For It Is Man's Number: maika monroe

Showing posts with label maika monroe. Show all posts

Tuesday, 28 April 2026

Reminders Of Him (2026)

I don't quite know how it happened, but I think I have now seen all of the recent movies that have been adapted from Colleen Hoover novels. If you don't know the kind of tales that Hoover writes, think Nicholas Sparks, but with . . . ummmm, no, actually, just think Nicholas Sparks. That should be enough for you.

This one stars Maika Monroe as Kenna Rowan, a young woman who tries to restart her life after spending a number of years in prison. She was in there because of her involvement in the death of her boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow), and that makes it very difficult to try and find a way to connect with her daughter (Diem, played by Zoe Kosovic), who is in the care of her grandparents, Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford), and is also doted on by Scotty's friend, Ledger (Tyriq Withers). Grace and Patrick firmly believe that Kenna killed their son, and they have no reason to let her near her daughter, who was born near the start of her prison sentence. Part of Kenna agrees with them, but she eventually forms a connection with Ledger that allows him to learn a bit more about how the worst night of her life unfolded, and why she maybe shouldn't be judged so harshly.

The first screenplay by Lauren Levine, working with Hoover to adapt her novel, Reminders Of Him is a typical slice of tragi-romance, all presented with soft lighting, plenty of rainfall to keep the leads looking wet and ready to be warmed up, and an excessive selection of country music soundtracking it all. While I'm unfamiliar with director Vanessa Caswill, her filmography has a few other titles that would seem to make her a solid choice for this kind of thing. It's all very predictable stuff, and helped enormously by the casting.

Monroe is always welcome in a lead role, no matter how good or bad the movie itself is, and I wasn't as bothered as I otherwise would have been by the fact that her character had to spend most of her time onscreen looking sad and/or angry. Withers is decent alongside her, very much acting like a gentle giant in a way that I assume will keep many viewers happy. Both Graham and Whitford are good in their roles, although I wish they both could have had a bit more screentime. Elsewhere, there are enjoyable supporting turns from Monika Myers and Nicholas Duvernay. As for Kosovic, I wasn't a big fan, but try not to spend too much time being critical of child actors.

If you've seen the other major movies that this sits alongside then you'll find enough to enjoy here. The predictability is part of the comfort, everyone generally handles the material well, and it all ends in a way that should leave viewers satisfied. I can't say that I enjoyed it, personally, but I can see why others might. I thought it needed just a little bit more, but there are one or two good lessons at the heart of the narrative, and it's worth remembering that I am far from the target demographic.

5/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Tuesday, 27 August 2024

Longlegs (2024)

I started to "raise the fences" as soon as I heard the praise being heaped upon Longlegs. A lot of people were effusive about it in a way that made me think I should keep my own expectations in check. When people start comparing a crime thriller to The Silence Of The Lambs then I know that hyperbole is usually in play.

Written and directed by Osgood Perkins AKA Oz Perkins, who impressed me enormously with his first two features (February AKA The Blackcoat's Daughter and I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House), Longlegs is a dark and disturbing thriller that deserves a lot of the praise it has received, but it's unsurprisingly not quite the masterpiece that some claim, although I am happy for those who feel that way.

Maika Monroe plays Agent Lee Harker, a young woman who ends up being used by the FBI to crack a difficult and disturbing case involving a killer nick-named Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). Harker has some strange ability, call it an over-developed sense of intuition, which may help, but she also ends up being somehow connected to the case in a way that may hinder things. Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) worries about Harker, but is also impressed by her. Meanwhile, Harker's mother (Ruth, played by Alicia Witt) may need to be questioned about past events that could help our lead in the current investigation.

With an impressive mix of unsettling shot composition and equally unsettling sound and music, Longlegs is a film that aims to keep viewers on edge for the majority of the runtime. There are very few scenes that allow you to feel completely relaxed, and that's before you start to notice the many small details that either foreshadow or link to a backstory revealed on the way to a very dark and tense third act.

