The Peanut Butter Falcon Review

We are quickly running out of summer as August comes to a close. With all the major summer blockbusters behind us, it was nice to be able to relax with a smaller, feel-good indie. Going into August, there were two independent films that I especially had my eye on and it made me happy that I was able to get around to both of them. The first one was "The Farewell" with Awkwafina and the second one was this one. "The Peanut Butter Falcon." With absolutely no context, that's a bit of a unique name for a movie, which certainly grabs your attention. Thus when you take a closer look at it after said title grabs your attention, you become immediately intrigued. At least that's what my experience was. This is a movie where Shia LaBeouf plays a character who goes on an adventure with a young man who has Down syndrome. Yeah, that just screams at you that it's going to be a feel-good movie worth seeing. It helps that I have my finger pretty closely on the pulse of the movie industry and thus was aware of this one back in March when it debuted at the South by Southwest film festival to very strong reviews. It took a while for it to get here, but it finally hit wide release this past weekend, expanding into 986 theaters after a few weeks of limited release, so I was excited to check it out. 

Expanding on the premise here, newly introduced actor Zack Gottsagen plays a 22-year-old man with Down syndrome named Zak who lives in a retirement home because he has no family and that's where he ended up. His dream, though, is to become a professional wrestler and attend the wrestling school that is led by his hero, the Salt Water Redneck. Eleanor, played by Dakota Johnson, does her best job at being his caretaker, but ultimately he escapes with the help of his older roommate Carl, played by Bruce Dern. Zak then wanders by himself until he comes upon Tyler, played by Shia LaBeouf, who himself is on the run since he lit a fire to $12,000 worth of fishing equipment after being angry that a local crab shack wouldn't buy all the crabs that he stole. Tyler initially resists Zak and tries to abandon him, but quickly his heart softens and the two of them form an unbreakable bond as the two outlaws of sorts go on a fun adventure to Salt Water Redneck's school while Eleanor independently is trying to hunt down Zak after her boss is understandably upset that he escaped. This is very much a modern retelling of Huckleberry Finn, or at least takes heavy inspiration from that, thus giving this a classic feel to it, but with a very heartwarming spin to it that is certain to win you over.

The thing that makes this work is Zack Gottsagen himself, as well as the relationship he has with Shia LeBeouf and Dakota Johnson. Quite frankly, there's not a lot of roles in Hollywood written for people with disabilities, let alone Down syndrome, so that aspect of this is what immediately makes the movie stand out and it's just magical watching Zack perform, making this movie centered around him that's very much a reflection of him as a person. After watching the movie, it's one of those experiences where I immediately rush to the internet to learn the story of how this came about. In searching through a lot of interviews on YouTube with the cast, I eventually found a featurette with the directors talking about how this came about. They were at a camp for people with disabilities and talked with Zack, who expressed his dream of wanting to become a movie star. They were honest with him and stated that it's probably not going to happen, which caused Zack to get quite emotional. He responded by telling him why don't they do it. That was about eight years, so it was a long process to get the funding and get it made, but the long story short is that they made a proof-of-concept video, which opened the door to them getting it done.

Getting that background to the movie really elevates this as being something special. I give a lot of props to the two directors, Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz, for making the effort to get this done. And this is their feature-length directorial debuts, so it's not like it was something that was easy for them. They've directed a few shorts before this and had a few small acting roles, but it's not like they had the power to write a script for Zack and immediately make it happen. I imagine there was a lot of persistence and patience involved, but it paid. And now we have this unique film where an actor with Down syndrome gets to be the lead star. A lot of things that happened in the movie were things that Zack was passionate about in real life, like wrestling, swimming and partying. So the directors really wrote this film around him, which is awesome. In watching more interviews, Shia, Dakota and Zack consistently emphasize that the filmmaking process was a very special one where they became an immediate family. That definitely translates onto the screen as there's this special bond between the three of them in the film, especially with Shia and Zack who are going on this adventure together with Shia essentially letting Zack lead the way, treating him as an equal.

That last part is also what makes this special. There's a lot of movies where two people or more are going on an adventure. As I mentioned earlier, said premise goes all the way back to classic literature. So it's not like the premise itself is super unique. But it carries with it a powerful message as to how to treat people with disabilities. A lot of said people are looked down upon as a lesser species of human beings. Even if we're not explicitly referring to them as "retarded" or other direct insults, how we act when we're around them can mean the same thing. Do we act like they're a lesser human who needs to be watched over and taken care of as if they are a little child? Do we look at them funny and refuse to talk or interact with them? Doing so can be quite damaging and can be equal to or even worse than if we walked up to them and insulted them. This movie teaches a strong message that we should treat someone with Down syndrome as equals, both in the words we use around them as well as the actions. And if we do that, we can come to learn how truly fantastic and amazing they are. I personally haven't had a ton of interaction with Down syndrome people in my life, but when I have truly gotten to know them, those types of relationships are honestly some of the best I've had.

I think this message here can just as equally expand a lot further into being a strong lesson as to how to treat our fellow humans. I think back to the classic line from Marin Luther King Jr.'s speech wherein he says that he dreams of a time where people will be judged, not based on the color of their skin, but the content of their character. I think it's very harmful to look on the outward appearance of someone and immediately make judgments based on that, or attach labels of any sort such as race, culture, sexual orientation, political opinion, religion, or whatever disabilities they may have. Rather we should set that aside and get to know who the person truly is on the inside, even if they aren't doing so themselves. In fact, maybe a better word there is ESPECIALLY if they aren't doing so themselves. Often we are our own worst critic. Because of that, if someone can look past all the negative things we are saying about ourselves and truly love us for who we are, that can give us an added level of confidence to wake up and try to become better. So if we perceive that someone looks or acts differently than we do, or has a different opinion, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge and try to genuinely get to know who they are. Perhaps we can make friends that we never thought we would.

I could nitpick elements of this movie if I wanted to. It's a very simple and straightforward plot. Some of the character development happens rather quickly instead of taking time to evolve. And you pretty much know exactly where it's going to go. But I don't really feel like diving too deep into all of that because I think the most powerful element of this is the subtlety of it all with how these messages I spoke of are incorporated. It doesn't bash you over the head with a ton of bricks, but rather it quietly sticks with you. You don't walk out of the theater with your mind having been absolutely blown, but it's a movie that will always remain with you in the back of your head. And oftentimes it's those types of movies that make a bigger impression in the long run. Thus I was rather captivated by the simple adventures these three went on in this movie. I didn't need any huge plot twist or a crazy emotional moment. I was perfectly content with watching them float down the river on a raft and other things like that. And I really liked how much it showed how strongly everyone cared about this project, from the directors on top all the way down to the small, nearly cameo moments from people like Bruce Dern or Jon Bernthal. It's a special movie and I'm going to give it an 8/10.

Overcomer Review

The Kendrick Brothers are back with what is now their sixth feature-length film, this one following "Flywheel," "Facing the Giants," "Fireproof," "Courageous" and "War Room." Not once in this movie's marketing campaign was I actually excited to see this, and thus I almost skipped it. But then I remembered that I have a lot of friends who have enjoyed plenty of their movies and might be interested in what I think of this latest additional to their filmography, so I submitted myself to seeing this one. The Kendrick Brothers' films have a lot of issues that I will dive into, but the biggest underlying issue is that they always paint a black and white picture of reality while steering far clear of any semblance of a complex issue. If life sucks, then turn to God and life will get better. While that's a fine sentiment, the reality is that sometimes life still sucks when you turn to God. What then? I'd love for them to tackle that issue, but they never do and thus I've gotten increasingly annoyed with them. While that's not as damaging as something like "God's Not Dead" treating every non-believer as a child of Hell, the unrealistic sentiment that they keep pushing in their films is still not very helpful. They might be harmless films, but they leave me feeling empty and uninspired.

