Popcorn Kernels: 'Tis The Season

Some mini reviews of Christmas movies I caught in my frantic year-end roundup.

A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding

Year: 2018
Director: John Schultz
Cast: Rose McIver, Ben Lamb, Alice Krige
Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes
Rating: TV-PG

A white lady is engaged to the prince of a fake country, but will political unrest get in the way of their impending nuptials? No, no it won't.

God bless the Motion Picture Corporation of America. The fabulously generic Hallmark-esque movies they produce for Netflix only hit the spot more and more. The original Christmas Prince was mediocre but affably dumb. But this sequel is a top to bottom nuclear blast of earnest good-bad glee, from the vacuous misunderstanding of macroeconomics to the dad who insists that putting inflatables on a Christmas tree is a time-honored American tradition.

This movie embraces crazy-go-nuts plot twists, soap opera zooms, and political intrigue over the wan romantic plot, which is honestly the best decision. The central couple here has never had particularly warm chemistry, and they're not one you root for, and it's not like this franchise's sense of romance is particularly nuanced in the first place (they also fall into the trap of having the only gay characters in the movie fall for each other the second they lock eyes, because they're the only two homosexuals who exist in the entire universe and are thus fated for each other even though one of them has up until that point only served as comic relief because he's an egomaniacal asshole who could only be toxic in an interpersonal relationship, and did I mention that I hate this trope so so much?).

I couldn't possibly do this movie any justice with a longer review, because I'd just be listing lunatic things that happen during the course of its blissfully brief run time (did I mention the heroine threatens a man's life with a bow and arrow in a scene that isn't super treated as a joke? In a Christmas movie!). It's a movie ripe with incident and not bogged down by anything resembling a researched political context, a real theme of any kind, or characters worth digging into any deeper than the layer of cake makeup that gives them all such a creamy milk-pale glow.

Rating: 5/10


Anna and the Apocalypse

Year: 2018
Director: John McPhail
Cast: Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming, Sarah Swire
Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A zombie apocalypse breaks out in a small Scottish town during Christmastime, throwing a wrench into the plans of the local high schoolers. Also, it's a musical.

Anna and the Apocalypse is a zombie Christmas musical, which is something I should love. Instead, I only like it a lot. I suppose I can't complain about that, because it's a delightful romp with catchy tunes, but there are just a few quibbles that refuse to leave my mind. First and foremost is the staging of the musical numbers. The film runs out of steam very fast after a High School Musical inspired cafeteria number with full choreography and a Shaun of the Dead inspired duet between two of the leads, who are completely clueless that a zombie apocalypse is happening all around them (maybe the fact that it's constantly reminding me of other movies is a downside too, come to think of it, considering how original the concept is).

After that, every single musical sequence just asks its performers to stand in place and belt their hearts out, but watching four or five people arrange themselves like statues in a garden for a three or four minute song isn't exactly dynamic cinema. This lack of creativity extends to a lot of the zombie gore sequences too. We get a lot of basic bashing and smashing, although their choice of a sharpened candy cane as their iconic weapon was obviously a good one. They just seem to have squandered most of their budget and preparation in the first half, and the glimmering fun is buried beneath a lot of trope-filled slogging once the apocalypse fully sets in.

That said, I love me the fact that this is a peppy Scottish horror musical unafraid of setting it bubblegum pop tunes atop scenes of grim devastation, not shying away from dire consequences for the main cast, which is much more ensemble-driven than you'd expect from a movie that literally has one person's name in the title. And this cast is all up to snuff, both in the dialogue and musical sequences, though Sarah Swire (playing a queer character that I adore) is certainly the most vocally talented, belting for all she's worth like a grand diva twice her age.

Plus, in addition to its plotty songs, which are mostly fun fluff like the Glee stylings of "Hollywood Ending" and "Turning My Life Around," Anna and the Apocalypse gives us two brand new Christmas classics in the form of the sexy Santa Baby ballad "It's That Time of Year" and the saccharine but melancholic carol "Christmas Means Nothing Without You." Those are tracks that will hit my Christmas rotation with or without the rest of the movie, even though this is certainly a fun stocking stuffer I will revisit time and again throughout the years.

