Unapologetic Reviews

Reinoryokusha Odagiri Kyoko no Uso (Spiritual Teacher, Kyoko Odagiri) wasn't the drama I first thought it was going to be. I thought it would have a lot of fake psychic stuff, pretending to do magic, and would be kind of annoying. Why I really started to watch was Ishihara Satomi, who I've seen in a few things, and that dress. Oh my, that is so gorgeous, I kind of want it. What I got was a detective series, actually. The cases seem to be supernatural at first glance, but of course they're not. I was happy that it was a detective series, because I'm growing to really love Japanese detective stories. Unlike most Western ones, the difference is that most "culprits" aren't really evil, and not doing things out of malicious intentions. Their motivation is often to help someone, or to save people. Therefore when the resolution comes, it's usually done in a kind way. The mysteries themselves are interesting, but not impossible to solve. I did figure s...

The ratings on this one are pretty bad, but I thought it looked good, so I wanted to see for myself what this movie was like. I'm kind of on the fence about it, because it wasn't that bad, not even boring. The story was very predictable, though the precise way of how Vlad became Dracula was something that I haven't seen before. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I wanted to see it. What actually did impress me about the movie was precisely that, the imagery. The colours, or rather the lack of them was great. In the beginning you still have some warm tones, the grass is green, the candle gives a warm yellow light. By the end, everything is grey and muted, just the red of the armour stands out. Among all the darkness the one bright spot is Mirena, the wife. Her beauty is so great, I often just stared at her on the screen, not being able to take my eyes off. Her white dress towards the end with the red lining displays her innocence, and how she is the one pure ...

I actually found this addition to the series more interesting than the previous one. That was because of several things. On the one hand there is a lot more magic than before, which was interesting and exciting. I also love little Hopper. How cute is that? I also loved how much Adrian was in this book. He had been my favourite character since he was introduced, and I'm still hoping for a second movie just to have someone cast as him. I also loved how we got to know more about the inner workings of the Alchemists. BTW, Sydney's father is still awful. Worse than my own. Sydney changed a lot since the first book. Part of it is because she had to do things in order to survive and to save the people she cares about. She also learned to care for people, and to just see them as people. I felt like she's becoming a new person, but someone whom she had in her all this time, but was forced to the sidelines by indoctrination. The process is basically breaking out of a cult. She no lon...

I find it somehow hard to write a review for this book. Though generally it is a lot easier to write for books that I either loved a lot, or hated. This edition of the series goes along the lines it has been for a while, since if we look at the whole universe, this is the 8th book. By now, the writing has become an old friend, though quite predictable. I've noticed the formula a few books back. Still, I find myself reading on, wanting to know what else is in this universe. The good thing about this book is that while we do have some things we know about the surroundings, we discover new things as well, new groups, new ways of magic, and new things about old groups. Like I have previously mentioned, Sydney is a lot like me. It was funny to see her dating, because it reminded me of some of my troubles with dating. The guy was even like some of the people I've dated, though none so smart. How Sydney is not like me is that she has some serious hang-ups about certain things, all und...

My Saturday night movies are starting to develop a bad pattern. I seem to pick boring movies. This was supposed to be an action, crime, thriller. Well, the action was mostly at the end, there was a crime, and it didn't thrill me very much. It starts out as one of those gritty dramas. Or at least tries to. The colours are muted, mostly greys, and we quickly establish that the "good people" are a couple down on their luck. They have money troubles, fertility problems, so you can really feel that these people are just in a hole. Now this is where the predictability starts to happen. Generally bad things don't seem to happen to the good people who are well-off and happy. From then on, it feels like a generic thriller. It has the drugs, the single mum, the ageing cop with a personal beef against the evil guys. It was almost like watching one of those genre comedies, like it should be titled "Thriller Movie".  It's not the cast, really....

I'm pretty late watching this movie, but that's because I didn't want to pay for it. Reason #1, the science is bogus. The whole 10% thing had been refuted a while ago. I remember when it was all the rage, I think it was the late 80s, or early 90s, at least where I am from. I was a kid, and we were talking about it during a break at school with my friends. Not really a topic for 10-year-olds, but I was weird like that. What I can't remember is when I knew it was stupid. We now do know, there is no part of the brain going unused, or not up to its potential. I'm not going to go into details here, let's just say that when I saw the trailer of this movie, I found it weird how they could use something so archaic. The reason why I did watch it was the reviews. They were pretty good, and promised excitement, good acting. I didn't really get either. The story is quite simplistic. Much of it is taken up by Morgan Freeman narrating. Now I like his voice as much as ...