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The latest (and maybe final) instalment of Pixar's flagship film franchise, Toy Story, has just hit theatres and I wanted to put my thoughts on the film from mind to screen. The original Toy Story was released in November 1995, back when Pixar was an independent company, meaning that were are nearly 24 years between this sequel and the original feature film.

Toy Story 4 follows shortly after the events of Toy Story 3 with Bonnie, the new owner to Woody, Buss and the gang, having her first trial day at kindergarten. During the day their she creates a new toy from a spork, Forky, who becomes alive and self-aware. Without spoiling the events, the film follows Woody trying to make sure that Forky, Bonnie's new favourite toy, is there for his kid during one of the toughest times in her life.

Does the film live up to expectations?

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Yeah? I mean, it was certainly nowhere near a bad film. It was feel-good, funny and tense at times but it didn't stand out from the previous 3 instalments. I think it was a good, nice way to (hopefully) end the franchise on a bitter-sweet ending. I felt that Toy Story 3 was a nice end to the series with the end of Woody's relationship with Andy after he went off to college; this further sequel actually didn't taint that tidy ending but didn't add too much more onto Woody and Buzz' story.

How did the new characters fair?

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Keegan Michael-Key and Jordan Peele's Ducky and Bunny duo was by far my favourite aspect of the film. They offered a new style of adult-y comedy that we haven't seen in previous instalments. It seemed like the perfect coupling of both voice and personality. We had Christina Hendricks as Gabby Gabby the teatime doll and Keanu Reeves as Canadian stuntman Duke Caboom, a contribution that I didn't notice until I was reading through the cast list on the way home. As with a lot of sequels  *cough* Porgs *cough* there can be a risk of the introduction of characters that have no need in being present and are just they to sell a few toys but I can't really put my finger on a specific character from Toy Story 4 that fits that description, which is great from Pixar.

All-in-all Toy Story 4 was an, although unneeded, good addition and conclusion to the series of now 4 films. The new character made a positive impact onto the already large number of characters at Pixar's disposal. If you're in the market for an easy-watching feel-good film then Toy Story 4 would not disappoint you.

77/100

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The reboot of Child’s Play from 1988 sees the role of chucky morphing from a serial killer-possessed child’s toy into a more modern problem. This iteration sees Kaslan, a company known for products ranging from drones to TVs connected  together via The Cloud, come out with their new product, Buddi. Buddi is a toy designed for children to have a friend to learn, play with and take care of. A jilted Kaslan employee who works in the factory where Buddi is being made wipes all of the safety protections from a single Buddi toy before throwing himself off of the company building This faulty toy finds it’s way into the hands of kid Andy Barclay (Gabriel Bateman) where all hell breaks loose.

The film features a great performance from Aubrey Plaza, moving from miserable teenager in Parks and Recreation to the mother of Andy in the film. I must say though, it’s weird going from hearing Plaza call her husband in Parks and Rec Andy to seeing her as a motherly figure but this time her son gets the honour. I was sceptical of seeing Plaza in this role but she pulled it off fantastically.

Actor Performances

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Chucky is voiced by Mark Hamill, best known as Luke Skywalker. Hamill’s best known voice acting work is in the form of The Joker in a number of animated Batman features. Hamill gets the blend of creepiness and cuteness as the demon toy just right so that you find the doll creepy, funny and cute all at the same time. The film’s creators successfully get their audience to feel a bit sorry for Chucky at times, seeing that he doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing wrong and he does at good intentions at the base of things.

Child’s Play plays on the fear of the technology we create in the world eventually turning on us and using all of it’s man-made features to it’s advantage. A good idea for a way to modernise a horror classic.

It’s an adequate watch with exceptional performances from Plaza and Hamill but the film is lacking a bit of what you would expect a horror film to have, horror. You have the very occasional jump scare or tense moment but I sat pretty comfortably on the back of my seat the whole way through the showing.

My verdict? You can probably wait this out until it’s on DVD or some streaming platform.

54/100


Make sure you tweet me and let me know what you thought of the film.

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1) If population growth continues at the same rate (1.1%) then we will have used all the particles in the known universe within the next 8,604 years

It's hard to believe. There are not enough particles in the visible universe to support the rate if human growth for more than 8,604 years. This number doesn't even take into account other types of life on our planet and possibly other planets. This was a figure recently calculated on Numberphile by Tony Padilla. 

