny. They've been friends all their lives, and know that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. However, their plans change when Fonny is arrested for a crime that he didn't commit. This film feels extremely real from the offset - these are real conversations between real people, and it shows in the words used and the actors' actions. It's authentic all the way through, particularly in terms of the voice-over. Not only is it really effective, but you get to know the character of Tish intimately. Every time she speaks, it feels like she's speaking directly to you. The way that the film is written, directed and edited is great. A lot of times, when a non-l...

Hey Guys x This is the last film that I needed to review, so after this, I'm completely done with the Oscar Best Picture nominees. This year there's actually been a really good selection of movies and I can't wait for Oscar night! Bohemian Rhapsody tells the story of Queen, one of the biggest and best rock bands in the entire world. We follow lead singer Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) through the ups and downs of his life, including Queen becoming a household name in time for the largest rock concert in history, Live Aid. There's something intensely real about this film. While it doesn't seem to over-inflate the high moments, it also doesn't shy away from the low moments. We see how happy Freddie is on stage, and then we see him go back to his empty house and try to pretend that he's not insanely lonely. It's euphoric and heart-rending at the same time, and these conflicting feelings really work, as they are feelings that are replicated throughout ...

Hey Guys x This is the second-to-last film that I needed to see before I've seen all of this year's Oscar Best Picture nominees - because it took such a long time to come out in the UK! Nevertheless, I've seen it now and I can't wait to review it! Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) is an Italian-American bouncer with a tendency to solve his problems with violence. After finding himself unemployed, he takes a job as a driver for Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), an African-American pianist who is touring the Deep South. While at first these two seem like complete opposites, they manage to develop a friendship while dealing with cultural differences and prevalent racism in 1962. I was surprised by how much I liked this film. When a film comes out and instantly gets loads of accolades before being released to the general public, sometimes that means that it speaks more to critics than to audiences, which can also tend to be the case with widely nominated films. Fortunately...

Hey Guys x I'm almost finished with the Oscar Best Picture nominees, and this is one that snuck up on a lot of people, including me. To be honest, it's probably the only nominee that I wouldn't have ever seen if it wasn't nominated - but just like previous years, films that you wouldn't have watched otherwise end up completely surprising you. Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) has been picked as George W. Bush's (Sam Rockwell) running mate in the 2000 presidential election. While he has a wealth of political knowledge and experience, Cheney's methods aren't what everyone expects. And when a man like Cheney gets a vast amount of power, you see exactly what he's willing to do with it. The first thing I have to talk about are the actors that portray these characters. Christian Bale, Amy Adams (as Lynne Cheney) and Steve Carell (as Donald Rumsfeld) are all completely unrecognisable in these roles, both physically, and in the fact that these are roles t...

Hey Guys x I owned this book for ages before I even thought about picking it up (it was given as a gift to my mum, who hasn't read it yet) but after watching the film version of the same name twice, I decided to pick it up and see what I thought of it, compared with the film. Susan Morrow has been divorced from Edward Sheffield for 20 years, so the last thing she expects to receive in the mail is a copy of his new novel. Reading it, she discovers a terrifying story that shakes her to her core. But how could Edward, the man she once knew, have written a story this distressing? And why did he send it to her? I loved this book. For the whole time that I was reading it I had to force myself to put it down because it was so easy to get invested in, and because the chapters were quite short (about 10 pages each), it was so easy to say 'just one more chapter'. First of all, I have to talk about the way that it was written, because in my opinion, it's the kind of book...

Hey Guys x Here's a film that's probably going to win more than a few Oscars, and as it's on Netflix, I'm pretty sure this will be the first Oscar win for a Netflix original movie, which would be really cool. The film is about a woman called Cleo who is a housekeeper/maid for an upper-middle-class family in Mexico City, including the many challenges she faces, and the way that her life tends to parallel the life of her boss, Sofia. As you can tell from the description, the story isn't complicated or hard to understand - it's what's done with this simple premise that makes it stand out amongst other nominated films. First of all, the pace of the film's opening mirrors the slowness, repetition and perhaps tedium of Cleo's domestic work - a pace that is consistent throughout the film. It is particularly interesting to see the life of a wealthy family through the eyes of 'the help' - bringing the background to the foreground. In a lot...

Hey Guys x This film came out today on Netflix, and I wanted to see it and review it as soon as possible. The trailer was so intriguing that I was literally counting down the days until it came out. After a man dies and his paintings are discovered, rather than them being destroyed, as he wished, the paintings are put on display and sold. But these paintings have a special supernatural quality - the ability to exact revenge on everyone that has profited from his work. Can anyone work out what's happening before it's too late? From the offset, you never quite know where you stand with this film. From the first minute, there's a sense of surrealism, but you can't quite put your finger on why. The setting seems completely ordinary, and yet there's something slightly off, which sets a tone for the rest of the film. You never quite know what you're getting, or how much of the film you should take at face value. In a similar vein, from the beginning, it feel...