Reviews - Screen Love Affair

The Exorcist: Believer – Shea’s Review

Well, if I ever believed in The Exorcist as a franchise then consider this me officially having a crisis of faith. Of course, I never had any faith in The Exorcist to carry a franchise. I didn’t even know there was official sequels until I started reading and watching reviews for this movie. Let’s not jump too far ahead though. Normally I’m very cynical about legacy sequels, especially of the kind we’ve gotten lately. I was also skeptical of David Gordon Green after the last two Halloween movies that he made. Fortunately though for this movie, my Gram absolutely LOVED the exorcist. She always told me it was her favorite movie. When I told her that a sequel was coming up, she had the same skepticism that I did, but was insistent that we would go and give it a try whenever it came out. I have to credit my Gram with my love of horror movies. When I would go and stay with her and my Papa, I would go back and forth between them. Usually Papa would be watching the Leafs game in the living room and Gram was in the bedroom watching horror movies. On one such visit (when I was probably far too young to watch these kinds of movies) Gram was at home recovering from surgery she had related to her breast cancer. She just so happened to be watching Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood at the time and I stayed and watched it with her. From that day on, our unique bond was sealed. As I got older we watched countless horror movies together at home and at the theater. She would even join my friends and I in high school to see the latest horror offerings. For those familiar with the genre, you know there is everything from bad language, to gore, to nudity. None of it was enough to phase us. I don’t know how many of you have seen lots of boobs with your grandmother but I’m certain I am up there for most all time. I’m not sure I’m particularly proud of that fact, but it was uniquely us and I certainly was happy to brag to all my friends about how cool my Gram was for wanting to join us for all of these movies. Unfortunately, my Gram passed away just over a year ago now. A promise is a promise though, so today I went to see The Exorcist: Believer with my brother Ty, our friend Sam, and we bought an extra ticket right beside us for Gram. So what did I think? Well I think Gram and I would have had on heck of a fun conversation about this one on the ride home. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t have been a conversation full of positive things to say about the movie. I really did want to enjoy this one and I hoped with all that I had that this movie would be able to be more than just a cheap use of what amounted to very expensive rights that Universal Studios reportedly paid for The Exorcist IP. Already though, the studios have two more sequels in the works despite the lackluster critical and financial success of The Exorcist: Believer. So what exactly went wrong? Well the biggest issue for me was just how generic this movie was. You could’ve slapped any of the numerous horror IPs to this movie and it would’ve felt the same. It was a generic story that lacked the originality of what has come before but also didn’t go further than what came before it. My Gram would tell me stories about how shocking her experience was when she first watched The Exorcist back in the day. Unfortunately, this sequel wasn’t even true to the spirit of the first one as it felt very tame and had much less shocking and horrifying moments than most horror fare these days. Beyond that, the performances were pretty bland, but I don’t really blame the cast. Some of them I have seen shine in other roles, but I think the writing and the movie itself didn’t offer up much for them to do anything with. This might sound lame, but one of the many reasons the first Exorcist movie resonated then and has remained so prominent still is that it pushed the envelope and dared to be different. What I would’ve done for this movie to be a new daring piece that split people along lines about how far the movie went instead of both audiences and critics all in agreement about the mediocrity of what we received. Verdict If it isn’t clear from what you’ve read so far, I definitely can’t recommend this one. Even if you’re curious, don’t waste your time and money because they don’t deserve it. Some early reports have emerged that apparently some serious changes are being looked at for this franchise. I only hope they can learn some good lessons from this failure and put this IP in the hands of some hungry filmmakers that want to use this opportunity to leave their mark. Are there any other horror movies you’re going to watch this Halloween season? Let me know what ones are on your watch list and please share your thoughts about my review as well! Thanks for reading and being part of my Screen Love Affair!

