AvidBards
Movies

Rocketman: Movie Review

I am a lover of musicals. Pretty much any musical, of any genre, finds its way onto my ‘to-watch’ list and is included in my ‘Musicals’ playlist on Spotify. So, of course, when I found out there was to be a whole movie dedicated to the life and songs of Elton John, there was no doubt I would be buying a ticket to see it. Last week, I finally got around to watching it, and let me tell you: emotions were felt. For those of you who have been living under a rock, Rocketman stars Taron Egerton portraying Reginald Dwight…

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Reviews

Captain Marvel

Film Review Even though S & I live in different countries, we still ended up watching the new MCU film Captain Marvel (2019) around the same time. This movie was hyped up for quite a while prior to its release, because this is the first Marvel movie that stars a female superhero! (Warning: Spoilers below) On one hand, it’s insane that it took 20 movies in The Infinity Saga before a female character had her own film. Of course, characters like Black Widow in the Avengers and Captain America movies, Pepper Potts in the Iron Man series, Gamora in Guardians…

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Reflections

Why I Don’t Use A Rating System Anymore

Something I see frequently in the world of book bloggers and media bloggers is the use of a rating system, ranging from stars, teacups and even dragons. When starting off this blog last year I thought it was such a great idea! It was a concise form of giving people a snapshot of how you felt about the work in question (which in our case could be book, film, TV show, or album). However, while this remains true, in recent months I have felt a resistance to rating my books. One reason for which is simply because I do not…

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Movies

Bohemian Rhapsody

A Review of the “Queen” Biopic Warning: light spoilers of Bohemian Rhapsody below. I have always been skeptical of biopic films. The reason is that there is a lot of biographical content out there that has skewed, glorified, or glamorized its subject. For example, while I loved The Danish Girl (2015), it didn’t take much research to find out that it was a heavily romanticized adaptation of its real life subject matter. Films like The Danish Girl cannot be relied on as historically accurate, but merely loose renderings. I have learned through watching various biographical films that one must always…

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Movies

“Venom” Movie Review: Are Critics Always Right?

Warning: major spoilers below! Though perhaps somewhat of an underdog in the Marvel comics universe, Venom has longtime been a highly cherished character, who appeared predominantly in the Spider-Man comics, especially to die-hard fans. For those of us who aren’t as much into the comic books, you might remember the titular amorphous alien symbiote from the film Spider-Man 3 back in 2007, absorbing itself first into Peter Parker’s spider suit, and later into the character journalist Eddie Brock. Essentially, the concept of the alien symbiote is that it takes on hosts; giving its host immense power but simultaneously (and sinisterly)…

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Movies

“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” Film Review

Warning: Major Spoilers below! When I first watched the trailer for the new Netflix film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (based on a novel of the same name), I wasn’t sure what to think. Personally, I am not a massive fan of overly sappy movies or shows because I find sappiness to be disingenuous most of the times, or romanticized to a point of unbelievability. That’s sort of how this film came across, but what caught my eye was that the main character was a PoC (actress Lana Condor is of Vietnamese ethnicity, playing half-Korean character Lara Jean…

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