Bria Lou Reviews

  I can't believe Blogmas has come around again so quickly! It's the last Sunday of November, so Blogmas officially starts next week! My favourite part of the Christmas period has definitely become the film reviews I upload during Blogmas, so I'll be keeping with tradition and uploading a Christmas film review for the 24 days of December leading to Christmas. I'll be taking the movies from a variety of platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Paramount+ and Lifetime, so hopefully I'll find a variety of good ones! As always, I'll be rating movies using my Christmas rating system, but this year I've added a new category to rate movies against, thanks to last year's 'The Christmas Aunt'!. 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) My next pos

I've had this book for a while but I haven't been interested in reading romances lately. After reading a couple of darker books in a row, I was looking for something more fun and light-hearted, and came across this. Ph.D. candidate Olive is trying to convince her best friend Anh that she's in a relationship. To keep up the charade, in a panic, Olive kisses the first man she sees. Unfortunately, that man happens to be Adam Carlsen, the harshest professor at the university. So it's a surprise when he agrees to be Olive's fake boyfriend. But as the pair spend more time together to keep up the illusion, Olive finds that maybe she doesn't want the relationship to be fake anymore. I loved this book. I honestly didn't even expect to like it, so the fact that I completely loved it was a huge shock to me. From very early on I liked the characters more than I thought I would. And while I really liked Olive as a character, I loved Adam. Like, I was (and still am a litt

This is the prequel to the A24 film 'X', which I reviewed HERE . I liked X (though I needed to watch it twice to really get it), so I was looking forward to seeing Pearl. Pearl (Mia Goth) is stuck on her family's farm, tending to her father and fulfilling her mother's wishes, but she can't ignore her dreams. Soon Pearl realises that to make her dreams a reality, she must escape the life she's living. I liked this a lot, probably more than I liked X. I didn't know what to expect, so was pleasantly surprised. Even at the beginning of the film when not much is happening, it's a really entertaining watch. There is an undertone of fear and tension that runs through the entire film, but it takes a while to really feel like a horror. And even then, for me it never got into 'scary horror' and always sat more within dramatic thriller or even non-scary slasher territory. Pearl is a really interesting character. I loved seeing what turned her into the chara

I first heard of this film a while ago, but never really knew what it was about. However it had a few recognisable actors, and looked like it could be interesting. After losing her job, a single mother (Emily Blunt) begins working at a pharmaceutical company, not knowing the dangerous scheme she has just entered. I didn't like this movie, for quite a few reasons. One of them being that, having seen this movie a couple of days ago, I still feel like I haven't seen it because I have no idea what it was really about. The first thing I noticed, which completely took me out of the film, was that the accents were all over the place. It felt like these characters weren't even in the same state, let alone the same movie. At some points it was funny, but in others it was just confusing. Pharmaceutical sales is a boring topic for a movie if there's nothing else backing it up (like in 'Love & Other Drugs', the pharmaceutical storyline was second to the romance). This f

I'd been meaning to watch this for a while but didn't get the chance until it was released on Disney+. But I was really looking forward to seeing it. Therapist, Will Harper (Chris Messina) and his daughters are still reeling from the death of his wife. When a visiting patient leaves behind a dark entity that threatens the lives of Will and his children, they have to figure out how to fight it before it's too late. I liked this movie. It was kind of what I expected it to be, which isn't a bad thing. I liked the characters instantly, especially the daughters Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), who were well casted. The actors did a great job with them. The beginning of the story was quite generic, but it was interesting enough to keep me engaged. There were a few genuinely creepy scares, but too many of them ended with the characters acting like nothing had happened, which diminished them. It took a long time for anything meaningful to happen. The film

I don't have a lot of experience with the Evil Dead movies. I've seen one and I didn't really like it that much, which is why I didn't rush to see this one. But when it was released on Netflix, I decided to give it a try. The reunion of two estranged sisters is interrupted by flesh-possessing demons. I didn't like this film. I have no idea if that's because I'm not completely familiar with the franchise, but this film definitely wasn't for me. The opening scene was interesting, but that was pretty much the only thing I enjoyed. I would love to see a horror movie that's not caused by stupidity and bad decisions, but sadly, this isn't that. I never cared about any of the characters. So when things started happening, I wasn't particularly invested. Even with the suspension of disbelief, I didn't believe a single thing that happened. The events were too over the top, and the character's reactions just didn't work for me. I was very aw

  I was looking forward to seeing this film. The concept looked unrealistic and a bit stupid, but also fun and light. Plus, maybe because Josephine Langford was in it, but the trailer definitely gave me light 'After' vibes. Zoey (Josephine Langford) doesn't believe in the traditional view of love and thinks romantic love relies on compatibility. But everything changes when she is at the scene of an accident, where a boy develops amnesia and mistakenly believes she is his girlfriend. This was exactly what I thought it would be. Fun, light, and very unrealistic. The film begins by making fun of predictable rom-coms. Which would be fun, except it also feels exactly like the predictable rom-coms it's making fun of. And while that may have been the point, it would have been nice to see a bit more originality. As unrealistic, and at times stupid, as it felt, it was also very entertaining. I never felt like I really knew any of the characters, other than Zoey's love of sci

I had never heard of this film before it came out on the Sky Premiere channel, but it was a new horror, so of course I was going to watch it! While quarantining during the pandemic, Parker (Gideon Adlon) and her best friend Miri (Beth Million) are threatened by a mysterious assailant. I liked this film. It wasn't amazing, and I definitely had problems with it, but it was a successful slasher. The first death scene felt odd, but also quite original and modern. It's out of context, so we don't know anything about the characters, but it sets the tone of what the rest of the film is like. I loved the idea of setting a horror movie in the pandemic, and this film did that in an interesting way. I found that I never really cared about any of the characters. I liked them enough to be interested in the film, but not enough to be fully invested. I didn't really care what happened to them, so the non-horror elements didn't really have the desired effect. Other than the pandemi

I didn't know anything about this movie before it came out, but I'm always looking for new horror movies so I wanted to check this one out. Sam (Megan Suri) rejects her East Indian culture to fit in at school. But when her former best friend is attacked by a demonic spirit, she has to embrace her heritage to defeat it once and for all. I liked this film. It wasn't amazing, and I definitely had problems with it, but it also had a good, unique concept. At the beginning of the movie there was a lot of screaming and suspenseful music with not much happening, and after a while this made the screams and scares less effective. I love that it deals with the idea of identity, and uses horror to do that. I really liked the characters, especially Sam, who was a great protagonist to follow. Even though the film isn't that long, it moves slower than it needs to. At least 15 minutes could have been cut to make it a packed, interesting 85-minute movie. There were too many dream sequen

I was really excited to see this movie. I think it was a combination of becoming a huge Leonardo DiCaprio fan this year; this being a new Scorsese movie; and wanting to get back into the Oscars for next year (because I assume this will get a few nominations), but I went to see it as soon as I could. In the 1920s, the FBI investigates a series of murders that take place within the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County. I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear that this is a really good movie. Just hearing about the story is really powerful, so seeing it on screen completely amplifies that. Everything that happens is so meaningful, every line has power. One of the major criticisms of the film before it came out was the 3hr 26min runtime. And while I would have probably liked it to be shorter (I was definitely getting uncomfortable by the third hour), there was nothing that I'd cut. Everything that happened moved the story on and felt like it needed to be there. So I