Tag: 2 out of 4

High-Rise is another movie based on a famous book that I have never heard about before. Shit, this book came out in the 1970’s. It took forty years before a movie was made about it, despite having general praise. And it wasn’t even done by America, but the UK got involved to make this bad boy.

And that is all I knew going into it, outside of the setting. That being a single apartment tower.

That might be all I need to know too. Single apartment tower films have tended to be good lately. The Raid: Redemption and Dredd. If it is anywhere close to their level of quality, we got a trifecta here. (I’m ignoring Everly, but that is a guilty pleasure film of mine).

I named this picture “Hiddledick” and felt very proud of that fact.

High-Rise takes place in a sleek and modern UK. In fact, it takes place in a new apartment tower that has all the commodities. There is a school, a supermarket, a pool and a gym, a spa. On the top levels, there are nice apartments and on the bottom, well, they are more modest and common I guess.

And the film begins with Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) walking around in this tower, all decrepit, falling apart, full of dead bodies. Just a sneak peak. The film then goes back three months to when we moves in and life is perfect.

The tower is designed by Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons), a great architect and meant to be the future. Laing moved there after the death of his sister, starts a relationship with a single mom (Sienna Miller) and becomes an almost father to her son (Louis Suc). Laing also befriends a low level guy with a lot of energy (Luke Evans) and his pregnant wife (Elisabeth Moss), despite the class difference.

Eventually, when residents find out that the police seem to be avoiding the tower, then changes start to occur. And you know. Laing all alone with a lot of dead bodies.

Also starring James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Peter Ferdinando, and Augustus Prew.

No, no, no, this shade is just all wrong.

What the hell did I just watch? I really had a hard time grasping it. I read the very detailed wikipedia outline after the fact, and it cleared up some issues, but it didn’t answer a lot of things. Was the book this vague and…weird? Probably weird at least. I just didn’t get it at all. This whole thing was probably a metaphor for something, but the film is so hard to follow that I can’t really figure it out.

Honestly, if they could have just answered the why things fell the way they did, I would have been a happy camper. But the film leaves to much up to the viewers imagination.

The film itself is shot wonderfully though. The camera use was well done and the music did a great job of guiding my feelings. The acting seemed fine for the most part, in particular I was driven towards Evans’ character the most.

High-Rise is chaotic yet slow, and a film that might require a reading of the book.

Here it folks, the big one. The Apocalypse is coming, despite everything Idris Elba did to cancel it.

The recent strange reboot of the X-Men franchise has been wildly successful. I enjoyed First Class and loved the crap out of Days of Future Past (which made my top of the year list), while also fixing some continuity issues that had been brought up. I used to like X2, but honestly, it hasn’t aged well with me, and I am tired as fuck of the Wolverine origin stories.

As a fan of the X-Men stories, Apocalypse has always felt like their biggest and greatest enemy. He is their Thanos or Darkseid. Not their main enemy, just their biggest threat. So to see it finally come to fruition on the big screen is both exciting and frightening. It is obvious why I am excited, but I am also frightened that I am over hyping the film. Days of Future Past did a lot of things right, so it will be hard for them to live up to that film. There are so many ways for X-Men: Apocalypse to go wrong.

But despite all this, I will do my best to not make fun of the way he looks.

He looks a lot less like Ivan Ooze in the actual film!

Ten years after the events of the last film, the world has changed for Mutants. After Mystique’s (Jennifer Lawrence) speech, mutants are a bit more understood and not completely seen as threats. In America, they can look weird and walk around and most people seem to accept them. It helps that Magneto (Michael Fassbender) has gone into hiding in Poland to live a new life, and Xavier’s (James McAvoy) school is a rousing success!

Until shit starts hitting the fan. Moira Mactaggert (Rose Byrne) discovers cults that are worshipping ancient beings believed to be the first mutants. Sure enough, bad events occur, and En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac) is out and about after being trapped and asleep for almost 5700 years. Go fuck yourself, Rip Van Winkle. What’s an ancient deity gotta do to get some respect around here? Make a new team of individuals to help him gain more powers and enslave the world of course! That is why we get to see new people, like Psylocke (Olivia Munn), Angel (Ben Hardy), and Mowhawk Storm (Alexandra Shipp)!

