The blog of author Stacy Kingsley - Stacy Kingsley

Movie Review - FIFTY SHADES DARKER

4/15/2019

Fifty Shades Darker..... more like fifty shades of why the hell was this movie made and why am I wasting my time with it?

Anna has decided, in this part two to the fifty shades series, that she is willing to give Christian another chance, but only if he follows her rules. While she is still willing to be spanked, and is intrigued by some of his toys, she is upset by the way his past keeps finding her, and threatening her future with Christian.

This movie basically had zero plot, and the ending was so abrupt that I literally shouted, "Are you serious, that's how we're going to end this one?" Anna goes through the same motions she went through in the first movie, several deer in the headlights moments when she has no idea how to take care of herself, then she tries to take a stand just to fall back into her deer in the headlights ways. She is faced with the woman who taught Christian everything he knows, and she goes so far as to throw a drink in her face (oh the horror), and she is confronted by a former "slave" who threatens her life and wonders why Anna is so special, and Anna just runs away when Christian tells her he can handle it, then the whole situation isn't spoken about again.

I don't know if it is the story or the acting by Ms. Johnson, but this was not good. The character of Anna was not very likeable or interesting, and a lot of the time I found myself wanting to slap her myself. I am thinking the writing of this was not well done, as none of it remotely fit together. There was a lot of hey let's do this, then no let's do this, then maybe we should stop, and I just want to be my own person. Also, it wasn't believable that Anna's boss gets fired and she moves from his assistant to his job - yeah sorry, spoiler alert.

Also, there is zero chemistry between the characters, and the sex scenes are washed out and boring. I was not at all interested, or turned on, which if we're going to watch a movie like this, I expect to be turned on at least a little bit.

So, do I recommend this movie, absolutely not. Am I going to watch the last one, most likely yes because apparently I am a masochist. Should you watch these movies, no, in fact run away, no, in fact, why don't you just watch porn. Even the worst porn is more interesting than this crap.

Movie Review - THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS

4/8/2019

The Girl With All the Gifts does share some similarities with the novel, but it isn’t really a lot like the novel. There are a lot of places in the movie that the divergence is clear, and it starts in the beginning, which I think might also be understandable. The book has a lot of information in it, and they cut some of it, probably due to the length of the movie. If they had kept it all it would have been longer than it hour and fifty-one minutes.

This movie is about a girl, Melanie, a scientist, and a teacher, who are trying to survive a dystopian/apocalyptic future full of zombies, which are called hungries in both the movie and the novel of the same name. In one instance everything changes, and Melanie finds herself defending her teacher in a way she didn’t know she could, and the teacher, scientist, a couple of soldiers, and Melanie find that they need to find a way to safety, to the Beacon of hope. However, a landscape full of hungries stands in their way, and they don’t know if they will survive, if they will be eaten, or if they will become a monster themselves. Of course, one question a lot of movies like this pose is who is the real monster?

Throughout the movie, Melanie, played by Sennia Nanua, portrays an innocent, playful, inquisitive child, well. She does not know what she is, although she does know that she is different. While she does still seem to be the same character in the movie as she is in the book, I feel that the movie made her a tad more intelligent and inquisitive than she was in the book. She still loves her teacher, Helen Justineau, and she does what she can to help her, but she isn’t as curious about the other children, nor is she as frightened as she was in the novel towards Doctor Caroline Caldwell.

Speaking of the other children, the movie makes a hasty introduction, but it isn’t really as thorough of the book, so it feels as if some of the information that made the story interesting is left out. The interactions between the children and the instructors and soldiers, isn’t as built as it could have been. In the novel, the reader knows how Melanie feels about Helen because there are several interactions, however in the movie there is only one scene in the schoolroom, and one outside, before everything goes to hell. The viewer of the movie doesn’t get as much background on the rest of the children, so there is no reason for the viewer to have as much sympathy for them as there was built in the novel.

Throughout it was obvious that several things had been changed due to the time restrictions of the film. The only monsters they had to face were the hungries, whereas in the book there are not only the hungries, but also humans with nothing to live for but their own selfish survival. The ending is a little different, but it isn’t a bad movie. Part of it, like a lot of movies, are a little slow, but overall, not bad. I will say, this is another case of I prefer the novel over the film, but that isn’t always true. I felt there was more depth to the novel that was lost in the film’s translation.

