Stacy Kingsley
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Movie Review - END OF WATCH

6/22/2018

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First if you don't know what the phrase "end of watch" means to a police officer, look it up, otherwise you might be watching a movie that you should not be.

This movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal as officer Brian Taylor, and Michael Pena as officer Mike Zavala. The movie shows an unspecified span of time in the lives of these two officers on the force. The officer, Brian and Mike, are honest and hard-working cops who stumble onto things that end up putting them into the sights of a cartel and local gang. As they continue about their days they arrest people who have ties to the cartel and gang, and end up making a name for themselves. They learn from another detainee that there is a hit out on them, but they laugh it off stating, "Hey, we're cops, of course we have a hit on us." In the end they are forced to confront the gang who has been sent to kill them and fight survive.

Watching these two actors I am reminded of the changing abilities of Jake Gyllenhaal. He can portray an alcoholic and obsessed cartoonist, a creepy news camera stringer, a love sick boy who comes to a bad end, or a good cop just doing his job. He is a very versatile actor, much like his sister, who I fell in love with in the not often seen movie SECRETARY (A good movie if can find it). I often forget that Michael Pena has a good career behind him too, but I feel as an actor he often is typecast and isn't given as many opportunities to spotlight his abilities as Gyllenhaal. In this movie they were both fantastic.

There were moments in this movie that seemed a little long, but as it does portray an unspecified period of time for the two men, it was really only short snippets in what their lives were really like. It also portrays the dangers of being an officer. In one gruesome part of the movie an officer is sitting on the side of the road with a knife sticking out of his eye. Brian and Mike go after the suspect and find them repeatedly beating on another officer, so bad that her face has already started swelling and it is likely that she will not survive the incident. Another part of the movie that stood out, besides the climactic ending, is when the two officers are sent on a welfare check and find a house of horrors waiting for them. This moment is what catapults them into the sights of the cartel leader.

While the movie wasn't fully unexpected, as the movie seemed to be building up to something like it, it was unexpected how everything happened and who ended up being affected.

I liked this movie as it held my attention throughout the entire film, which isn't something I can say about all of the movies I watch. This isn't a movie for everyone. It also does a lot of handheld video shots throughout, which at one point did become an issue for me (I get terrible motion sickness). I'd recommend it though.
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Movie Review - HE NEVER DIED

6/18/2018

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Henry Rollins may not be the guy for everyone, and this movie may not be the movie for everyone, but for me, it was pretty fun.

HE NEVER DIED is about Jack, a man of few words with a severe social awkwardness. He is made to do things he doesn't want to when his past comes back to give birth to a new plethora of problems. His past and his future now depend on what he does next, and how much he cares.

Before you continue reading, know that there will be some SPOILERS in this review.

Looking at the pictures, this movie looks like a movie about a fallen angel, which isn't quite true. It is about a fallen man, a man who has lived many lives, and was birthed at the beginning of time. He now roams the earth, living life after life, reinventing himself every hundred years. His secret, he is a vampire of sorts. The only true vampire. Now, don't look at this review and say, "Ugh, another vampire movie...boo." It isn't what you'd expect.

When this movie came out it wasn't loved, nor is it well known. Even now it isn't well known among horror fans. It is hidden a little by it's description. It looks like it will be a movie about a fallen angel trying to make things right, and that is not what this movie is about at all.

Henry Rollins, who plays the main character, Jack, is great in this roll. He is quiet and keeps to himself, just based on a looks alone, this is a role Rollins was destined to play. Jack finds out that suddenly he is a father and his teenage daughter needs saving. Her mother calls him and yells at him that he needs to go pick her up because she doesn't want the daughter to drive drunk. Reluctantly he agrees. After spending some time doing nothing with his daughter he finds that he enjoys her a little, but he still doesn't want to be a father. His past then comes knocking at his door, several times, trying to end his life. What people don't seem to know is that due to his nature, he isn't killed easily, and when he kills he likes to eat his victims. Oh, did I not mention that he is a cannibal?

So, I really enjoyed this movie. It was funny, quirky, and at times horrific, but throughout it all, it was ninety-five percent enjoyable. There were some moments that seemed a little too obvious and cliche, but overall this movie was very enjoyable. Jack is very matter-of-fact in his dialogue, which is perfect for his character, but it also was very fun because I never knew how he was going to react to the situations he was in.

