Upgraded was watched early as a screener. It is being released on Amazon Prime Video on February 9th, 2024.
Ana (Camila Mendes) is a woman just trying to make her way into the art industry! Does she have an Art History degree? You know it. But she also lives with her sister and her SO, and she is taking up space. She can’t afford rent, her job hasn’t gotten her anywhere yet. But now things are going to change.
You see, there is going to be a big art auction for the company she works for, under Claire (Marisa Tomei), and if she can impress her, she can get on the fast track to success and eventually have her own art gallery and be rich. The good news is, she unconventionally has a success, and gets to go on a trip to London to help out with a big event! But because of bullying and plot, she has to take a later plane by herself. But don’t worry, her seat is randomly upgraded (that’s the movie name!).
That is where she meets William (Archie Renaux). You know, a rich British guy. And because of silly reasons, like Ana actively lying, William thinks she is the CEO of the company, and is impressed, she is so young and knowledgeable. And then she gets introduced to the parents, and so many things get awkward, lying about what she does, and of course it will effect her job and her love life at the same time.
That face is how they first intended the creepy people to look like in the Smile movie PR campaign.
If I described the movie in a sentence, instead of paragraphs, it would be enough for you. You got the whole picture. You know the movie. You know how it ends. Honestly. Knowing where a movie is going isn’t inherently a bad thing. Not at all. Like, I can assume in a super hero movie, that the good guys eventually win. Sure. But then the journey really, really, matters.
So the journey needs to matter for Upgraded. And the journey here does nothing. Honestly, it follows a playbook to the letter. Our main character doesn’t really learn anything, because she comes out on top, better off than she was before. And so I guess the whole thing was worth it in the end!
Honestly, feels a bit icky. The main character uses the love interest, lies constantly, and then like, gets to rich and successful at the end? Okay.
Upgraded is honestly one step above a Hallmark movie. It has a bigger budget, and that is about it. This film is entirely forgettable, and I wish it was a good RomCom, I honestly do. But Upgraded will be off my radar within a week. Complete out of sight, and out of mind.
The Monk and the Gun was watched early as a screener. It was shortlisted for Best International Film at the Oscars as Bhutan’s submission. And it is released theatrically on February 9th, 2024.
This is pretty obvious from the title, but of course this movie is about…holding free and fair elections!
In 2006, the King of Bhutan was like, hey, you all deserve to have more freedoms. And decided to switch their country to a democracy, so that the citizens could vote. And sure, they would still have their king. You know, like Great Britain. But the citizens had no concept of democracy, or voting, or voicing their opinions on a prime minister. So, what are they to do? Just let democracy fail as everyone ignores it?
No! The local government is going to hold Mock elections, to teach the citizens how to vote, to share opinions, to pick different things to care more about for their government to work on. In a big face of apathy from the local population, who seem to just really like their king and not want the change. Yep, that is the backdrop to the story.
Now, the other main plot is that Tashi (Tandin Wangchuk), a monk, is told by his Lama, in a religious exile for years, to go into the main country and bring him back two guns. For a ceremony, for a mystery. At the same time, Benji (Tandin Sonam) is escorting an American (Harry Einhorn) around the country, looking for a very specific gun as well, for a collection. Guns!
Oh look, a (presumably) monk with a (presumably) gun! The movie delivered its title!
Finally, another Bhutanese film. I know most of you reading this might have seen zero Bhutanese films in your life. At this point, this is only my second one. And that is probably true of a lot of people who have seen any. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, is a film that was nominated for Best International Film a few years ago, and was a surprise. Similarly, this movie was on the shortlist of nominations for Best International Film, but not nominated. Is this a grand awakening of Bhutan as a film producing country, or, have they been producing movies for awhile and I just have only noticed if it relates to the Oscars? Honestly, I hope its the latter.
Either way, I do like that both of these movies have really simple, yet descriptive titles.
But on to the movie at hand. Did I expect it to be about mock elections for a countries first elections? Obviously not. And I am not a historical scholar of Bhutan, and have no idea how much of this story is actually what happened in the country. I clearly have to take the film’s word on the subject. Of which, I do think it is a very interesting backdrop, and I love that I learned a little bit of recent history from just that knowledge alone.
