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.

Movie Preview: August 2019

Summer 2019 is winding down. It's certainly been an eventful one that has played out mostly as expected. "Avengers: Endgame" dominated the beginning month, opening the weekend before Hollywood's summer started. Then it was a bloodbath at the end of May and into June with too many titles crowded together as they all avoided the summer's last two major tentpoles scheduled in July that didn't disappoint financially. "The Lion King" led the way with $385.1 million in its first two weeks of release. It was followed closely by "Spider-Man: Homecoming," which opened on July 2 and made $351.0 million during the month. Both movies have already joined the $1 billion club worldwide. Previous months holdovers in "Toy Story 4," "Yesterday," "Aladdin" and "Annabelle Comes" also added decent business, while "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" had a solid opening in the final weekend. All this led to a 2019 monthly best $1.287 billion. August 2019 will officially close out the Hollywood summer, although it will be a traditional August, meaning one or two big titles and a whole bunch of filler that won't make a huge impact. Even though box office totals might be sparse for most of these titles, there's still a lot of them on the schedule, so let's go explore them all.

August 2nd - 4th-

The opening weekend of August usually has one final attempted blockbuster positioned to plow through the month with little direct competition. This year Universal won the bidding war on this spot and will release Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. This is the ninth film in this franchise and first spin-off. Needless to say, it's fairly rare to have a franchise that is nine films in and still going strong, but that's what somehow managed to happen here as "Fast Five" revitalized the franchise as it then drove off into absurdity with the next few films. It's quite amusing to look at this franchise in hindsight, realizing that it started off as a street racing franchise and has now evolved into genetically enhanced super soldiers fighting Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Jason Statham. But yes, that's what's happened. Financially this is headed towards a weekend around $60 million based on Friday estimates, which is significantly off from "Fast & Furious 6" and "The Fate of the Furious," which opened to $97.4 million and $98.8 million respectively, but that's not all that surprising given that spin-offs generally don't perform as well as main franchise films. However, "Hobbs & Shaw" will have the chance of holding well through August, plus international totals should be huge.

August 9th - 11th-

While studios decided to avoid opening anything against "Hobbs & Shaw" in the first weekend, the rest of the month will be quite the blood bath with 15 wide releases over the final four weekends, with the next two weekends having five wide releases each. Given that high quantity, it's hard to predict exactly which one is going to rise to the top of the bunch or what order they'll all end up in, but the current favorite at the moment seems to be Dora and the Lost City of Gold. Dora's biggest challenge here is the fact that a good portion of the summer's hits have been family-targeted films, most from Disney. A lot of parents may have already burned through their movie budget and may not be interested in taking their kids to a live-action "Dora the Explorer" film. However, the cartoon, which began in 2000 and ran for eight seasons and 176 episodes, is popular enough that this could be a fairly decent draw in certain circles. A good comparison here might be 2011's "The Smurfs," which opened at the end of July to $35.6 million. Other comparisons could be "Garfield: The Movie" ($21.7 million) or "Yogi Bear" ($16.4 million) if Dora doesn't quite reach the heights of "The Smurfs." Boosting the movie's appeal is a solid cast that includes the likes of Michael Pena and Eva Longoria.

The next entry on the schedule will have everyone sitting around the campfire telling scary stories with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which is essentially a slightly more mature version of "Goosebumps." The movie is based on the trilogy of horror books written by Alvin Schwartz in 1981, 1984 and 1991. Each of the three books contains a series of short horror stories. This movie adaptation sees a group of teens find a book of scary stories wherein in the stories come to life and haunt them, hence the statement that this is a slightly more mature version of "Goosebumps," because that's almost exactly what the 2015 "Goosebumps" film did. "Scary Stories" just has a PG-13 rating rather than the PG rating of "Goosebumps," so the target audience is the teen horror crowd rather than family audiences. "Goosebumps" opened to $23.6 million, which would be a great opening for "Scary Stories" if it was able to match that. However, "Goosebumps" had an October release date and a more popular source material that it was based on, so the current trajectory for "Scary Stories" isn't quite that high. That said, August has had horror breakouts before, like "Don't Breathe" in 2016, which opened to $26.4 million. So a $20 million debut isn't out of the realm of possibilities.

