Stream Me!

Here's your gentle reminder that time is running out to watch The Lost Hallmark Christmas Movie: LIVE.

Actually, it's too late to watch it live. It happened two weeks ago. But it's there on VOD for your home viewing until December 26th!

This is your rare chance to see me onstage. Yes, I really am that short!

Winner Takes It All

There's a certain joy in good dumb fun action movies that's hard to match. 

Cue The Tournament.

Quick Plot: Every seven years, 30 of the world's greatest assassins are invited to play in The Tournament, a battle royal with a $10 million prize and the chance to make a roomful of wealthy betters even more. 

It's a simple premise that doesn't really need much more setup. There are no rules, which means civilians caught in the crossfire or used as human shields are simply part of the game. This doesn't bode well for alcoholic priest Father MacAvoy (the always welcome Robert Carlyle) who breaks a commandment when stealing an abandoned cup of coffee only to face some divine punishment when he swallows a contestant's tracking device. 

That's one more player to add to our roster. Also in the mix is stoic yet sympathetic Lai Lai Zen (Kelly Hu), psychotic Texan Miles Slade (Ian Somerhalder, who I thought was Chace Crawford showing personality before realizing that was impossible), parkour expert Anton (Sebastien Foucan), and returning champion Joshua Harlow (the one and only Ving Rhames). Harlow has returned for a more important motive than money: one of the players in the game assassinated his pregnant wife, and he's here for vengeance.

Plot schmot, let's watch physically fit people creatively murder each other...and so we do.

Director Scott Mann has an efficient approach to the material. I don't know why this script required three writers, since all of the character work seems to come from the actors and their physicality. Kelly Hu makes for an appealing lead, even if we get little insight into her actual character. Robert Carlyle is an incredibly versatile actor, and he threads a rather effective braid of pathetic, sympathetic, and amusing in his confused holyman. There are bus chases, hand-to-hand combat, explosions, and shootouts in strip clubs. 

This movie understands its audience.

High Points

We're not quite at Atomic Blonde levels, but The Tournament really does deliver on its violent action, and having someone as physically capable as Kelly Hu as its lead doesn't hurt

Low Points

I'm not really mad that we get so little backstory on any of the characters, but it's a bit ridiculous that Robert Carlyle's priest is introduced at such a low point and the film never actually pauses to explain why he's there, nor really why he's willing to work so hard to get out of it

Lessons Learned

A hanging slab of meat is the new shield

UK laxatives are incredibly ineffective

Assassins never know why

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you're in the mood for a super violent action flick, this should easily satisfy. I found it on Tubi, though it may have since jumped around. Toss a tracking device in the nearest cup of coffee and we'll see where it lands.

I'll Take It Black

 

I'm going to make a declarative objective statement about something that is very much subjective: black comedy is the most divisive of all film genres. Either you click with a movie's intentionally polarizing sense of humor, or you find it deplorable. There is very little room in between.

Especially when it involves...

(SPOILER ALERT THAT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY KNOW GOING IN TO KNOW IF THIS IS GOING TO BE OKAY FOR YOU OR NOT)...

adorable dead babies.

Quick Plot: Opening credits read as an instruction manual for assembling the titular piece of furniture. Maybe it's because I just assembled my own outdoor cart by following pictures that kind of matched tiny parts, but this graphic design decision pleased me grandly.

Meet Jesus and Maria, a very tired married couple navigating the stress of new parenthood in a small city apartment. Despite the bags hanging under her eyes, Maria is actually quite happy. Years of IVF have finally given her exactly what she wanted: infant Cayetano. 

Jesus is less enthused. An overgrown child of sorts, he seems overwhelmed with fatherhood. It doesn't help that the 13-year-old neighbor down the hall is madly in love with him.

What does all of this have to do with a coffee table, you might ask? Doesn't EVERYTHING come down to your choice of coffee table?

Much to Maria's annoyance, Jesus insists on purchasing an incredibly tacky glass table complete with nude women posing as the legs in extremely fake gold. It's clearly his way of holding onto some remnant of his own identity, making a decision completely separate from both his wife and child. It's certainly not the worst crime a new father can commit. 

That comes a few minutes later. 

Spoilers for a movie that, as I've warned, is probably best slightly spoiled in order to know if you can stand it. Maria exits the apartment to do some grocery shopping (even THAT has some bitterness, as it's for a small dinner party for Jesus's not entirely welcome brother and much younger girlfriend). After realizing he's missing a component to complete his table's assembly, Jesus turns away just long enough for something to go terribly, terribly wrong: the unbreakable glass shatters and decapitates his only child. 

What does one do in that kind of situation? Call the authorities? Scream? Throw yourself out a window? Tell your wife?

In the case of Jesus, hide the evidence, go into shock, and host the world's most awkward dinner party in European history. 

Directed by Caye Casas (who also co-wrote with Cristina Borobia), The Coffee Table is a brutally uncomfortable film. It takes the cringe humor of something like The Office at its most extreme and turns it inside out to expose every part you'd rather not witness.

It's also very funny.

(ducks)

But I understand if you don't agree! 

High Points

There is some VERY funny writing here in Cases and Borobia's script, particularly around the wonderfully wry Ruth (perfectly played by Gala Flores) and her inappropriate obsession

Low Points

I understand that The Coffee Table is ultimately Jesus's story, but it feels a little bit of a cheat to not give us insight into Maria's final decision

Lessons Learned

A furniture salesman can solve your table problems, not name your newborn

Never recommend a book of poetry to a teenager, even if it's for a school project

Cowards never admit they're in love

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you (not unjustly) have an absolute zero tolerance for dead babies, The Coffee Table is not the film for you. But if your sense of humor is appropriately twisted, give it a go on Kanopy.