Rating: 7/10

Cola de Mono

Year: 2018
Director: Alberto Fuguet
Cast: Santiago Rodríguez-Costabal, Cristóbal Rodríguez-Costabal, Carmina Riego
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

On the night before Christmas in 1986, two brothers have twisted psychosexual encounters with their sublimated homosexual desires.

There was a time and place for movies about how gay desire twists men and makes them into crazy murderers. That time was the 80's, and they weren't exactly welcome then, but at least that decade had the twisted sensibility to inject them with plenty of camp and glitzy excess. 2018 is not that time though, and as much as Cola de Mono (literally translated to "monkey tail," describing a traditional South American Christmas drink as well as being a bit of a naughty pun) wants to be a Chilean Cruising, it's pretty much just nothing.

In the first act of the film, I held out hope that the pacing was slow to highlight the boredom of a hormonal young man trapped inside with his family on Christmas Eve, but alas I was giving the movie too much credit. The pace stays the exact same throughout, during the moments where it cuts between nothing happening to one brother inside and nothing happening to the other brother outside, though sometimes the shots are out of order in a way that's probably trying to be "Tarantino-esque" but just accomplishes "confusing."

When the film finally erupts into action, it's so cheaply realized and shoddily edited that it would almost have been better if it never happened at all. The only bright spot of this insufferably overlong movie (when the movie cuts to several years later instead of just ending, it's like a slap to the face) is Carmina Riego as the overworked mom. She's the mistress of a resentful dinner table, and she vamps it up into the rafters. Beyond that, don't waste your time on this one. Not that you needed me to tell you that, because you've probably never heard of this one to begin with. Oops. I went out of my way for nothing.

Rating: 2/10

The Grinch

Year: 2018
Director: Yarrow Cheney, Scott Mosier
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Cameron Seely, Rashida Jones
Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

He's a mean one, that Mr. Grinch.

Look, everybody knows we didn't need another version of the Grinch tale, especially one as toothless and plasticine as the type of story being told by Illumination Entertainment. Literally the only addition this film makes to the Grinch mythology is the fact that the Whos sing two Christmas songs with specifically religious elements ("God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "Silent Night"), leading me to question if there is a Who Jesus. But beyond that, no. Nothing added, nothing gained.

Plus, they're definitely playing jazz with the original poem, adding some godawful rhyming couplets to beef out the run time, and giving Cindy Lou Who a whole bunch of aimless slapstick that doesn't drive the plot in any particular direction for about a third of the movie. And Benedict Cumberbatch is giving a nasal, wobbly performance that doesn't befit his skills at all, he should have just stepped aside and let Jim Parsons do his thing.

But with all that said, it's still, y'know, cute. There are a couple fun design elements, my favorite being the elevator fashioned from a cushy chair that the Grinch uses to navigate his mountaintop abode. And by far my favorite sequence involves a group of relentlessly cheerful carolers being perceived by the Grinch as a zombie-esque horde chasing him through the streets, an excellent bit of quasi-expressionism that is simultaneously hilarious and deeply chilling.

Look, I will never ever ever think about this movie again, but it did its job and it went home, and I can't say I'm mad at it? It just sort of exists, and it's a perfectly functional piece when it does. So that at least makes it better than The Secret Life of Pets! Thank goodness for small favors.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1547
Reviews In This Series
A Christmas Prince (Zamm, 2017)
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (Schultz, 2018)

I Took A Pill To Ibiza

Year: 2018

Director: Alex Richanbach

Cast: Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer, Phoebe Robinson

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

Netflix is swiftly hemorrhaging credibility with a lot of their creative choices lately, but a quick and easy way to cauterize that wound is to stop making feature films. Sure, if we eliminated that department, we wouldn't get Gerald's Game or Okja, but I'd gladly trade those titles if it meant we could stop Adam Sandler's latest string of hate crimes against the art form, or whatever the hell Bright was supposed to be. As you can probably guess from these ruminations, the Netflix original film Ibiza, she was not too good.