Movie Review - OUT OF THE DARK (2014)

3/5/2019

Out of the Dark stars Julia Stiles, Scott Speedman, and Stephen Rea as American's who live and work in Columbia. Julia Stiles is the daughter, Sarah, of Stephen Rea, Jordan, and she has moved with her family to Columbia to take over part of her father's paper mill. They live in a fancy house with a nanny, who takes care of their young daughter, Hannah. Once their daughter disappears they realize that things are not what they seem, and their house is haunted by the past, as houses often are. Jordan has kept a dark secret from not only his daughter and her husband, Paul, but also the town surrounding the mill.

The only reason I watched this movie was because I had some time to kill while I worked on grading papers. I often have movies or music or something on in the background so that I am not sitting in silence, which annoys me. I should have chosen to sit in silence rather than watch this movie. It wasn't that it was a bad movie, but it wasn't developed and it didn't make sense why the daughter, Hannah, was the one being tortured by the ghosts when it was her grandfather, Jordan, who knew why the house was haunted.

I often don't like movies for one of two issues, one is the acting, and the other is often the plot or story, or lack thereof. The acting in this was just so-so. I thought Julia Stiles was wasted, in fact most of the characters were wasted in this movie. Stephen Rea plays another man looking for answers who is willing to sacrifice himself if he needs to, just like in the movie Fear.com. Julia shows a variety of emotions, but we don't know why she has decided to uproot her family from London to live in Columbia and work at the mill. We get almost no information about Scott Speedman's character, Paul, except that he is an illustrator for children's books. This is basically all of the information we are given about the characters. The problem with this is that I am given no reason to care about the characters, and at an hour and a half there should be a reason to care about the characters.

The plot of the story revolves around the deaths of a few children twenty years earlier, and a ritual holiday that is put on for them. The children disappeared after or just before their deaths, and no one knows where the bodies are. This movie tries to build up suspense, but the scenes are often so dark that it is hard to even tell what is going on. When the climax happens it is almost impossible to tell what is really going on because the scenes shift too rapidly between Paul, Sarah, and Hannah, and everything is dark. I don't know if it is really ghosts haunting the couple or if it is real people who are running around terrorizing the family.

The ending is predictable, which is not good for a horror film, and doesn't make it any more interesting. We never really find out why Hannah was the one who was focused on. I can't recommend this movie, This seems like one of those movies that the actors do just so they can make some money. It is too bad that this wasn't better than it was because often movies set in a foreign land can use the backdrop of that place to build fear. There are often local legends or legends that can be built upon to strike fear into the souls of audiences.

So, maybe skip this one and watch a movie like Zombie Strippers or the weirdly popular ZomBeavers.

Movie Review - YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

1/22/2019

2017 saw a movie that never really got much attention, even though it should have. You Were Never Really Here is about a traumatized veteran, who is not afraid of violence. His job is to track down missing girls. When a job spins out of control, Joe's nightmares overtake him as a conspiracy is uncovered leading to what may be his death or his awakening.

Joe, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is a man who does what he needs to, providing he is paid. He has a job to do, and it is to track down missing girls who were taken in the name of sex trafficking. Most of the time he may not be successful in getting the girl, but he does exact vengeance when it is asked of him.

Joe, throughout the movie, does have some obvious issues. He takes care of his aged mother, and he remembers childhood trauma that causes him to risk his own life almost every night. There isn’t much given about his past, but the audience does see that there is one incident when he is working with either the military or after, that has caused him to take on the role of a paid savior.

This movie is a slow burn. It begins in a hotel room and ends in a diner. There are scenes which seem to be placed just to confuse the audience as to what is really going on, but overall it is a movie in something of the same vein as Leon: The Professional. Joe is sent to find and rescue Nina, the daughter of an elected official. Her father finds out who has taken his daughter and is understandably upset when he finds it is the man he is working on a campaign for. The man has been so taken with Nina that when she is rescued, she is immediately retrieved, setting off events that cause death to those Joe loves, and causing him to do what he has learned to do best, kill.