Jordan Todosey, who plays Jack's daughter, Andrea, was funny and written quite well. I did wonder about her a little because she seemed at ease with a man she didn't know. Also, she kept asking him what he did and he kept showing her (he slept, ate, played bingo), but throughout she continued to ask. It seemed to me as if she wasn't really trying to get to know him, since she wasn't asking a lot of personal questions.

There were other characters that made this movie the fun, gore fest that it was (there was quite a lot of blood and eating of body parts), Cara, was the waitress at the diner he visited every day. She falls into his life and isn't sure that is where she should, or wants, to be. And finally there is David, a man who continually has the crap beaten out of him, but continues to prevail in continuing to live.

This may not be a movie for everyone, but for me it was fun. I enjoyed the quiet nature of Jack, and I enjoyed the humor throughout the movie. The only disappointing part of this movie was the ending, which seemed a little lackluster compared to the rest of the movie. I'd watch it again though. It was fun and not at all what I expected.
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Movie Review - A DARK SONG

6/13/2018

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The plot synopsis - A woman who has lost her child (Catherine Walker) and an occultist  (Steve Oram) retreat to an isolated house in Northern Wales to practice a magic ritual. The pair hope to contact the dead, or at least a guardian angel, but their attempts lead to something even more terrifying, especially when they keep secrets from each other.

This movie has few characters, just the woman and the man helping her. There are a few instances when the audience meets the woman's sister, and the caretaker or manager of the house she rents, but then we are left with the woman and the man she has hired to perform the rituals for her. At first she tells him that she is doing it for love, then she tells him she is doing it to talk to her son, then she tells him she is doing it for revenge, and in the end we find out the truth of what she is doing it for. The man she has hired to perform the ritual is strong in his beliefs and accuses her often of lying to him, which can affect the ritual and cause bad things to happen. In the end the audience finally learns the truth of what has happened, and the truth of what she has been searching for, which is not what was expected.

I'll be honest, I am a little tired of women in these types of movies being whiny and annoying when they don't get what they want. She constantly yells at him, asking him when things are going to happen, and getting angry when she isn't getting the things she wants when she wants them. As a character I didn't care for her and hoped that in the end a demon would eat her. I also didn't care for the occultist she hired because he didn't seem like he wanted to be there. After several mistakes, all made by her, things go in a direction they didn't expect. 

I have to say I was not happy with the ending of the movie, and didn't find it satisfying in any way. Even with the twist in the end, I didn't think it was good enough to go with the rest of the movie. There was a build up of suspense, but there weren't a lot of scares throughout. Towards the ending it became a little more frightening, and sad, but the most frightening thing in this movie were the moments when the woman and her son talked to each other through a closed door. It was scary and chilling.

I don't know if I would recommend this movie, but since it is available on streaming, and it isn't a very long movie, take a chance on it and see what you think about it.
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Movie Review - IT'S ALIVE (2008)

6/5/2018

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I don't know why I decided to watch this movie. It was awful, just awful. And after looking it up I saw that it had less than two stars on IMDb, and that only six percent of 946 people liked the movie on Rotten Tomatoes. When I received this movie I thought it was the original movie, not the remake, which I didn't even know existed. I was disappointed to get the remake as I have yet to see the original. I will actually be watching it next and will review it and compare it to this remake.

First I have to tell you all what this movie is about. It is about a young woman Lenore, who finds out she is pregnant by her longtime boyfriend, Frank. Frank lives on a farm and takes care of his wheelchair bound younger brother, Chris. Later in the movie we find out that Lenore tried to abort the baby by buying pills online. They did not work and she had a monster of an infant. Not only does the child incessantly cry, but he loves the taste of human flesh.

I hate being hard on movies, but there was nothing redeeming or interesting in this movie. The kills were dull and not explored. The bodies were not shown in any form after or during the kills. The characters were all incredibly flat and boring. Also, the movie, while only lasting an hour and a half, seemed to last for much longer than it should have.

The character of Lenore has a best friend at the college she is attending, Marnie, but the relationship doesn't seem very strong or interesting. There are no relationships that seem very strong or interesting. One would think that Frank would be there for his brother, Chris, but he isn't. He leaves Chris all of the time and he goes to work (only one day is shown in the movie) and leaves Chris in the care of Lenore, who he is worried about.

Once Lenore has the child the room she has given birth in becomes a crime scene, and nothing seems to faze with the father, Frank, or the mother, Lenore. No one seems to worry that the baby was born and the mother and baby were left in a bloodbath.