For one thing, it should have been titled "Croatia," because ain't nobody got Spain budgets here.

In Ibiza, three best gal friends head to... Ibiza. Stick-in-the-mud Harper (Gillian Jacobs) has been sent on assignment by her boss (Michaela Watkins) at a PR firm to land a sangria account (yeah, sure), and her two roommates have insisted on tagging along: Leah (Phoebe Robinson) is The Black One and Nikki (Vanessa Bayer) is Vanessa Bayer. The girls drag Harper to a club, where they meet Leo West (Richard Madden), a Scottish man who is so hot that it's not even a dealbreaker that he's an EDM DJ.

Some sort of bland hijinks ensue (the only upside of these being that we get to see a shirtless Miguel Ángel Silvestre, who is objectively the most attractive man in the world) which prevent their planned meeting, so the girls conspire to meet him at his concert in Ibiza the next night, even though Harper has an incredibly important meeting the following morning. Can they have their debauchery cake and eat it too?

And does anybody care?

I don't mean to be too harsh on the movie, but it certainly invites it: Ibiza is like a textbook on exactly what's wrong with modern comedy filmmaking. It's abnormally focused on partying as both humor and plot point (it is neither), the script largely doesn't exist because the film is mostly improv, and the title is f**king boring as sh*t. The current films from the Apatow family can sometimes still be strong in spite of these limitations, but let's just say that Ibiza doesn't have the same strong guiding hand at the wheel as a Paul Feig or even a Nicholas Stoller.

In fact, Ibiza might be the closest a comedy has come to not even being a movie at all. It's more like a basic white girl posting a vacation video on YouTube. Let me paint you a picture of almost every scene in the movie: two to three women and maybe (hopefully) a shirtless man babble incoherently at each other for three minutes, the awkward pauses in their improvised dialogue absolutely not being smoothed over by the film's utter lack of score, until an EDM song cranks up and we pan across shots of random revelers jumping up and down for about ninety seconds until the next scene can begin. That's about all we get.

Luckily, one of those improvisers is Vanessa Bayer, the secret weapon of the past several seasons of SNL. Her comedy is of a quieter, subtler sort than her cohort Kate McKinnon, who probably could have saved a movie like this with her surreally manic energy, but it's always pleasant to be around. She at least drags Ibiza onto a track of potentially being redeemed for existing in the first place. 

With great comic power comes great responsibility.

And that's not to say anything bad about Gillian Jacobs or Phoebe Robinson, but the former is forced into a heterosexual comedy of romantic fumblings that the movie assumes we care about because they're hot and white, and the latter has literally not a single character trait to grapple with. They wander through the movie with flashlights, searching desperately for anything that might be funny. They occasionally trip over something charming, and that's exactly where Ibiza finds its almost subliminal thrum of pleasantness.

There is something to praise about the movie, I suppose, though naturally it's faint praise. As a story about women with sex drives, directed by a gay man, there is plenty of male objectification and (possibly) more importantly, a vigorously progressive approach to sex, flirtation, and consent. Those things don't make a masterpiece, but it's like watching a bad movie while wrapped in a warm blanket. It's not good, but it's comfortable, and sometimes that's enough.

TL;DR: Ibiza is a noodly non-movie that's vaguely charming and that's all it has to lean on.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 765

Raved With Good Intentions

Year: 2016

Director: Christopher Louie

Cast: Sarah Hyland, Graham Phillips, Brett DelBuono

Run Time: 1 our 32 minutes

Rating: TV-MA

I have no idea why XOXO exists. Combining the central conflict and half the cast of Jem and the Holograms with the EDM subject matter of We Are Your Friends, the Netflix original film is cobbled together from the two biggest flops of 2015. Nevermind that I kinda like both those movies, it just doesn’t seem like a solid investment. And the first-time writer-director, former animator Christopher Louie, is no Duffer Brothers, to say the least. Oh well. Maybe I’m just getting old.