This movie was slow and weird, but there were several scenes that were interesting. One scene is Joe laying next to a man he has been fighting with. They are both laying on the floor, one dying and one exhausted from the fight. A song comes on and they both sing softly to it, holding hands as the man dies. There are several other intense scenes which makes one question the sanity of Joe, or what his plans are. He is searching for something, and in the end, like Leon had Matilda, Joe has Nine to save him from himself.

You Were Never Really Here is not a bad movie, but I don’t think everyone will enjoy it. It is a thought provoking movie, and for me, it made me wonder once again, about man’s inhumanity to man.

Apologies and Movie Review for STRANGERLAND

1/7/2019

Before I review this movie, I'd like to apologize to all of my readers for the lack of posts these last few weeks. I was on break from work and unfortunately I spent most of that time sick. I am back to work, but I am also feeling much healthier, which means back to real life and all work. I am working on two books, one I am sending queries out for, and the other I am writing. Sometimes my writing has to take a backseat as I have papers to grade, but I am down to three classes this semester and I feel that I've managed my grading time well. So, without waiting any longer, here is my review of Strangerland. You may not have heard of this movie, and now you can read my review before deciding on if you want to or not.
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Strangerland starring Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes, and Hugo Weaving, is a movie about a family who has moved to a rural area in the outback (is there any other area?) and try to escape the doldrums of this new life.

The family, of which Kidman and Fiennes are the parents, have been forced to move to this new town because of the actions of their teenage daughter. They have two children, their daughter, Lily, and their son, Tom. These two children are precarious and I found them incredibly annoying. The couple have some serious issues in their marriage and they seem to be on their way to divorce, as the audience sees they don’t sleep in the same bed, and they don’t seem to be on the same page when their children have issues.

In the movie Kidman seems to be a desperate mother, while Fiennes is a distant father. Kidman walks through the movie trying to figure out her daughter and save both of her children, while Fiennes not only continues on with his regular day, but he doesn’t see the trauma he is causing his wife to endure. In the end, this family seems broken, and there is no way to fix them or put them back together.

I have to say the most interesting characters were Kidman and Weaving, as they both go through a lot in the movie. The movie itself however, wasn’t a very engaging one. As the family goes through a huge trauma nothing about them, or what they are going through, falls strongly with the viewer. There are issues that don’t make them interesting, and I couldn’t feel anything but blah for them. I wanted to be more interested in what they were dealing with, and I wanted to feel something about what was happening to them, especially since they were dealing with the possibility of losing their children. I just didn’t feel sympathy or happiness or anything for them.

The ending of this movie didn’t settle well with me either. It left the movie unfinished, which isn’t horrible, but it is a little overdone, as a lot of movies seem to end with a mystery still left to be solved. I wanted it to have an actual ending. I wanted this movie to give me answers, but instead it created more questions.

While I enjoyed the acting of the top actors, they weren’t enough to keep me interested, nor were they a reason to watch this movie.

My recommendation is to skip it. Don’t even waste time watching it on streaming, it isn’t worth the time.

Movie Review - Infini

12/26/2018

Infini is a horror science fiction movie released in 2015. It is about a search and rescue team who travel through time slips to other worlds. The company that trains and operates the slip streams are a mining company, and their practices don’t quite take the human element into consideration. One planet where mining is taking place erupts in a horrific outbreak, and no one is quite sure where it has come from.

The movie revolves around a young man named Whit, who has left his pregnant wife for one last job. These jobs are dangerous and they pay very well, which is why Whit has decided it do it one last time. Once he arrives things start happening and the other people on the planet begin showing signs of a sickness that makes everyone a little violent. A search and rescue team is sent to not only find out what happened, but also make sure the product is still being produced.

This was a very bloody movie, which was fun for a horror movie. However, the science part of it wasn’t explored as much as it could have been. The being behind the outbreak was interesting, although it has been done before, I liked how it was interweaved between the horror of what was happening, and the reality of what humans do when they see or meet an alien being.

I didn’t think this was a great movie, and at times I was impatient for the characters to do something together or figure things out, instead they were at each other’s throats and it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen in a movie like this before. It reminded me of movies like Sunshine and Event Horizon, which were both better movies. I would have liked to see the characters do something new, and I would have liked less of a religious view on motherhood in this film.