Ah, the end of the world. The best time to introduce young new guys to the fold too. Like Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), Cyclopes (Tye Sheridan) who is of course Havok’s (Lucas Till) brother, Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Jubilee (Lana Condor).

Also returning: Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Evan Peters as Quicksilver, and Josh Helman as Col. William Stryker. And featuring Warren Scherer, Rochelle Okoye, Monique Ganderton, and Fraser Aitcheson as the original four horsemen.

Something new, something old (Apocalypse), and a whole lot of somethings blue.

With X-Men: Apocalypse, we now have our third 2.5 hour Superhero film of the year, which must the new normal. Please be different Dr. Strange. The timing felt good for Civil War, but it was too much of a run time for this film. Plenty could have been cut out to give a more straight forward and less clunky film.

Here is the good stuff though! I almost gave this a 3 out of 4, because what worked really worked. There is a scene that actually made me tear up in this film. It was then immediately when extra lives were somehow lost without making a whole lot of sense. I will say that Magneto’s reason for getting involved seem almost completely justifiable, and like normal, Fassbender and McAvoy basically carry the film. Lawrence isn’t bad in her role, although Mystique’s arc seems just a bit weaker. In terms of new characters, Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler does a fascinating job and Turner as Jean Grey grew on me over time. Quicksilver was a lot more involved in the plot and his moments were some of the highlights of the film again. It is great that they made him more integral to the plot and confirmed some of his backstory.

And finally (a vague spoiler) we have a film where characters can actually die from these extremely powerful individuals doing battle. Thank goodness.

For most of the other players, everyone else feels underutilized. Psylocke is only really used in one fight, we get a decent amount of Angel but it isn’t great, and Storm doesn’t have many great moments. And if you were one of the dozens excited to finally get Jubilee in film, then quickly suppress that excitement, because she does diddly squat. And of course we have the wonderful OSCAR ISAAC to play the big bad guy, but for half the film his voice is distorted and there is never really a moment where he can really display any great acting, which makes the casting feel a bit wasteful.

It could have been the 3D and theater settings, but the CGI felt weaker than Days of Future Past. Apparently Apocalypse’s powers involve turning items into sand and sand into items for the most part with the occasional cool purple thing. Add in Magneto’s electric field near the end and we just get a used over and over again ugly look to the whole film.

This movie is not as good as Days of Future Past, and maybe not even as good as First Class. It is still decently enjoyable though, but it features a clunky plot with a lot of underutilized characters. The good news is that for the parts that work, they work really damn well. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy some nice fan service?

Horror anthologies are all of the rage. I probably said that in my last review of a horror anthology, V/H/S: Viral, in October of 2014. Since then there hasn’t really been any horror anthologies. They died really quick.

There was another film called Southbound, but I missed it, so I will just have to wait for the DVD release or around Halloween. Whenever I remember it exists. Other than Southbound, the latest film to match this category is of course Holidays.

Holidays!? Yes, Holidays. A horror anthology with a common theme of several different holidays. Eight to be exact, with a bunch of random directors. That is a low enough number for me to talk about each one quickly!

So many holidays, you probably can’t even guess what this one is about!

For Valentine’s day, we have a little girl (Madeleine Coghlan), who gets teased by a different girl (Savannah Kennick) because she is a bitch. Our first girl also has a crush on her swimming coach (Rick Peters), who just wants her to be happy and not get picked on.

In St. Patrick’s Day, our Irish teacher (Ruth Bradley), wants to make a new girl (Isolt McCaffrey) smile, so that girl puts a curse on her to give birth to a snake.

For Easter, a little girl (Ava Acres) confuses the Bunny with Jesus, but is also told that no one has ever seen the Easter Bunny before for a pretty scary reason.

In Mother’s Day, we learn about a woman (Sophie Traub) who always gets pregnant after sex, regardless of birth control or condom usage. She is 100% fertile and it is ruining her life, so she goes to a middle of nowhere to people who claim that they can help her, when in reality, they want to just force her to stay.

On the other side for Father’s Day, we have a girl (Jocelin Donahue) who thought her dad (Michael Gross) was dead and gone since she was 11, but when she finds a voice recorder with a message on it, she has to go and investigate.

For Halloween (directed by Kevin Smith), we see a dude (Harley Morenstein) operating a small time cam girl operation, where the girls (Ashley Greene, Olivia Roush, Harley Quinn Smith) decide to get even and put him through the same abuse. You know, just worse.