And that is only introducing the basic message. The quality of the filmmaking is a whole different story. Their early two films, "Flywheel" and "Facing the Giants" are harmless enough on their own, and not terrible films. But they seem to have gotten worse over time. "Fireproof" is one that I barely remember. The only thing that sticks out to me is that the movie seems to think that bashing your computer with a baseball bat is a good way to overcome a pornography addiction. That aside, it's full of overacting and a bunch of nonsense. "Courageous" was as boring as tar with way too many story arcs and a run time that felt an hour too long. And "War Room" was so bad that I was laughing hysterically at several points, while also being a bit disturbed that the movie thinks that all your legal troubles are going to magically disappear if you have faith in God. The main actor should've been in prison at the end of the movie, but they didn't think too hard about that one. And "Overcomer"? Well, it has a few redeeming elements that make it not quite as bad as the previous three, but when it comes to pure filmmaking, this is a pure disaster. The movie has no idea what it really wants to be and comes with the most generic title that I've seen in a Christian movie.

So what is that they are overcoming in this movie? Well, that's a good question. I guess they're overcoming a lack of faith, which means the title "Overcomer" could describe every one of the Kendrick Brothers' movies. But specifically this is a cross country movie. Kind of. Alex Kendrick, who is the director of all of these movies, and the lead star in most of them, plays a basketball coach who has a lot of hope about the upcoming season after suffering a sad loss in the final game of the current season. But then something happens in the city that causes the school to loose a huge percentage of its students. What is said thing? I actually don't know. They jumped over it pretty quickly, but due to some sort of random plot device that makes no sense, a lot of families are moving out of the city. Jump five months into the future, right before the start of the next school year, and Mr. Kendrick is asked to be the cross-country coach, because apparently his halfhearted, generic speeches to his basketball team is enough for the principle to think he's the right man for the job, even though he has no idea how to coach cross-country and never really makes an effort to learn how throughout the movie. But when tryouts come, he has only student tryout, but they go forward anyways.

That's what our movie is like for the first portion of it. There's not even a mention of "faith" or "God" until much later on. We're just a cross-country movie. So I decided to judge it on it being a sports movie. Granted, sports movies can be formulaic and predictable because there's not a whole lot of avenues you can go with them, but this movie doesn't commit to anything here. As a sports fan, if you at least put some sort of effort into following the sports movie formula, I can be entertained. But in this movie, they just run. The lone student of the bunch is a girl named Hannah. There's not really much progression with her and her running abilities. There's just a bunch of disconnected sequences with her running and magically getting better even though Mr. Kendrick doesn't do much coaching. In between Hannah's runs, he's complaining about basketball, being dragged into drama class stuff, talking with his wife, complaining about how rough life is at the moment, then we'll randomly cut back to a scene of Hannah running. So this is a kind of a sports movie. But they really just use the cross-country stuff as a backdrop to everything else. They don't commit to it. If you want a good cross-country drama, go watch "McFarland, USA" with Kevin Costner. It's pretty good.

After only half committing to the cross-country angle of the movie, our first mention of religion comes when Mr. Kendrick's wife tells him he has a visiting assignment with the pastor at the hospital. In the midst of that, he literally accidentally stumbles into a different patient's room. That patient just so happens to be Hannah's dad, who Hannah was told by her grandmother of whom she lives with was dead. Mr. Kendrick actually only goes back because Hannah's dad is also a runner and gives him tips as to how to coach, which he doesn't do a good job of implementing. But eventually he figures out who he is and then the next portion of the movie becomes a drama where Mr. Kendrick and his wife try to figure out how to break the news to Hannah that her dad is still alive, despite the fact that grandma is adamantly against it. They decide to go around her, which seems dumb, but whatever, and the movie then becomes a father/daughter drama that lacks in interesting drama. It wasn't all that interesting and things just sort of happen. Apparently after being a horrible person much of his life, Hannah's dad came to Jesus and transformed his life around while suffering in the hospital and whatnot. Now Hannah has to figure out how to deal with all this since he's never been in her life.

Then the movie finally becomes a religious movie. But in terms of the build up to the religious drama of the movie, it kinda comes out of left field. Hannah is talking to her principle about her being unsure how to react to this revelation that her dad is alive and feels bad for not being there, then the principle says, "Well, even though your father isn't perfect, you have another father who is." Then principle proceeds to give a speech to Hannah about God and Jesus, then commits Hannah to read from Ephesians and take notes as to what those chapters say about who Hannah is. Said principle is allowed to do this because this is a Christian school... one that Hannah is going to for some reason even though apparently she's not even heard of Christianity based on how she reacts to all this? Yeah, I don't know. This didn't make sense to me. And the conversation seemed a bit forced in the first place. But Hannah is a good little girl and studies the Bible, which causes her life to be miraculously changed. And this is where this becomes your typical Kendrick Brothers movie because from this point forward, everything miraculously turns out perfectly for Hannah. She becomes a more inspired runner. She fixes her relationship with her father. She calms down her angry grandmother. And she gives restitution for being a thief earlier in the movie. 

The only reason why this kinda works to some degree is that the actress who plays Hannah is a very likable girl. You naturally cheer for her to do well in cross-country, even though the movie itself doesn't do a very good job at being a sports movie. You hope that things work out with her and her family, even though the movie doesn't do a good job of setting up that drama and only half commits to about two minutes of grandmother being extremely upset that they went behind her back. You are inspired by Hannah's speech of who she is after she reads the Bible, even though it didn't make sense for her to randomly walk into the drama class room and give the speech to the whole class, nor did it feel natural for that religious conversation to happen in the first place. And you cheer for her in her final race for the state championship in cross-country, even though by that time the movie had completely forgotten it was a cross-country movie and thus lazily, and rather hilariously threw in a plot device that made it for the stupidest ending I may have ever seen in a sports movie. I wasn't even angry at that, though. I was highly amused and nearing the point of laughter. It wasn't as unintentionally funny as "War Room," but it got pretty close at points, which isn't a good sign.

In summing all this up, this movie fails at being a cohesive movie. Going in, I decided I was going to judge it based on three aspects: how well the filmmaking elements are, how good of a sports movie it is, and how inspiring are the religious messages. It completely fails in all three categories. Yeah, sure, the Kendrick Brothers have done well enough financially to have enough of a budget for the technical aspects of the film to look just fine, but the writing is all over the place, the film has zero direction, and the young girl who plays Hannah is really the only actress who I think did a good job. In regards to it being a sports movie, it's terrible. There's just a bunch of disconnected sequences of Hannah running while Mr. Kendrick and family complain about how awful cross-country is. Then there's a state championship race at the end that comes long after the movie abandoned the whole sports movie thing for some predictable and boring family drama. And as far as the religious stuff in the movie, it just felt forced. If Hannah giving a speech in the drama class causes you to jump out of your chair and shout, "HALLELUJAH!" then maybe you'll like this. It did get an A+ on Cinemascore, so what do I know. Personally I just need more substance and thus I'm giving "Overcomer" a 5/10.

Ready or Not Review

We're entering late August, which is a bit of a dead zone when it comes to the box office. It's often a crowded field quantity-wise, but not a lot of the movies are making a lot of money as it's one of those times where studios are dumping a whole bunch of smaller films in hopes to make a quick buck or two while they wait for the more lucrative times of the year. Thus it becomes a bit of a challenge in sifting through everything to find what's worth seeing. The last two weekends saw a total of 10 wide releases hit theaters, with three more being added this upcoming weekend. I got through a few of those, while adding a few more to the list of movies I'll eventually check out. Now it's time to play the waiting game for "IT: Chapter Two," which is poised to explode into theaters on September 6. In the meantime, though, I may have hit a late August gem in this hide and seek thriller. This is a movie I've had my eye on for a while now as it's had a rather aggressive marketing campaign. Initially I wasn't completely sure what to expect, but I thought it had potential based on the trailers. Then the reviews came out and I was taken aback because this was sitting at 100 percent for a while. Yep, that got my attention. It's fallen a tad bit since then, but it's still at a certified fresh 89 percent.

I think the most amusing thing to me is that this is a Fox Searchlight picture. Usually when you get a late August horror film, Screen Gems or Blumhouse is the responsible party. Both of those studios are good at finding the right weekend to sneak in a quick horror film that was dirt cheap to make and get a decent profit off of it based off of the almost non-existent production budgets. The quality can be hit and miss for them, but every once in a while you get a fun one, like "Don't Breathe" (Screen Gems) or "Happy Death Day" (Blumhouse). "Don't Breathe" is one that I was especially thinking of when it came to "Ready or Not" as both are movies where our protagonists are trapped in a house, trying to escape, and both movies were released in late August. But no, "Ready or Not" doesn't come from Screen Gems or Blumhouse. It comes from Fox Searchlight, a studio best known for their mastering the awards season as three of their films this decade have won best picture. So they're usually releasing a bunch of high-profile independent films, not late August thrillers. It gets even funnier when you realize Fox Searchlight's parent company is now Disney. So from Disney and Fox Searchlight comes a rather darkly comedic, gruesome, late-August thriller. 