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Dumb Money – Shea’s Review

Reviews / Shea Angus

It’s weird to see movies pop up about what I still consider to be fairly recent events, especially of ones that happened during the pandemic, but Dumb Money has been on my radar for a while now. For anyone that may be unaware, Dumb Money is about the entire Gamestop (GME) saga that occurred in 2020 and 2021. Dumb Money is what people on Wall Street call your average joke that does their own personal investing and this story is about how those average people came together to shake the foundation of Wall Street and fleece the rich for billions of dollars in the process. I won’t spend time explaining what happened because the movie does a great job of that for you. Rest assured you don’t need to be an investing whiz to follow and enjoy this movie! I was excited for this movie for a few reasons. First, that I was part of this whole ordeal (though a modest one at that). I was frantically following these events as they occurred and was staring at stock tickers all day on my computer. It was really cool to be an actual part of a moment that had real impacts. Watching how average people were seeing obscene increases in their investments while at the same time costing some of the ultra rich to lose billions for trying to profit off the struggles of another business by shorting (betting against) Gamestop stock. GME went from around $3 per share in November 2020 to as high as $500 at one point. The second reason though was the cast of this movie is stacked with talent. Paul Dano leads the way as Keith Gill or Roaring Kitty who really started this whole movement to begin with. Dano is really good as Gill in this movie and uses the time he’s allotted to flush out his character and make the audience care about him while showcasing the toll this took on his family life. The cast also includes Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, and Shailene Woodley. However, this is where my first criticism of the movie comes in. This is a large cast for a movie that has to spend a decent amount of time explaining things and showing you what happens to these characters and I felt like beyond Paul Dano, most of the other characters didn’t really have time to shine or make me invested in their stories. I think a big issue was how similar these characters are from a narrative perspective. Much of the cast are playing other people that invested in GME and all struggle with similar issues. Do we hold? Do we sell? What if we hold too long and miss out? These same questions are what nearly everyone in this movie is dealing with and the only real differences are just their setups. You have two students that have a ton of student loan debt, a single mom who is also a nurse, and a Gamestop employee. By filling this movie with so many people with such similar stories, I felt like I wasn’t able to really connect in any meaningful way with their characters. I think this would’ve benefited from maybe focusing more on less characters for sure. If you’ve seen The Big Short then this movie will definitely feel familiar. Unfortunately, I found this movie lacked the pace and character of The Big Short. Another thing that separated these two movies in the benefit of time passing. The Big Short released seven years after the 2008 financial crisis and so the impacts of that time were more evident and clear. Dumb Money on the other hand sort of feels incomplete in that we really don’t know the larger and longer term impact of the whole situation. Sure there is some finality to the stories of these characters, but the overall importance of the situation feels unclear because it’s still so soon afterwards. Verdict Overall, if you’re curious about the movie, I think it is definitely worth your time. It does a great job capturing the time and events as they unfolded. If you’ve never heard about the movie or don’t know anything about the whole situation, this will definitely be a fun way to bring you up to speed. It’s a good time watching people eating tendies, watching GME go to the moon, and squeezing the rich in the process! Have you had checked out Dumb Money? Let me know what you thought of the movie and please share your thoughts about my review as well! Thanks for reading and being part of my Screen Love Affair!

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Welcome to Screen Love Affair!

Blog Posts / Shea Angus

Hello and thank you for checking out our little corner of the internet! My name is Shea and I’m the creator of Screen Love Affair. What exactly is Screen Love Affair? Well I wanted to create a space for me and my friends to share our passion about the things we love and yes, generally those things involve screens. Whether it’s the silver screen at the local theater, the small screen in your living room, or the computer monitor on your desk, if you can watch it or play it, we will most likely write about it here! One thing that was very important to me though was not doing this alone. For starters, I’ve been a little insecure about seriously writing about movies. In my case, I have a fairly limited formal education when it comes to cinema (just a few elective courses at university) and despite a minor acting role in my brother’s student film SMILE! (which you can watch here), my creative contributions to the art form are minimal. What isn’t in question is just how much I love movies. If my logs on Letterboxd are accurate, I’ve been to the theater about once a week on average this year. This includes multiple trips for the same movies, including two different Barbenheimer double features! Being in the city has definitely given me the opportunity to see a lot more movies than before and I’ve taken advantage of it every chance I’ve had. My hope is that my love and passion for these things comes through in my writing and that maybe you will read something here that will inspire you to watch or play something new. So with all that out of the way, I asked two people near and dear to my heart to join me on this adventure. I think it only makes sense to start with my friend Andy as she was instrumental in sparking my love for movies. My friend since childhood, Andy and I became much closer during our time at Carelton University in Ottawa. This was when I really started watching and collecting more movies and Andy was the one to encourage me to take some courses. We also went and watched lots of movies together and Andy was always incredibly patient with me as we talked about movies together hours after we watched them. Andy is currently pursuing a PhD in film and offers some incredible insight that I’ve always valued and loved to hear and discuss. Next up is my friend Adriana. Adriana is a fellow film lover that I met in Montreal. Throughout out friendship we often found ourselves watching and talking movies. It got to a point where every time I heard of a new movie and went to check it out on Letterboxd, Adriana had already added it to her watchlist. We’ve seen quite a few movies together, but I would have to say that watching Skinamarink with her at Cinema du Parc will forever be stuck in my mind as an all time favourite movie theater experience. I’m confident that by having more unique voices on this website that not only will we have more content for you to read, but that each one of us will bring our own unique perspectives and tastes to the topics we right about. As far as what you can expect to see, we will have reviews, editorials, and even some discussion about news whether its movies, TV shows, or video games. Basically, if we want to write about it, this is the spot where you can read it! We hope you find our passion infectious and that you’ll discover a new movie, show, or game that inspires you because you read about it here. Thanks for being part of our Screen Love Affair!

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