PK

Hey Guys! I got another movie that I want to share with everyone!

PK! This is a hilarious Bollywood film that I highly recommend. It is about an alien who comes to Earth to explore, but he basically lost the keys to his spaceship and is now trapped here with us. When he asks for help, people respond with “idk, God only knows” so now he is on a quest to find God and ask him for his remote back.

This is such a funny movie. Because for the most part, you are just seeing him trying to navigate through different customs and religions. Example, when he first arrived on Earth, he was naked.

So then to blend in, he stole some clothes from “dancing cars” (I will not give that one away, that shit is hilarious)

But because he has no concept of fashion, you get him walking around like this:

It is the small things that make this moment. Because he is just trying to figure out how society works.

He sees a Hindu Woman dressed in White, and when trying to approach her he gets yelled at for bothering a widow in mourning (in Hinduism you wear white at a funeral). So he then saw a western bride in a white wedding gown, and expressed sympathy for her dead husband.

He learns that you give offerings at a Hindu temple, so he tries to give food to God at a Christian Church. The Church yells at him that it should be wine, so he then brings wine to a Muslim Mosque. WE get that there is difference, but he doesn’t. Which usually results in him getting chased.

When he finally does understand there are different religions, it becomes his mission to learn all about them so he might finally be able to reach God and get his remote. It is honestly his innocence that makes this movie.

He sees that Taxis are yellow to get people’s attention, so he wears a yellow helmet to get God’s attention. He follows every custom of every religion down to a T, even some religions you might not have known about (there are a ton of customs in India). He chased down a guy dressed as Vishnu (Hindu God) because he thought he was the god. He wears religious stickers on his face to prevent being punched, people people won’t “strike God’s image”. What PK does is he manages to take the information given to him, and apply it in clever ways.

Now while this movie does tackle religion, it does not insult or degrade them.

When I say to a T, I mean to T. There is a lovely montage in the movie where you see him trying to reach God by doing ALL of the religions. You see him in the middle of people praying, of different festivals, it is very beautiful to watch.

(Trigger Warning: In the montage there is a festival where men whip themselves with long knives - yes it is a thing - so if you want to watch it timestamp for that scene is 1:06:57-1:07:10 )

This movie is so fucking respectful of religion, even while poking fun at some of the unnecessary traditions it has, is amazing. Because the movie isn’t really focused on the religions, but how people treat and abuse it.

You know televangelists, where they ask people to give them money and basically con people in the name of religion? Yeah, that is the main target. Because PK never intentionally means to try and take down an Indian Televangelist, he just keep asking questions like “If my wife is sick why do I need to go to  different church to pray instead of being by her side” “if god really loves me, why does he tell me to give up money so he can love me more” and these are questions that undermine the Televangelist’s authority.

The pic above comes from my favorite scene in the movie. It is so charming and clever I dare not ruin it. But it go along with the asking “why” to the necessity of certain religions.

PK isn’t the only story being told. We also follow a woman named Jaggu who is a reporter trying to catch her Big Break when she meets PK. You see her life finding love while abroad in the cutest way possible.

Just look at that guy! I would love him too!

But there are family drama because she is Hindu (specifically that Televangelist group) and he is Palestinian. TL; DR on Indian history - family is prejudice on him for being Muslim (there is a lot more to India/Palestine than that, but that should be enough to understand the movie).

So you see her meeting up with PK, trying to guide him through human culture, but also answer his innocent yet hard questions about it.

Along with the comedy there are so many heart wrenching moments in here. Her being heartbroken. PK losing hope/faith for ever going home. I swear the biggest tear jerker is at the end, I could not stop crying over the emotional climax this movie had. Because it isn’t a battle of strength, it is a clash of religious ideologies on what faith really means.

For people who have not seen Bollywood before, you might get a little bit of culture shock from it, so I’ll give you the run down.

First, it is in Hindi. No getting around that. Luckily there are English subtitles so you can still get the jokes and what they are saying.

Second, Bollywood movies are LONG! Like, average 3 hours per movie. This movie is on the shorter side with it being 2.5 hours, but it is still a great watch. If you managed to watch Infinity War, you can sit through this.