This was not a bad movie, but it was lacking in some of the elements and originality. It isn’t a bad movie to watch on streaming, but I wouldn’t recommend paying for it.

Movie Review - IT'S ALIVE (1973)

12/10/2018

SPOILERS included in this review. You have been warned.

I previously watched the remake of It’s Alive, and after watching the 1973 original movie I really don’t think it needed to be remade, because the remake is a million times worse than the original (which wasn’t the best movie itself). The 1973 version of It’s Alive is about a couple who have a monster of a baby. The baby goes on a killing spree to survive and get home to his parents. Frank, the father, feels an incredible desire to destroy the infant, but the mother has other ideas after she returns home and tries to start life back up. Their older son, Charlie, is left in the dark as the parents try to protect him from what happened, but in the end Charlie doesn’t need protection from his baby brother, the rest of the world, they might.

The original version of this movie was very different from the remake. In this version the mother hides the child for a few days in the basement of their house, only wanting to protect him. She doesn’t get to take him home from the hospital because after he slaughters the medical staff he runs in fear, whereas in the remake they take the baby home and find that the only weird things about him are his teeth and his size (he grows incredibly fast). The father in the remake doesn’t seem to take an interest in the movie, and the mother in the remake tries hide her infants murderous deeds by moving and concealing bodies.

One thing I liked about the original is that the father eventually comes around and tried to protect his child, unlike the remake when the mother sets the house on fire, killing herself and her baby. In the original the parents seem to really care for their oldest child, Charlie, while in the remake the kid seems to be left on his own, or he disappears and the audience has no idea what might have happened to him.

Since the original was made in the early 1970’s it is a little bit hokey, but the fun of it is the badly done effects and some of the interesting acting. In fact one of the best lines of the movie came from the lead detective trying to find and destroy the infant. The line was, “Hunting and killing babies doesn’t seem to be my specialty,” and I thought it was the most apropos line in the movie, since how does one justify hunting down and killing an infant, even if it is a homicidal monster?

I actually enjoyed the original version a million times better than the remake, and I thought it not only had a better story, but a better ending. If you haven’t watched it, look for the 1973 version, and skip the 2008 version.

Movie Review - LET'S BE EVIL

12/3/2018

2016’s Let’s Be Evil is a movie that doesn’t quite have a specific plot or outline. What it seems to be about is a young woman named Jenny, who accepts a temporary job at a research facility to help care for her ailing mother. While there she is set to watch the children in the facility as they are trained for unspecific purposes.

Jenny is a young woman who must find a way to care for her ill mother. She ends up getting a temporary job at this research facility. She is never told what she is doing there, nor what the children she is watching are doing there. Each day she is awoken by an alarm and must wear special glasses to view the augmented reality of the facility she is at. In reality she may or may not be in some sort of virtual reality game. Throughout the movie she tries to connect with the children and feels that she does connect with a young girl named Cassandra. In reality it is all a game.

This movie started out very interesting, because as Jenny and her two coworkers do what they are supposed to be doing, they don’t really learn much about what they are doing. Neither does the audience. There are suspicious things that happen throughout the movie, like lights going out, black smoke roaming over a door, and children playing vicious games on Jenny and the other two workers. The audience sits waiting for something, anything, to happen. Then when something does happen, it is both expected and unexpected.

At the end of the movie, I can’t say I was shocked. I found that the entire idea of the movie changed with the end of the movie. I didn’t think the ending was a good one, and it was frustrating to see the movie ending like it did. It was one of those movies, one where you find out at the end that the movie was just a dream. This was just like that, except it wasn’t a dream, but it was close to one of those stupid movies.

Now, I don’t mind a twist at the end of a movie, but I really think directors should try to make things more interesting, and stop with the ambiguous or circular endings of movies. Please, I’m begging all of you directors and producers and writers out there, stop writing the same ending in different cities and realities for all of the movies out there. Try being original! I don’t need another twist to another movie that tells me that none of it really happened at all. I’m so over that!

So, did I like this movie? Yes, until the end. Was it worth a watch? Yes, until the end. Should you watch it, I mean, if you don’t mind something that seems like it will be a good movie that craps out in the end? Yeah, go ahead, it’s not a long movie, and it is free on a few streaming services.