And, it still maintains the other plot as well, the gun and the monk, of which I assume is the more creatively liberal aspect of this story. And that plotline on its own is fine as well. It meshes well eventually with the societal backdrop of the historical events. It is amusing and worthy of light giggles at points. But at the same time, I still wish there was some more to the story. It being a relatively simple story is fine. I just wish it was more satisfying in its conclusion. It felt like a short story, expended into a larger movie without enough content at points.
Still a great film on its own rights. In a year with so much great international work, it had a tough hill, and it was likely an honor just to be shortlisted. Here is hoping I see another Bhutanese film before a 2-3 year gap.
Scrambled was watched early as a screener. It comes out in theaters on Friday, February 2nd!
Nellie (Leah McKendrick) is a great friend to her friends. The ones who have all gotten engaged or married at this point. She throws a great bachelorette party, and is there for them, but hey, she is also losing those friends. They are married. They do couple things. They are having babies.
Nellie is currently out of any relationship. She has had some in the past, but things didn’t work out. You know, people just playing around, not being serious, wanting kids, cheating on her. Speaking of kids, turns out that even though being 34 shouldn’t be the end of the road for her potential maternity plans, it turns out, her eggs are low, for a variety of reasons. So she is at the point if she wants to have kids, and has no current prospects to have them with her, she might need to freeze her eggs for that possibility.
But freezing is expensive. And it requires a strict regiment of being healthy. And at this point, Nellie also wants to go through her history of relationships to see if anyone was the one that got away and needs a second chance.
I wonder if the eggs are in that box? If so, they should probably be in the freezer?
This movie was written and directed by Leah McKendrick. Hey, that’s the woman playing the lead! I honestly have never heard of her before this movie, so congrats to her on getting to make a movie and have it released theatrically. What is this, the 90’s? People can still do that? Comedies are allowed in THEATERS? Wow!
As for the film, I do enjoy that a big part of the plot was about a woman deciding to freeze her eggs, and go through the process. It wasn’t a woman rushing to have a baby with her loved ones. It wasn’t about artificial insemination. It wasn’t about adoption. It wasn’t about finding or being a surrogate. I only bring up all of these plot lines, because i have seen movies with them before (not that we can’t have more than one on a subject), but I have not seen a single one where the entire goal was to have eggs frozen for future considerations, and the processes behind it. I am all about diversity in my plot lines, and frankly, the more normal things people do that can be turned into a movie for awareness sakes, the better.
Better yet, this movie was funny. McKendrick was a great lead, in and out of her relationships, dealing with regular life and trying to change it for the better. And I especially loved her negative interactions with her family. Clancy Brown as her dad was just a wild dick and the arguments felt realistic, with chances for comedy along the way. I also want to give a shout out to Ego Nwodim, who I think I have mostly seen on SNL and small cameos in films. She was hilarious as her best friend character, popped up multiple times, and made me damn sad as well. Good to see her expanding her roles.
Scrambled gives a unique look at a common practice so many people take care of, without necessarily being obvious what is involved in that process. A worthwhile comedy for sure.
Marry Little Batman was watched early as a screener. It comes out on Prime Video on Friday, December 8th!
Batman! Nununununununununun. I did not count if I put the right amount there, nor do I care.
This Christmas Batman movie is set in a Gotham where…Batman had finished the job! Like, the crime is all gone. Woo. So Batman (Luke Wilson) has been more settled down, and has a son, Damien (Yonas Kibreab). Mother? No idea, I don’t think it is brought up. Maybe it was a mitosis thing.
Either way, Damien is super young and likes to play, but generally in a mansion only has his dad and an Alfred (James Cromwell). There are toys, gadgets, and bat caves. Oh yeah, he knows about Batman.
Anyways, long story short, around Christmas, Batman gets in a jam, appears to be missing or dead, so Damien thinks he needs to done the costume before all of these villains come out and steal Christmas, or whatever.
Why does Alfred look like the world’s wrinkliest long penis?
From the very first frames, it became incredibly clear that this is not a movie for me.
Style wise is the first indicator. The animation style was absolutely gross in my mind. Not because of a penis joke I made above, but the style instead just felt like, I am not sure, an early 2000s Cartoon Network show? Something that is super quick and easy? I don’t think animation needs to break the bank every film with futuristic drawing technology, classic is fine, but this isn’t even something appealing to me. It feels like a television show, in the worst way, but goes on for 90 minutes.