Third, there are musical numbers. Bollywood movies really focus on the musical numbers. They can Literally make or break a movie if they are good/bad. Modern Bollywood movies can sometimes get away with musical montages (like the religious montage I mentioned before) but there ARE going to be song numbers. I think in total there were 4 in PK, and they do have a purpose in the movie for understanding the characters. Just keep that in mind so you won’t get too surprised.

Sum Up, I highly recommend this movie. It has so much innocence and care put into it, it is well worth the watch. You can find it on Netflix or Youtube with no problems so definitely check it out

Animal World

I have always wanted to talk about this movie. And since I am going to branch out, I have decided, “hey! Why not!” So I am going to make a super long post on why you guys should watch this movie

I found this movie while trolling though Netflix Foreign films. It is a Chinese movie I just clicked on it because, I was bored and had nothing else better to watch. 

And it is by far one of the strangest and most addicting movie I have ever seen.

So the basic plot is as follows: Young Adult Kaisi works an unfulfilling job trying to support his comatose mother in the hospital while having this on/off relationship with one of the nurses there. His friend gets into trouble with a debt he owed to a evil shadow organization, which is transferred over to Kaisi. To eliminate the debt, he has to play in a high stakes gambling game where you can win millions, get all debts cleared, but losers will die (or worse)

Sounds interesting/basic…but then it gets weird

First, here is the other cover for the movie

Kaisi’s job? He works as a part time clown at an arcade. But the clown is MORE than that. See, he correlates all of his anger (raw unadulterated rage) to be “one with the clown”. He seriously sees himself become a clown whenever he fucking rages and beats the shit out of someone.

And the movie definitely leans in on that.

The first 5-10 minutes of the film you see Shinobi McDonald running on rooftops and trains. You know, being as angsty and dramatic as a clown can get. But the clown has so much anger and frustration, just running around isn’t going to help.

That’s why the movie has this:

LOOK AT IT! It’s basically Sid if he reproduced in space. And he has friends.

There is a ton of these monsters on the train which our Mr. Anger-Pants here has no problem laying waste. I mean he flat out murders then, kills them off one by one in a strange, yet highly engaging battle sequence.

Too bad we never see them again.

No joke guys. We LITERALLY never see this clown/monster battle ever again. Kaisi makes references to the clown in the movie (cause again, that is the representation for his anger issues), but we never see the clown or anything like this ever again.

Instead we jump into Kaisi trying to deal with “containing the clown” while trying to survive and just pay his mother’s medical bills. His childhood friend is a nurse and his not-yet girlfriend. And it isn’t not-yet because any female-friend is the obvious love interest eventually. She does in fact love the guy, and wants to be with him. But he doesn’t want to marry because working as an arcade clown and 3+ other minimal wage jobs doesn’t really make a decent living here. So he wants to wait to be more financially stable before they marry. Something I don’t usually see, and totally appreciate.

But let’s get to the meat of this movie. The Gambling Game.

So after his friend couldn’t pay back evil shadow organization, Kaisi gets taken to the big boss here.

Micheal Douglas.

This is a movie made in China. I did not expect any white person to be in it, let alone Micheal Douglas.

And honestly? He is a great villain. He is in command, in control, not afraid to get his hands dirty (as shown above), and has the resources to support any/every fucked up sadistic desire he has.

He gives Kaisi 2 options. Pay back his friend’s stupidly large 6 billion dollar debt (I may be exaggerating, but the debt was in the billions), or join on his stupidly evil cruise ship of horror to play a life/death game where winners go free and losers die.

But see,this guy, for being a sadistic classical evil guy, is actually a smart villain. And it leads to some clever plot devices. Game on Boat? It makes sure that the “contestants” are completely isolated. No outside help. But my favorite are the ear pieces. Micheal Douglas does not speak Chinese, so how to get away with this? Everyone on the boat has an earpiece that acts as a translator. How cool is that? There are people all over the world on this boat, you can see an Arabic man and an Italian man speak their own languages and still hold a conversation. Netflix provides subtitles for all languages, so there is no need to miss out on anything. It just makes it seem more realistic instead of “everyone speaks the same language”

So on the boat, there is at east 100 other people there. Time to learn the rules of the gambling they are risking their lives on.

