JB & The Chop Do: Scream 4 (2011)

After taking such a long hiatus – and relieving the public of my constant shame – I want to say that I have had a shitload of fun doing this again, JB. Thanks for not giving up on me :  ) I haven’t exactly loved these Scream movies BUT I didn’t grow up on them like you did. I wonder what we can pick next… maybe something older – like ME! I remember the 90s as my young 20s when I moved out of my mom’s and went to college and had to start paying bills and shit and working 90 hours a week (for real). Those aren’t my fondest memories CRY CRY CRY. But, with that, I had to say this was probably my favorite one of the bunch… *walks slowly backwards out of the room….

SYNOPSIS: Ten years have passed, and Sidney Prescott, who has put herself back together thanks in part to her writing, is visited by the Ghostface Killer. – via IMDB

What made me like it the most out of the four? It came out in 2011 so it was a little more modern. It was definitely much  more gory,  #guts . Dewey seems to be back to his role as an inept #dingdong . I know the cast is principally the same but I liked the cameos. This came out right when True Blood was popular so I wonder how much they had to pay Anna Paquin and her #legs to be in this for two minutes? I also liked the fact that the killer made sense this time even though I still think the costume is not #tits . If you don’t get that reference, you can search my site for the three page explanation of how that term came into my life. Searching that word on my site will take you to probably 1000 of the 1300+ posts out there. Go find it and get back to me here. Maybe you’ll win a prize! A #booby prize!

Plus – Marley Shelton??? #??????????? any movie with her in it gets extra marks from me.

I also like Emma Roberts. I don’t think JB does but I do – I really liked her in Scream Queens.

You know what I didn’t like? This asshole’s hairdo. (Not the chick). A man’s hair should never blow in the wind! #fuckinhippies

I also really liked the publicist:

Where have I seen her before??? OH YEAH! She’s one of the leads from GLOW!

I loved that show! Bring on season two! More #spandex and #chickfights and #cleavage and #bighair and #showerscenes . #hashtag

I always try and end these runs with a nice thank you to the beloved JB, not that that happens consistently but… even though JB and I live on different continents, if it ever came down to it, and I was a zombie:

It gives It permission to end It without repercussions. It does not want It to end It in any way, but It saw this image and it made It think of It.

Always love,

It

And here we are, the final movie. Thank you all for sticking with us, reading, commenting, everything. As always, we appreciate it! It’s been a blast, and hopefully we will be back soon with something new!

I think that this is a damn fine entry to the series, especially after so many years passing in between. More solid than the last, that is for sure, and I really liked how it took the concept of Scream and modernised it to cellphones, vlogging, etc. So much has changed! I will always be a fan of the fact that the same cast has always returned for their roles, it just gives the whole experience a more cohesive and authentic feeling, which is awesome. I really like how these movies are all solid – truly, how many franchises can say that they have so many entries and that they are all well worth watching? *cough* Amityville *cough*

Thank goodness Cox’s hair was sorted out – Scream 3 did her no wonders whatsoever, and whoever styled her hair with that fringe should have been shot. Seriously. Her and Dewey being together is adorable, and I will not lie, that blonde woman, Hicks, who was hitting on Dewey? Really made me angry Stay away or go find an available man, hooker! Even though the Chop thinks she is hot. Which is fine. But she must back off the Gale/Dewey thing!

And yes, the Chop is 100% right – I am still not sold on Emma Roberts. Even her face just looks like a spoiled brat to me, and she always comes across like that, too. Ugh. She isn’t even that great an actress (or I have yet to see her in anything where she wows me, at any rate).

Scream 4 brings on the slashing, the guts, the gore, some humour, more movie references than you can shake a stick at and all most all of our favourite characters. *cough cough* no Randy ;( The rules have been updated, too, for a more modern set, and it works for this. When this first came I just didn’t watch it, because… well… what if it didn’t end well? When I finally got to it I was pleasantly surprised, and definitely rank this over Scream 3.

I almost died when they tried to call Rory Culkin’s Charlie Walker this generation’s Billy Loomis. Are you freaking kidding me?????? Are you?????? I mean I get the updating and all of that but… but… yeah. Still not, though I did like how he was worked with in this.