This movie is an absolute blast, though. It's sure to become a cult classic as it's not looking to make a whole lot at the box office. Despite being positioned well in late August, a good spot for breakout horror films, and having Fox Searchlight's widest ever release with 2,855 theaters, it has the unfortunate challenge of following in the footsteps of "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" and "47 Meters Down: Uncaged," two horror films this month that already took advantage of the prime positioning. Then we have the elephant in the room that "IT: Chapter Two" comes out in two weeks. So the horror fans have been well served this month, which can lead to lower box office. But I say this has cult classic potential because, not only have critics enjoyed this, but audiences seem to be enjoying it, too, as it has a solid 82 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes audience section to go along with a B+ Cinemascore, both of which are pretty high for a horror film. Oftentimes the horror films that get critically praised see the general audiences spit in their face. So the fact that everyone seems to be enjoying this means the word is eventually going to get out, even if it means people are still discovering it in a year or two instead of rushing out to see it in theaters in the next month or so.

If you've never heard of this movie, but you like yourself a good horror film, I'd almost suggest you simply take a leap of faith by closing this review, not watching any trailers, and going in blind. That would be a really fun experience as there's so many crazy things that happen in setting up this movie's premise. I kinda wish that I had known nothing about it going in, but that rarely happens for me when I go to so many movies and thus see all the new trailers for upcoming movies. This trailer specifically shows quite a bit from the first half of the movie, but Fox Searchlight had their hands tied a bit in that regard because if they hadn't shown as much, they wouldn't have been able to attract anyone to come see an original horror film that's not based on anything or a part of a pre-existing franchise. Because as much as people complain about not having as much original films, when said original films show up people don't go see them because they're not part of something familiar. It drives me crazy. That said, the trailer doesn't spoil anything from the last half of the movie. It's just that I had to wait a bit before I got to something that I hadn't seen in the trailer as the trailer does a great job of a being a thorough summary of the first third of the movie.

If you don't want to just trust me and go see this, then let's proceed with what this movie actually is. It stars discount Margot Robbie as a girl who has just married into a crazy family. I say discount Margot Robbie because that's who the whole internet either thinks she is or thinks she looks like. And I agree. She looks practically identical and is only two years younger. In reality her name is Samara Weaving and she's the niece of actor Hugo Weaving. She hasn't been in a whole lot. She played a small role in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" and starred in the Netflix film "The Babysitter." But I wouldn't be surprised if suddenly Hollywood now takes a huge interest in her because she is fantastic in this role. In the movie, what should be the best night of her life with this marriage instead turns into her worst nightmare. Her husband's family has a tradition where every time a new person comes into the family, they have to play a game at midnight. The game is selected at random, but if the choice ends up being hide and seek, they feel that they have to kill you before down because they're superstitious due to reasons that they will all die if they don't. And of course Grace, our lead character, selects hide and seek. So the family locks down the house and tries to kill her.

That's the basic premise. The movie is actually fairly simple in plot, but fantastic in execution. What makes it such a blast is this crazy family dynamic. First and foremost, you really care about Grace. She's a very strong female character who has a pure innocence to her. Given that it's her wedding night, she looks drop dead gorgeous as she's all fancied up with her hair, makeup, and beautiful dress. But now she is doomed to die as everyone is trying to kill her and she's the least deserving human being to be designated this fate, thus you are desperately cheering that she someone makes it through a whole night with all of these psychopaths chasing her down. The other element that made this really fun was that all the family members chasing her down had unique personalities that made for an interesting dynamic. And they lived in an old-fashioned home in the middle of the woods with a lot of more ancient weapons that they really didn't know how to use. Given that it had been a while since someone drew hide and seek, they're also out of practice. So it's not your typical home invasion where the villains are trained killers. It's a group of bumbling idiots chasing down a poor, innocent girl who had no idea any of this was going to happen.

Enter chaos. While I do still claim this as a horror film, it's not the type of horror film that is extremely intense and serious the whole time. The movie has a wide variety of tones that I think are excellently mixed together. It's very much a crazy slasher film at times with exaggerated deaths that will have you rolling around in laughter due to the shock value. It's also extremely hilarious in other ways, yet in doing so it doesn't compromise the rest of the film. It reminded me of a Kingsman movie if Kingsman did a horror spin-off. It's that level of crazy, hilarious absurdity. It very much has a lot of dark humor to it, which I thought was well implemented. Yet despite that, the horror elements are still well crafted as there's a lot of tension throughout that had me uneasily cowering in my chair. And the lighting of the whole movie was spot on. Most of the movie takes place between midnight and dawn, so it's naturally dark everywhere, but they're also in an old-fashioned house that's dimly lit to begin with. It's also a big house, providing plenty of places for our girl to hide while at the same time causing there to be plenty opportunities for a family member to come out of nowhere to chase her down. The set design with all this is great, so the result is a perfectly crafted horror film.

On top of all this, I really liked a lot of the character development. It's not a movie that's just going for a bunch of cheap scares, like is the case with some home invasion movies. But in addition to all the crazy absurdity, there's a layer of emotional depth to it. You can understand where everyone is coming from and you buy into the conflict of a lot of the family members who don't want to do this, but are so terrified of this family curse that they feel they have no choice and thus decide that they would rather kill an innocent girl than face whatever might happen if they get to dawn and she's still alive. But they're all on different levels of commitment. Some are wondering if perhaps this whole thing is bogus and others don't care as much and would rather save the girl. I'm specifically talking about the new husband with the last part as he kinda likes his new wife and is not sure he wants to kill her just because the game says so. The husband's brother is in between all of this and has a great arc. But then we have some of them who have submitted to the darkness and are completely honed in on killing the girl in whatever way they can. Hence you go on a very wild ride that is very satisfying, especially because they totally stick the landing with how the film ends.

So yeah, this is a late August movie that comes highly recommended from me. I always enjoy it when a movie comes out of nowhere to become one that I really like. While it's always fun to look forward to and enjoy the latest Marvel or Star Wars movie, sometimes it can be even better to go into a movie that wasn't even on your radar and be completely blown away. It makes each movie going year quite the adventure that is fun to look back on. "Ready or Not" is obviously not going to be for everyone, but if you're in the mood for a crazy, intense, over-the-top horror adventure that also has a surprising amount of depth and character development, I think "Ready or Not" is well worth the price of admission. And if you're one who finds this movie later in life, in a way I'm a bit jealous for you because that means you weren't aware of all the advertising and had a lot more surprises come your way in the first half of the movie. But I'm not going to be too jealous because I do like the experience of finding a hidden gem early on in its movie life while doing my best to help get the word out. And if no one else reads or finds this review, then that's OK, too, because I enjoyed my escape into the world of this movie. It was quite the enjoyable boost of adrenaline. My grade for "Ready or Not" is a 9/10.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged Review

Our yearly shark movie has arrived! This has been a rather fun tradition for me as I've come to really enjoy my dumb shark movies. In fact, some friends and I have become a bit obsessed with them recently. It's a story that has a bit of a sad beginning, though, as I excitedly showed them "2001: A Space Odyssey" in honor of its 50th anniversary and they hated it. To counteract that, a decision was made to watch "Sharknado" next. But not only did we do that, over the course of an entire summer, we watched ALL of the "Sharknado" movies. I can't remember the exact timeline of all of this, but in the midst of this, Hollywood got on a bit of a shark kick, releasing "The Shallows" in 2016, "47 Meters Down" in 2017 and "The Meg" in 2018. Sure, shark movies have been popular since "Jaws" revolutionized cinema in 1975, but this subgenre of horror has had a bit of a resurgence of late and it's been exciting. This summer I feel extra spoiled because, although it's not a shark movie, we had "Crawl" in July. And that's pretty much the same thing, but with alligators instead of sharks. So if we broaden the conversation and talk about terror in the water, it all fits into one big happy family of horror. After "Crawl" was extremely entertaining, I was ready for my second dose.

