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ameliaj247
Reviews
Urban Explorer (2011)
I Loved It
I loved it and hated it at the same time to be honest. I loved it because I am biased in favour (yes, I am British and spell it this way) of Movies set in underground locations so this was a 'must watch' for me although I am not usually a fan of slasher/hunter style horror. This Movie is, as some as pointed out, not exactly 'original', show me a Horror Movie made in the last decade that IS 'original'? However, the film plot runs at a good pace, has an interesting story and lots of gore (one scene of which was too much for me to stomach despite having seen all the Hostel and Saw Movies without flinching....much). I hated it because of the total predictability of the main male character failing to finish off the bad guy when he had the opportunity (not listed this as a spoiler because it's pretty much a given with a Movie like this), the female character could have done the job herself here but she, also, failed to do so (no surprise there) but this is par for the course with most horror flicks so c'est la vie! This Movie is most certainly worth a viewing, it is no masterpiece but it is miles better than most of the crud available at the moment.
Misfits (2009)
Not quite as good as other reviews make it out to be
This show is pretty bad, not dreadful but not as good as it should be. The story lines are not bad but the whole sex mad thing is so typical of British TV over the past decade or so, I think that the the joke about the British being repressed and stuffy about sex is just proved by the innuendos and crassness of shows like this.
Having said that, the show is still watchable at least (unlike The Fades) but bear in mind that it is full of horrible teen Brits (I live in the UK and have the dubious honour of being a 'Brit' myself). I believe that Kelly is a totally typical 'Brit teen' and was shocked by how realistic her character is but the real shocker is Nathan! I am simply astonished by the number of people who seem to love this truly dreadful character, he is a total moron ( I SO want to call him something else) and he deserves a jolly good kick to the head, he is rude, stupid and none of his companions understand him (that is how stupid he can be) but the average viewer loves him? WHY? I love that he is no longer in the show, although I have yet to watch season 3 I am so looking forward to a Nathan free Misfits :)
Update to this review, I just watched episode 4 (season 1) and it was very good (very good indeed) but Nathan is even more of an arse in this episode and I really do not get the whole Nathan is wonderful vibe.
FURTHER UPDATE
I have now watched all 3 series (yes, I became hooked) and although it is not the amazing show that some make it out to be, it is certainly worth a view, you just have to make it through the first 2 or 3 episodes of Nathan hating and you should be fine for viewing the rest.
The 2nd and 3rd series were the best for me, especially the 3rd since Nathan is not present (I kinda miss him though, he 'grew' on me through series 1 and 2 since he exhibited slightly less moronic behaviour in each successive episode - or maybe I just became more childish and moronic, I really cannot be certain)
My favourite episode is most definitely series 3, episode 7, the 'zombie episode', it was hysterical, couldn't have been been funnier (or sadder), the producers outdid themselves with this one despite the critics reviews of series 3.
The Portal (2010)
I am reviewing THE Portal (2010) not Portal (2008)
The premise is good but the rendering is awful, it truly is the only descriptive for this movie and be sure that I am reviewing the correct movie, I waited 2 years to see this film expecting great things only to be severely disappointed. I have also seen Portal (2008) and if I had to judge, I would say that Portal (2008) was the better movie!
This movie starts badly, the middle is awful and the ending is totally dreadful, I do not recommend it at all, I did not pay a great deal for the DVD but I still feel conned simply because so much fuss was made over this movie and I waited so long to see it.
I think the director must have been aiming for an 'arty' style but he has failed abysmally, there is no such thing as a good 'arty' horror movie, it just does not work (for me at least), the film does not flow, it felt like a bad Hammer Horror from the 80s and gave me a headache.
I have never been happy with shows or movies where the characters all look alike and this movie has too many female characters who look alike and the male characters are almost as bad. The film opens with April in her ME persona but then we are shown a scene where a woman is chatting with a man to whom she appears to be engaged (Nicholas Brendan who barely features in the film at all) and he seems to be involved in some horrible accident, then we have a scene with Valerie, who is mourning a dead boyfriend/fiancé and she looks so like April that I became confused as to who was in the 2nd scene, this only got worse throughout the movie. It became apparent later in the film that it was actually April who was engaged to the Brendan character but by this time I really didn't care.
The scenes are chaotic and do not flow as they should, the story is all over the place and makes no sense. Who was the weird guy who painted the 'Portal' painting? Who were the men peering through the bars at him? I got the impression that one of them was Dr Azirra (when he was younger) but this was never confirmed. What is all this rubbish about the 'Inner Child' ? I know for certain that my inner child is not so pi**ed at me that she would kill me, I find it hard to believe that we all have to fear our inner child. Also, why the exploding heads? WTF is that? I got the impression that the exploding heads and other bloody issues (haemorrhagic issues) were simply for the gore factor.
Overall I found this movie a mega fail and am still spinning in confusion over what the director was trying to achieve.
Is it possible that he was just trying to confuse and disturb us as much as the 'black painting' confused and disturbed the characters? Maybe, but whatever the answer, I would suggest that you rent this film not buy it. It is certainly not a 'keeper' :-/
Hostel: Part III (2011)
Great start, shame about the rest
I loved the twist at the start of the movie but everything went downhill from here, disappointing doesn't even begin to cover it. The gore is minimal, the irritation factor is high (by which I mean the characters are borderline imbeciles to fall for the plot lines). I resented the death of 2 characters in particular, but applauded the calm with which one died, he shamed the 'Elite' as far as I am concerned, he showed them how a real man would face death! I also disliked the death of the unfortunate Ukrainian man, it seems to me that a guy with this amount of intelligence and drive would have done better with the Axe!
The movie could have been a huge improvement on the previous 2 but sadly it fails to meet the standard of the 2nd.
The ending was a huge failure in my opinion, there was a real opportunity here to make a sadly depressed audience recover their spirits but the makers failed abysmally to provide the gore we'd all been waiting for, the theory is good but the gore is lacking.
Halloween II (2009)
Bad, bad, BAD
This movie is awful, I expected a little more gore from a Rob Zombie movie and all I saw was a weird woman in white (very Wilkie Collins) encouraging Michael (or his avatar perhaps) to 'have some fun' which meant sticking a big knife into a person, any person he ran across, as many times as it took to kill them. Laurie is irritating and I had no sympathy for her at all, none of the characters were particularly engaging, except Annie and her Father for whom I felt I tremendous amount of sympathy, although even Annie proved irritating over her Police 'guard'. In summation, watch at your peril, it's a slasher movie with added irritations, be warned!