Next up is a movie that could be a late-August sleeper hit and that is The Kitchen. This is a movie based off of the graphic novel of the same name published by DC's Vertigo Comics, which began in 1993 as comics aimed at an adult audience. "The Kitchen" is set in the late-70's Hell's Kitchen, New York City, and is about a trio of women whose mobster husbands have been sent to prison. This causes the wives to decide to pick up where their husbands left off, leading the gangs. The big draw here is the lead cast, which consists of Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elizabeth Moss, as well as a whole host of supporting cast members. In the director's chair is first time director Andrea Berloff, who was nominated for an Oscar for writing the screenplay of "Straight Outta Compton." So a strong lead cast, a talented female director and a potentially intriguing premise means all the pieces are in play here for this to do well. The only issue here is that awareness doesn't seem to be super high. The first trailer was released a bit late in the game and interest level doesn't seem to be too terribly high. Reviews could help it if they're strong, but perhaps a comparison is last year's similarly themed drama "Widows," which opened to $12.4 million in mid-November.

The fourth film this weekend sees a very similar premise of late with Disney's release of Fox's The Art of Racing in the Rain. It tells the story of Formula One race car driver Denny Swift as he relates his racing to life, marries a girl named Eve, has a child, and all that sort of stuff. Denny is played by Milo Ventimiglia while Amanda Seyfried plays Eve. And narrating Denny's dog is Kevin Costner. Said dog is the movie's main perspective here, which is why this is a very familiar movie after 2017's success of "A Dog's Purpose" led to TWO follow-ups this year, a non-related adaptation from the same author titled "A Dog's Way Home" in January and a direct sequel titled "A Dog's Journey" in May. While "The Art of Racing in the Rain" is not from the author of those three original books, it's quite possible that Fox saw the success of the "A Dog's Purpose" and decided to then adapt the 2008 novel "The Art of Racing in the Rain," written by Garth Stein, into a film. As it turns out, the timing here is off with this being the third dog movie this year as each of the films have had diminishing returns. "A Dog's Purpose" opened to $18.2 million, "A Dog's Way Home" opened to $11.3 million, and "A Dog's Journey" opened to $8.0 million. It's possible that downward trend continues.

Pulling up the caboose this weekend is Bleecker Street's release of Brian Banks. This is a movie based on the true story of football player Brian Banks, who was a promising young linebacker in high school whose dreams and career was derailed when a classmate of his accused him of dragging her into a stairway at their high school and raping her. After verbally committing to play at USC during his Junior year of high school in 2002, Banks was expelled from school in the summer of 2002 due to these allegations. He spent nearly six years in prison and five years on parole before the girl eventually confessed that she had made up the whole story. The movie specifically focuses on his legal fight to overturn the conviction so that he can revive what's left of his life and career. Early theater counts from Box Office Mojo have this set to debut in about 1,500 theaters. Looking at previous football dramas opening in around 1,500 theaters leads to the 2015 movie "My All American," which opened to $1.4 million. Bleecker Street themselves have opened three previous movies in wide release with "Logan Lucky" ($7.6 million - 3,031 theaters), "Megan Leavey" ($3.7 million - 2,023 theaters), and "Unsane" ($3.8 million - 1,956 theaters). All of that suggests an opening around $2-3 million.

August 16th - 18th-

After an exhausting weekend that saw five new wide releases, this third weekend doesn't let up with another five new wide release. They'll be led by The Angry Birds Movie 2, which will get a head start on the weekend by opening on Wednesday, August 14. This sequel comes to us because the first movie was actually quite popular, opening to $38.2 million in summer 2016, making $107.5 million overall domestically. Thus Sony brought the birds back together for a new adventure, which sees the birds being forced to team up with the enemy pigs. The voice cast is again quite large with a host of returning and new voices that include Awkwafina, Dove Cameron, Bill Hader, Danny McBride, Peter Dinklage, Tiffany Haddish, Maya Rudolph, Jason Sudeikis, Sterling K. Brown, Eugenio Derbez, Josh Gad and Nicki Minaj. Now despite the first movie doing well and the large cast here, one has to ask if audiences really wanted an "Angry Birds" sequel, especially since the first movie wasn't exactly well received and the popularity of the app game isn't the same in 2019 as it once was. In a summer of underperforming sequels that no one asked for, "Angry Birds 2" seems like it will fall right into that, perhaps only making around $20 million after looking at various comparisons, such as "Ice Age: Collision Course."