Lastly, I have to address the acting of Bijou Phillips. While I have no problem with her personally, and I can't admit to seeing her in anything else, although I may have, she was the most annoying character in this movie. As a mother she cares nothing for Chris, and is disgusted by what her child does, but she also sees nothing wrong with it in the same breath, which was annoying. But, overall it was her high pitched, and very whiny voice which annoyed me the most.

So, was this a good movie? Absolutely not. I don't think anyone should suffer through this, even if it were available for streaming, just don't waste your time. There are better really bad movie out there, like FROGS or PIRANHA 3D.
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Movie Review - AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

6/3/2018

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All right everyone, most people have probably seen this by now, but just in case, this review is full of spoilers. It is hard to talk about this movie without at least some spoilers, so I am going all in and I'm going to talk about it all.

First, it looks like the following movies won't be made:
Spiderman 2
Guardians of the Galaxy 3
Doctor Strange 2
Black Panther 2
The Avengers (whatever movie might be next)
Loki 1

Thanos, I am sure a lot of people look at him and see a villain, but me, I see a god. If you believe in a higher power isn't Thanos just acting as the god from the Bible did when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah or flooded the earth, only saving one single family group. Thanos does go about what he is doing wrong, by destroying have of all universes he is also destroying the good in life.

This was not the best movie ever, and a lot of the judgements the characters made seemed to fulfill one purpose, help Thanos win. Throughout the movie I don't think anyone was surprised as each infinity stone was retrieved by Thanos. I think the only thing that might have been a surprise was the amount of main characters who were killed or died in the events leading up to Thanos getting the infinity stones.

In the end this was a very long (two and a half hours) trailer for the next movie, which seems to be a revenge story with an added mystery per the end credit scene.

Back to this movie. The acting was okay, but since there was so much going on there was almost too much to pay attention to. The things that would have been funny in other movies were lost in the mass of things that were happening in this movie. Thor had a few funny moments, as did The Hulk, but neither had enough screen time to be appreciated. It was the same with the characters from Guardians of the Galaxy. As soon as Thor was pulled into the ship he made jokes, and the others made jokes, but then the movie jumped to a different scene. A lot of what the characters did was frustrating. They had several moments when they could have saved life on all planets, but instead they reacted badly and waited too long to react, which doomed not only beings we have and will never meet, but also some very well-loved characters.

For example, when Gomorrah dies, as a participant in the audience I was angry that she chose the life of one person over the life of many. Then not only does she take Thanos to the place where she hid an infinity stone, but she tries to sacrifice herself too late to be of any good. If she wanted to help life and save a large number of life on all planets, she would have sacrificed her soon as Thanos had captured her, not after having a father/daughter talk with him. This wasn't the only time in the movie that felt unnecessary.

Later, towards the end of the movie Vision and the Scarlett Witch have a decision to make, and it is one they should have made a lot earlier in the movie, then maybe Thanos wouldn't have killed them both and life in all other universes would have continued on, not knowing that there had even been a chance of their untimely deaths. I understand that the love story between the Scarlett Witch and Vision had to be explored a little more, but it didn't add anything to the movie, and it really made everything seem long and as if there wasn't any point.

I think that was the problem. In the end I thought this was one of those movies that didn't need to be made. Couldn't the next movie have started with the end of this, Thanos getting all of the infinity stones and killing as much life as possible? Another issue I had was, if Thanos was doing all of this to eliminate half of all other worlds to help them, then why did people like Mantis have to die? She was the last of her people, at least that was what she said in the last GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movie. She isn't the only one who I questioned the death of, especially since she was not the only character who was the last of her species. Several of the deaths seemed pointless, which often seems true for deaths, but when the Black Panther faded away I wondered why they would choose to do that when the BLACK PANTHER movie made so much money.

This might just be the fatalist in me, as the person I saw the movie with said that maybe everyone wasn't dead and this is going to turn into some time shift or alternate universe timeline device, but for me, I am not sure. If these characters are actually dead the Marvel universe has killed some very beloved characters and left behind characters that may not be able to hold things up on their own.

After saying all of this, I will say I did enjoy this movie. I enjoyed the interaction between some of the characters, but there wasn't enough to keep me from being frustrated in the fact that people were going to die, or that this movie was a very long trailer for something else. I don't appreciate movies that take place just to fill space, and this was how I felt about ROGUE ONE. It wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't necessary.
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    Stacy Kingsley

    Stacy has a lot on her mind, so sharing helps. She also has a great love of movies and books, so she decided to blog about it. Get her reviews here! 

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