This August ain't exactly blowing Oscar season out of the water but it's better than June and July.
You know if you want to see the ninth film of the “Fast and Furious” franchise starring Jason Statham and The Rock.
Whatever condemnations or Praises one may have for this franchise regarding boundary-pushing stupidity in action movie logic, the fact of the matter remains that Universal Studios only started crafting billion dollar grossing entries after they ceased pretending the semi-grounded reality that this franchise calls a setting was the planet we call Earth.
Spinning off from the main series and featuring The titular antagonists turned anti-heroes/heroes tangentially involved in the high octane hijinx of Dominic Toretto and his "family," "Hobbs and Shaw" is about as predictable as it gets; an unapologetically big, loud, dumb, and expensive string of action set-pieces bloated out into a 2-hour and 15-minute production that could desperately use a 20-minute trim.
The stupidity of the film furthermore comes with an added layer of surrealness when the nature of its antagonist, played by Idris Elba as a hacktivist Black Ops cyborg superhuman, is brought to the forefront as being exaggerated in a movie that features Dwayne Johnson taking levels of damage that even The Avengers can't shake off and Jason Statham's never-ending stamina, with the unintentional question of where the gauge of normalcy even is on a flick like this.
If you really want to hate “Hobbs and Shaw” it is not that difficult to do. For those seeking its actual charms however, you may just find just as much to enjoy.
The “Fast and Furious” franchise’s themes of family and loyalty, for all of their cheesiness, continue to be played with an infectious sincerity that helped to make the endeavors of the production endearing.
That production this time is held together by David Leitch of Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde, and John Wick fame and, despite the tendencies of the film 2 bloat it's set pieces with the budget at its disposal, the man is still clearly a stupendous craftsman of clear, flowing, sharply edited, and stylish action.
“Hobbs and Shaw’s” excellent direction and sincerity lend it an enjoyable action B-movie charm buoyed by the entertaining performances of its central stars.
Johnson and Statham tend to get a lot of flack for typecasting themselves but at the end of the day they do what they do substantially well and there’s no exception here except that they share the added benefit of a surprisingly compelling love/hate chemistry with one another that would be a blast to watch in any movie, “Fast and Furious” or otherwise.
Firmly planted in formula and in desperate need of a trim to its length that keeps it from being better, “Hobbs and Shaw” is clearly not setting out to rewrite the book on the summer action Blockbuster. However, through its solid performances, generally decent sense of pacing, excellent action set-pieces, and two of the best cameos from comedic actors that I hope stay on this franchises ride a little longer, it is and undoubtedly fun ride for an afternoon far better then in August release typically sees.
6 NOS Fueled Chase Scenes out of 10
Based on the horror Anthology children's book series of the same name by Alvin Schwartz, "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" seemed to have an easy pass to go the “Goosebumps” route and make something broad and easily digestible for it's on paper demographic but instead attempts something far more novel, bold and ultimately, effective.
Aiming to celebrate the spirit of the books rather than adapt any individual narrative, the film tells the story of 3 high schoolers and a traveler on Halloween night that break into the home of the tragic Sarah Bellows, a woman mythologized through folktales of their small town as a storyteller who told the children of the town scary stories around the time of its founding.
When the children discover Bellows’ storybook and find themselves being written into the more famous plots from them, they find themselves in a struggle for their lives to uncover the mystery behind bellows death before they all meet their own tragic ends at the hands of her horrifically literary concoctions
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The cast of relative unknowns actually do a fairly solid job holding the film and it's uniquely politically accurate 1960s period piece setting together, coming across as sincerely awkward, excited, terrified, and relatably endearing as they struggle to piece together the horror they found themselves in with just enough composure to not be unlikable.
The true star of the show however, is André Øvredal’s direction.
A veteran of blending tropes of horror and thriller storytelling together with palatable doses of relatable situational comedy and dark humor, through underappreciated classics such as “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” and “Trollhunter,” Øvredal proves himself not only to be a master of suspense and atmosphere, but a further expert in weaving said aforementioned elements into a compelling and cohesive narrative with surprising amounts of thematic weight behind it that can occasionally slow down but never truly runs out of gas as it effectively utilizes every second of runtime possible to its advantage.
In an effort to push a potential franchise the film does falter a bit towards the end, as the edges of the previously unyielding terrors begin to soften and the ending create a hook for a potential sequel that is unnecessary.
These issues however are are generally small Potatoes in the grand scheme of a movie that is solid diverting fun at worst and a potential horror cult classic for a new generation of young horror film fans in those fleeting moments when every bit of it is firing on all cylinders.
7 Children Having Nightmares out of 10
The first 40 minutes or so of “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” are legitimately clever, funny, deconstructive, and engaging in a way that nobody would ever anticipate a Dora the Explorer movie being; so much so that they may very well supercede any of the hard criticisms I can possibly muster up for the substantially less clever second half.
Poking fun at the quirks of the preschool learning cartoon, before shifting gears towards packaging said quirks into a more contemporary form with the help of an impeccably earnest performance by Isabela Moner that perfectly toes the line between laughable dorkiness and lovable sincerity, then finally deconstructing all of it by making her a fish out of water struggling to hold her wholesome head up high amongst a cynical Society of high schoolers is a memorably surreal roller coaster for two major reasons.
The first of these reasons is that when these things are happening, “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” is surprisingly and genuinely compelling.
The film doesn't shy away from the bizarreness of its own concept but embraces and humanizes it. As weird as Dora is, her predicament is instantly relatable and watching the cultural Clash that ensues he's infinitely more fascinating than the Bland, trite, hodgepodge of Adventure movie cliches that populate the second half of the movie as it shifts gears into a soulless and lazy jungle Adventure, which segues nicely into reason number two.
Seeing a movie shockingly achieve such an accidentally perfect character study narrative only two unravel with a cliche back half that contradicts the logic brought forth and by the first half would ordinarily be a substantial deal breaker but for a production that apparently had Michael Bay attached as a producer at some point in time, it almost doesn’t even seem fair to penalize it for inevitably coming the cash grab that it devolves into.
I think I’d ultimately rather revel in the fact that we somehow manage to exist in a reality where a live action Dora The Explorer movie exists and despite inevitably going off the rails in the way one would expect it to, it somehow managed to hold itself together long enough to tell a real story with heart and provide a young actress with a potential break out mainstream performance.
That’s worth thinking on more than almost anything that actually happens in the movie.
Seis Expeditions de Diez
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