Bria Lou Reviews

  Two couples experience strange occurrences after unknowingly booking a mansion at the same time. I heard really bad things about this movie. It was essentially snuck onto streaming with no promotion, the reviews were terrible and the premise was way too vague. But it was James McAvoy and another improvised movie, so I was down to see exactly how bad it could be. And as the reviews suggest, it is a bad one. This is the second James McAvoy improvised movie I've seen, and the first one wasn't great either but it did have a better plot than this one at least.  From the opening credits of the film I could already tell how slow it would be. And it remained this slow the entire way through. But the main issue with this is that it never captures your attention.  Despite being improvised. which you'd think would make the dialogue feel more authentic, it actually has the opposite effect. You can see the actors trying to come up with something to say next, you can hear the awkward...

I'd never heard of this film before, but after looking it up I really liked the premise, so I was looking forward to seeing it. I liked this film. Being that the film is a little over an hour, it's great to get into everything quickly. We know exactly what's going on, we have an idea of who these people are, and we're into the story right away. It does a great job of creating tension and genuine fear. We are scared for characters we don't even know. One of my favourite things about the film is that it's essentially a creature feature, which is a genre I love no matter what form it comes in. For a film made in the 40s, I thought the design of the leopard itself was great. If anything I just wanted to see a lot more of it. Because while the scenes with the leopard were great, there's quite a lot going on outside of it, and not all of it feels necessary to the story. It's so plot-driven that we don't need to know the characters to enjoy the story, so th...

  Maya is 23 and figuring out her life, Conor is 38 with everything figured out. When they become forced together to celebrate Maya's brother's destination wedding, Maya can't help but feel that a summer romance with Conor is exactly what she needs - even if it's problematic. I'd heard good things about this book, and as a Hazelwood fan it was always going to be on my list. That being said, because I didn't love the first book in the series, Not In Love, I was a bit sceptical. Unfortunately I didn't love this one either. That being said, I did like being back with the characters from the first book, particularly because we got to hear more from people who were only mentioned a few times in the first book. Though there were still some supporting characters that I wanted to hear more from. I also really liked the setting. The idea of taking the characters away from academia and work, and seeing a different side to them in a new environment was really interesti...

  It's Oscar day! I feel a lot more invested in this Oscar race than I have in previous years, which is really fun, but honestly I'll be glad when it's over, we know who's won, and twitter conversation can go back to ANYTHING else. Nevertheless, I'm excited to finally have a look at my predictions. As usual, I'll go through the categories where I've seen most or all of the nominees and highlight what I think will win, what I want to win, and why. But I'll start by ranking the Best Picture nominees: 10. Hamnet 9. F1 8. Marty Supreme 7. Bugonia 6. Frankenstein 5. Train Dreams 4. Sentimental Value 3. The Secret Agent 2. Sinners 1. One Battle After Another I scored a lot of these films around the 6-7.5 area and that feels accurate, as most of them felt just above average to me. Thankfully I really liked the majority of them, and the top two in particular are two of the best films I watched last year (unfortunately 'Weapons' wasn't nominated, or t...

  Two performers, Claire (Kate Hudson) and Mike (Hugh Jackman) form a Neil Diamond tribute band and soon begin to find connection in both the music, and each other. This isn't one that I thought I'd be writing an Oscar post about but there we are! I was looking forward to seeing this one, but the description was quite vague so I wasn't exactly sure what it was about. I liked this film more than I thought I would. For a start, Hudson and Jackman have great chemistry. They work really well with each other and it's fun to see them together. The singing sections of the film are great, even if you don't know the songs. But in the beginning, when it's just song after song after song, it feels like that's all there is to the film. So it's nice when the music slows down and we get to go deeper into the characters' lives. The first hour of the film felt too drawn out. It was more focused on the songs and didn't really let you get to know who these people ...

  In 1977, technology expert Armando (Wagner Moura) flees a troubled past and returns to his hometown of Recife, where he is forced to fight against corruption and political turmoil. And the last Best Picture nominee I needed to see! This was the film I knew the least about, and one of the only ones I could go into completely blind. The premise didn't give me as much as I wanted so I went in a bit apprehensive. I ended up really liking this movie, which I didn't expect! One of the first notes I wrote was that both the scenes and characters are given space to breathe. At 2hrs 40, this is one of the longer Best Picture nominees, but that time is used really well because the audience gets the chance to sit, breathe and live with these characters. And with that, the pacing it great, it doesn't feel nearly as long as it is. That being said, at the beginning it feels like characters are thrown at you every two minutes with no introductions, despite the clear importance they'r...