But first, before I dive into the movie, I want to talk box office because, you know, numbers are my thing. Out of all the three recent shark movies we've had, you might be wondering why "47 Meters Down" is the one that first got a sequel when "The Shallows" made $55 million domestically and $119 million worldwide while "The Meg" made $145 million domestically and $530 million worldwide, yet "47 Meters" down made only $44.3 million domestically and didn't have a worldwide release. Now I suppose that $44.3 million is fairly close to "The Shallows," and is more impressive when you consider it opened to just $11.2 million compared to the $16.8 million of "The Shallows." But the answer to this is budget. "The Meg" made a crapton of money, but also cost $130 million. "The Shallows" was pretty well off as it cost only $17 million, but "47 Meters Down" cost a mere $5 million, which for Hollywood standards is chump change. With a budget that low, justifying a sequel is a lot easier. That's also why "47 Meters Down: Uncaged" wasn't a failure this past weekend, despite only opening to $8.4 million. Sure, they were probably hoping for a bit more after boosting the budget all the way up $12 million, but they will still end up getting a return on their investment.

The other reason why it was easier to make a "47 Meters Down" sequel is that of the three of them, that's the one that more easily lent itself to a sequel because it wasn't tied down to characters or premise. "The Shallows" was specifically tied down to Blake Lively's character and what she went through while "The Meg" was about Jason Statham fighting a megaladon. A sequel to either would have to include those characters and find a way to at least attempt a logical next step with them. "47 Meters Down" was just about two girls trapped in the ocean while getting surrounded by sharks. Even if we ignore spoilers of how that movie turned out, bringing back the same characters for a sequel isn't necessary because those characters aren't really what made the movie interesting and fun. It was the sharks. So the idea of them getting a bunch of nobodies together for a quick sequel that has zero connection to the first is something they can get away with. And that's exactly what they've done. "Uncaged," as I will now refer to it, has nothing to do with "47 Meters Down." In fact, it also has nothing to do with the specific distance of 47 meters, which is why naming this "48 Meters Down" would've been a bit silly because "47 Meters Down" is pure branding at this point.

The basic premise of this movie is that four teenage girls go off a little adventure to some underwater caves and get chased around by sharks. That's all that really needed to happen here, but I think this movie's biggest issue is that it tried to be more complex. Of the four teenagers, Mia and Sasha are step sisters. Mia's dad and Sasha's mom recently got married and now they're trying to make this new family work. But Sasha for some reason doesn't get along too well with Mia and has no interest in even calling Mia her sister. On top of that, Mia, despite being a beautiful, smart, nice girl, gets bullied at her new school by a group of annoying teenage girls. Why does Sasha not like Mia? Why does Mia get bullied? I actually don't know. They're just empty hollow things that don't make sense. I didn't understand the motivations. I didn't buy all of the drama. In fact, it was all a really annoying distraction when I just wanted to get to the sharks. Sure, it's good to have good characters and emotional arcs. That can make a terror in the water movie more intense, like "Crawl" earlier this summer. But when the screenplay is just so terrible and the fairly inexperienced actors that were brought don't do a good enough job selling it, things become a disaster really quickly.

Thus as we got going in this movie, I was getting the feeling that perhaps I was a little too overly excited for this movie. Perhaps I was also forcing myself to like this movie because I tried to get pumped, but it was all superficial excitement. I didn't know if I really cared about any of the characters. I certainly didn't care about any of the drama. Then when the shark first showed up, I tried to be excited, but I wasn't. The only bit of emotion that came to me was the four girls went to this ancient Mayan underwater ruins and accidentally destroyed the whole thing. It was rather heartbreaking that such a cool historical site was all ruined and I was sad. Maybe at this point it would've been appropriate for our shark to be a vengeful Mayan guardian who decided to hunt and kill all these girls as a punishment for destroying the ruins. Or maybe the spirit of the Mayans themselves should've possessed all the sharks and chased after these girls. That would've been exciting. But no, that's not what happens. Instead, these girls are trapped and their oxygen tanks are running out, so they're trying to figure out how exactly they're going to get out of this since their exit is now blocked off, which isn't helped by the fact that they now know a shark is lurking around, causing panic levels to rise.

It was at this point when I was trying to force myself to be interested in this thing that the movie became comparable to an actual shark attack. You're casually swimming around the ocean, minding your own business, when all of a sudden... BOOM! A shark grabs you and pulls you under. That's how I felt, anyways. Because this movie came out of nowhere to suddenly become extremely intense. There was a jump scare that actually got me. I felt rather embarrassed and thus a bit relieved that I was watching this by myself so that my friends wouldn't laugh at me because I'm usually quite thick-skinned when it comes to jump scares. But this one got me. The shark snapped out of nowhere and had me on edge. From that point on, Johannes Roberts has a lot of fun with this movie. The acting budget may not have been very high and the screenplay probably went through nothing more than a quickly thrown together first draft, but it felt like they put over 90 percent of their $12 million budget all on these sharks and shark sequences. That's certainly where all the directing effort when into. The sharks here that are terrorizing these girls are blind cave sharks and they looked menacing. They're also given plenty of red coats to chow down on beforehand.

This is where if you have the right mindset, this movie will be a blast. If all you care about is watching sharks chase people and you want well-crafted shark scenes, this gives you exactly what you expect. Thus on a shark movie scale where one extreme is "Jaws" and the other extreme is "Sharknado," this movie leans more towards the "Sharknado" end of the spectrum and I feel that it's very self-aware of that. It's not really trying to be a serious movie as they only halfheartedly set up a story and a cast of characters, but things get bonkers really quick and I was rather amused. There were also plenty of moments where I was curled up in my chair as the horror sequences were well crafted. It's way more than a series of jump scares. The first jump scare got me. If the rest of the movie was just an endless string of jump scares, I would've grown rather tired of that, but Johannes Roberts plays around with a lot of different horror elements, mixing and matching to keep things fresh and keep me on edge. It's also apparent based on this and the first movie that he loves his bait and switch. That happens rather effectively in the first movie. This movie he has a lot of fun with that with a ton of bait and switch moments, especially in the final act, which was extremely entertaining.

I wasn't going to mention the cast of this movie because none of them really stand out, but then I learned after the fact that Sylvester Stallone's daughter is in the movie, as is Jamie Foxx's daughter. That's Sistine Stallone and Corinne Foxx. Both of them were in their feature film debuts. That was fun to learn. Do they have a future in film following this movie? Well, I don't know. Maybe. They probably have the pedigrees to get a good jump start on their acting careers, but eventually they need to bring a bit more to the table. Sistine Stallone played one of the annoying friends always making the dumb decisions. If that's what they told her to do, then she did her job effectively. But she wasn't a very good character. Corinne Foxx, on the other hand, plays one of our main two sisters, that of Sasha. And she does a good enough job to make me believe that she could have a good career if she was put in better movies where story and characters meant something. I hope she doesn't get relegated to entertaining B-movies. However, the real star of this is Sophie Nélisse, who plays our main character of Mia. She does a good job in this and it shows that she's the one with the acting background, having starred in "The Book Thief" and "Pawn Sacrifice," two really good indie films. 