On Christmas, a guy (Seth Green) goes to great lengths to get the latest VR tech for his son, but when the virtual reality starts to show his inner secrets, he and his wife (Clare Grant) have to cope with them.

Finally, on New Year’s Eve, a man (Andrew Bowen) has been killing a woman on each holiday that he has met while online dating, and now he will complete his collection (Lorenza Izzo). He hopes.

What is love? Baby don’t hurt me.

I spent most of my alloted time just going over 1-2 sentence synopsis’ of each short. I figured I could do that with only eight segments, but I may have been wrong.

Like almost every single horror anthology before it, Holidays is definitely hit or miss. The entire thing is less than two hours so overall it is probably worth a late night viewing.

In particular, I liked the Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day and Halloween shorts the most. New Year’s Eve told a decent story as well.

Christmas felt too short, St. Patrick’s Day was mostly weird, and Easter was also incredibly weird (but mostly just short).

Mother’s Day might have been the longest short story, I didn’t really keep track. It had an interesting premise, but I thought it dulled too much in the middle, despite the also pretty good ending.

Now I am ready for the Horror Anthologies to die. I think they are running out of ideas on how to package them together.

Adderall is a drug designed to help those with ADHD calm the fuck down and get their work done. That is how I understand it at least.

Adderall is also a drug that goes around college campuses or weird professions, where the user will take it in order to focus more on a task. The amount sold under the table on colleges increase more around final exam times. So yeah, people might use it to “study better” or finish an essay or stop looking at their facebook every few minutes. It has also been used by journalists and writers, I am sure.

Basically, the plot of Limitless is the guy takes Adderall5000 and his extreme focus lets him do a shit ton of things. What fun!

The Adderall Diaries, if anything, is a shitty title to a movie. Adding Diaries to something is just unoriginal. This one is based on a book, but the book came out in 2009, so it was already past the point when Diaries was a cool thing to add to a title. So I am going into this movie pretending it is just 1995 and the title was cutting edge.

Of course I was six then, so I probably thought this was how to ride a motorcycle.

Hans Reiser (Christian Slater) might have killed his wife. Who knows. That is what the trial is for.

For some reason, this case drives the interest of one Stephen Elliott (James Franco). He is a writer, who writes stories based on his life. He had a rough child hood, with a dad (Ed Harris), who was abusive, left him to make him homeless, and eventually died. He has a book deal, an advance from the publishing company and more thanks to his wonderful agent (Cynthia Nixon).

But he has writers block. So he wants to write about this case instead. It drives close to home. Not that anyone wants any of that True Crime shit right now. They want his personal stories. While watching the case, he meets Lana Edmond (Amber Heard), a journalist. They start doing stuff together.

Oh and hey. His dad isn’t dead. Stephen lied about that. This creates problems, as other big moments might be lies as well. Add to the fact that he isn’t writing, no one wants the new stuff, and more, his life might come crumbling down as well.

Also featuring Jim Parrack and Wilmer Valderrama.

A VHS tape? Man, getting my head set in the 1990’s is actually pretty easy.

Last year, Franco starred in True Story, where he played a guy who might have killed his wife and kids and a journalist, Jonah Hill, was trying to tell his story. And now he is a writer, trying to get the story of a guy who maybe killed his wife.

Similar? Yes. Annoyingly so? Still yes. Franco loves independent films. So much that he is more of these indie films than he is bigger well known films, and that includes the stoner ones. And for the most part, all of these films he is a part of just seem to be incredibly lacking. It might not all be Franco’s fault…it could also be his agent specifically picking lesser roles.

This film is dull, but in a slow burn way. Franco’s character is all over the place. There are quite a few sub plots and they don’t seem to mesh together fully. There are some tense moments. There is a lot of yelling. There is some classy text over the screen to make sure you are a paying attention. But overall it just feels like the entire story is pointless.

At least in True Story we had great cinematography and a better story. This one just doesn’t seem cohesive and I am left wondering why quite a few scenes even happened.

I was forced into watching the trailer for The Huntsman: Winter’s War and I was confused. Based on the plot and what I remember about Snow White and the Huntsman, my timelines started to hurt. It said it was a prequel, but if events in the trailer happened in the prequel, how did we even get the first film? That was my main concern going in.

