Quick Takes

I'm short on time this month and it's been quite awhile since I did one of these, so....

Terrifying Tales to Tell Without the Lights On

The latest film attached to Oscar winner and Guadalajara’s favorite son Guillermo del Toro (as screenwriter and producer) is the PG-13 rated – a rarity for GdT – ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,’ based on a children’s anthology book I’ve never even heard of before this movie came out.  A creepy, old-fashioned campfire story in the best rustic small-town tradition of Stephen King, ‘Scary Stories’ is really just one continuous story about the evil curse of a vengeful spirit in a haunted house plaguing a group of teenagers – again a staple of Stephen King – in a small Pennsylvania town during the late ‘60’s.  Scary?  Oh quite so, even for a jaded horror aficionado like yours truly.

Grade: B+ 

Not a Manfred Mann Movie

Some of you will probably lambaste me for this, but Manfred Mann rather than Bruce Springsteen comes to mind when I think of the song “Blinded by the Light.”  I suppose that’s because I was never a big fan of “The Boss” and his particular brand of blue-collar, working class New Jersey rock & roll even if he gave Courtney Cox her first big break.  So this painfully honest and heart-felt inspired-by-a-true-story coming-of-age dramedy from the director of 'Bend It Like Beckham' about how his music helped a Pakistani teenager in recession-era 1980's England deal with his family struggles and realize his creative potential didn’t quite hit the right notes for me.  Yeah boo, I know.

Grade: B- 

Supergood  

Good boys, good boys, what ya gonna do, what ya gonna do when you have to learn how to kiss a girl for the very first time at a party?  Well, you practice it with your dad’s pretty and well-endowed (but fully dressed) “CPR doll” of course.  From long-time partners-in-crime Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, ‘Good Boys’ makes three tweener 6th-graders “Superbad” in their many well-meaning, often ill-fated and - as much as I hate to admit – hilarious shenanigans.  ‘Good Boys’ is directed by a guy named (I kid you not) Gene Stupnitsky, so what did you expect?  A cerebral comedy perhaps?  Does the warning below "From the guys who brought you Superbad, Neighbors and Sausage Party" mean absolutely nothing to you?  Just sit back and get ready to laugh your asses off already.

 

Grade: B