He who is tired of watching other people party is tired of life.

XOXO wants to be the Love, Actually of the rave scene, detailing the myriad adventures of the attendees of the XOXO EDM show and how they cross paths. Our de facto protagonist is Ethan Shaw (Graham Phillips), an aspiring DJ who lands a coveted last-minute slot on the XOXO lineup, but is too shy to play his own demos. He doesn’t seem aware of how raves actually work. Or record deals, as evidenced by his seduction by the skeevy headliner Avilo (Ryan Hansen). Or USB drives. There are literally two separate scenes where the tension hinges on his inability to plug things in. This guy’s our hero.

Anyway, the other characters are Tariq (Brett DelBuono), Ethan’s best friend/manager who attempts to hold a meeting with a record producer and find Ethan among the throng after being accidentally dosed with LSD; Shannie (Hayley Kiyoko) and Ray (Colin Woodell), a couple trying to enjoy their last day together before she moves across the country for a year; Neil (Chris D’Elia), a music shop owner/rave Grinch who used to be a DJ but is bitter about the scene; and Krystal (Sarah Hyland, the film’s biggest “name”), a rave virgin/regular virgin who is there to meet a guy she’s been talking to online for a month. But is she really ready for this?

And, more importantly, are we?

Like any film dedicated to depicting a very now subculture, XOXO is hastily assembled, slapdash, and kind of hilarious. Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been to a rave, and I’ll die happy if that never changes. But judging from XOXO’s too-trendy teens and depiction of the show as a drug-soaked erotic bacchanal as envisioned by a suburban soccer mom’s G-rated nightmare journal, Christopher Louie has been to even fewer than I. 

I mean, at least I have Instagram friends who go to Electric Daisy Carnival.

When XOXO is an adult’s attempt at translating the world of teens for other teens, it’s a doofy but loveable flop. Then when it really settles down for some deep interpersonal drama, the engine drops out at 40,000 feet. But before it plummets to its saccharine demise, it’s worth at least keeping on in the background while you wash dishes. Let’s focus on that part for the time being.

Full of the hip teenage standbys of giant text bubble chockablock with random emojis, zooms on YouTube pages as the numbers rack up, and ridiculous ABBA reject outfits that adults think people actually wear, the first act of XOXO is a manic slalom through too many characters doing too many things that make too little sense. There’s actually some genuinely good dialogue in this sequence, though the lazy clunkers start here and only pick up momentum as the show goes on. It’s a shoddily tossed-together sugar rush that’s easy to mock but easier to find at least a  little endearing.

However as the stories progress, they either settle into an entirely predictable formula, stop making any semblance of sense, or lose steam and evaporate from the film entirely. There are still some pockets of campy B-movie magic, like the reclusive creator of the rave, who’s one part Great Gatsby and one part Willy Wonka, but the film’s attempts at emotional sincerity are stunted by its Dollar-Tree-wrapping-paper-thin characters.

Seriously, that stuff tears if somebody’s using scissors NEXT DOOR.

It’s kind of impossible to care about these people because, other than Ethan, they’re only given one character trait to beat over and over like a bongo drum. And they don’t have “arcs” so much as linear stretches from point A to point B, and point B is dancing. I find watching other people have fun onscreen to be an intolerably boring experience, and if you’re anything like me, XOXO will grate on you like your brain is a block of parmesan.

There are some alright moments. Chris D’Elia is amusingly misanthropic. You get to see Ryan Hansen’s arms, and man is that dude aging like a fine wine. But for the most part, XOXO is a transient burst of energy, like a Pixie Stick. There’s still a little powder left in the tube after the initial rush, but you have to work way too hard to get to it. Stick to Netflix’s original series and don’t bother with this half-baked feature.