Ultimately, though, your enjoyment of this movie will rely on two things. First, did you like the first movie? That has like a 55 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, so it was split right down the middle in terms of critics reaction and audience reaction was about the same. I really enjoyed the first movie, so I found myself enjoying this one. Second, can you sit back and enjoy a dumb shark movie? Does your shark movie need to be on the level of "Jaws," with great characters, great themes, and great development along with well set-up shark moments? Or can you also enjoy a "Sharknado" style of film where the acting is bad, the story is subpar, nothing makes sense, but the shark sequences are absurdly entertaining and thus enough to make for a fun film? If the latter is the case, then I suggest you give "Uncaged" a chance. I'm not saying you have to run out to see it in theaters, although with quantity superseding quality at the moment with our August and September release schedule, it's certainly not a bad option for a $5 Tuesday or something like that. But when this comes to a streaming platform or you're at a Redbox trying to figure out what to rent, this is a great option. I can't say this is a great movie, or even a good one, but I was entertained, so I'm giving it a 7/10.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 Review

Because this is the sequel everyone was looking forward to. "The Angry Birds Movie" came out back in summer 2016, which was already passed the popularity of the app game. Admittedly, "Angry Birds" was an extremely addicting app, and one of the most popular app games, but it was first released way back in 2009. When 2016 came around, it was already a stretch to release it given that "Angry Birds" was past its prime. And now is there anyone in 2019 still playing the game? Well, maybe. Turns out Wikipedia informs me that there's 18 different "Angry Birds" games in the main series, as well as seven spin-off games. The latest one was released two months ago, that being "Angry Birds Explore" in June 2019, so I guess there's some sort of audience. But I went to my app store (for my Android tablet) and the first "Angry Birds" game that showed up on the top free app games list was "Angry Birds 2" at No. 71. In fact, I kept scrolling to see where the others were and out of 513 games on the list, the only other "Angry Birds" game that made the list was "Angry Birds Friends" at No. 316. So yeah, it's the perfect time to release a sequel to that "Angry Birds" movie that came out three years ago, right? It's definitely going to give Sony Pictures Animation more positive vibes.

Truth be told, "The Angry Birds Movie" has almost completely left my mind. I remember being one of the few people that watched the initial trailer and thought it could be a fun movie. But then the movie itself came out and I got burned pretty hard as it turns out the rest of the world was right when they thought it was a bad idea. I remember the movie being a really dirty kids movie that bored the tar out of me, but I don't remember much about it. I went back and read my review and learned that I spent most of the review complaining about the lack of an interesting plot, which makes sense because the game is a mindless app game where you launch birds at pigs. It's not the type of thing that was meant to be adapted into a full-length movie. Also in reading that review, let's just be glad that movie adaptations of "Temple Run," "Tetris," "Fruit Ninja," "Monopoly" and "Settlers of Catan" ended up not being a thing, because I mentioned there in that review that said movies had been announced. Maybe Hollywood learned their lesson that games without plots shouldn't be turned into movies. Although not everyone in Hollywood has learned their lesson as Sony Pictures Animation went onto make "The Emoji Movie" in 2017 and now have released this movie in 2019.

I suppose one could say that Sony Animation is like that friend who is still sharing Harlem Shake videos. They haven't quite kept up with what they should be doing. Funny enough, the also made "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" last year, which now looks more like a fluke than anything. I was almost worried there that the Sony Animation I knew had disappeared and become a competent animation studio. Who am I supposed to continually make fun of if Sony Animation learns how to properly make movies? I guess Illumination could take that crown because they've been a train wreck lately when it comes to quality. But it appears that Sony Animation is back to their usual selves, making awful animated movies for me to make fun of because "Angry Birds 2" is another disaster that I found even more annoying than the original film, which is kinda what I was expecting. So why did I see it when I knew this would be the case? I don't know. I tried to come up with multiple excuses in my head while watching, but the most honest answer is simply that reviewing movies is what I do. And this movie came out on a Tuesday instead of a Friday, so when I randomly had a day off that I wasn't expecting, I threw in the towel and went into a matinee showing to get this one over with to give me a jump start on this weekend's movies.

The plot? Yeah, if 2016 me had an issue with the plot of the first movie, 2019 me is in for a world of fun because this movie is completely bonkers. I mean, to heck with an "Angry Birds" movie doing "Angry Birds" things. Instead of having evil, raunchy pigs running around, causing the birds to launch themselves at the pigs' base, they all decide to be friends because an angry purple eagle, upset at the fact that her fiance stood her up at their wedding, and tired of the fact that she lives on a frozen island, decides that she's going to destroy both the pigs' and the birds' island so that she can take over and use it as her summer paradise. Instead of, you know, flying somewhere else. Maybe in this universe these are just the only two islands in existence, giving purple eagle nowhere else to fly. I don't know. Logic isn't this movie's strong suit. I suppose that's not completely necessary in a kids movie, but it would've been nice if the filmmakers showed that they actually cared. They just simply opened the box of "What to do in a generic kids movie" and rolled with it, using the first idea suggested to them from one of their five-year-olds as a loose plot structure, while taking lots of inspiration from that awful first movie, in hopes to make their bosses at Sony happy.

The movie didn't have much character development. We just gathered together our main characters from the first movie, added a few more for style, teamed them up with their pig enemies, and sent them all on a random adventure. OK, sure, I'll back track a little bit. Red, our main bird, has a bit of development. He's so obsessed with his newly found fame as a hero of bird island that he is dead set on doing everything himself instead of working as a team to find a solution. And the movie's big lesson is that he learns how to work as a team player instead of having to do everything himself. But that's it. Yet even that feels like generic kid movie stuff and his arc wasn't even as interesting as in the first movie. The rest of the movie is just all of the characters doing things. The movie doesn't feel like it has a connected plot. It's just a thousand smaller sequences all strung together, each of them hoping to spark a reaction from the kids in the audience. In fact, most of the things that happen in the movie don't even serve a purpose to the overall plot. There's even a huge subplot involving a trio of young birds searching for some lost bird eggs that's completely pointless and only loosely connects to the main plot at the end. Even most of what our main characters do serves little purpose.

Ultimately everything that happens feels extremely juvenile. We only spend a few brief minutes at the beginning doing "Angry Birds" stuff. You know, birds launching things at the pigs and vice versa. But that almost feels obligatory. They just used all of these characters to do random juvenile things. Every five minutes there's a dance sequence with a pop song that lasts 30 seconds. I got the feeling that this was a very expensive movie just because of how much money they had to be paying all of these music studios for the rights to use all of these songs. None of them really have a purpose outside being a poppy song for the kids to laugh at. If you're ready for your kids to be singing "Baby Shark" all day, there's even a dance off to that song. There's also plenty of toilet humor for the young kids to laugh at. It's not quite as dirty as the first movie, but they still can't help themselves with all the poop, fart, and pee jokes, as well as showing as many pig and bird butts as they can, because, you know, that's super funny, even though pigs and birds don't have human-like butts. These ones do, though.The movie also thinks it's extremely funny by cracking jokes the entire run time while practically pausing to wait for a reaction. Yet I don't think I even laughed once.

To close this review off, I'm going to use an obscure football reference. One of the more well-known press conference blow-ups was with the Cardinals coach after a loss to the Bears where he yelled "They are who we thought they were! And we let them off the hook!" If you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up. That was going through my head because I tricked myself into thinking that maybe this movie could surprise me. I didn't like the first movie. I didn't like the idea of them doing a sequel. I didn't like any of the trailers. Yet I saw the positive score on Rotten Tomatoes (currently a 72 percent with 61 reviews counted) and thought that this maybe could be a surprise. It wasn't. It is what I thought it was going to be. And I let it off the hook by giving it a chance. I have no idea how it has that high of a score. I also don't know how so many big name actors got conned into joining this sequel. I don't even know how or why this movie exists in the first place outside the fact that Sony Animation is stupid enough to think this will make just as much money as the first movie. I don't know what the final prognosis will be, but I hope it fails miserably because I don't want there to ever be an "Angry Birds 3." Because this movie annoyed me even more than the first, I'm giving it a 4/10.

The Farewell Review

Here's a movie that's been getting a lot of buzz in the last few weeks. After a successful showing at Sundance this year, A24 purchased the rights to the film for $7 million, beating out the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Fox Searchlight. A24 released the film in four theaters on July 12 to the tune of $355,662, pulling off the highest per theater average for any film this year so far at $88,916 per theater. Since then, they've been very smartly playing the slow roll out game, feeding off of great reviews and positive buzz to continually build the hype while only adding a small number of new theaters each week instead of impatiently expanding out too quickly. The strategy has worked out quite well so far as the movie has already made over $10 million and it hasn't even hit 1,000 theaters yet, meaning its run is far from over, especially if it ends up with awards buzz in the fall. While I certainly respect this release strategy, as it's often the best way to get the most money possible with a smaller film, it's also driven me crazy this past month. I really wanted to go see it, yet it wouldn't expand far enough to hit my local theater. When it finally did this past weekend, I immediately beamed and made plans. It was as if a new Marvel film had hit theaters. This type of small film is my thing!