But before we get to that, it is hilarious that this movie even exists. Right after the first one came out, there was talk about a sequel but about The Huntsman instead of Snow White. The point of the first film was to give us a strong female lead character, so to kick her out for the sequel is just amusing.

Of course, there was also the scandal with the director, Rupert Sanders, and Kristen Stewart, having an extra martial affair thanks to the film. I wonder why they weren’t invited back…

There can only be so many queens in one picture.

Before the incidents of the first film, our Evil Queen (Charlize Theron) was marrying king after king, killing them, taking their kingdom, and moving on. She also had a family, namely, a sister. Freya (Emily Blunt) had no magical powers as she hadn’t unlocked them yet like the rest of her family, but after tragedy, sure enough, she had ice powers.

Freya runs to the North after losing her kids and decides if she cannot raise a baby she will raise an army (actual line from the film). So she begins to conquer nearby villages and kingdoms, stealing their kids so she could turn them into her own personal warriors. Her Huntsmen, as she calls them.

That is where we get to meet Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain), well, the kid versions of them. They are the best warriors, her cream of the crop, and they fall in love. But love is forbidden in her kingdom, for reasons. And if you remember the first film, you will remember that Eric was super drunk and depressed over the death of his wife Sara. It doesn’t take a genius to spoil what happens next.

Did I just spoil the whole movie? Nope. Because then it fast forwards to after the events of the first film. We have a prequel and a sequel. For the real plot of this movie, the magic mirror goes missing on its way to a Sanctuary to lock away its evil. So The Huntsmen is forced to go look for it to help end its evil. And on the way he has the help of some he-dwarves (Nick Frost, Rob Brydon) and she-dwarves (Sheridan Smith, Alexandra Roach).

Of course this might put him on a path to go against The Ice Queen, which is good since he hates her and all. Sam Claflin briefly resumes his past role and Sope Dirisu is also a Huntsman with speaking roles to make the cast more diverse.

You’re god damn right I’m reviewing The Huntsman and not showing The Hunstman in the pictures. #GirlPower

Off the bat, this film is definitely superior to the original, but it is still not a great film. The idea of having it as a prequel was weird to me as I couldn’t imagine a good enough story to take place pre-Snow White. And a sequel was weird because I imagined it would only dampen the point of the first film. So it did both and did the best it could to try to make a coherent story.

I have problems with the prequel, because if there is this terrible Ice Queen up North ravaging the country side, you’d think someone would mention it in the first movie. Maybe even that the Queen had a sister. The only part not shoe horned in is the fact that Sara was his wife and she dies. But even that was poorly done and didn’t seem like the type of thing that would drive him to years of depression and booze.

As for the sequel, yes it does cheapen the first film, but the first film was bad. The adventure wasn’t that great, the plans were still piss poor. The special effects were a bit better as was the humor, thanks to the dwarves and Hemsworth playing a happy Huntsman. The fight scenes in general were a lot better as well.

The film still suffers from a rushed ending with a lot of silly actions from the characters. I was pretty sure I heard the narrator say that Freya was betrayed by her sister early on, but apparently Freya didn’t know that? The betrayal came at the very end and the fact that it was supposed to be a surprise confused me.

Other minor notes: Yes, Blunt had to play someone emotionless, but it was terrible. Chastain and Hemsworth had great chemistry. Theron should not have been in this film. And this film has goblins, but these goblins are basically apes with horns with tar in their blood, reminiscent of fantasy trolls. Of course, the first film had a troll that was nothing like the fantasy troll, so they instead had to call them goblins.

The most ungoblin-y goblins I have ever seen.

Another Thursday, another foreign film. Or documentary. Really it is whatever is convenient on a Thursday and/or how hard it is to find a documentary I want to watch. And this week, a documentary to watch was too difficult!

So I picked My Big Night, as I saw the trailer recently at the theater and it looked funny. And it had dancing! I like to dance and party, every night is my big night. In the comfort of my own home. Clubs are scary.

My Big Night is directed by Álex de la Iglesia, who more recently directed The Last Circus and Witching and Bitching. The former I never heard of before, but it looks intense. The later I actually had recommended to me at least twice and I never saw. Whoops. Maybe I will get around to that one if My Big Night maintains my interest, at least a little bit.