Opening on Friday proper will be the rest of our four releases. Of the bunch, the one that seems like it has the most potential is 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. This is our latest in the recent trend of yearly shark movies, which saw "The Meg" open to a massive $45.4 million at almost this exact time last year. "Uncaged" is certainly not expected to explode to that much money, but it's worth noting that the first "47 Meters Down" was a surprise hit two summers ago. Not only did it open to a decent $11.2 million, but it held extremely well and wound up with $44.3 million domestically. "Uncaged" has a completely different cast and premise, this time following a group of teenage girls who swim to the wrong part of the ocean and get trapped near a hungry shark or two, but the brand name appeal is will still be there and it helps that Johannes Roberts is returning to direct the sequel, meaning a similar tone is likely. Our shark movie from three summers ago was "The Shallows," which opened to $16.8 million. Perhaps "Uncaged" is able to get close to that number. But if not, the first movie only had a production budget of $5.3 million. If the production budget for "Uncaged" is similar, then it's not going to take much to get a profit. An opening anywhere in the teens will be a win here.

Challenging "Angry Birds 2" and "Uncaged" for a spot somewhere in the top five (remembering that "Dora," "Hobbs & Shaw" and "The Lion King" will also be in play) is the latest comedy Good Boys, which is a purposely ironic title because this is a comedy involving a group of kids acting like bad boys. As the official rating says, a rating that is displayed largely in the middle poster, this is rated R for "strong crude sexual content, drugs and alcohol material, and language throughout - all involving tweens." Jacob Tremblay, Brady Noon and Keith L. Williams as three sixth grade boys who try to impress girls, skip class and attend parties. Gene Stupnitsky, writer and producer of several related comedies, is directing this movie in his directorial debut, while Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are on as producers The big question here will be how much do audiences really want to see a group of tweens cussing, doing drugs and partying, because that shock value is the main appeal. Worth noting, this summer has not been nice to comedies at all as "Long Shot," "Poms," "The Hustle," "Booksmart" and "Stuber" all failed, with "The Hustle" being the only one to even crack double digits in its opening. That seems like a bad omen for "Good Boys," which is only getting mixed-at-best reviews.

The next movie on the schedule will be the Sundance film Blinded By the Light. This also follows in our musical-theme trend this summer with "Rocketman" telling the story of Elton John, "Yesterday" imagining a world wherein The Beatles didn't exist, and now "Blinded By the Light" telling the story of a teen in the 1980's inspired by the music of Bruce Springsteen to find his own voice and live the life he wants. All of these were in the works before "Bohemian Rhapsody" absolutely exploded last year with a $51.1 million opening, a lengthy theatrical run, and plenty of awards season love. But said performance was likely a key factor for Warner Bros. picking this one up from Sundance this year, hoping to cash in on the trend. Now given that this is not a biopic like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Rocketman," the best comparison here is "Yesterday," which opened to $17.0 million and has held remarkably well. But if we're being honest, The Beatles vs. Bruce Springsteen isn't much of a competition in terms of popularity, so "Blinded By the Light" probably won't open that big. Rather, it would be better to look at the wide expansions of the other two 2019 Sundance films that have hit 1,000 theaters., that being "Fighting with My Family" ($7.8 million) and "Late Night" ($5.3 million).

And finally this weekend we have the latest from director Richard Linklater in Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Given the heavy schedule in terms of quantity, it would make sense for this movie to take the limited release route rather than opening wide initially, especially since that's what normally happens with Linklater films as he's mostly an independent filmmaker, the most well known of which are "Boyhood" and the "Before" trilogy. In fact, the last time a Linklater film opened wide was way back in 2005 with "Bad News Bears." This certainly could end up being a limited release, or at least something that starts in 500-1,000 theaters. However, new distributor United Artists Releasing have released all four of their films this year in at least 2,500 theaters, so we'll see what they end up planning here. Either way, the movie stars Cate Blanchett as a mother who is frustrated with life and decides to completely disappear one day, leaving her daughter Bee, played by Emma Nelson, and her husband Elgin, played by Billy Crudup, to try to figure out what exactly happened to her. Also co-starring in the movie is Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and Laurence Fishburne among others. The movie was originally scheduled for a May 2018 release date before being pushed back four times.

August 23rd - 25th-

We now enter what has been, historically speaking, one of the lowest parts of the year for the box office, that being the final two weeks of August. Depending on how the dust settles in the previous two weekends, this should set the stage for Angel Has Fallen to take a two-week run at the top of the box office. This is the third chapter in what I suppose can be called the Fallen trilogy, the previous two movies being "Olympus Has Fallen" and "London Has Fallen." Gerard Butler returns as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, who helped save the White House and London from terrorist attacks in the previous two movies. Morgan Freeman also returns as Allan Trumbull, this time as President of the United States, after being Speaker of the House and Vice President respectively in the last two movies. President Trumbull is about to make Agent Banning director of the Secret Service when an attempted assassination happens, which ends up being blamed on Agent Banning. "Olympus" was a surprise hit in 2013, opening to $30.4 million in 2013. "London," however, didn't perform as well, only opening to $21.6 million. A likely downward trend should continue as this could be yet another sequel that no one asked for that underperforms this summer. Somewhere around $15 million is likely.