What I find most fascinating about this film is the premise. It's a very unique and personal film to director Lulu Wang as it's based on the story of her grandmother. While the actual story and characters are a work of fiction, it's the events in the film that mirror what actually happened with the director's family. Out of context, the statement "based on an actual lie" might sound amusing. It got a few chuckles out of my audience when I saw it, but in context I didn't know this type of thing happened. What I mean by all this is that the movie surrounds an older lady who gets diagnosed with a severe form of cancer. According to the doctors, she only has a few months to live. However, the family decides not to tell her this and so even the doctors lie to her and say that everything is fine. They even go as far as creating fake medical reports so that she's convinced she's fine. Now I'm the last one to talk to when it comes to Chinese culture, but the movie claimed that this is a fairly common occurrence in China. While there's a lot of motivations behind this, one that stuck out to me is that if a person knows they are going to die, that might speed up the process. If they think they are just fine, they might actually live longer. That's a rather fascinating concept that I hadn't thought of.

The drama in the movie comes with how each of the individual family members deals with this decision. In order to say goodbye to their mother and grandmother, a fake wedding is planned, giving them all an excuse to gather together for one final family outing. Nai Nai, as they call her (that's Mandarin for grandmother, I believe), thinks they are all celebrating a wedding and she is very excitedly working out all the plans. Everyone around her is doing their best to fake excitement, with various levels of success. Perhaps not doing the best at this is Nai Nai's granddaughter Billi, played by Awkwafina. Billi moved with her parents to America when she was young and thus is probably more familiar with American culture than Chinese culture. At the least, she's extremely confused as to why this all is happening as she thinks they should tell Nai Nai the truth so that they can say a proper goodbye. But nevertheless, she flies out from New York and maintains this lie, but acts in an understandably depressed fashion as she has a great relationship with Nai Nai and would rather say a proper goodbye than pretend nothing is wrong. All of this leads to a lot of awkward moments and subdued drama until each of the characters takes turn breaking down in their individual ways.

The definite star of this movie is Awkwafina. She was in smaller movie and TV roles prior to 2018. In fact, she began her career as a rapper and even has a couple of albums out. But 2018, specifically in the summer, was when the movie gods decided to make her a thing. She had breakout roles in "Ocean's 8" and "Crazy Rich Asians," the latter of which personally caught my attention as she was hilarious. At around the same time, in June 2018, this movie was being filmed. I'd say that's a great summer. And now she's showing up all over the place, including in Netflix's "The Dark Crystal" later this month and "The Angry Birds Movie 2" in a few days, as well as "Jumanji: The Next Level" at the end of the year. At San Diego Comic Con this year, she was also announced as a cast member in Marvel's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," coming February 2021. So yeah, everyone should know Awkwafina's name before too long, if you haven't already. And "The Farewell" showcases her as an actress who is more than capable of carrying a lead dramatic performance instead of just being the comedic side character. If this performance doesn't give awards consideration when awards season rolls around, I imagine she'll at least have everyone's attention, which should lead to even more dramatic performances from her.

Because, yeah, Awkwafina really sold this. I felt the emotion from her in multiple forms. When she's with Nai Nai and has to join in on this lie, you can just tell from the look on her face that she's struggling. When Nai Nai calls her out on this, wondering why she's not looking happier, she's not really sure how to respond and either gives the most obvious white lie of "I'm fine" or has to play along with Nai Nai's theory of her suffering from jet lag. But not only can you tell that she's extremely sad, but you can also feel the anger building up inside her towards everyone else who won't let her properly say goodbye to Nai Nai. When she's not around Nai Nai, that emotion becomes unleashed in several different sequences that would be perfect for her Oscar video if she can somehow get an Oscar nomination, like getting mad at her parents when they are alone or talking openly and bluntly with the doctor when she realizes said doctor speaks English. Finally, there's moments where she finally gets to spend some one-on-one time with Nai Nai and that's just heartbreaking, especially when Nai Nai talks about how she wants to give her an even bigger wedding feast or when they have to say goodbye and Nai Nai is sure they'll see each other again, but Billi doesn't think they will.

It's these types of moments in the film that not only make you want to break down and cry because of how strong the on-screen bond is between the two of them in the movie, but it's also the type of film that will spark a lot of personal reflection, especially if you've had a grandparent pass away. For me, all of my grandparents have passed away. Two of them passed away either before I was born or before I could remember, but I did have a great relationship with my grandpa who passed away just a few years back. I remember our final moments together quite well, which is a memory I will always cherish. I feel there's often a special bond between a grandparent and a grandchild that is quite unique. While relationships and siblings can have a lot of highs and lows, more often than not the relationship with a grandparent consists of mostly highs as their can be a lot less baggage and very little negative energy. While I don't feel I'm doing justice to this type of relationship with words, the movie captures it perfectly, which makes this a special film that gives off a unique energy that we haven't seen much of, while also teaching me about a certain part of Chinese culture that I wasn't aware of. Thus it was not just an emotional piece, but it also felt very educational.

I do have to apologize for being a dumb American at this point, but there's a lot of other Chinese actors in this movie whose character names just didn't stick in my brain, nor does looking through a cast listing help me much. That said, there's a lot of them who did an excellent job of providing the movie with a lot of layers. This is not just a movie about Awkwafina's character and her Nai Nai. All of the family members have their own story that weaves into this. They might be mostly supporting characters, but they add a depth to this story that helps it stand. We have Tzi Ma and Diana Lin as Billi's parents, Lu Hong as Nai Nai's younger sister, Jiang Yongbo as Billi's uncle, and Chen Han as another grandchild. All of them have a different relationship with Nai Nai and they have their own way of dealing with this situation, which made this feel even more real. One of my favorite moments of the movie was when the uncle was up giving his congratulations speech at the fake wedding, but he couldn't help himself and broke down in tears as he talked about how much his mother has meant to him. She didn't understand what was going on, but he had to get his feelings out. Then we had other characters who were more closed up, which added to the tension of the situation.

Finally, this movie was another great showcase that you don't need a $200 million budget to make your film look nice. You just need talented people who know how to do their job. In fact, I often have a lot of respect for independent films because there was no guarantee during the production of this film that this was going to make any money. The team of filmmakers had a story to tell and they wanted to do their best to properly tell it. Director Lulu Wang has only done one previous feature-length film and that's a German film called "Posthumous" that doesn't appear to even have had an American release. She doesn't know if this is going to be successful. She just wants to tell her story and so there's an extra level of care from her as a director as well as all the crew around her to make sure they do their job perfectly. Oftentimes you can tell the difference between a movie like this and a big blockbuster film where in the latter, the filmmakers know they are making a movie that is going to make a ton of money, so they sometimes are going through the motions. Not the case here. I could tell that everyone on board wanted to make this movie look as good as possible, thus there was a lot of care and precision put into technical craft of the film.

To that last point, this is the moment where I could act like a film student who is required to talk about the cinematography, sound design, editing and all of that fun stuff. I won't go into all of that simply because I've already gone on for a long time with this review and I worry that reviews that are too long won't get read. But I noticed it. There were a lot of basic, everyday stuff that was being filmed, like eating dinner. But instead of being boring, there was a lot of great work with the camera design, editing and the likes that made simple scenes rather engaging. When I started noticing things like that, I purposely paid attention and it was a rewarding experience. The movie also made me really hungry because a central focus in just about any culture when there's a large family gathering where something is being celebrated is the food. And there's a lot of food that's being eaten in this movie. One thing I do know about Chinese culture is that they do a great job with their food. So combine good looking food with great technical work in the movie where food is a big focus and I was ready to go to a Chinese buffet of sorts right after leaving the theater. The only reason why I didn't at least go somewhere afterwards is that I had plans shortly after my movie ended.