Much has been made of Cage's performance here. He's good, but he still gets to indulge in some familiar Cage-isms. This isn't a complete transformation, although the make up and his changed voice do a lot to keep him feeling much more like Longlegs than "CAGE does Longlegs". Monroe is finally in another film that is at least worthy of her talent and presence, and she does a very good job of being awkward and struggling in every moment. Underwood is very good, often playing his part in a very obvious way until the one or two moments that allow him to break out from the stereotype, but the real standouts, for me anyway, are Kiernan Shipka and Alicia Witt, both delivering some of their very best work. Shipka gets to be more serious and dark than usual (although I've only seen some of her movie work, maybe she gets to be serious and dark in the Sabrina show . . . but I'll always be thinking of Melissa Joan Hart), and Witt is the person who delivers a performance that is truly transformative. I don't mean this to sound dismissive or insulting, but Witt has been doing work over the past few years that I never expected after she seemed to enjoy spending so much time in the lucrative Christmas TV movie market. Then again, looking through Witt's filmography makes it clear that she hasn't stopped working in a variety of projects over the past few decades, but it's the Christmas TV movies that get the guaranteed airtime and marketing.

While I would still be hesitant to immediately place it in a conversation with the absolute greats in this sub-genre (one from Demme, two from Fincher, plus one or two others), Longlegs is a meticulous and quite brilliant journey into darkness that may well leave even the hardiest of viewers slightly rattled by the time the end credits start to scroll. Perkins shows that he has been on an upward trajectory ever since his feature debut, becoming more confident and skilled with each outing, and I cannot wait to see what he does next. I also cannot wait to rewatch this, scouring every inch of the frame for the details that offer astonishing verisimilitude and indicators of how everything is due to play out.

8/10

Tuesday, 23 July 2024

The Watched (2024)

AKA The Watchers.

Here is a film in which Dakota Fanning plays someone who spends a large portion of the runtime being watched, hence the title, and it must be said that she's a very watchable presence onscreen.

That doesn't mean that The Watched is one to watch though, sadly. This is a bad, messy, film that starts off weak and then just gets worse and worse, en route to a thoroughly disappointing ending.

Fanning plays Mina, a young woman obviously struggling to get through everyday life while dealing with her emotional/mental health baggage. She ends up in a mysterious forest in Ireland where she encounters a group of trapped individuals, subsequently becoming trapped alongside them. There are rules, there are entities watching them, and Mina might not really mind being caught in such a limbo state that keeps her focused on the here and now.

The feature debut of Ishana Shyamalan, who adapted the story from the novel by A. M. Shine and directed this, that's the most obvious explanation for The Watched feeling like one of the weaker stories presented to audiences by her father, M. Night Shyamalan. That may seem harsh, but it's impossible to spot the familiar surname, watch this film unfold, and not come to the conclusion that this is the work of a child trying, and failing, to emulate/impress a parent. It's a stick figure drawing passed across for the approval of someone who is responsible for some superb oil-on-canvas portraits.

None of the cast are treated very well by the requirements of the script. Fanning languishes, her character fully defined by her unhappiness. Olwen Fouéré plays the nominal leader of the group, Madeline, and she has to deliver exposition and rules that ultimately make no sense. Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, and Alistair Brammer play the less important characters, and John Lynch appears just in time to test the patience and observation skills of exasperated viewers.

While there are a few nice visual flourishes here and there, nothing is impressive enough to make you forgive the lack of skill in the writing and directing department, which you could also describe as the lack of skill from Shyamalan. Perhaps this would all be more enjoyable if it was a TV episode (maybe one of The X-Files or a 2-part Grimm special), but it's not. It's a full feature film that some people thought would work well enough to enable audiences to suspend their disbelief and enjoy themselves for 102 minutes.

The attempts to create tension don't work, the attempts to make the lead character sympathetic don't work, the backstory being used to feed into the narrative doesn't work. The Watched just doesn't work. Maybe we'll see Ishana Shyamalan do better with whatever she does next. At least she'll get the luxury of having another bite at the cherry, unlike a number of female film-makers who don't have the same good fortune.

3/10

Friday, 5 May 2023

Watcher (2022)

It can sometimes be hard to tell when art is deliberately commenting on a major issue in our society, or when that commentary might just be coincidental, especially when it comes to movies within the thriller and horror genres. Take Watcher, for example, which is a thriller about a young woman in Bucharest who starts to think that she is being watched by a potentially deadly stranger. On the surface, what you have here is a standard, and solid, thriller. Yet it also feels like a film about the feeling that women often experience many times in a single day, especially when they try to explain to others who may dismiss their worries as paranoia.