Movie Review - DEVIL'S KNOT

11/26/2018

Devil’s Knot is a movie based on a true crime. The story revolves around the murder of three young boys who were out riding their bikes. Another boy states that he saw what happened, and that it was a satanic ritual. This was also during part of the crisis when lots of people were being accused of being satanic worshipers. The three teenagers accused of the crime were convicted and later released, which is not a spoiler because you can look the story up and get all of this information.

The movie stars Reese Witherspoon as one of the mothers and Colin Firth as an investigator of sorts. The town screams that the teenagers were all involved, yet one mother isn’t sure (Reese Witherspoon’s character) because one of the boys, Jesse, has the IQ of a ten year old, and he gets a lot of the details wrong when he is telling the police of being at the murder.

There is also the interview of a child, and children are often unreliable witnesses. All of the evidence used against the three teenagers was circumstantial, and there wasn’t any concrete evidence. It turns out that the mother of this child was trying to get out of some legal trouble of her own.

The movie was an interesting look into the legal system, and how broken it really is. People judge things that they don’t understand, and they always think that Satanism is evil, which it is not (just look it up if you don’t believe me).

The beginning of the movie is very suspenseful, and even heartbreaking. When the bodies of the boys are found and one boy is brought out of the water he was placed in, it is a horrifying moment that would touch even the hardest soul. Throughout the movie the audience is left to wonder who is guilty of the murders, as even some of the parents (besides Witherspoon’s character) doubt the guilt of the three convicted of killing their boys. Then again, maybe they doubted the guilt of the teenagers because they themselves were the murderers.

Since this movie is based on a true story, there isn’t really an ending to it. It is still ongoing, and there are suspects, but the truth may never be found. The movie was interesting, and well done. It showed the limits of the justice system, and really why innocent people are convicted. In a murder this heinous, everyone wants to find the guilty party as soon as they can, so that everyone else with a child can feel as if their child is safe. But if we rush to accuse and convict, sometimes we miss important things, like who might have actually committed the crime. This is one of the reason crimes from fifty plus years ago are still unsolved, or are just not being solved.

A good, if not heart strangling movie.

Movie Review - OUIJA SUMMONING

11/19/2018

The synopsis for Ouija Summoning from IMDb is: A beautiful woman is haunted by an evil spirit after an innocent game of Ouija board goes horribly wrong.

First off, in this day and age are there any “innocent” games of Ouija. I mean I am sure everyone has read the warnings and seen the other movies where teens have played with an Ouija board and have died.

Ouija Summoning begins in an older house where one women arrives and is attacked by another. As things happen the police arrive, and the crazy woman is arrested, all while chanting that it had to be done.

This was a problem for me as I had no idea who these people were, or why this was happening. So while it starts in the action, it doesn’t do anything me because I have no idea what is going on, or really why I should care. Plus, this isn’t something that is returned to later in the movie, so it is a scene that doesn’t matter. Later three young college age students stop at the house because one of them needs to pee. They don’t stay in the house but they do step in, and from there bad things happen.

The main character, Sara, is haunted by someone crying and telling her to kill people. As people start dying around her, she is viewed as insane and her parents seek help for her. Her parents, who are divorced, attempt to help their daughter, but they find that they don’t really know how, and then they decide that they think she might actually be killing people.

Bad acting and a bad story line were the biggest issues throughout this movie. There was a lot going on and nothing was explained. The audience has no idea what is up with this specific Ouija board, or why it is the one that is haunted, or who the woman that keep crying is. With so little information the movie doesn’t make much sense. It also isn’t very interesting as a horror movie because there is nothing scary throughout it.

I felt that this movie seemed like a half-hearted attempt to make a scary movie that was attempting to bank on the Ouija board fears created by other movies. However, there was no character or story development, nor was there any reason for the audience to feel fear or suspense. So there wasn’t anything to redeem this movie to the audience, and there was nothing to make it worth watching.

I absolutely do no recommend this movie to anyone, not even if you are bored and looking to watch something on streaming. If you watch it you have been warned that it is a waste of an hour and a half.