The next glaring category was the voice acting. I am not some purist that thinks a certain voice actor is the best actor for the job and should keep doing it. Changing people up is great. (Unless it’s Mario, then they should get an impersonator). But almost no voice really hit for me. Sure, Kibreab as the kid? Fine. Wilson is a great actor, but he never felt like Batman to me this whole film. Just felt like a silly dad. The catalog of villains were all forgettable, except for Hornsby as the Joker. He had some giggles, sure, and it just still felt really off and like I was getting the most reject version of his character they could have made. Something left at the bottom of the bin and ignored.
And finally, the story. It is wild a little bit that part of this plot would have the kid thinking his dad was dead for a large part of this film. And he is hearing his voice on the bat belt. It is played for comedy, and we know that Batman isn’t, but damn, this kid, whose size makes him look like he is 5 years old or younger (look, the animation style is BAD), but it is fucked up. I never feel compelled about any part of this story. I don’t get scared, or excited, or confused. I just watch in boredom, apathy, and a bit of disdain.
I am not saying some people out there might think this is just a cute Christmas movie. The good news for you if you like it, is that it is also turning into a Prime show at some point next year which, well, explains a whole lot more in that regard.
Candy Cane Lane was watched early as a screener. It comes out on Prime Video on Friday, December 1st!
Christmas is the best season to be and exist in, according to Chris Carver (Eddie Murphy). Now, it is debatable if he married his wife just because her name, Carol (Tracee Ellis Ross), fit in with the season so well, but his three kids, Joy (Genneya Walton), Nick (Thaddeus J. Mixson), and Holly (Madison Thomas) were certainly named that way for Christmas.
Except this Christmas things are shit. Chris just got laid off. His wife might get a promotion, but he feels bad. And his street always has a giant contest for the best decorated house. He loses to his neighbor (Ken Marino) a lot, who just fills his lawn with inflatable crap, whereas Chris has hand carved wooden sculptures and lights. Well, for some reason, this year there is a cash prize of $100,000 to the best house. That is a chunk of money that can save Chris. And so he wants to make this Christmas the best he can before his oldest runs off to college.
Long story short, he ends up spending a lot of money on a giant Christmas Tree themed after the the 12 Days of Christmas, that is wooden and robotic and spins. And through more plot (eventually), that stuff all comes to life to terrorize his life until he can reclaim all of the golden rings, least he get turned into a toy. Turns out making a deal with an elf (Jillian Bell) is more like making one with the devil.
Only people with Christmas Sweaters can win Christmas decorating contests, fact.
Ah, Christmas movies. What is their goal overall? To make you excited about a holiday that you likely are excited about already? To make you feel a certain way? To make you remember it is coming up? To make you realize some people do holidays way better than you?
Hard to say. Having a main character as an adult just really love Christmas is an interesting idea. Hallmark movies do that all the time.
Honestly, at this point, I think I am just over Jillian Bell as a villain. She was also in the recently straight to streaming, Good Burger 2, as the bad guy. And has been the bad guy before in the past. And it has lost all meaning at this point. Kind of like Ken Marino playing a smug asshole. The side characters don’t do anything for me, which is more important given that Bell is in this movie a lot as a weird vengeful elf.
But what about the main family? Well, they just never really seem to deal with the issues the characters are going through. Murphy lost his job and is now spending a lot money, for a cause, and not looking for something else. That is an issue. The son is failing school class. The main plot line dealt with is the oldest daughter wanting to go to school out of state (and she is a senior, and this is December, so I guess it makes sense for this to be a last second conversation. Although she was also doing Track and Field for high school, which we all know is not in December).
Sorry, I am getting technical.
In terms of the actual plot, it is actually really bad. Collecting the golden rings in 24 hours. Is it figuring out clever puzzles? No not really. It is just aggressively themed ornaments who come into the families life at various points, and they just succeed when the challenge comes to them. They don’t have to go out from their normal activities to find them. No puzzles. Just…rings. Only a little bit of shenanigans, at the end, but hey, it is solved by counter-shenanigans so again, no worries.
Honestly, out of the side characters? I did love David Alan Grier as Santa. I wish he had a bigger part of it.
Candy Cane Lane is a safe movie, that maybe some kids will like the slight zany-ness of the situation that comes up. But it takes a long time before that even starts, and it is spread out slowly through the other slower family plots. There was potentially a good idea here, but it was played safe and slow.