Maika Monroe is the lead here, playing Julia, and she has moved with her partner, Francis (Karl Glusman), to a country she is completely unfamiliar with. She hasn't even had time to learn much, if any, of the language, so it's understandable that she feels more alone than ever while Francis gets busy with his new job. Unfortunately, Julia then starts to suspect that someone is watching her from a building across the street from them, and that someone may also be trying to follow her when she is out and about in Bucharest. Julia befriends a neighbour, Irina (Madalina Anea), but her moments of relaxation in friendly company are always offset by the tension she feels when she may be being watched again. It certainly doesn't help that the news is busy reporting about a serial killer who beheads his female victims.

Written and directed by Chloe Okuno, from a screenplay by Zack Ford, this is an impressive debut directorial feature from someone who has been honing their craft with a number of shorts over the past decade. Her 2014 short, Slut, has an interesting premise, meaning I really want to see it ASAP now, and I enjoyed her segment, "Storm Drain", in V/H/S/94. Equally comfortable with creepy moments and sudden shocks, Okuno is happy to keep building the sense of dread and discomfort on the way to a finale that delivers what you hope, but in a slightly unexpected way.

Monroe is great in the main role (but fans of her work will expect her to be great in everything anyway), and Anea is a welcome and warm presence in the film. Glusman has to be the busy, and sadly dismissive, husband, but he's not turned into an outright villain. The fact that he doesn't take his wife's concerns as seriously as she wants him to is typical of how many men can be when women voice any opinion about the world seeming a much more dangerous place from their perspective. Last, but not least, is Burn Gorman, as the neighbour who may or may not be a creepy voyeur.

A lot of Watcher plays out as you think it will, but that's not a criticism. This is solid and chilling stuff, helped enormously by having Monroe at the centre of it. It doesn't ever feel like essential viewing though, sadly, although I have seen many other people rate this as one of the best films of last year. I thought it was good, boosted by that inevitable commentary underpinning everything, but I wouldn't rush to rewatch it.

7/10

Sunday, 23 January 2022

Netflix And Chill: Villains (2019)

Co-written and co-directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, who I didn't exactly love for their previous movie, Body (2015), Villains takes a now commonplace idea of two bad people stumbling into a household owned by some much worse people and has some twisted fun with characters all willing to do horrible things to one another in the name of self-preservation.

Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe are Mickey and Jules, respectively. They are small-time crooks, shown in the very first scene committing a messy and amateurish robbery. Making their getaway, it isn't long until their car runs out of fuel. That leads them to a seemingly empty house, one in which a little girl (Blake Baumgartner) is chained up in the basement. When the owners, George (Jeffrey Donovan) and Gloria (Kyra Sedgwick), come home then it's time to see who can keep the upper hand and resolve the situation in the way that suits them best.

Helped by the fact that they have a bit more to play with this time around, Berk and Olsen maybe viewed Villains as the movie that they would have made their debut, if only they had made the connections and extra resources back then. It's obviously a central idea that they saw potential in, and this comes much closer to achieving that potential than their last film did. The only big thing working against it is the fact that it's a bit of an overused trope nowadays. It's still fun, but we've seen it so many times throughout the past decade or so, from The Cottage to Monster Party, from Don't Breathe to The Owners, and many more. Some of these films are much better than others, and a big part of the success or failure depends on just how well the plot mixes in the dark comedy, nastiness, and characters to root for.

They can also depend on the central cast, which is a big plus here. Skarsgård and Monroe are excellent as the young crooks who find themselves suddenly way in over their heads, with the former an especially likeable doofus, and Donovan and Sedgwick are so ready to turn from absolute calm to absolute madness that you suspect they already have a number of bodies hidden away under the foundation of their house. The most fun is had whenever Donovan tries to remain calm and composed in the face of increasingly brash and stupid escape attempts by the youngsters.

Although I had fun with this, and REALLY appreciated the lead performances, Villains doesn't manage to be quite as good as most of those other titles I just mentioned above. And I am sure there are some other movies that I have forgotten to name-check that are in the same ballpark. But I'd find this an easy one to rewatch. There just happens to be many others that I would prioritise ahead of it.