TL;DR: XOXO is a slightly bad-good but mostly messy exploration of an exhausting teen subculture.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 855

C (S) U Later

It is with heavy heart (and backpack) that I inform you of the beginning of CSULB's fall 2013 semester, meaning that I will be unable to post daily on this site, and most likely not very frequently at all. I'm taking five classes, TAing a sixth, on the board for the GSA, and working so I'll barely have time to watch movies, let alone write about them.

I'm gonna do my best though, and I know this is hard on you so I've made you a little back-to-school present,

10 TV Shows to Watch on Netflix Instead of Doing Homework

30 Rock (2006 - 2013)

Seasons: 7

Time Wasted: 2 days 2 hours 36 minutes

OK, so the seventh season technically isn't on Netflix yet but it will be soon! If they answer my prayers.

30 Rock is a witty behind-the-scenes comedy that is a not-so-veiled look at Tina Fey's life as the head writer of SNL. She plays socially inept Liz Lemon, a woman on a quest to balance work, love, and having it all. And eat as many sandwiches as she possibly can.

With Alec Baldwin as her boss (a man as conservative as he is wealthy) and mentor, providing 30 Rock's core, the show survived way more seasons than the ratings should have allowed by always remaining as sharp and clever as the very first episode.

Also featuring Jack McBrayer, Tracy Morgan, and Jane Krakowski.

Scrubs (2001-2010)

Seasons: 9

Time Wasted: 2 days 18 hours 44 minutes

A screwball comedy set in Sacred Heart Hospital, Zach Braff plays J.D., a young intern on his way to becoming a doctor. Chock full of fast-paced gags, creative fantasy sequences, and a surprising amount of heart, Scrubs is so good that you won't even notice that the last two seasons mostly suck. 

Also featuring Donald Faison, John C. McGinley, and Sarah Chalke.

Arrested Development (2003-2013)

Seasons: 4
Time Wasted: 1 day 3 hours 35 minutes

Quite simply one of the funniest sitcoms ever. The story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son (Jason Bateman) who had no choice but to keep them all together, it's... Arrested Development.

Full of structural humor, bizarre in-jokes, and zippy punch lines that keep you on your toes, this show bombed in initial ratings, leading Fox to cancel it after three increasingly short seasons. Netflix picked it up for a fourth. Reviews were mixed, but the new season returns to the characters with as much zeal and wild experimentation as ever.

Also featuring Will Arnett, Portia de Rossi, and Michael Cera.

How I Met Your Mother (2005 - Present)

Seasons: 8

Time Wasted: 2 days 19 hours 28 minutes

With one season not yet on Netflix and another (its last) in production, HIMYM still has some crackle in it yet. Although the main premise, Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) telling his kids the tale of... how he met their mother has long since worn thin, the show is kept alive with a brilliant ensemble cast - the first show since Friends to truly succeed with the "twentysomethings hang out in a place" formula.

Also featuring Alyson Hannigan, Jason Segel, and Neil Patrick Harris.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005 - Present)

Seasons: 8 (with a ninth on the way)

Time Wasted: 1 day 10 hours 28 minutes

The simple story of a bunch of self-centered lunkheads who own a bar in South Philadelphia is a pitch black comedy starring Charlie Day. Mostly improvised and never tame, It's Always Sunny panders in filthy humor, shrill arguments, and the hilarious antics of truly awful people.

In the second season, Danny DeVito joined the cast as the disgusting Frank Reynolds, a role he was clearly born for.

Also featuring Rob McElhenny, Glenn Howerton, and Kaitlin Olson.

Undeclared (2001 - 2002)

Seasons: 1

Time Wasted: 6 hours 14 minutes

Judd Apatow's college comedy and spirit sequel to his cult classic Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared is the story of Steven Karp (Jay Baruchel), a nerdy kid trying to reinvent himself in his first year of college. Perfectly capturing the drama and the magic of freshman year, Undeclared will have you looking back fondly on your first college friends, overbearing RAs, and the time when Adam Sandler was still relevant.