I hear a lot of complaints from people being tired of so many sequels and remakes these days. People think Hollywood has run out of ideas and thus there's no more original films. However, I disagree. There's a lot of original films these days. And it's in the independent realm that they come from. Yet they rarely get attention in the mainstream because the same people complaining about no original films are the same people that refuse to see original films because it's not part of a franchise they are familiar with, which is why we get so many sequels and remakes because Hollywood is a business and that's what people pay for. People complain at how shameless Disney is, but yet Disney is about to get their sixth $1 billion film in 2019. And "Frozen 2" and "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" haven't even come out yet. Because people complain about sequels and remakes, yet that's all they choose to see. If you think I'm being unfair with this statement, it's time to now put your money where your mouth is and go see "The Farewell." It deserves your money. It's not just a rewarding, emotional experience in the moment, but it's a movie that's going to stick with me for a long time because I left feeling educated. Because of all this, I'm giving "The Farewell" a 9/10.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Review

Happy Halloween everyone! Because, you know, it's never too early to start celebrating one of the best holidays, right? I say that because this weekend's slate of new arrivals is led by the adaptation of the popular 80's book "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," which is actually a trilogy of books written by Alvin Schwartz, with the three books published in 1981, 1984 and 1991 respectively. These are books that I didn't realize I was aware of until I saw the cover and was like, "Oh yeah. That." I didn't quite get into them like I did the "Goosebumps" books, but they're still familiar. Despite me not having quite the level of nostalgia for this books, I was still intrigued by this movie. It was an easy choice to see it over the other new wide releases. "Dora and the Lost City of Gold" is getting better reviews than I was expecting as I hear it's a cute and fun movie, but I still feel like the wrong demographic for that. "The Art of Racing in the Rain" is the third dog-narrated movie of the year and all of those trailers all year really started to annoy, so I'm passing on that. "The Kitchen" is getting pummeled by critics, and looked a little too similar to last year's "Widows," anyways, while "Brian Banks" looks like it would've been better as an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary. So "Scary Stories" it is!

When I introduced this review by wishing everyone a happy Halloween, that's because this immediately reminded me of the perfect Halloween party movie. Despite the series of books being marketing towards a younger crowd, and thus being a bit controversial because of that, this is not a kids movie. So don't take them. If you need a good Halloween movie for your older kids that pushes the boundaries a bit, put in "Goosebumps" or "The House with a Clock in Its Walls." Or play it safe with something like "ParaNorman." Those are solid PG horror films that would work well for older kids. "Scary Stories" is a PG-13 horror film that pushes the boundaries even for that rating. Like, seriously. When I first saw the trailer, forgetting who the target demographic is with the books, I was wondering if this was going to be rated R. It's not. Because there's no blood and language. But some scenes are about as equally as intense. Now I hate referring to this as a teen horror film because that implies that PG is for kids, PG-13 is for teens and R is for adults. And I hate those labels, except for maybe the R being for adults. So I don't want to say "Scary Stories" is only for teens. Rather this is perfect for anyone who doesn't want to deal with something as intense as "IT" or "Halloween."

As far as the plot goes, the original books didn't really have a through plot. They were a collection of short stories, with the first book having 29 stories, the second book having 28 stories and the third book having 25 stories. In addition to being a collection of short stories, they were also well-known for the creepy illustrations that stuck in people's minds. So what the movie does is that it finds a clever way to implement a handful of these stories, taken from all three books, not just the first, and creating a story out of them. How they do that is creating a character named Sarah Bellows who lived back in the 1800's and has returned in the form of a vengeful spirit, wreaking havoc on this small town in the 1960's. On Halloween night, a group of teenagers wander into the abandoned Bellows mansion and find Sarah's book where she wrote all her scary stories in. Our main female protagonist, named Stella, is obsessed with horror stories and becomes rather fascinated with this book until she quickly realizes that Sarah is writing more stories in it that are coming to pass right as they are being written. All the new stories are about each of the teenagers who were in the Bellows mansion that night, thus they are getting picked off one by one.

I was pleasantly surprised by how invested I was in this story. Sure, none of it is particularly unique. The idea of the characters from a book that are coming to life is the exact thing that the "Goosebumps" movie did. We've also seen vengeful spirits done countless times, as well as horror stories involving a group of kids or teens. But the execution of this was nearly flawless to me. Put front and center was this group of teens, the core of which was a trio of longtime friends consisting of Stella, Auggie and Chuck. Auggie and Chuck are the troublemakers in the group, but they also are very likable and have taken Stella, an often made fun of girl, under their wings. The three of them run into Ramon, who takes a special interest in Stella as a young love interest. And it's the four of them that go into the Bellows mansion while running away from school bully Tommy and his girlfriend, who is Chuck's ditsy older sister Ruth. It becomes therapeutic when Tommy is the first one targeted, but then it gets increasingly intense as the spirit goes after the other kids who we care about. The movie sets them up as great characters who are portrayed very well by the young actors. So that adds to the tension of the film when they start being targeted.

That leads me to the horror elements themselves. The movie does an excellent job of setting up the atmosphere around it. There's a lot of great, creepy set pieces in the movie, from the Bellows mansion, to the hospital, to the jail, all of which are accented by the dark and chill nature of the surroundings. Then the CGI of the monsters themselves do a great job of a capturing intensity of the illustrations they are based off of. Because of all of this, there were several sequences where I was curled up in my chair because it was so effective. But yet while the movie does push the boundaries of a PG-13 horror film, it never quite crosses the line, releasing the tension at just the right moment, leaving the audience with quite the rush, which is why I think this is a perfect party film. These scenes are well done, but they're never too much. It feels like it's done just right in order to satisfy the most broad audience. If adult-themed horror films are not your thing, you can feel comfortable watching "Scary Stories" because it'll give you a great rush without traumatizing you. At the same time, if you do like intense horror films, this movie will still give you a good enough rush to leave you satisfied. And you can also have a lot of fun in a group setting watching all your friends lose their minds.

This movie very easily could've been a jump scare fest focused on the loud noises and gory images. But I was really happy that it wasn't. Even though Guillermo del Torro, who was pushed heavily in the advertising, wasn't the director here, the movie felt like it had a lot of his influence with him being writer and producer. He's a filmmaker who knows how to effectively tell a horror story. It's all about the characters, the themes, and the atmosphere. I don't know who was the actual ring leader here, but I'm guessing it was del Torro because this feels like one of his films. The director is André Øvredal and my guess is that he set out to bring to life del Torro's vision with this. At the very least, though, you could tell that the two of them were on the same page and the result was an extremely effective horror film. I talked a lot about the main group of teens that elevated the film. Not only did they have great story arcs, especially Stella and her dad, the latter of whom was played great by "Breaking Bad" star Dean Norris, but I actually really liked the story behind our vengeful spirit Sarah Bellows. I won't say too much because spoilers, but when your horror villain has a good amount of depth and relatability, that helps quite a bit. 

This movie also feels like it was taken straight from the CW show "Supernatural." This fits so well into that world that I kept expecting Sam and Dean Winchester to pull up in their Impala to help these kids with their vengeful spirit problem. And that's another reason why I probably enjoyed this quite bit. As one who has watched all 14 seasons of "Supernatural," and is excited for the final 15th season, this felt like a classic "Supernatural" story with a great monster of the week, a solid lore and backstory, and some solid creature sequences. The group were trying to figure out how to stop this vengeful spirit and I kept feeling like yelling at the screen to tell that they needed to burn her bones because that's how the Winchesters would do it. Anyways, all that aside, I was well pleased with this movie. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect because a mid-August horror film can go either way, but it was a very pleasant surprise for me. Now I'm cheering for it to do well and become a sleeper hit so we can get more "Scary Stories." This feels like a horror franchise waiting to happen given that the original books have a total 82 scary stories and this movie just barely scratched the surface in portraying them. With my final grade, I'm going to go big and give "Scary Stories" a 9/10.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw Review

The Fast & Furious franchise continued this past weekend with the ninth installment of the franchise and first spin-off. I imagine there might be some people on Earth complaining as to why this franchise now has nine movies in it and personally I don't really feel the need to defend that because said human beings are often the same people who haven't even watched a single movie, so nothing I say to them will really matter. However, I will quickly recap my thoughts on the franchise for people who do care. I didn't actually dive into the franchise until 2011 when there was a lot of buzz surrounding "Fast Five." So I decided to catch up. The first one is alright. The second one is very underwhelming. The third one is dumb and pointless. The fourth one gets things back on track and is, again, alright. But yeah, this is a franchise that is very unique because its the later films that have been the strongest. "Fast Five" is excellent. "Fast & Furious 6" as well as "The Fate of the Furious" are a lot of fun. And "Furious 7" is on a whole new level because of how emotional it is in dealing with the death of Paul Walker. I go back and fourth as to whether I like "Fast Five" or "Furious 7" more because they're both great for very different reasons. But yeah, five through eight are all a lot of fun.

