I recommend the following

I've mentioned how many hours I spend watching films (film reviews beginning again as of tomorrow by the way) so I figured that although I can't write reviews on all of them, because I just don't have the time, I could at least just write a simple list of films I think are good, bad or even wonderfully ugly, which sometimes can be great. I'm also doing this because I constantly look up lists of films that people do/do not recommend, especially on IMDB. So I want to have my own, maybe I can do what others have done for me and point someone in a good cinematography direction, hopefully. (This is in no particular order or genre)


-Wanderlust (2012)
Me- ***     IMDB- 5.6/10
Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston are a married couple with money troubles, standard. They accidentally stumble upon a hippie/free living community and decide to give it a go, not so standard! I fount out about it online, I'd never heard off it before that, which I thought was weird because I found it pretty hilarious.

-Wild Target (2009)
Me- ****     IMDB- 6.8/10
With Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt and Rupert Grint, it's bound to be good in my opinion.   Someones an assassin, one the assassenee, and the other just caught up in it.

-This is 40 (2012)  
Me- ***     IMDB- 6.2/10
Paul Rudd again. This film is tagged 'the sort-of sequel to Knocked Up', it's the older sister and her husband of the girl in the first film, and obviously it's about them turning 40. I'm not nor have ever been 40 and married, but I thought it was pretty realistic for what I do know of being 40 and married.Writer and director of the movie Judd Apatow shared the making of the film with his wife Leslie Mann and his daughters Iris and Maude Apatow, who play the wife and daughters in the film.

-Feast of Love (2007)
Me- ****    IMDB- 6.6/10
Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear and many other decent actors. This film is based around love obviously, it follows a number of people's stories that are all connected. It truly is a rollercoaster of emotion. Both myself and my friend found ourselves chugging down water to keep the tears back, it wasn't easy! Really good film though, with interesting twists.

-Primal Fear (1996)
Me- *****   IMDB- 7.6/10
Ever since I saw Fight Club when I was younger, I have been in awe of Edward Norton. I think he's pretty damn phenomenal, recently I've watched a lot of films with him in, so prepare to hear more raving about him. This film is about an altar boy being accused of murdering a very loved priest. But of course, there is far more to the story than first thought. Richard Gere co-stars.

-Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Me- ****    IMDB- 7.4/10
I was recommended this film by a friend who has unusual but very good taste in films, she tends to find ones that aren't so well known. It took a year but I finally got around to watching it! And it was very good. Another pretty emotional one, and I have to say after reading about the plot I wasn't sure how good it would be. Basically Lars (Ryan Gosling) has a doll as a girl friend. Sounds very odd indeed, but actually, it's extremely well done, and very heart-warming!

-Mississippi Burning (1988)
Me- ****    IMDB- 7.8/10  
Excellent portrayal of segregation in Southern America in the 60's. Gene Hackman and Willam Defoe are two very different FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three young civil rights activists. The investigation tears the town apart and many are taken as collateral damage.

-Powder Blue (2009)
  ****
Jessica Biel, Forest Whitacker, Ray Liotta and Eddie Redmayne are four characters crossing paths in L.A. as a stripper, a suicidal ex-priest, an ex-con and a mortician, each with their own interesting story/situation.

-Daydream Nation (2010)
Me- ***.5   IMDB- 6.3/10
Cat Dennings is a teenager relocated to a small town with many troubles. Bordeom and naivety entangle her in two dfferent relationships, one with a high school teacher, the other a stoner classmate. This story is just as much about the town itself than the story of Caroline Wexler (Dennings).

-The Oranges (2010)
Me- ***     IMDB- 5.7/10
Two families who have been friends forever and who live across the street from each other encounter a pretty uncomfortable situation when the daughter from one and the dad from the other begin an affair. A mixture of emotion, awkwardness and hilariousness. Very good cast, including Oliver Platt who I've been a fan of since'Lake Placid'.

-Martian Child (2007)
Me- ***     IMDB- 6.7/10
John and Joan Cusack both star in this movie, as brother and sister! John Cusack's character David is a widower who decides to adopt a kid. As he was an odd child himself he gets paired up with a radical little boy who believes he is from Mars. Heart warming, funny, and a good picture of how it might be to take a lost child into your world.

-25th Hour (2002)
Me- ****    IMDB- 7.7/10
Edward Norton again, because I CANNOT get enough of him. Montgomery Brogan considers his options as a convicted drug-dealer facing a seven year sentence. Directed by good old Spike Lee. It's difficult to decide who's side your on throughout this film.

My first shooting star, possibly a comet actually

On Wednesday 6th August 2013, on a beach near where I live, sitting with some lovely people, I saw my first shooting star. I have never said this before in my life, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to say it again, and forgive  me for sounding award-winningly corny, but it was magical. My friends told me that normally shooting stars aren't that amazing to be fair, apparently they're normally a lot less clear and more like this...

                                                  But the one we saw looked more like this...