2) The sum of all natural numbers (1+2+3+4+5...) is equal to -1/12


This is a bit of a controversial one. It's a bit of a counter-intuitive idea. The proof is...strange? To say the least but it does work. Check out the proof for yourself, again from Numberphile and let me know what you think.

3) A Googol (1 with 100 zeroes after it) is larger than the number of particles in the universe

It is also where Google got their famous name from. A Googolplex is written as 1 with a googol number of zeroes after it. There is literally not enough space in the universe to write down the number in it's long-form. It is just too large.

4) If you stretch out all of the DNA in your body you would have enough to reach Pluto and back 17 times over

Why would you not want to?

5) The number 0.999... is the same as writing 1

This carries one of the quickest proofs I have ever seen.
N = 0.999...
100N = 99.999...
99N=99
N=1
0.999... = 1

6) You can fit all of the other planets in our solar system between the Earth and the Moon


Providing you take the distance where the Moon is at it's farthest from us then you can fit every single planet in the gap if you were to place them pole-to-pole.

7) The coldest any substance can be is -273.15 C

Otherwise known as absolute zero this is the lowest temperature that any substance or object can reach. This is because the atoms have no energy at this point, meaning it is impossible to lose any more energy (heat). Absolute zero is set at 0 in the Kelvin scale and equates to -459.67 F.

8) The sum of any 3 consecutive numbers is divisible by 3

For example 3+4+5 = 12 which is divisible by 3. The same also works for the sum of any 5 consecutive numbers being divisible by 5.

9) Venus is the only planet to spin in the opposite direction to Earth

It also takes 243 days to rotate, the longest in the solar system. This makes a day on Venus longer than a year on Venus (225 days).

10) If someone is asked to pick a number between 1 and 10 chances are they will pick 7.

This is because they wouldn't choose 1 or 10 cause that's too obvious. 5 is in the middle so that's out. it's not going to be an even number so 2,4,6 and 8 are gone, leaving 3 and 7. 3 is too small of a number so 7 takes the gold.

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I'm not going to delay my judgment at all. Joker is one of the greatest movies of the last decade. It is a phenomenal masterpiece of story-telling which raises awareness of mental health issues and the impact they can have on an individual.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding this film with concerns that it could lead to the glorification of mental health issues as well as people supporting a fully-fledged villain but those concerns come from people who have obviously made those judgments before seeing the film their selves. Anyone who did see the film would know that this film in no way glamorises the issue of mental health. Instead, it shines a light on how life-destroying these illnesses can be in a dark but thought-provoking manner. 

Performances

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Joaquin Phoenix is a brave man for daring to take on the role of one of cinema's most famous and hard-to-portray villains. After the poor reception of Jared Leto's Joker in Suicide Squad it is a wonder why any respectable actor would risk the plunge into the DC fandom. I'm beyond glad than Phoenix took that risk because his performance was well and truly ground-breaking and game-changing. The 'Her' actor portrayed the Joker's descent into madness as a dark but powerful tragedy that could have been avoided at multiple points. It references modern-day problems such as lack of funding into mental health provisions as well as the lack of awareness of mental illness.

The film also saw American Horror Story's Frances Conroy portraying would-be Joker's mother Penny Fleck in another decent performance and a caring and loving mother of a tragic son. Conroy brings out an essence of humanity in Arthur Fleck amongst a range of evil and depraved acts. It reminds us that Arthur Fleck is a human after all. It reminds us that Joker has a mother of his own who cares about him, despite his flaws.

Why don't people like the film?

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Rotten Tomatoes has scored this film 68% which does the film an injustice. I believe the reason for this is, in addition to the previous quarrels about the promotion of insanity, due to viewers expecting a comic book movie. You see the title of 'Joker' and think of a run-of-the-mill dark DC comic book origin story but Joker (2019) is far from it. The feature bears little resemblance to any kind of comic book movie we've come to expect. It's dark, yes, but that's about where the similarities come to an end.

Joker is a new take of comic-book movies as well as game-changing in the blockbuster world of R-rates films. You should spend your time and money giving this film a watch. You won't regret it.