How to Harness the Power of Generative AI in Digital Marketing
This can lead to presenting a solution to a customer that’s entirely unrelated to their actual problem, leaving customers frustrated and subject to churn. You can respond quickly to criticism and intervene with customer support issues, improving customer retention and potentially spotting product and service flaws before they become crises. Much more efficiently than a Google keyword search, Brand24 will highlight problematic mentions and great reviews, weeding out irrelevancies. While the conversion rate for email marketing campaigns may be a lowly 1.22%, that can translate to a lot of promising leads when you scale up. To make the most of this technique, which can be fully automated, you need an AI-powered email assistant such as Reply.io. This is a design tool which uses AI and machine learning to identify the subject of a portrait and separate it from the background.
There’s a great hashtag trend-spotting feature and good customer support including blogs and masterclasses to sharpen your marketing strategy and customer service skills. Build cold email drip campaigns across multiple channels and Reply will automate the rest, applying AI-powered response scoring to help identify leads which hold potential. There are a host of CRM integrations and predictive analytics tools to track the progress of your campaigns. Competitive Intelligence (CI) is one of the most powerful weapons in the digital marketer’s armory.
Examples of AI Marketing
As AI matures, brands need to know when to use it or not, and when to tout it or not. But that flaw in generative AI doesn’t absolve us of responsibility as marketers. A shocking 73% of consumers trust AI in content marketing written by generative AI according to a multinational survey by Capgemini Research Institute.
The quantity and quality of information fed to train AI algorithms correlates directly to the quality of the output predictions. Here’s a neat (and free) specialist tool — it selectively removes the background of any photo, leaving the human subject highlighted on a transparent background you can incorporate into other graphics. This is what Algolia enables, proving especially popular with entertainment companies or ecommerce firms with large inventories. The less time visitors have to spend fruitlessly scanning your catalogue the more likely they are to buy from you. Albert’s adopters include Crabtree & Evelyn, Telenor, and Harley Davidson.
The raw material of artificial intelligence algorithms and models is data.
Identifying key patterns in your data is challenging and easy to get wrong when done manually, with potentially dramatic consequences.
AI is often used in digital marketing efforts where speed is essential.
AI for creative development turns that problem into a strength, taking large amounts of data, learning from it, and working with humans to generate the best creative results.
Last year, Apple even introduced an AI iPhone tool that recognizes doors and reads the text on them. That way, a visually impaired user can navigate the world with more autonomy. Stay updated with the latest news, expert advice and in-depth analysis on customer-first marketing, commerce and digital experience design. Spotify will also send automated email marketing messages with personalized recommendations.
Related Digital Marketing Articles
You can use AI-powered tools to optimize the entire customer journey – from acquiring leads to generating sales. Marketers have more exciting tools at their fingertips than ever before, allowing the tiniest startup to compete for global success alongside the most established brands. The use of influencers in social media marketing has been a major trend in recent years and isn’t showing signs of slowing. Whether its hauls, product reviews, sponsorship or traditional advertising, social media influencers are big business for brands, especially those aimed at niche or younger demographics. When implemented effectively, artificial intelligence may have a big impact on e-commerce entrepreneurs. From developing websites and content to making product recommendations, inventory control, and providing customer support, AI can do it all.
This enables marketers to adjust the marketing funnel and spend quickly and efficiently, rather than waiting for infrequent and out-of-date reviews and recaps. Ultimately, this lets both marketing and sales teams prioritize the most important leads. Traditional forecasting takes a lot of time-consuming manual work, data engineering, and needs statistical expertise. AI makes forecasting effortless, even for non-technical teams, allowing marketers to plan ahead, predict campaign performance, and build better budgets. When creating ML models, marketers must take steps to look for and eliminate biases that adversely impact groups based on ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity.
From chatbots to self-driving cars, AI has slid comfortably into The applications of Ai and the use of AI product been constantly and conveniently growing. The algorithms are getting better and faster, making the AI products more mature and efficient. It is indispensable that AI would be an essential part of future digital products.
Rally Introduces Rally AI Recruitment Marketing Assistant – MarTech Series
Rally Introduces Rally AI Recruitment Marketing Assistant.