And the first musical number reminded me awkwardly of Prisencolinensinainciusol.

Hooray the new year! Sure, it is like, August or September of 2015 when this movie takes place, but we need to celebrate this bad boy now.

Namely, the television company has serious issues, including a corrupt owner (Santiago Segura) about to lay off hundreds of people. So they have had massive protests outside of their studios. Regardless, they are filming this special months in advance to make sure it goes off without a hitch. That means retakes, reshoots, crowd shots, over and over again.

Speaking of the crowd, they are full of extras who have had to dress up in the same clothes, pretend to party with fake food and drinks, day after day. And then someone gets seriously injured and they need a new extra. That is where Jose (Pepón Nieto) comes in. He has been waiting for a temp job for months and this is the first one to bite. He will do anything, even if his ex-wife and kids are leaving the country to vacation and he has to leave his senile mother (Terele Pávez) at home alone. He also has to deal with Paloma (Blanca Suárez) a very attractive woman who is sitting next to him who is apparently a jinx but super into him.

Other plot lines include! Aging singer Alphonso (Raphael, who I’ve been told is a real singer doing a parody of himself?) battling for the “midnight” spot with a young pop star Adanne (Mario Casas). A stalker (Jaime Ordóñez) who loves Alphonso enough to want to kill him during his performance. And a few women trying to steal Adanne’s sperm to have a blackmail baby. And the two cohosts (Hugo Silva, Carolina Bang) constantly bickering over their lines while auditioning to host a future show.

And shit, even more weird side plots.

Also starring Carmen Ruiz, Carmen Machi, Carlos Areces, Luis Callejo, Enrique Villén, Tomás Pozzi, Luis Fernández, and Ana Polvorosa.

When you’re this fly, you don’t even need color.

My Big Night is an insane ride, with intersecting plot lines and characters, all woven around an absurd idea. The whole movie is absurd, so many little things working together to make this the craziest night of pre-recorded television ever. I like crazy, I like absurd, I would have just liked a little bit more details.

Honestly, the only reason I was able to understand the protesters outside, the time frame of this taping, and how crazy the taping process has been, is thanks to re-reading the plot summary after the fact online. There is so much going on during this film, that they forget to mention all the finer details.

Now, My Big Night is definitely entertaining. I had characters I was rooting for and enjoyed a lot of the music. Some of it could be lost on me culturally, especially not knowing anything about Raphael in real life. It just felt like it should have been a lot more. The ending was also pretty week, comparatively. It was like they had no idea how to end it.

The movie has a ton of promise and I would be excited to see more from this director. You’ve earned yourself a viewing of Witching and Bitching.

It is still quite hard to find new documentaries coming out that are easy to watch and not about another damn singer. I might have to refuse to watch any of them this year as a sort of protest.

Instead I found Gameshow Dynamos, a relatively recent release (within the last year at least) documentary about game show experts. I have only seen one “documentary” on game shows before, and it was Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal, which turned out to be quite creepy. There are probably great stories relating to the behind the scenes of the best game shows, and just someone needs to film it and make a sweet picture.

Gameshow Dynamos gave me a chance to see something different, and it was free on Amazon Prime, so even better.

Gameshow Dynamos is on the surface about two stories. One is the very specific story of Bernard and Claire Boiko. Two very different people who found each other, love, and grew a wonderful family together despite opposition. The other is a sort of history of the rise of Game Shows in America from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. And of course its pitfalls.

And obviously how the two stories connect and game shows saved the Boiko household from ruin.

I know I know, I used a promo poster picture. I suck.

Bernard’s first game show was Tic Tac Dough where he won an equivalent of $9000 in today’s money. He did it to pay back college debt and bills, but it didn’t last long. Then Claire went on the show, while pregnant for her third child and she also did fantastic, to help pay for medical bills.

And for awhile, they did a few game shows just to get by. Bernard didn’t make a lot as a teacher (until the teacher union succeeded in a pay raise), and they ended up with five kids. But there was a scandal back then where the producers would give popular people answers to do well for ratings. Bernard had to testify before a grand jury about it (he never was offered answers for cash) and it put a halt on the game show industry for awhile.

But eventually they got in it. And eventually their kids grew up. They did most of their game show playing once they were now grand parents, going on dozens of shows each separately, on the game show circuit because people liked them so damn much. And hey, game shows pay great.