7/10

Sunday, 22 August 2021

Netflix And Chill: Flying Monkeys (2013)

No, this is not a spin-off from The Wizard Of Oz, which could have been a much more interesting movie. Flying Monkeys is a movie that barely needs any further explanation. It's about deadly flying monkeys.

Maika Monroe is unfortunate enough to star in the lead role, playing Joan, a young woman who seems to be consistently disappointed by her father, James (Vincent Ventresca). Things haven't been the same since her mother died. After he arrives late to her graduation ceremony, James tries to make up for his latest error by buying a pet monkey for his daughter. She wants to be a vet so owning a pet monkey should be good practice. Unbeknownst to everyone, however, the monkey isn't actually a normal monkey. It can turn into a dangerous winged creature, and when shot with standard weapons it actually multiplies. The local Sheriff (Michael Papajohn) ends up racing to protect the people in his local community, but the real solution can only be found in the blessed weaponry wielded by a woman named Yin (Boni Yanagisawa).

The only film, to date, directed by Robert Grasmere, Flying Monkeys is almost absolutely awful in every single respect, save for the fact that they got Monroe just before her star-making turns in some great genre movies a year or so later (and when I say star-making . . . I am referring to how she is viewed by fans of those movies who immediately adopted her as a new potential scream queen). This is also the only film to be written by Silvero Gouris, which is a situation I hope doesn't change any time soon. Flying Monkeys could have been a silly distraction, either a simple and fun creature feature or something with a tone to put it firmly in the comedy horror camp. It instead tries to play everything fairly straight, and is all the worse for it.

Where to begin? I started to think that the people involved with this didn't really know what they were doing when they decided to have an elderly character deliver a line of dialogue most famously spoken by Matthew McConaughey in Dazed & Confused. It shows that this was written by someone more interested in fitting in a small reference than creating some convincing characters to be caught up in the winged primate peril. Having said that, at least it is one memorable line. It just happens to be lifted from a much better movie.

Monroe remains likeable enough in the lead role, and Ventresca isn't terrible as the father who cannot do right for doing wrong, but there aren't many others who help to make the material more bearable. Yanagisawa is particularly poor, I'm sorry to say, but Papajohn isn't very good either, and their performance levels are equalled by Electra Avellan, Tyler Forrest, Zac Waggener, and others. Christopher Matthew Cook, billed as Matt Cook, manages to do well enough, playing the unscrupulous animal trader who unwittingly sells the killer beast to Ventresca's character.

You could say that this is on a par with so many other movies of this type. It's not though. I've watched, and enjoyed, many other films like this. I've accepted the varying quality of the acting, I've had fun with the terrible CGI, and I've known that they were a packaged product that I chose to consume. Flying Monkeys lacks a sense of fun, or some kind of self-awareness. Which means that none of the moments feel as enjoyable and entertaining as they should, even the main "punchline" delivered by Monroe, a line that should have been celebrated for how wonderful and terrible it is, but just ends up making you roll your eyes and groan instead.

Or maybe I am just annoyed that there still hasn't been a killer monkey movie titled The Apes Of Wrath.

3/10

Monday, 22 October 2018

Mubi Monday: It Follows (2014)

It Follows is the popular horror movie written and directed by David Robert Mitchell that updates the classic idea of "Casting The Runes" by turning the curse into a STD. It's a hugely entertaining film, with a few fantastic set-pieces throughout, but also massively flawed, in ways that will be covered shortly.

Maika Monroe plays Jay, a young woman who finds her life thrown into chaos after a sexual encounter with a young man (Jake Weary) who has deliberately chosen to pass on a deadly curse. He immediately informs Jay of the situation: it will appear to her in humanoid form that anyone "uninfected" will be unable to see, it doesn't move quickly but is relentless, she will die if it gets hold of her, the only way to become safe is to pass it along, if Jay is caught and killed then it will go back to pursuing the previous victim. Jay tries to explain everything to some of her family and friends, and it's no surprise that they find it hard to believe until they start to see things that are scary and inexplicable. Can they help Jay to stay safe, and is there a way to break the cycle?