Now that they've entered the spin-off realm with this franchise, "Hobbs & Shaw" is the one that makes the most sense because those are the franchise's most popular side characters. Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs is a character that many will claim revived the franchise. I'm not so sure I fully agree with that statement as he's not the only thing good about "Fast Five," which is the first movie he was in, but at the very least he certainly helped as he was a welcome presence. Then they added Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw as the villain of "Furious 7," while forcing him to team up with Hobbs in "Fate of the Furious," and that was also inspired casting choice because the two of them are perfect together. And they also just happened to be two of today's most popular action stars. So yeah, when this spin-off was announced, my immediate reaction was, "Let's do it!" As I've said, I've thoroughly enjoyed the last four movies of this franchise. I love the characters of both Hobbs and Shaw. And I've enjoyed solo movies from both Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, even silly ones like "Rampage" and "Skyscraper" for Dwayne Johnson" and "The Meg" for Jason Statham. So this seemed like a match made in heaven. One that wouldn't be too terribly difficult for me to enjoy.

First, though. I find the box office totals for this movie to be a bit interesting. This past weekend it opened to a solid $60 million domestically. That's probably not the exact opening Universal was hoping for when it comes to the movie's $200 million production budget, but they're not in panic mode yet as the movie had a $180 million global opening that did NOT include China, which it doesn't open in until later this month. This franchise, as well as Dwayne Johnson movies as a whole, are always huge in China. So stay tuned on that. However, I have heard a lot of people that were thinking that maybe this is the direction that franchise goes moving forward as they expected this movie to do just as good, if not better than the main franchise films as they thought Dwayne Johnson was the reason why this franchise got revived and continued to do well. But a $60 million opening throws a wrench into that theory as not only is this a significantly lower than the previous five films, but it's also the second lowest opening when you adjust for ticket price inflation, above only "Tokyo Drift." This performed a lot more like a Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham solo film rather than a Fast & Furious film. That goes to show that the whole crew is more important than some give them credit.

For those who do miss the whole team, fear not. They'll be back in less than a year as "Fast & Furious 9" comes out May 2020, with "Fast & Furious 10" scheduled for April 2021. "Hobbs & Shaw" was just a quick appetizer while we wait for that ninth film. Now I know that Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel have their issues, but my personal hope is that they can either work them out or set them aside so that we can get everyone on board for this next two movies. In fact, as I watched "Hobbs & Shaw," one thing that kept going through my head is that every new character in this movie has the potential to join the main crew. Not only would I like to see the return of both Hobbs and Shaw in the main films, but I also want to see more of Vanessa Kirby's character of Hattie, who is the sister of Shaw. She got so much screen time that the movie could've been called "Hobbs & Shaw & Hattie." And she totally made her presence felt as she proved she belonged in the same action sequences as her two big-name action co-stars, which was impressive. We also had a couple of other characters show up that I'm excited to see more of, but I can't say anymore because they are there as surprise cameo appearances that aren't even in the movie's credits. You have to scroll to the bottom of IMDb's cast listing to spoil it for yourself.

The other major new character that I can talk about is the movie's villain Idris Elba. His name is Brixton Lore and he has a bit of history with Shaw, which I won't dive into, but said history has made him bitter and he's also a genetically enhanced super soldier who has decided that humanity is a lost cause. There's an MI6 virus called Snowflake that he's trying to get his hands on so that he can wipe out millions, leaving only the strongest. In his first attempt to get it, he attacks a team of MI6 agents, killing all of them but Hattie, their leader, as she injects the virus into herself and escapes. Hattie, however, is framed by Brixton as someone who betrayed her crew, killed them all, and stole the virus. So now she's on the run and Shaw is called on to deal with his sister. At the same time, Hobbs is called on from Los Angeles to help, because, well, why not? So even though Hobbs and Shaw are not happy about it, together they team up and realize that Hattie is the victim, not the villain, so they need to come up with a plan to get the virus out of her and destroy it while also figuring out how to stop Brixton, who has called himself Black Superman and is much stronger than both of them combined, which surprises both of them. Even though that's our plot here, if I'm being honest none of it really matters.

I do think it's amusing to look back on the franchise and see where it's come. Something that started off as a street racing franchise has evolved so drastically that the ninth entry in the franchise is about a genetically enhanced super soldier facing off against Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. Travel back in time to 2001 and tell that to original director Rob Cohen and I'm sure he'll laugh in your face and assume your high on something. Poor Rob Cohen, though. Instead of continuing to be involved in the franchise that he started, he left after the first movie and is now busy directing movies like "The Boy Next Door" and "The Hurricane Heist" while Justin Lin and co. have turned this into a $5 billion franchise wherein the last two movies prior to "Hobbs & Shaw" have earned $1 billion at the overseas box office alone. They didn't even need to be released in the United States in order to be considered massive successes. And while the street racing elements are still there, this has now just become a franchise known for absurdly ridiculous action sets and sequences. When they decided to turn "Fast Five" into a heist film wherein they robbed a giant safe of money, dragging it throughout the city while an army of officers chased them, that opened up all sorts of possibilities.

I said on my personal Facebook page when I got home from the movie Thursday evening that I didn't really need to post a full review because my quick statement of "So... Hobbs and Shaw. Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham went BOOM! and POW! and I'm like... yay!" was an excellent summary. "Hobbs & Shaw" does have hints of the franchise's roots as there's one scene close to the beginning where the three of them are driving in Shaw's McLaren as they try to escape from Brixton, who is on his motorcycle. But outside that, as well as a few other car sequences, the cars are not the focus of this movie. This is a movie that fully embraces the physics-altering absurdity of what this franchise has become. The plot is there to set up a string of action sequences that take full advantage of our two leads' strengths. Dwayne Johnson is a giant, physical presence who is all about brute force while Jason Statham is more about stealth and skill. He's the quick, little ninja who is thinking 10 moves in advance while Dwyane Johnson is just plowing through everyone or holding down helicopters with a chain so they don't fly away. Jumping off a building and landing in a way that would kill any normal human being, yet walking away without a scratch? Of course. Why not? Who cares about physics?

You could say that this movie is a bit exhausting. At 137 minutes, this is a lot of movie. And most of it is just action scene after action scene. When the movie is not focused on action sequences, it's focused on the banter with Hobbs and Shaw insulting each other the whole movie. If you walked out thinking that this is the type of movie that is better in small doses as a part of the main franchise instead of being the subject of a 2 hour 17 minute film, I can understand. I didn't feel the same way. Rather, I was enjoying myself the whole time and laughing at all the banter. There were even a few insults that had be nearly rolling around on the floor. There were times where I felt the length of the movie and my body was wanting to shut down and sleep, but I blame that more on the fact that I saw this late at night after a really long day at work. My body needed sleep, but my brain didn't want to wait any longer to see another Fast & Furious film. So I fought it and paid the price at times during the movie, but overall it was still very worth it. Never did I get to the point where I completely shut down, so the movie did a great job of keeping me awake late at night after getting very little sleep all week. So kudos there. If you're interested in kicking back enjoying some action, this is your movie.

If you haven't seen any Fast & Furious movie, this isn't really the movie you should watch to introduce yourself. Rather, I think you should start with "Fast Five" to see where this franchise ends up, then if you enjoy what you see, go back and watch the first four films. Even though they are much lesser films, they are kinda necessary in order to introduce you to this family of characters that everyone loves. Then you can sit back and be entertained by the sixth and eighth films, while crying with everyone in between with the seventh film. After you've done all of that, then go enjoy some "Hobbs & Shaw." Or you can just go and see "Hobbs & Shaw" anyways. It's not like context is that important in order to be entertained, but it is a more rewarding experience if you've seen where these characters have come from. Just know that if you need all of your physics and your movie logic to make perfect sense, then you're about to dive into the wrong franchise. With "Hobbs & Shaw," if you need a movie where the plot is unique and original or is full of deep themes and intense moments, this is also not your movie. But if you want to go watch Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham punch things and insult each other, then why are you waiting? My grade for "Hobbs & Shaw" is an 8/10.