Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close By Jonathan Safran Foer

Synopsis:
Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Review:
When I first picked this book up off of the shelf and flipped through the pages, I thought to myself "this is going to be interesting." The pages were filled with photos of doorknobs, colorful scribbles and unintelligible text. And for some reason it excited me.
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When it comes to movies, the term legal thriller has always sounded like an oxymoron to me. The term legal reminds me of long documents full of terms and conditions I don’t understand, and even if I did understand them I still wouldn’t care about what they were saying. In short, the legal world is boring to me. Thrillers are anything but boring; they are full of exciting elements like car crashes, backstabbing, and sex. Which is why I tend to scoff when I hear a movie described as a legal thriller. Even with this skepticism, I still went to see the 10:00 am showing of Michael Clayton, a legal thriller. (more...)

Stupid title, stupid movie.

Prologue

Before getting to my first review, I would like to say a few things regarding horror films. I love horror films. I have loved them since my Papa Bear first exposed me to their glory, by showing me Aliens at age seven and The Howling at age eight. The films terrified me. They also created a bloodlust that could not be satisfied. Throughout my childhood and early adult years, I have seen many horror films hoping to satisfy that bloodlust, for at least a moment.

Lately, the films the horror genre has churned out have been stupid, lacking soul, or made for 11-year-olds having slumber parties. With the decline in truly good horror films and the rise of remakes, prequels, and just plain bad movies with no merit, it appears as if the horror genre may be performing its death rattle.
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