There's a lot to like here, not least of all the lead performance from Monroe. She's very easy to like, which helps to make up for the lack of real personality in the mixed group of supporting players (Keir Gilchrist has an understandable crush on Monroe's character, Olivia Luccardi has a memorable moment in which she ends a thought by breaking wind, and that covers the "highlights" of moments that don't focus on Monroe). The general dialogue is good, pacing is brisk, and there's a good synth soundtrack by Rich "Disasterpeace" Vreeland (despite the overused trick of the volume increasing in a way that signifies an approaching terror, not unlike THAT cue in the John Williams score for Jaws). You also get good special effects, all the more effective for being used quite sparingly, and the strength of that main premise.

Mitchell shows great confidence for his second feature, but his creation of such a great central conceit is as frustrating as it is entertaining and intriguing. Considering the potential here, there are a number of ways in which It Follows lets down viewers. First of all, moments that play things out with the potential to comment on abuse, and particularly sexual abuse, seem to veer close to saying something meaningful and then swerve away at the last minute. It's not that any horror film MUST have more to it than the superficial tension and scares, but Mitchell occasionally shows that he knows the potential of his premise (e.g. the scene in which police are questioning Monroe over her sexual encounter, certain specific incarnations of the curse) and that is what makes it harder to overlook.

It's also hard to view the curse as anything but inevitable, which is another problem. This isn't something you can pass onto someone else and be done with, nor is it something you can surreptitiously return to the person who initially gave it to you. It's a constant thing, as explained in the film, because once you pass it along to someone then that will only give you a temporary reprieve until the next person is killed. That's fine for the duration of the movie, and it ends with a suitable final image, but it's no good once you start to think outside the confines of that runtime.

Those things are easier to forgive, however, than the main thing to take viewers out of the movie, which is a truly dire third act that involves the worst plan to try to capture an evil entity since Ray, Egon, and Peter tried to jump on that ghost in the library at the start of Ghostbusters. In all seriousness, if anyone can explain to me why that was the big plan then please let me know. I understand that the characters soon realise it won't work, as things start to happen, but I don't understand how they reached their flawed conclusion in the first place. Are we just supposed to believe that the character who came up with the idea is a complete idiot, making the others more idiotic for going along with the scheme?

And yet, despite those big mis-steps, the film still works. It's a fantastic mood piece, with that score matched by some fine, creeping, cinematography (by Mike Gioulakis), and manages to keep you suspending disbelief for a good hour or so. And it also gains points for trying something a bit different.

7/10

You can buy It Follows here.
Americans can buy it here.

Sunday, 15 July 2018

Netflix And Chill: Tau (2018)

At the start of Tau we see Maika Monroe (playing the lead character, Julia) weaving her way through a crowd and getting up to some pickpocketing mischief. Then, just moments later, she is incapacitated, her character moved to the house that is the main setting for the movie. That's a great shame. As Tau starts to become more and more tedious, it becomes apparent that we may have been better off seeing the character of Julia in some other, any other, kind of story.

But here's what we get. Julia wakes up and finds herself imprisoned, alongside some other people (let's just call them "inconsequential and interchangeable corpses-to-be"), in a house that is protected and managed by a state of the art AI system, Tau. After an escape attempt that turns the corpses-to-be into corpses, Julia is made to undergo a number of tests by the home owner (Alex, played by Ed Skrein). If she does well then the information gathered from the test results will help Alex to move ahead in his work, but she will still have to die when no longer useful.

There are a couple of half-decent ideas buried in this film. Tau itself (voiced by Gary Oldman) is an impressive creation, with a nice line in curiosity about the nature of identity and humanity. The visual FX work is generally good and the visualisations as Julia is tested or communicates with Tau offer a respite from the one main setting. Unfortunately, there aren't too many other positives I can list.

Noga Landau doesn't have the most extensive writing career (everything before this is TV, and fans of The Magicians may already be familiar with her name) and it shows here, her failings exacerbated by the fact that this is the first feature directed by Federico D'Alessandro. Neither party really knows where to go with the central idea, instead wavering between a rumination on AI and a straightforward thriller about a young woman being held captive, and what lengths she might have to go to in order to gain her freedom. The end result is a mess, and it's not even an entertaining mess.