                                                                                                                  ...It was so clear that the tail of it actually looked kinda glittery in a way, and it was so bright that just after it showed it lit up the entire sea in front of us, honestly for a second, I thought that we may of been about to experience the same fate as the dinosaurs. It really was incredible. Think that's all I have to say on that.

A real catch 22

     In May of this year I moved to a new city with my boyfriend. This was due to the house ourselves and our housemates lived in being knocked down. Think that's slightly weird? It happened twice in a row! Nah it's not so weird though, we lived in houses that got knocked down to build new houses. Anyway! Obviously we could have stayed in the area, and found a house near by, but it was my home town, and since the age of about 12, I had been dying to get out of it. Also, we had all been living in a bubble, for about two years or so we had been in our own world, and all of us reluctantly agreed, that it was probably time for us to explore other places, people and things, even if it was just for a little while, plus each of us had certain commitments we needed to uphold, whether they were to ourselves or others. And if you knew my friends and I, you too would agree with us, we were pretty damn dependent on each other in a way.
     So now we are all apart, and I am experiencing a very big predicament. I love the place where I am. It's like the mothership has called me home. It's awesome. To be honest, if I ever had kids, unless I find somewhere better in the time it takes for that to happen, I think I'd want to raise them here. HOWEVER, I recently realised that I have absolutely no desire to make new friends. I know that sounds really bad, and I do love to meet people, and share thoughts with them and such, I guess I enjoy good conversation with interesting people. But ultimately, I do not wish to go out and make friends with people, if it happens it happens, but I don't intend to go out searching for them. One reason is because, I don't really like people, maybe that's just because I've met more bad ones than good, or because I take a very, VERY long time to be myself around people, not because I'm fake or two-faced I don't think, just because I'm shy or self-conscious I guess.
     Therefore I want my friends, the ones who I already have and love so much. But most of them are in different places, not many of them are even in the hometown at present, and most the ones that are will be leaving to go back to uni or jobs in September. And I don't want to be living there at the moment anyway, it was a BIG step to move away, I don't want to reverse that, especially so soon afterwards.
     Here is where my predicament lies, the friends I have aren't moving to where I am, not anytime soon anyway, and I don't want to move home, and I don't think I should move to wherever a friend is, because that's kinda desperate. So I suppose my only option is to stay where I am, and save up enough money to visit people whenever I can and have them visit us when they can. I know that I can live with this, I've been doing it for three months already. It just kinda sucks. But maybe the sucking of it is more prominent because we were, for the most part, all together for quite a good amount of time. Maybe I will actually make loads of new friends, although I promise you now they will not be better than the ones I have already. It's literally not possible. God I hope none of them read this, past or future friends...

In your FACE-BOOK

     Facebook is very much like loosing your virginity. If you don't have it, you go around acting like you deserve a certain level of respect for not 'joining the crowd' and just getting it, and you may even openly pity'those that are 'weak' and have signed up to publicly display their lives on the web. If you were completely honest though, there's probably a little part of you at least that feels kinda left out in some way, and rather curious.

     And if you do have Facebook, you may well truly believe that it's the source of everything and everyone you know. And like a horny teenager who likes to say they've slept with many people, because of course that makes them...'like, totally awesome', you have AT LEAST 500 friends, er..sorry, FACEBOOK friends. Guaranteed too that half those people you never even had a conversation with, or if you have, you can't remember it because you were on a night out and probably inebriated in some way.
     I remember some researchers somewhere in the world announced a couple of years ago that the average person can, at most, have 150 friends. I believe their definition of friend was probably something along these lines:

A person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.

     Now I'm not going to sit here and criticise and pretend that I don't fall into any category, because of course I do. I first got Facebook really soon after it came out, but I was still on Bebo then (hahhaha I know, you'd laugh EVEN MORE if you'd seen my profile on it) but I couldn't get to grips with it if I'm honest, I think I was 14 and obviously not so great with computers. So I left my account to go stagnant. Then later, when shit loads of my friends had it, and Bebo was becoming really uncool, I realised that I probably needed to update my online life and move to more habitable (popular) places. So I did. In 2007 I became fully Facebooked.
     Three years on, 2010, how are things with my online life? Well, total honesty, every morning before I'd even got out of bed, and every night before I fell asleep, I would scroll through my ENTIRE homepage on my little Blackberry, not just Facebook either, TWITTER too. Yup, those two sites were very much a part of my life. I needed to ensure that I had read every single new update on both so that I didn't miss a thing. Not only that, but I regularly updated my statuses on both so that everyone could see all the 'awesome' things I was doing, por examplay..'OH MY GOD I'M SO TOTALLY WASTED'. I don't know if I ever actually wrote that specific phrase, but I unfortunately have to admit that I wrote so many that were similar. I guess I felt like I had to prove myself to people, many of whom I didn't really even know. I was also constantly obsessed with the feedback from my status and picture updates/uploads,

'How many likes has it got now? Who's liked it? Are there any comments? And how many Facebook friends do I have now?!'