Together, they introduced a unique ad campaign featuring visuals entirely crafted by AI, aptly named “A.I. Ketchup.” They prompted the AI with inventive concepts like “ketchup in space,” and the generated images unmistakably echoed the Heinz brand identity, even without specific branding. Intriguingly, the online community soon joined the initiative, offering their own prompts, reinforcing the deep connection between the Heinz brand and ketchup. Implementing a chatbot can help reduce the time employees spend answering simple questions. When something more complex comes up that the chatbot can’t answer, it can escalate the issue to an actual human. Here, we cover seven things digital marketers can do with AI to speed up workflows, boost ROI on ad campaigns, and more.
Srihari Sasikumar is a Product Manager with over six years of experience in various industries including Information Technology, E-Commerce, and E-Learning. Srihari follows the key trends in Big Data, Data Science, Programming & AI very closely.
The VC Firm That Backed Apple Before Its IPO In 1980 Is Focusing On AI — Here’s How You Can Do The Same With $1,000 – Yahoo Finance
The VC Firm That Backed Apple Before Its IPO In 1980 Is Focusing On AI — Here’s How You Can Do The Same With $1,000.
Recently, my team and I had the opportunity to work with a client in the automotive industry, and we decided to use an AI-powered tool to help optimize their digital advertising campaigns. AI in digital marketing empowers companies by automating many marketing tasks and improving processes. It helps marketers save time on tasks that would be difficult or even impossible to do manually within a reasonable time frame. AI chatbots can support digital marketing efforts in several ways, including lead generation, lead qualification, running contests and surveys, content distribution, and more. These tasks aren’t much different from what rule-based chatbots were already capable of. AI is a powerful asset for businesses overall, which includes marketing teams.
These are just a few examples of AI transforming the digital marketing landscape. By leveraging these AI-powered tools, businesses can optimize their marketing efforts, deliver superior customer experiences, and drive growth. Machine learning is one technology that has been used to turn this enormous amount of data into insights and actions. This form of artificial intelligence trains an algorithm to recognize patterns in data, thereby learning from information like a human. With this technology, teams can use data from their business’s history to make predictions about the future. Predictions can optimize marketing actions, flow directly into marketing automations, or inform marketing strategies.
It’s exceptionally easy to use — just copy and paste your text into the online app and hit return. These automations can be written without coding, and there are templates to speed things up. Zapier calls its automations zaps, and it features over 3,000 integrations at time of writing. You can even create branching workflows, dependent on logical criteria you set. It’s no secret to any digital marketer that Google’s SEO algorithm updates play a central role in making your content…
It’s a delicate balance between leveraging AI’s transformative power and maintaining the human touch that no technology can replace. As AI assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant become commonplace, optimizing content for voice search is critical. AI helps businesses adjust to this shift by enabling them to analyze voice search queries, understand intent, and optimize content accordingly. The importance and relevance of AI in digital marketing cannot be overstated.
However, it’s important to keep in mind the limitations of AI, even as the technology continues to get better over time in the changing marketing landscape. One of the most significant advantages AI can bring to SEO is the ability to optimize content for search engines. AI algorithms can analyze website traffic, identify keywords that can help improve search engine rankings, and track competitors’ activity. The goal is to have your marketers spend less time researching and brainstorming so they can focus on sending successful campaigns.
Additionally, it maintains your company’s tone of voice and allows you to build your own database of approved company terminology. Salesforce Einstein provides AI-powered insights and predictions to help marketers optimize lead scoring, identify high-value customers, personalize communications and accelerate sales performance. A spokesperson for Meta said in an email that the company has done extensive research to try to mitigate bias in its AI systems.
Create your own search filter to enable your customers to find exactly what they want at lightning speed.
The other is the customer-facing side, as marketers use AI to improve the customer experience, thereby strengthening the brand and making more sales.
Marketers can easily measure the quality of each advertisement channel and turn on and off spend automatically as the ROI approaches a critical threshold.
You already didn’t need to be a coder to build a rule-based chatbot for your marketing leads, but now the process is much easier and faster.
AI in digital marketing refers to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and techniques to optimize and enhance marketing strategies, processes, and campaigns in the digital realm.
AI-powered tools have transformed the way marketers edit and enhance visual content. These tools utilize machine learning algorithms to automate tasks such as image retouching, background removal, object recognition, and video editing. Adopting AI in digital marketing may demand a learning curve and specialized skills.