Hayden Panettiere (who I am sure will always be Claire, the cheerleader, for me) initially struck me as potentially out of place in this, but fast becomes a fan favourite, she’s awesome.

Anyway, after all is said and done, I just want to thank Eric from the bottom of my heart for doing these movies with me! I am glad to see you liked them, even if you didn’t love them! I am so excited for any and all future projects that we will do together (and damn, those Amityville movies are racking up again). This is always fun and you rock 😀

PS: It loves Its picture, but It will not be ending It in a hurry!

Review: After You – Jojo Moyes

Me Before You #2

SYNOPSIS: “You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. But I hope you feel a bit exhilarated too. Live boldly. Push yourself. Don’t settle. Just live well. Just live. Love, Will.”

How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future…

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.  – via Goodreads

Alrighty, so after months of procrastinating after reading Me Before You (and even watching that substandard movie), I finally got to this. Primarily because Natasha read it and loved it. Either way, it finally happened. I know Natasha was seriously taken with this, and while I enjoyed it, I definitely didn’t like it as much as the first. Not because all sequels suck, blah, blah, blah, because that is not the general consensus for book series, but because this one just didn’t speak to me, and Me Before You didn’t really need a sequel. Let me explain all of that.

Louisa really annoyed me in this one. Really. I get that death and loss can really ruin people, so on that front I was fine. But I was annoyed by how useless she was. She was just existing, which is pretty much what she was doing before Will came along too, so there is no way you can tell me she is like this just because of Will. She is also intent on sabotaging herself, and I really get annoyed with people who are content to play the victim, and not to strive for more in life. That’s a personal feeling of mine, but yeah. It coloured her in the book. Then there were the characters again – I liked some, I resented others, that’s just how it was.

The frenemies relationship between Lou and Treena was highlighted here again, and it is something that you can like and dislike in equal measure. I found the tone of this book to be totally different from the last, the writing style, the characters, they just seemed so loosely related to Me Before You, and I didn’t much like that. Way too different. I enjoyed reading about Josie’s feminist awakenings, but felt that they were handled terribly and the idea never really found its feet, thus making it very awkward at the best of times. It didn’t flow right. There was so much more potential to that than was realised. That being said, there were still times where this provided a smile.

The humour was greatly lacking in this book, if we are being honest. There were one or two moments where I had a good laugh (the waxing, good gracious!), but for the most part, I just read this. There was also Lily, a character that I frequently disliked. She came across as a brat. I know she was going through rough stuff and all that, but jeesh. I don’t know, I think I just wanted something of substance from this book, as the last really gave you something to chew on. This one reads like a breeze, but it also feels like it never really takes off and gets going. I liked it, but I certainly didn’t love it.

I enjoyed Sam and Donna quite a bit as characters, and found them to be interesting and entertaining. I thought a lot of the antics in this book were crazy. I was pleased to see Nathan return, as he was a character that I enjoyed. I must say that while the book brought back a lot of characters and all that, it felt like quite the generic romance novel, so I was quite let down about that. It also got really crass at times (looking specifically at Lily and how she talks to people, but also all the ways that sex was addressed in this book).

I thought After You to be unnecessary, if we are being honest. So much more could have been done, though a sequel was totally unnecessary in the first place. Instead of making this an inspiring story, adding humour, making it amazing, it is ultimately quite a bland and flat affair. I was really hoping for more, but this was really not that.

Rapid Review: The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

“The unwritten Purge rule: don’t save lives. Tonight we take lives. We make things manageable.”
– Big Daddy

SYNOPSIS: Three groups of people are trying to survive Purge Night, when their stories intertwine and are left stranded in The Purge trying to survive the chaos and violence that occurs. – via IMDB

So, I reviewed The Purge some time ago, and it was a movie I did not like. I even lamented the fact that it had a sequel coming, but oh boy, how wrong was I? I popped this in recently to watch with my husband, though we had no real faith, even though most reviewers said it was an improvement on the first. What ensued was 103 minutes of a total blast. We had a great time with this movie.