Next up is the Kendrick Brothers returning for their latest faith-based film Overcomer. This will be the sixth movie from the two of them, following "Flywheel," "Facing the Giants," "Fireproof," "Courageous" and "War Room." In each case, Alex Kendrick has directed while Alex and Stephen Kendrick have written the screenplay. Creativity and originality are not necessarily the brothers' forte, but rather they are quite good at presenting simple, straightforward films about how having faith in Christ will turn your life around and their target Christian audience has often eaten them up. "Overcomer" will most likely be no different, but the story this time around follows Alex Kendrick playing a basketball coach who is forced to coach cross country, even though only one girl is there to join the team. In terms of the box office potential, each of these Kendrick Brothers films has seen an uptick in performance, with "War Room" breaking out to a $67.8 million total after opening to just $11.4 million. In fact, "War Room" opened in second place in its first weekend, but ended up taking the crown in its second weekend after a strong hold. That could happen again if "Angel Has Fallen" disappoints, but Christian films are often impossible to predict, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.

If "Angel Has Fallen" and "Overcomer" fail to make much of an impact this weekend, the horror thriller Ready or Not is waiting in the wings to play spoiler. Out of the three films, this is the one does seem to be getting the most aggressive marketing push, although how that'll translate is yet to be seen. This comes via Fox Searchlight, who hasn't opened a film higher than $10 million since 2009. They usually play the limited release game. However, this is a different era in Fox Searchlight with Disney now being in charge, so perhaps that changes things. "Ready or Not" begins with a very happy marriage that goes south when the bride learns that there's a family tradition with her groom's family where they have to play a game at midnight whenever someone new joins the family. This leads to them playing a deadly game of Hide and Seek where all the family are trying to hunt and kill the bride and she's trying her best to escape. In terms of late August horrors, while many of them end up being throwaway films that are completely forgotten about two weeks later, this is also the exact weekend where "Don't Breathe" broke out to $26.4 million in 2016? Could this be this year's "Don't Breathe"? Perhaps that would be too optimistic, but this is one to keep an eye on.

August 30th - September 2nd-

This final weekend of of August is also Labor Day weekend, with Labor Day falling on September 2. Historically speaking, Hollywood avoids this weekend like the plague when it comes to new releases. However, recent years has seen films already in theaters have great holds over the four-day holiday weekend as people choose to catch up on whatever summer film they missed out on. That means whatever movie opened in first place last weekend is most likely going to also be in first place this weekend, unless "Angel Has Fallen" and "Overcomer" end up being close enough together for them to switch spots as "Overcomer" is almost certainly going to have the better hold. Or maybe there's another surprise in store for us this month that dominates, like "Crazy Rich Asians" last year, which wasn't hardly on my radar when I did my August 2018 preview. As far as the new releases, I was all set to discuss "PLAYMOBIL: The Movie," which WAS on the schedule for this weekend when I started typing this post earlier in the week, but when I went to finish the post it had vanished. Turns out STX has moved it to December 6 in hopes to get more of an audience during the holidays, which might be smart because it wasn't going to make anything this weekend.

That leaves this weekend especially empty as I'm not even positive that the remaining two wide releases that Box Office Mojo (which I always go by with this monthly post) has listed as opening wide at this point are actually opening wide. But let's quickly discuss them anyways. The first of these two is Sundance release Don't Let Go. This got mixed reaction from Sundance as a sci-fi horror/thriller film wherein a man gets a phone call from his dead niece after her whole family got murdered. Turns out the phone call is from his niece two years in the past, giving him the opportunity to solve the murder, tell her the information, and change the future. Best case scenario is that this performs like "Searching" last year, another Sundance thriller release, that made $6.1 million in its nationwide expansion on Labor Day weekend. The other film is Saaho, an action/thriller from India from the distribution company Yash Raj. There's actually a lot of these Indian/Bollywood films that open in around 300 theaters, yet get an extremely high per theater average. Last year Yash Raj had three films earn over $1 million opening weekend in just around 300 theaters with "Zero," "Thugs of Hindostan" and "Race 3." I'm guessing that's what "Saaho" is as opposed to a wide release.