This isn’t a sad story about game shows and debt and get rich quick ideas, but a happy one! And these people probably do hold the record for appearances on game shows a couple (and somehow never together on any two person game shows)! Also they talk about finding out the right hook for yourself to make you likable by producers to get on these game shows.

The documentary is a nice story, but at the same time, it does feel a bit too short. Its running time is just an hour, and a lot of it is basically the story of their life before they met, their marriage, and their problems. I would have liked a lot more footage of them actually on game shows, answering questions. We got bits and pieces, but not a lot of significant time. I want to see game show footage when I am watching something about game shows. More shots of them winning, losing, whatever. Heck, we got one of them on jeopardy but I don’t think we saw any actual questions from it, or watching them sweep a category or anything.

It was a good idea, but could have been better.

Heh. Hardcore Henry. It isn’t necessarily a bad title, but it is slightly suggestive. Still, it is a better title than its previous iteration, just Hardcore. And I could be wrong, but I think before that it might have just been called POV.

Either way, it isn’t the safest film to google image search.

Ahem, but in case you didn’t know, this film is shot entirely from the first person point of view. It is 100% GoPro camera, specially mounted on a face mask, not awkwardly on top of the head. This movie promises to be very similar to many modern shooting games, except with realistic arm placement on the camera.

It’s a new experience, so let’s just jump on in feet first and get wet.

Hello Henry! I guess, you are Henry. No one actor played Henry, mostly a bunch of stuntman and the director. And since it is your point of view, and since Henry doesn’t remember his past, then sure, you can be Henry. Congrats!

Henry/You wake up in a science laboratory, where Estelle (Haley Bennett) is there to add some robot limbs to your body and let you know that you were husband and wife. Don’t worry, you will remember eventually. Just before they can reinstall his voice software, some very European guy named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) breaks in and starts killing people. And he has telekinesis, cool.

Either way, Henry has to escape and run from a giant Akan army of masked unnamed soldiers. He quickly meets Jimmy (Sharlto Copley), who knows about his situation and seems helpful. At the same time, he keeps showing up almost everywhere with elaborate disguises and surviving extreme situations. Very strange. Henry needs to trust someone, needs to take down Akan, and needs to save his wife. And hopefully get his memories back.

Also starring Andrei Dementiev as Slick Demetri, Oleg Poddubnyy as Yuri the henchman, and Darya Charusha and Svetlana Ustinova as dominatrices.

Oh and Tim Roth! For like, one quick unfulfilling scene!

Despite appearances, Jimmy is not a time traveling soldier.

Hardcore Henry is the type of movie that delivers on its promise and not much more. If you want almost non stop action with the unique filming style, you will get it. A decent plot and acting? Eh, calm your expectations.

The director has said they wanted to do this movie with the intention of making it a personal experience for the viewer, and not the video game angle, but that doesn’t really hold water. In this movie we have an escort mission, dozens of different weapons, chase mission, and even a last ditch health pack type situation before the big boss fight. It felt like a video game. The personal experience angle never really works, because it isn’t a 4D film. We aren’t getting turned around left or right every time he does, so our head doesn’t move with the scene. That is a vital component if it wanted the audience to feel like the protagonist.

Honestly, the reason I am even giving this film an average rating is thanks to Sharlto Copley. He really makes this movie, his characters are wonderful and, at times, incredibly campy. Without a character like him and just a voiceless action star, it would be a boring film with the occasional headache.

At the end of the day, it is a unique style and so it can have some points for trying. But should this art form continue in the future, I hope we can remember this as the starting point and not the best the genre had to offer.

I first heard about Meet The Patels months ago, and that is because an alumnus from my High School was the director! Now, she went there 14 years before me or so, but it was still cool. We got quite a few newsletters letting us know it was going to theaters and eventually Netflix.

Despite the connection though, I won’t be biased favorable for it. If anything, I might be biased against it. Because despite our school connection and being a member of the press, they wouldn’t give me a press screening to watch the film. What a bunch of jerks.

Patel is apparently a very popular Indian last name. Our story is about Ravi Patel, who is about to turn 30 and is currently unmarried. Unmarried and Indian! At that age! Oh no! His parents were part of an arranged marriage of course, after his dad had already moved to India. His wife was the 12th match and they knew it would work. And the mom is also quite good at arranging marriages, so it looks bad that her son hasn’t even had a girlfriend in 30 years!