93/100


What did you think about the film?


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5) - Us

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I was a bit sceptical when I first went to see this film since it was written and directed by Jordan Peele, the same director from Get Out (2017) which, despite its fantastic reviews, I thought to be a bit of a bore with not much substance. To my pleasant surprise, Us was a fantastic film which had its own original story and fantastic twists here and there. I would thoroughly recommend this film if you're looking for a modern horror this Halloween.

4) - Halloween III: Season of the Witch

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The Halloween franchise is usually seen as one of the standards in Halloween films, and not just because they share a name. Many people consider the third Halloween film one of the most disappointing of the series since it doesn't feature the franchise's poster boy, Michael Myers. The thing is, Halloween was originally aiming to be an American Horror Story-esc anthology series of horror films. If you look past the absence of the title character you will see that Season of the Witch is a tense thrilling horror film filled with masks just as creepy s Myers'. 


3) - Cube

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I came across Cube by chance on Netflix when I was looking for some kind of different horror film to watch. It follows a group of strangers who wake up inside a series of coloured and connected cubes which no idea how they got there. Some of the rooms contain Saw-like traps which a mathematician in the group can predict based on serial numbers on the gaps connecting the cubes. If you're looking for a weird cult horror film to watch have a go at Cube. 

2) - The Collector

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A run of the rill Horror film. The Collector follows a family and robber who's house taken over by a masked serial killer 'the collector' who booby-traps the house with morbid, lethal contraptions in a bid to prevent the family from escaping. A sequel to the film was released which I have yet to watch but I'm looking forward to the sequel and the recently announced 3rd film.

1) - Jigsaw

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Jigsaw is the latest instalment in the Saw franchise and serves as a kind of rounding-off of the first 7 Saw films before the franchise is rebooted with Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson in 2020. Not that well received, I kind of mean my top spot to go to the entire Saw franchise as a whole. I used to think that Saw was nothing but a bloody-gory mess with not much substance but after paying attention to the story it involves I must admit I was wrong. Saw is a story of tragedy turning into murder. I don't think I need to push these films to anyone as I'm sure most people have seen one of the instalments themselves. 

What's your favourite horror film?


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I've been aware of the Hitchhiker series from a young age, from both snippets of the TV Series and discussing the show in my middle school English lessons. I'd never had any interest above that in either the series or the book (or the film as I have just discovered) until I saw this Reddit post. It gave me a little chuckle so I thought "Hey, I'm in my summer holidays from work, might as well do something useful" so I got myself a copy of 'The Complete Trilogy of 5' and started on the first book in the series.
The first thing I noticed was how little the book has aged. It doesn't seem dated and its ideas of what futuristic space travel may look like are the same ideas that you would expect from a modern-day space-opera. You don't find yourself laughing at what the author, Douglas Adams, thought the future of the universe may look like as it's very modernly written even though the novel was published in 1979.

“Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This is the first book I have read that gave me a good few chuckles here and there. Douglas Adams portrays typical British humour through the novel in the form of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox. A third of whom are human with the other 2 being alien life-forms. Dent is whisked away from Earth by his close friend, Ford Prefect, who is aware of a plan to destroy Earth in favour of an inter-galactic bypass. The book follows the pair's hitchhiking through space upon escaping the ashes of where the planet earth once was, using Prefect's trusty copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

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I found myself reading this book for a chapter a night due to time constraints but it was the sort of novel that you could easily pick back up and know what was going on, in spite of a few unfavourable lengthy words here and there. It's a cheery take on an over-done plot in film; the destruction of Earth by alien life.

The ending of the book seemed a bit too abrupt for my liking but since the second novel was published the following year I'm not too fussed as it's sequel 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' was published the year after the original novel so I'm sure it was meant to be immediately followed upon in the next instalment. I for one cannot wait to get onto the next book and bring you my thoughts yet again.

There are another four books in the series by Adams for me to read, plus a sixth published posthumously in 2006, so there's plenty more for me to get my teeth into now that I've finished the novel. I plan to slowly but surely work my way through the huge universe that Adams created, which all began from a 1978 BBC Radio 4 comedy show

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward to venturing further into the series, perhaps having a go at watching the series, film and maybe even the original radio show.

Have you read this novel? What did you think?

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