Monroe is a saving grace, putting in yet another decent performance. She can't do much to improve the material that she has to work with, but the film benefits from having her in almost every scene. Skrein is nowhere near as good, although that is as much to do with the script as it is to do with his flat, stilted, performance. Oldman does well enough in his voice role, I suppose, but I must admit that I spent the duration of the film thinking it was Jonathan Pryce lending his tones to the AI system. A compliment or criticism? I'm not sure.

Bear McCreary provides some good music to accompany the visuals, there are a couple of moments of bloodshed that are as unintentionally amusing as they are sudden, and the overall end result is, like many other Netflix options, a harmless enough time-waster that fails to make the most of its potential.

4/10

Buy a better sci-fi film about a "smart home" here.
It's also available here.

Thursday, 1 January 2015

The Guest (2014)

There have been a lot of movies in recent years that have tried, and often succeeded, recapturing the tone of films that many of us enjoyed during the boom period of home entertainment. Those VHS glory days, if you will, when more fun could be had delving in to the bargain bins than opting for one of the latest blockbuster titles. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have never tried to hide their many influences, especially with the great mix of old and new horror elements that they used to great effect in You're Next, but this is one step up from that film. Despite the slight polish to the technical work, you could stick a Cannon logo on the front of this thing and convince people that it was a gem from the '80s they'd somehow missed. And that's a ringing endorsement, in case you weren't sure.

Dan Stevens stars (and it's a star-making turn, let me tell you) as a young man who introduces himself as David to the Peterson family. He is visiting them because he fought alongside their son in combat overseas. The father (Leland Orser) is more suspicious than the mother (Sheila Kelley), the daughter (Maika Monroe) isn't really bothered by anything other than her own life, and the son (Brendan Meyer) has his own stuff going on, mainly trying to survive the bullie at his school. But it's not long until everyone starts to take notice of David. He's such a charming guy, and he gets things done. He seems too good to be true, which means that you just know things aren't going to stay happy and idyllic for long.

The Guest is ALMOST a perfect film, for me. Perhaps after one or two more viewings I actually won't be able to think of even the smallest criticism, which I'm even struggling with now, but I'll hold off temporarily. This film had me smiling throughout, and there were at least five sequences that had me grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

Barrett provides a lean script, but don't let that fool you into thinking he must have had an easy job. On the contrary, every character and motivation is nicely sketched out. One or two stretches aside, the logic stays within the universe that these people inhabit, the dialogue is cool without ever feeling too stylised, and the slim plot unfolds at a perfect pace. It also keeps you rooting for a main character who could just as easily be painted as an absolute, no moral grey area, outright villain of the piece.

Wingard helps. Utilising a supercool soundtrack that could have been plucked from the '80s, he takes the opportunity to support the content here with a bucketload of cool style. This is a gorgeous film, at times, yet the visuals never prove to be a distraction. They simply serve to highlight the tone of the film, one of playfulness and exuberance as both writer and director work to present a gently satiric love letter to the kind of action thrillers that used to be, and still often are, adored by film fans while being completely ignored by critics.

The whole thing wouldn't work as well as it does if it didn't have such a winning performance from Stevens at the centre of it all. I defy anyone to watch this film and not fall for his charms. If there's any justice in the world then Stevens has plenty of good roles still to come, and deservedly so. Monroe and Meyer are both almost as good, with the latter especially touching as he finds a much-needed friend in the stranger that has entered his home. Orser and Kelley do fine work, Joel David Moore has a small, fun, role, and Lance Reddick is a major badass named Major Carver.

The Guest, in case you hadn't quite got the gist of what I was trying to say, is a film to get your blood pumping and even make you want to punch the air a few times. In short, it's the kind of film that they don't seem to make any more. Except for the fact that they do. And when they're as good as this one I can only hope for more in this vein.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Guest-Blu-ray-DVD-DIGITAL-HD/dp/B00NO834N0/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1418073523&sr=1-1&keywords=the+guest

Start your year off right. Buy my e-book, that has almost every review I've written over the past 5 years. It's very reasonably priced for the sheer amount of content.

The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

And American folks can buy it here - http://www.amazon.com/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395945752&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=TJs+ramshackle+mov

As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.