Thursday, August 29, 2019

Ready or Not (2019)

Rated: R - Runtime: 95 min
tesg’s Rating: Three stars (out of four)

A girl marries into a rich elite family that has a curse of sorts.  When you marry into this family, you are required to play a game chosen at random by a mysterious box at midnight.  No big deal...unless you draw Hide and Seek,  Then the family must kill you before dawn or they all blow up like ginormous zits.

So you’ve got the feisty bride trying to save herself, the creepy family trying to save themselves, and a big old fabulous house to chase and run and hide and stuff in.  Andie McDowell pretty much steals every scene she’s in as the deliciously evil family matriarch.  There’s lots of dark humor, and the movie ends on a great one-liner.

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

Rated: PG-13 - Runtime: 111 min
tesg’s Rating: Three stars (out of four)

Let us take you back to Halloween 1968 where kids end up in a haunted house and take a book belonging to Sarah. Horror stories start to appear on blank pages in the book and then actually happen.

The movie looks pretty great and is paced relatively well. Guillermo del Toro had a minor hand in this so the monsters look pretty amazing. There’s a cool drive-in scene to boot.

At a PG-13 rating, I again have to wonder just how the hell Annabelle Comes Home ended up with an R. This is FAR scarier and more graphic.

Friday, August 2, 2019

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

Rated: PG-13 - Runtime: 138 min
tesg's Rating: Three stars (out of four)

Basically you've got two unlikely and mostly unwilling partners recruited by the CIA to bring down a guy who calls himself Black Superman (Black Six Million Dollar Man would have been more accurate). It's big and dumb and funny as hell and has some seriously impressive action scenes, particularly the climax scene with a helicopter. Idris Elba is a phenomenal bad guy, and Ryan Reynolds shows up a few times with a very Deadpool-like persona that is hilarious.

You will spend 75 percent of this movie grinning from ear to ear. This is a serious crowd pleaser popcorn movie.