This is a review for Totally Killer, out on Prime Video on October 6, 2023.
Oh Jinkies! Living in the year 2022 is so swell. Even for the people in the relatively small community. You know when it wasn’t swell? In 1987, when a masked individual, dubbed the “Sweet 16 Killer” terrorized and killed three sixteen year old ladies! That was totally uncool, and also fun fact, he was never caught.
For Jamie Hughes (Kiernan Shipka), she doesn’t care that much about it. How could it affect her life that much? Well her mother (Julie Bowen) for one. Because those three girls were her best friends, and she has been frightened ever sense. Sure, she has a nice supportive family now, and a protective husband (Lochlyn Munro), but that makes her mom overprotective of HER so Jamie can’t have any fun.
Anyways, SURPRISINGLY, the killer comes back, and comes for her mom. That is totally not cool. 35 years? What the hell dude. Because of plot reasons, Jamie actually ends up going BACK IN TIME, to 1987, a few days before the murders happen. Seems like she knows what to do, stop the killer before he can start! And thankfully, this was after Back to the Future came out, so she can reference that movie and maybe people will just totally get it.
I forget she did Sabrina and can still only think of Mad Men.
Hey kids? Do you like Freaky? And Happy Death Day? Because this is definitely the movies they want you to compare it too, very much going for fun and death at the same time. Maybe some gnarly deaths, maybe some quirky references. The director, Nahnatchka Khan, is known for comedies, and not her horror, so you can tell that is clearly the bigger focus here. Always Be My Maybe was a wonderful, beautiful, and funny film.
But this is a movie that seems to just completely drop the ball on the scares aspect.
I think the only kill and chase that was only exciting was the first one in the film, when Bowen was attacked. She seemed legitimately afraid for the character. Everything else after that was just a disappointment. Even the final climatic potential scene, where our hero is trying to return to her time finally, with a killer coming towards her. It just felt bloated and didn’t actually live up to its location, where it could have been amazing.
Totally Killer is a GREAT idea for a horror/comedy. And it has the nostalgia element. The film itself looks nice, it just didn’t offer amazing kills, nor did it go beyond the low hanging fruits in terms of joke quality. It is certainly a movie, and you might still like it if you liked the other recent horror comedies. But I don’t think anyone will walk away saying its better than them, which is a shame.
Bill (Martin Starr) is taking his family to Norway! You see, his Uncle owned a cabin and land out there, but he passed away, and Bill was left the property. So why not upend his whole life to a new place to start over.
You see, Bill’s original wife died in the past. So he had gotten a new wife, Carol (Amrita Acharia), but he had two kids before that, Nora (Zoe Winther-Hansen) and Lucas (Townes Bunner). His new wife, the kids don’t really full accept as a replacement mom, but she is trying. She is into self help seminar speaking. Bill is excited to open up a bed and breakfast place with their new land.
However, and forgive me as I say this, but there appears to be something in the barn. Only Lucas sees it at first, so of course no one believes him. But a local tells him about the Barn Elves that supposedly live in the land, and how they are different than those silly American lawn gnomes. They have rules, they hate noise, they hate bright lights, and will leave you alone if you leave them alone.
So no one cares, there are parties, and sure enough, the elf gets pissed. Time to get revenge with a bunch of his elf friends. Just like they did to the last owner.
“I’m not even sure how the debt collectors found my new place in Norway!”
Christmas horror comedy flicks. Is this genre on the rise or what?
Now, I like the idea of a good multi-genre film. For example, we didn’t really have a lot of Christmas horror comedies, besides like, Gremlins sort of. Then eventually we got a Krampus and it became a big hit. And last year we had Violent Night.
I would put There’s Something in the Barn solely between those two movies. Better than Krampus (which was just okay for me), and not as fun as Violent Night. It IS a fun movie in its own right though. There are creative deaths, and a lot of silly moments. I mean, these elves are so dumb looking, it is hard to not find it humorous. But Starr is no David Harbour, when it comes to the physicality and outrageousness of his Santa.
