A Month of Movies | January 2020

Last year I wrote a post titled 'Odeon Limitless | Is It Worth It?' which goes into detail about my experience as an Odeon Limitless member, what it includes and if it's worth the monthly fee. I'd recommend heading over there to check that out after this, especially if you're on the fence about whether to join the Limitless club or not. It quickly became one of my most popular posts last year and still is to this day. As a little follow up I thought it would be fun to start a mini review series, where I take a look at the films I see with Odeon Limitless each month. Listed below are all the films I saw throughout January and a brief summary of my thoughts.

Jumanji: The Next Level

Jumanji was the first film I saw this year and to be honest the first cinema visit for quite a while. I've recently moved house and as you can imagine, between packing, unpacking and decorating whilst going to work like normal, I've not had much time to visit the cinema lately. Overall Jumanji: The Next Level was a nice welcome back to the cinema-going experience. The film was funny and enjoyable, which is exactly what would be expected from a light-hearted comedy like this. In my personal opinion it wasn't as good as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle but it still made me smile and chuckle from time to time. The cast from the 2017 reboot all make a return, with some new faces thrown in as well. My favourite character is Professor Sheldon 'Shelly' Oberon, who is played by Jack Black, I think he was by far the funniest character in the first film and it was brilliant to see him revisit the role in Jumanji: The Next Level.

Frozen 2

I never boarded the hype train when the first Frozen was released back in 2013, I liked it but it wouldn't make it onto a list of my favourite Disney films or anything like that. Having said this though I enjoyed the second one a lot more, I liked how the characters were already established and I knew what to expect. Olaf was just as hilarious as ever and Anna was probably even more likeable in this one too, the same can't be said for Elsa though, I'm not that keen on her character or any of her solo scenes. One thing that let this film down though was the soundtrack, none of the songs are as memorable as 'Let it Go' or 'Love is an Open Door' from the first film. Although I enjoyed the musical parts of the film whilst I was watching it and listening to them for the first time, none of the lyrics have stuck in my head, which I think says a lot considering how well known the soundtrack became for the first Frozen film. I would recommend seeing this film though, whether at the cinema or on DVD when it's released, seeing as it had a lot to live up to it was actually really enjoyable and didn't feel like it was 'trying too hard' either, like I though it might.

Joker

Joker was released earlier this year but was re-released at my local Odeon earlier this month because it was nominated for 11 Oscars, so it was like a 'last chance' showing for the people who missed it the first time around. I'm not going to lie, initially I wasn't excited to see this film, I can get quite bored at the cinema sometimes, especially with films I don't enjoy or that just aren't my cup of tea. I'm not a fan of the Batman films, so I was going along to see this more for my boyfriend than for my own enjoyment. Having said that though, I did enjoy it, It was pretty much one long and twisted character study of the Joker, taking quite a dark approach and being quite creepy and atmospheric at times. The acting is superb, that's one thing that did blow me away, Joaquin Phoenix did an amazing job at portraying the character and it's no wonder he's been nominated 'Best Actor' for his role. It was also quite interesting seeing the Joker's back story, where he came from and why he is the way he is. It was a very thought provoking film that I'm actually really glad I saw.

The Grudge (2020)

The Grudge was awful. The story-telling and character building was non-existent and when there was any interesting plot points or character development it all just ended up being unnecessary and pointless because the story never went anywhere and all of the characters were boring and unoriginal. The film never allowed me to care for any of the characters, so it quickly became boring and empty (some people even walked out during the screening). Don't get me wrong though, it wasn't the worst film I've ever seen, not even close, last year I saw 'The Nun' at the cinema and literally felt like I was dying inside. So compared to that, this was amazing. But on a serious note this film was very dull and forgettable as there was nothing to it. I wouldn't recommend seeing this film, especially if you don't have an Odeon Limitless card as you would need to pay specifically for the privilege of doing so.

Thank you so much for reading this post. I plan on going to the cinema quite a lot this year, so I hope you like the idea of monthly film reviews. There are some really exciting films coming out soon, some of which will be featured in next months post, one film I'm particularly looking forward to is Sonic the Hedgehog, I think it has the potential to be better than Detective Pikachu, which came out last year. It's not often video game inspired films are released so it's quite exciting when they are, and I'm really interested in how well Jim Carrey plays Doctor Eggman because that seems like a really good fit to me.