Unapologetic Reviews

I’d translate the title of the novel to:  I will come for you from below the city . My first thought upon finishing this book was "that was weird". I don't read weird books. I like stories that follow the usual rules. You start at the beginning, follow the story all the way to the end, and then stop. You don’t really get the sense of stopping, even though it is a definite stop, but it leaves so many questions unanswered, you want an epilogue of something. This story did start at a kind of a beginning. The kind where the person's life starts to change, take on a new shape. The actual story was slow. There was a lot of talk of dreams, the past, the present. What it was actually going to be about was very vague. When it culminated in the actual dystopic ending, it snuck up on me, in a kind of futility. I’m a story person, I read books for stories, but this book wasn’t really about the story. It was rather about the author communicating his view of the world. Th...

I sat in to see this movie with mixed feelings. I was pretty bored by the first movie, and I wasn't sure if I would be more entertained by the second. In the end, it was okay. Unlike the first movie, which had an interesting beginning, boring middle, and more exciting ending, this movie had a steady pace. While I wasn't at the edge of my seat, it was interesting enough to not cause me to start creating dishes for my other blog in my head. However, it wasn't exciting enough to actually make me feel. In the review of the previous movie I had a few questions. Now let's see if they were answered. What is the wall for? - We sort of get an answer. What is the rest of the world like, and why isn't anyone trying to find out? - We sort of get an answer for the first part, but not the second. It still doesn't make sense to me why people just take at face value that the world beyond the wall is terrible. On some of the shots there were clearly forests beyon...

I didn't hear about this movie until it was mentioned in a list of movies never released in the theatres in Hungary that were good. That's where I live, BTW. The concept sounded interesting and unique, so I decided to check it out. I also do have a thing for dystopias. The movie is about a train that goes around the world, carrying the last members of humanity. In an experiment that we managed to mess up, we managed to freeze the whole world. The train was built to be a self-sustaining economy. I did wonder how that would work. The first thing that came into my mind was "guns?" That's the first thing you see on the the screen of the train. A man carrying a machine gun. In a way that describes the whole movie. It is very violent. The basic plot is that the people who live in the back, the poor section, try to take over the engine at the front, to control the train, the world, really. The rich people control the food, punish rebellious poor people, an...

Frankly, I didn't know what to expect when I decided to go to this movie. I have seen that some of the people I follow for book reviews have read it, and it got mixed reviews. However, sometimes even bad books can be made into good movies or TV shows. Recently The 100 comes into mind. Not a very good book based on the reviews, but I'm hooked on the show. It probably also occurred to me, because it has similar themes. Teens trying to survive in a world they don't know much of after an apocalypse. This movie is very action packed. Probably the book is a lot slower, but the movie is two hours even like this, so they really didn't need to put more in it. The pacing is good for the most part, however, the ending was a bit abrupt. As if they were shooting, looked at what they had, and realised that they spent too much time on the stuff so far, so they had to finish it already. The story itself isn't typical current YA. Mercifully, no romance! There could be in t...

I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch this movie. The book is on my "never read" list, mostly because I heard it has a lot of romance in it with insta-love, which I can't abide. I was afraid that the movie would be like that as well. However, I have had a movie change my mind about reading the book, twice actually. Therefore, I decided to give this one a shot. I've heard the story compared to The Hunger Games  more times than I can remember. Funny thing was that it reminded me of a whole lot of other dystopian novels, and even some non-dystopian ones, but not The Hunger Games . The factions remind me more of the houses in Harry Potter. Especially because the houses seemed to stay with them even after they left them. The difference is that Hufflepuff is divided up into three aspects of the Hufflepuff mentality, which in a way doesn't make sense, but it does if you think in the terms of jobs. The only people we're missing are the Slytherins. The problem wit...

This is the second installment in The Hunger Games trilogy. I went to see the movie with a higher level of excitement than I did the previous one, as can be seen from the tone of my review . Partly, it's due to the fact that I've read the books in the time between. I was bothered by the style of writing in the books, which I talked about in detail in the review of the first book . However, the story itself and Katniss' character captured my imagination, and I managed to get passed the style for the most part. The second book was my favourite. It had the most imaginative story line out of the three, and the greatest shocker at the end. Now onto the movie. My greatest problem with the previous movie was the shaky cam, and the weird close-ups. Luckily, we got a new director for this instalment, and he didn't suffer from this "artistic" compulsion. According to the credits of the next two (yes, Mockingjay looks to be a two-parter, yay) movies, he will sta...

I'm really mad at this movie. Mad with disappointment. After watching the trailer  some time ago, I was excited to see this. Now, I just want to kill the people who couldn't translate the awesomeness in the trailer to the movie. Let's start with the story. It starts out good. Post-apocalyptic world, good. Characters having tension, there. Love angle, present. See? Lots of potential. When they decide to go to the other colony, you get excited. They even learn something very important there, that you think is going to be the endgame of the movie. Instead, when it does end, you have a WTF moment. I usually don't use such things in my reviews, but seriously, that's the only way it could be described. Like halfway through the budget ended, and they decided to leave it at that. Or it was the first episode in a TV series. Yeah, I could actually see this continued in a TV series. The acting couldn't have been much of a challenge. You have Laurence Fishburn ...

Okay, just got back from The Hunger Games . I rather liked the movie. I'm not going to talk about the actors. No one made glaring mistakes and I haven't read the books, so can't compare. I'm going to discuss the movie style a bit, then the story itself. The handling of the camera and the general cinematography aspect was rather "fashionable". The shaking during the action and the lots of close-ups are all the rage nowadays. The shaking was a bit overdone. Especially in the beginning. Luckily a bit later it calmed down, because it sometimes makes me nauseous. The close-ups were good, just the right amount at the right moments. Especially because it wasn't 3D. You can't do so many close-ups in 3D nor shake the camera, because the mind can't keep up. The story was good. I knew to expect a dystopia. As a genre they are usually defined as portraying the worst of all possible worlds. They are also usually critiques of the present society. I coul...