Of course of course, this is not the point of Starr’s character. He is playing the classic screw up father, who is trying to make everything nice, when nothing is. In fact, this might be the first time he has ever played a dad on screen? He was a nerd on Freaks and Geeks and has been sarcastic asshole for so long, its weird that we are getting to that stage in his career. Am I old now? (yes)
But back to the film. This film is 100% going to join the rotation of others of the similar genre. If you like comedy horrors at Christmas, you will like this one as well. I think it offers something new and interesting, including a bit of a rewatchability factor.
Can a piece of furniture ruin a marriage? Ruin a family? Of course it can. But is it really the tables fault? Probably not.
You see, for Jesús (David Pareja) and his wife (Estefanía de los Santos). See, she just had their baby. And they have been redecorating their apartment. But according to Jesús, she has decided everything. All the decorations. When they should have a kid. What to do with their free time. Even their son’s name, is a name that he despises. So they have had their arguments. For whatever reason though, she said in their redecorating, that Jesús can pick a new coffee table for their apartment.
So what does he do? Well, he listens to a salesman about a very exotic and recently on sale table. It is glass on top, unbreakable! And the legs are just two naked ladies, plastered in gold. It is absolutely gaudy, and his wife doesn’t like it, but he takes it anyways due to pride.
Now he just has to put it together. But it is missing a screw. These dang Scandinavian designed furniture, and it doesn’t even have all the parts!
It turns out, the missing screw is just the first and smallest of problems. Literally and metaphorically. Things get bad, and get bad quick. The coffee table was a bad choice.
As you can see, the wife was right to judge her husband.
The Coffee Table, if I had to say anything, is a hard film to recommend. It classifies itself as a dark comedy. And the DARK element of that is super true. I am used to dark comedies dealing with death, and things spiraling out of control. And usually I can find humor in this as well. But holy shit, this one went really dark, really fast. I wasn’t sure where the comedy part was hiding?
I mean, it is awkward still. There is an uneasy chuckle in a few scenes, and the beginning scene is played out for laughs. I was still downright horrified at the events and stayed horrified for the rest of the film, watching as things continued. The conversations were unbearably uncomfortable. I almost turned it off early on, after a scene. I didn’t think I could handle much more of the film. At the same time, I figured the impacts of the scene would move on and we’d see the spiral. But it actually never really moves on. It lingers and it makes you feel and deal with the events.
The ending is a bit predictable. You can tell where things will end up, and it does not disappoint.
The Coffee Table is not for everybody. Hell, it isn’t for most people. But it is for people who want an experience about why not all relationships can just wash away their problems.
Sometimes being a simple man isn’t always so simple. For Eladio (Victor Clavijo), he doesn’t even know how to read, but he has a wife (Ruth Díaz) and a son. He works at a ranch, which comes with a free house to live in. What does he do at this estate? Barely anything to be honest. He maintains the grounds for the rich owner, who never comes out to visit.
But the main crux of the job is that sets up various stands to rent out to hunters to hunt deer and wild boar from. He makes sure the (normally ten) stands are safe and don’t overlap, so that they don’t have any crossfire. Other people find hunters to pay for the stand usage for the day, while they get really easy places to hunt! However, this time, his coworker says he actually already sold 13 stands worth of people. And if he doesn’t tell the owner, and sets it up for 13, he can get a nice under the table bonus. And his family needs the money…
Eladio takes the deal after his wife convinces him to. Sure enough, something bad happens. Which leads to another bad thing happening. And then hey, even more bad stuff happening. Oh fiddlesticks.
OH NO HE HAS A GUN! Oh yeah, there is hunting. Everyone has a gun.
Now real early on in the film, you can get a sense of what is likely going to go down. You could figure it out from my description. It is called foreshadowing. And sure enough, it does happen! But honestly, earlier and faster than I imagined. That is because a great deal of this film deals with the snowball effects of the events. Things get worse, because it makes sense for things to get worse.
But certainly, I can say the ending I did not expect at all. Things got weird, things got creepy, things got downright extra-evil. This became a sort of mystery film, instead of a sad spiraling drama. And for one, I can say, the ending feels like it lands on its feet.
Clavijo as our main character deals with his issues in very believable ways, and honestly, at no point do I not feel bad for him. There is not real gotcha moment where its like, surprise, he is a bad guy! This shit is at some point just how bad life can be and pile up on those in the lower working classes.
The Wait is a film that honestly really draws the viewer in, and is not something you should be waiting awhile to see before seeking it on your own.
