Bria Lou Reviews

  The Fantastic Four face their biggest challenge when they have to defend Earth from an otherworldly villain. I can't lie, this isn't the Superhero movie that I was most looking forward to this year. After seeing and absolutely loving Superman and Thunderbolts* , I didn't know if I'd love this in the same way. Going into it, I wasn't a huge fan of all the casting choices, and feeling like the only person who absolutely loved the 2005 version and its sequel, I guessed that I might have mixed feelings about this one. And that's exactly what happened. I really liked the opening. You need absolutely no context to understand who these people are or what happened to them. The film tells you everything you need to know. I found the dialogue and character speech patterns hard to get used to. At the beginning, this all felt disingenuous to me - they were speaking like TV presenters and it really hit my ear the wrong way. But either I got used to this or it toned itself...

  Before Spider-Man: No Way Home came out, I watched every Spider-Man movie back to back so I could be as prepared as possible for all the potential cameos and returning characters. Before that I had only seen one of Andrew Garfield's (and of course all of Tom Holland's), so it was only Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man that I was experiencing for the first time. And because of that, his three movies kind of blurred into one. So when I saw that this one was on the list, I was looking forward to seeing it again - not only so I could differentiate it from the other two movies, but also because I genuinely liked it! I know that origin stories have been a bit played out and have become a bit stale lately, but for me you can't beat a good origin story, and the background of the creation of Peter Parker into Spider-Man is one of the best origin stories out there. It's particularly great to go through the process of Peter developing powers with him, learning as he does. We feel a...

  30 years after an accident derailed his racing career, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) returns to racing alongside rookie hotshot Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). This film wasn't really on my radar until I saw that it was being favourably compared to Ford v Ferrari, which I like more each time I rewatch it. I liked this film. All of the characters had great introductions - we get to know and care about them really quickly, which lasts for the entirety of the film. You don't have to be particularly interested in driving, racing or F1 to enjoy the film, because the characters are enjoyable in themselves. But I would guess that any lovers of F1 will really love this story. Saying that, if you're not into the driving, then those scenes might not be of any interest to you - but the more character-driven scenes are entertaining enough on their own. Pitt and Idris have great chemistry. The entire cast is great (the film also stars Kerry Condon and Javier Bardem amongst a great supporting ...

  Struggling author June Hayward has always been in the shadow of Athena Liu, her much more successful writer friend. So when Athena dies in a freak accident, and June happens to find her unfinished masterpiece, why shouldn't she publish it as her own? It's still helping Athena, right? And when the situation spirals out of control, shouldn't June do whatever it takes to protect her fake reputation? It's been a while since I've written a book review! I was looking forward to reading this book so much, I'd heard great things about it and couldn't wait to get stuck in. I liked this book. I knew the plot but I didn't really know what to expect. The introduction was really great. Not only are we told a lot about Athena, but in the narration about Athena we also found out exactly what kind of person June is. June is a great unlikeable protagonist. Everything she tries to justify makes us as the reader roll our eyes, but we can't stop reading because her vo...

  I was really looking forward to this one - as I was practically all the horror movies on the bucket list. I saw this film years ago - I've seen the spoofs, I've seen the original Japanese version (Ringu), I love this story. I'm actually surprised the Japanese version wasn't the one featured on the list, but I love them both so I don't mind which I get to watch again. The concept of the film is so interesting and unique, particularly for the time the original was made. The idea itself is so simple that it could have played out in a thousand different ways, and most of those ways would have made for a bad film. But this film does great things with the concept, and gets so much right that it's considered a classic. The cast is great. Naomi Watts leads the film so well, Martin Henderson and David Dorfman do an amazing job, and Daveigh Chase is iconic as our 'villain' Samara - all of the other actors are great too but these four completely make the film. It...

  I hadn't seen this film in years before seeing it on the bucket list, so I was interested to see it again after a long time. I used to be a really big Harry Potter fan, and while my love for it started to wane before the 6th movie came out, I've seen the first 5 probably at least 50 times each. Watching it again after so long made things fun but also familiar enough that I could slot right back into it. This film is iconic. That's it - iconic. All of the movies are great, but there's something about an origin that just holds a certain amount of magic, and this is no exception.  The cast is fantastic! The child actors are all most famous for being in these movies, and it's so fun to go back and see them when they were young - they're babies! And they do such an amazing job playing these parts that it's a shame more of them didn't go on to have robust careers. But the ones that did, you can see exactly why. But that's not to say the adult actors aren...

  Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team race to find an artificial intelligence with the power to destroy the world. I can't say that I was especially excited for this one. I love the Mission Impossible movies, but of them all, the one before this was the only one that I couldn't really remember. So seeing part two of that story wasn't something I was really looking forward to - but I was excited to see the end of the franchise. This film was fine. I didn't love it, and it's definitely not the best of the franchise. But it wasn't bad! For a start, the theme of AI is so relevant to today's world, so it was really interesting to see the film lean into this more than in the first part. The opening of the movie is great - it calls back to the rest of the franchise, it reminds us why we're here and why we love these stories. And while I may be a bit tired of these stories now, I'll never get tired of these characters. The new additions are great but the on...