I had a very unhealthy habit, very unhealthy indeed. Anything that takes over so much of your day-to-day life is either bordering on, or has become a fully fledged obsession. And you know what? OBSESSION is very, very bad for your health. Whatever it may be. As my Dad always says, 'everything in moderation'.
     So in January 2012, when I'd just become a girl *WAIT FOR IT* friend, and therefore had way more fun things to do with my time, I decided that Facebook, Twitter, and anything remotely similar, didn't have to go for good, but seriously needed to take a back seat in my life.
     I'll be honest, I didn't have much faith in myself that it would stick, firstly because I fold like a little bitch under peer pressure and of course, my friends were still all hanging out there, and I hate to miss out on things, and also because I have a rather addictive personality. HOWEVER, other than for communication purposes, occasionally looking at funny things and friends photos that I actually wanted to see, and maybe uploading a few photos myself because people actually wanted to see them too, I didn't go on. I went from spending about half my day on those sites, to checking Facebook only, once a week or so. And let me make this very clear, IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. No longer did I concern myself with who had liked my status, no more time was spent coursing through peoples pages to find out who was up to what, I didn't give a shit what my profile picture was, and the best of all, I deleted every person who I wouldn't or hadn't have/had a conversation with, this absolutely included 'exes' (VERY IMPORTANT- DO NOT spend your time looking at an exes page, even if it is 'just to see how their doing'. It is NOT OKAY.) I stopped using Twitter and others completely because I just couldn't be bothered, Facebook I still wanted because it is genuinely a brilliant place to keep in touch with people.
     How is my online life at present you ask? Well I recently moved away from home, so I do spend a little more time on it than I'd like, half because I do want to talk to people I miss, but the other half is spent boredly (<that may not be a word, but if it's not, it should be) killing time when truthfully, I should be doing more productive things, i.e. my washing, or writing this stuff. I currently have ABOUT 105 friends I think, and interestingly, and not that I'm counting I just have genuinely noticed whilst researching for this post, I get more 'likes' than I ever used to when I had five times the amount of friends. Weird right? Maybe it's because the only people on my friends list now are people that actually give a shit about my life, maybe it's just a coincidence. Who knows, or who cares? IT DOESN'T MATTER!  
   
     If you sound like you're me before 2012, then consider liberating yourself from your computer. If you never even tried the F book and actually kinda want to, then set up a profile! And just remember,

                                                                                 EVERYTHING IN MODERATION.

Film review - The Hangover Part III

Better late than never...

I'm going to start off with 'The Hangover Part III' (2013).

100 minutes
Directed by Todd Phillips
Comedy

A wolfpack member is kidnapped by a hardcore gangster, the others must endure some shitty situations to ensure his safe return. 

Now I'll be honest, I loved the first one, because it was hilarious, part II however, I didn't see the point in at all when I heard of its release. Why would they destroy a genuinely funny film by making a secondary copycat? Bad, bad move. Unfortunately it does seem that the large majority of films being released over the last two years or so are sequels and prequels. Have we officially run out of material?! Gosh I hope not. With this in mind, you can imagine my dismay when I saw the poster for the third movie. 

'Really?! I mean REALLY? So the third installment will officially brand the first film, which I loved, a shit film. Great. Way to ruin ANOTHER film.'

Okay, so I can be a little negative at times, but I'm passionate about films so I tend to take it to heart. I also noticed the tag line for part III,

'The end.'

                                                                      ...and I couldn't help but wonder what this meant. The end to what? These films were about the crazy antics of four hilarious guys and the consequences they had to deal with the morning after. If I'm honest, I couldn't really think of any loose ends to tie up. But naturally this tag line did it's job well, so at the cinema last week after finding out that 'The Great Gatsby' was completely sold out, we opted for this instead. 

I was very, VERY pleasantly surprised. Obviously my expectations had been quite low, so it wouldn't of taken much to impress me, but it gave so, SO much more than I had thought it could. And there absolutely were loose ends to tie up. I hadn't even realised that they existed, I think that this was one of the elements that made the film so brilliant, there are twists and undercover threads you don't even know are there, until you see flashbacks to the previous movies. They're not the only surprising factors either, there were a number of unexpected moments. And this is pretty grand coming from me, a self admitted 'telepathic' twat when watching films. Yes I'm one of those annoying people who feels the need to blurt out my prediction of what's coming up in the story, and to be fair, I often get it right (but I should think so considering the amount of time I've committed to my television over the years). Not only did the film have a genuinely surprising story line that kept me eagerly watching throughout, but oh golly, was it funny. Tears were brought to my eyes more than once, and at some point my stomach muscles started cramping up from laughing so hard. The comic delivery from each character, very much like part I, was awesome and intense.

My favourite character, ahhh, for this film it is genuinely hard to say! But I'm gonna be predictable and go with Alan (Zack Galifianakis). Because he is ridunckulously hilarious with his facial expressions and weird personality. I can't get enough of him!

IMDb rating (from over 40,000 users): 6.1/10

My rating (from me): 6.5/10