But…but Ravi has had a girlfriend. He was dating a white ginger chick for two whole years without his family knowing about it. But he had an “Indian” problem and some commitment issues, so they ended it right before the documentary. The “Indian” problem is that he has always pictured himself marrying an Indian woman and knows it is what his family wants.

So he goes to his parents and agrees for them to work on arranging a marriage for him.

A photo of them taking a photo! Madness.

Now, arranged marriages aren’t like they used to be. The parents had to print out a bio sheet on their son and send it all around the country to friends and family, all of which passed it on. At the same time, the parents began to receive information on ladies across America. They sort through the ladies and give him women they think he will enjoy. He just has to go on a date with the woman and they decide on their own if they want to date any more in the future. If not, the parents keep trying and keep hooking them up with company.

And Ravi’s sister, Geeta, is there the whole time to document and film the whole thing. Weddings, Indian dating sites, and speed dating at Patel reunions. No it’s no weird. Basically everyone is a Patel, and most Patel’s just marry other Patel’s from different parts of India.

As a documentary, this story is about Ravi, but he isn’t really an interesting character. What makes the documentary interesting is learning about modern Indian American dating customs. The levels the parents go through to provide for their children. That is what an average viewer will appreciate about this documentary.

Ravi’s story on its own is…well, predictable. If you know how stories work, you can probably figure out how this thing will end already. I hope it was actually a real story and not a scheme done by the brother/sister to make it seem like a better story. But who can really say?

Meet The Patels is the type of documentary you might want to put on while working on other projects, not bothering to pause it if you need to run to the water closet. An average story about average people, with some nice culture aspects occasionally thrown in.

Happy Holidays from the end of March!

I wanted to see Krampus when it came out early in December, but unfortunately there weren’t any prescreenings for the film. Guess they assumed critics would hate it, or not get the point, man.

Either way, I was disappointed, but not disappointed enough to spend money on going to the film. December is busy for awards movies, not comedy horror films!

But the idea of a Krampus movie was very exciting. I haven’t even seen a Christmas horror film since Rare Exports years ago, which was wonderful and you should consider adding it to your Christmas collection.

But this one has scary clowns, so you know it might be more horror than comedy.

It’s Christmas time, yay! We are going to celebrate at the Engel household with their family coming over. Tom (Adam Scott) and Sarah (Toni Collette) have to make sure their house is clean, food cooked and everything decorated for Santa. After all, their kid Max (Emjay Anthony) still believes despite being like 10 or something. Also living in the house is their older daughter Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) and Omi (Krista Stadler), Tom’s mom. She speaks German!

Anyways, the family eventually comes over. Rednecks. Howard (David Koechner), Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell), and Linda (Allison Tolman) with some dick kids (Queenie Samuel, Lolo Owen) and a baby.

Needless to say, the other boy kids tease poor Max for believing in Santa. They find his letter to Santa and read it outloud, making fun of his wishes for things like his parents to love each other more, and so on. He gets mad and rips up his letter throwing it into the wind! And with that, the power in the whole city goes out. And the winter storm gets a little bit more wintry.

Strange things are afoot. But let’s just cut to the chase. People have ruined Christmas. Krampus is here to punish them.

Damn grandma, you are brave enough to take on the Krampus alone?

When you go into a comedy horror film, you can never really expect a whole lot. They rarely have large budgets and are never really too funny or too scary. Krampus seems to fit the bill like the other ones, with a slightly more impressive budget.

I feel bad for Adam Scott, who often is put into these sort of roles (see Piranha) and lower budget comedies (see Hot Tub Time Machine 2). He is a funny guy who keeps getting stuck in bad to mediocre films.

Krampus at times is a little scary. Toys come to life in a very The Nightmare Before Christmas way. The Krampus itself felt downplayed with most of the work being done by creepy helper demon things. But knowing that even the kids weren’t safe was a nice surprise that a lot of films seem to avoid.

As for the comedy, well, there really wasn’t any. The comedy came from strange things happening, like CGI gingerbread men attacking them. No other real jokes outside of the weird factor, which is the most disappointing aspect of the film.

It did an okay job at the scary parts, but failed when it came to making me chuckle.