You ready for this?

Rock Paper Scissors

I am not joking. The entire movie is them risking their lives playing Rock Paper Scissors. I thought that it was going to be “Phase one” or a next round. But no, in this 2 hour movie, OVER HALF is dedicated to Rock Paper Scissors.

And honestly, it fucking worked. It is weird to say, but I was hooked on people playing rock paper scissors.

The specific rules are as followed.

They start with 3 Star Chips, and 12 cards (4 cards per R/P/S)

You need to get rid of all of your cards, while keeping at least 3 stars.

If you still have cards, or not enough stars, you lose.

There is also a handy counter to keep track of all used cards, and a timer to let people suffer about how much time is left.

So with these rules in place, Kaisi fight to survive in a savage rock paper scissors competition

This is a gambling anime. I swear to god this movie works like a gambling anime.

What makes gambling anime interesting? The strategies. You have so many people playing this game.

Some there to help, others not so much.

To win you need to have a plan in action for any situation. And Holy Shit does this movie deliver. I swear there is at least 10 different strategies used by our protagonist team ALONE! Counting cards, stacking cards, using signals, using statistics. It is amazing how they can adapt and change battle strategies when the next problem comes up.

This isn’t including the different ways the competitors play. Some use luck/random, but a lot play dirty. They also trick, cheat, whatever to get those Star Chips. 

But as long as it doesn’t break the rules, anything goes.

You need three to survive. But you can trade the stars for money, so many people go for the kill. And this screws over Kaisi big time, forcing him to start at the bottom of the heap and crawl his way back up.

Seriously, check this movie out! There are a bunch of other stuff I haven’t even mentions yet. The fact that Douglas’s henchmen look like default matrix men. The out of place car chase that goes ABSOLUTELY no where, but is shot beautifully and fucking entertaining to watch. The fact that it isn’t just death to worry about, since there the losers MAYBE be used in human experimentation. MAYBE. And this is just the TIP people! JUST THE TIP!!!

If you love strategy games, high stakes gambling, and weird ass action scenes, trust me. You want to check this movie out. It will not disappoint. 

Monte Cristo Kid Edition: Overall

It’s ok. Like the animation is really just do the least amount to get away with everything. So you would see them reuse the same scenes and animations over and over again. That was obvious from the beginning.

I don’t know why they want to make Monte Cristo for kids, but story wise it wasn’t bad. They took out plot elements to get to the core story that a kid could understand. Though I doubt kids would understand or care about stocks. So the differences, they took out one guy that got rid of Dantes, I’m pretty sure Mercedes had a son, and Montego was a hell of a lot more faithful to his family than the original. Guess they didn’t want to show that to kids.

this gets like a 5/10. It’s just there. The dialogue wasn’t bad, but the animation was trash. It was ok for me to watch, but I would not show it to kids. There is just a lot better movies to show them than this.

Deep Blue Sea: Overall

This is a pretty entertaining movie, ‘cause it feels like a b-movie mash up of other movies. Jurassic parks/science monster films for the research labs. Poseidon Adventure for trying to navigate through the building underwater. And let’s not forget Jaws, the original Bruce itself.

In my opinion the side characters were the best, but most of them were always going to be shark food. For the main characters, they were trying to play on the mystery and danger, but honestly that felt really forced trying to make them fight against each other. Especially this bs “will they/won’t they” drama from Charter and Susie.

Sherman by far was my favorite, it could be because they gave him a personality outside of always brood or always sunny. Plus seeing him surviving by himself was incredible. He had two shark kills at the end of it all

Science wise the sharks looked really good. Outside movie plot science, they kept using true shark facts. While yes they do look CGI, it was as pretty close to a shark as they were going to get, especially for a 1999 movie.

And the scenic ocean shots, my god they were so well done. I mean, they just showed everything about this movie

So yeah, I would give this a 7.5/10 for being a fun B-rated action movie. Clever battle scenes, interesting explosions, and some fun side characters too