This is what I had been hoping for in the first one, not some run of the mill home invasion with some crazy plotsie going on outside. No, sir, I wanted to see what was going on outside, what would happen if you weren’t supposed to be outside, and what happened if you weren’t one of the very rich who could afford a state of the art security system. The Purge: Anarchy delivered on all those fronts and more. Sure, if you are going to sit and spend hours thinking too long, hard, and seriously about this, you will probably find nothing but fault with the concept and the implementation, etc. However, if you sit down, suspend reality to accept that the United States has a Purge Day on the 22nd of March each year for twelve hours, you are in for a good time.

Sure, the movie was predictable in places, but this actually didn’t hurt the film at all, because you are so drawn in, enthralled by this crazy concept. This movie was absolutely Frank Grillo’s movie – he was freaking fantastic! While the other characters are there and a part of this group, the one that really interests you is Grillo’s Sergeant. He dominates when he is on screen, and is a majorly compelling character. Grillo is definitely an underappreciated actor. I think that the score was also perfectly suited to the movie, and I liked it a lot.

I think that the Purge series is quite ambitious, but if they keep it up as they have, and don’t get stuck in the unimaginative rut of the first film, these could be movies well worth watching. Anyway, I thought that this was an exceptional improvement over the first dull entry to the franchise, and it definitely tapped into the potential that was there to work with, and I think the implementation was excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I do think, however, that one might like this if it is the only entry you have seen in the franchise, but one would definitely appreciate it more if one sees where is originally came from.

Review: Scream 4 (2011)

SYNOPSIS: Ten years have passed, and Sidney Prescott, who has put herself back together thanks in part to her writing, is visited by the Ghostface Killer. – via IMDB

And here we are, the final movie! Thank you all for sticking with me, reading, commenting, everything. As always, it’s appreciate it! It’s been a blast.

This one is definitely not right up there like the first two movies, but this is really not the worst movie to be added to a franchise, especially so long after the fact. It is infinitely better than the last one though, that’s for sure! I will always be a fan of the fact that the same cast has always returned for their roles, it just gives the whole experience a more cohesive and authentic feeling, which is awesome.

Thank goodness Cox’s hair was sorted out – Scream 3 did her no wonders whatsoever, and whoever styled her hair with that fringe should have been shot. Seriously. Her and Dewey being together is adorable, and I will not lie, that blonde woman, Hicks, who was hitting on Dewey? She really made me angry Stay away or go find an available man, hooker!

I am still not sold on Emma Roberts – even her face just looks like a spoiled brat to me, and she always comes across like that, too. Ugh. She isn’t even that great an actress (or I have yet to see her in anything where she wows me, at any rate). Giving her such a huge role in here peeved me a bit, but there were other things to enjoy. As I understand it, there was quite some backlash when Hayden Panettiere was cast for this (although much humble pie has been eaten since, by the sound of it). I thought she was great, and definitely a character I had a lot of fun with.

Sidney has the worst agent of all time and she annoyed the fuck out of me. Like can you even?! The woman had no morals or scruples! There were quite a few reprehensible characters for this one though, but you can deal with it. There was a strong focus on the teens again, very reminiscent of Scream, and I enjoyed exploring that avenue again, though modern kids are less entertaining than they think they are.

Dewey with some power was awesome, and to see him getting hit on by the other cop and that pissing Gale off was classic, even though that woman irritated me (as I mentioned). Hicks did provide some classic entertainment for unleashing the snippy Gale Weathers we all know and love though.

Sidney is back in action of course, and the woman just keeps on getting crap flung at her. She has in no way had an easy life, and people seem so keen on constantly making her relive awful torment. This time around she is not taking anything, and puts up a great defense, terrified or not. She is making her stand and that is just that.

I almost died when they tried to call Rory Culkin’s Charlie Walker this generation’s Billy Loomis. Are you freaking kidding me??????

My argument:

Billy Loomis – sexy

Charlie Walker – not so much

The new and improved “rules” that were put forth in this movie and explored made me laugh, there were quite a few industry digs and they were handled quite well.

For a sequel to a set of films so long after the fact, Scream 4 is highly successful and hits quite a few high points and misses in other places, but that isn’t an issue for the most part.

Overall I had an absolute blast going back to these films as well as watching this one, the only one I hadn’t seen. I can see myself watching the hell out of these movies again, so much fun to be had! Thank you all so much for undertaking this journey with me, taking the time to read and share comments, I always appreciate it!