Also featuring Seth Rogen, Charlie Hunnam, and Monica Keena.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 - 2003)

Seasons: 7

Time Wasted: 4 days 12 hours

Buffy is Joss Whedon's ultimate cult classic. Taking the horror trope of the Final Girl and turning it on its head, Buffy stars a butt-kicking Sarah Michelle Gellar as the Chosen One of Sunnydale High, defending the world from vampires, demons, and creatures that go bump in the night.

Also featuring my lover David Boreanaz, Alyson Hannigan, and Nicholas Brendon.

Twin Peaks (1990 - 1991)

Seasons: 2

Time Wasted: 23 hours 18 minutes

Twin Peaks is David Lynch's surreal masterpiece of small town intrigue. Kyle MacLachlan stars as Special Agent Dale Cooper as he searches for the answer to the question on everybody's lips: Who killed Laura Palmer?

Also featuring Michael Ontkean, Mädchen Amick, and Dana Ashbrook.

Portlandia (2011 - Present)

Seasons: 3 (so far)

Time Wasted: 9 hours 54 minutes

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's sharp satire skewers Portland, the hipster capital of the world. As with most sketch comedy, it's sometimes a mixed bag, but it is always insightful, hilarious, and full of weird celebrity cameos.

Also featuring Kyle MacLachlan, Chloë Sevigny, and Aubrey Plaza.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret (2010 - 2012)

Seasons: 2

Time Wasted: 4 hours 24 minutes

Simultaneously uproariously funny and oppressively dark, Todd Margaret is an acquired taste. Starring David Cross as a bumbling corporate employee sent across the pond to sell a putrid energy drink, this BBC comedy is crass, sophisticated, wry, and exceedingly British.

Also featuring Will Arnett, Sharon Hogan, and Blake Harrison.

And because I have my super anticipated horror class today, I would be remiss if I didn't include

BONUS: Five Horror Films to Watch on Netflix Instead of Writing Your Essay

Dead Snow (Død Snø) (2009)

Time Wasted: 1 hour 32 minutes

A bitingly fun Norwegian zombie comedy that pays magnificent homage to the gore pictures of yore.

Featuring Jeppe Beck Laursen, Vegar Hoel, and Charlotte Frogner.

Read my full review here.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Time Wasted: 1 hour 25 minutes

Essentially the movie Dead Snow pays homage to in the highest, The Evil Dead is Sam Raimi's gleefully gory, somewhat campy (the outrageously slapstick humor of its sequel is not present, although the film does have some comedic elements) zombie flick that isn't really about zombies.

Candarian demons are released by an accidental reading of a passage from the Book of the Dead and attack five unwitting college students spending their break in a secluded cabin in the woods.

Featuring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, and Richard Demanincor.

Re-Animator (1985)

Time Wasted: 1 hour 26 minutes

What can I say? Netflix is really on top of zombie movies. Re-Animator is the tale of med student Herbert West, whose experiments with a serum to bring the dead back to life go terribly awry.

Read my full review here.

Featuring Bruce Abbott, Jeffrey Combs, and Barbara Crampton.

The Host (Goemul) (2006)

Time Wasted: 1 hour 59 minutes

This Korean monster movie has it all. Monster kidnappings, shoreline mayhem, and a surprising vein of  good humor and family satire.

Featuring Kang-ho Song, Hie-bong Byeon, and Hae-il Park.

The Initiation (1984)

Time Wasted: 1 hour 36 minutes

How could I not include a slasher movie? The Initiation is the story of a sorority hazing gone very wrong. I'll cover this one on Census Bloodbath before you know it, but I'll call it now. It's one of the top 5 films of the year.

Featuring Daphne Zuniga, Hunter Tylo, and Vera Miles.

Have a good day at school, everyone! (And screw you, UC people!)

Word Count: 1323