Kamran Shaikh Archives

Review: ‘Altered Reality’ (2024), starring Tobin Bell, Charles Agron, Alyona Khmara, Krista Dane Hoffman, Ed Asner and Lance Henriksen

February 17, 2024

by Carla Hay

Charles Agron and Lance Henriksen in “Altered Reality” (Photo courtesy of K Street Pictures)

“Altered Reality” (2024)

Directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the sci-fi/drama film “Altered Reality” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asian and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A medical research executive, whose daughter has been kidnapped and murdered, discovers a way to go back in time and change events.

Culture Audience: “Altered Reality” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching time-traveling movies, no matter how incoherent and poorly made they are.

Krista Dane Hoffman and Alyona Khmara in “Altered Reality” (Photo courtesy of K Street Pictures)

Plagued by a disjointed screenplay, horrible acting and unfocused direction, “Altered Reality” is a muddled drama about time traveling and a mystery of a murdered girl. The movie concludes with an unimaginative ending that looks rushed and tacked-on, in order to pander to what the filmmakers think would be the most crowd-pleasing outcome. The only altered reality is the filmmakers thinking this low-quality film is any good.

Directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy and written by Charles Agron, “Altered Reality” takes place in an unnamed U.S. city. (The movie was actually filmed in Georgia.) It begins by showing a girl, who’s about 5 or 6 years old, sitting by herself and a table in a wooded area near her house, as she is making some drawings. Someone dressed entirely in black, including a hooded sweatshirt, appears to be stalking her.

Viewers soon find out that the girl’s name is Katy Cook (played by Quincy Faler), and she has been kidnapped by this stalker. “Altered Reality” tells the sequence of events in a very jumbled way, but viewers who are paying attention will see what led up to this kidnapping. It’s also revealed in the “Altered Reality” trailer that Katy was murdered.

Katy’s parents are a business executive named Oliver Cook (played by Agron) and a homemaker named Caroline Cook (played by Alyona Khmara), who were experiencing some marital problems even before Katy was abducted. Oliver is the owner and leader of a medical research company that is developing medication that can cure terminal illnesses. He is a workaholic who spends a lot of time away from home.

Oliver’s workaholic ways have put a strain on his marriage to Caroline and his relationship with Katy. Caroline feels neglected, and she suspects that Oliver has been cheating on her, because she notices that he gets calls and text messages on his phone from women she doesn’t know. It’s also mentioned at one point that Katy has been feeling depressed because she thinks Oliver doesn’t love her.

On the day that Katy disappeared, Oliver had promised that he would go bike riding with Katy. But instead, he backed out of that promise and was celebrating at a party with work colleagues because his company has had a major breakthrough in its research. Clinical trial results have shown that the company’s medication has cured all 5,000 people with terminal illnesses who were part of the most recent clinical trial.

In a meeting that previously took place between Oliver, the company’s cynical attorney Cooper Mason (played by Tobin Bell) and two other people named Dr. Ross (played by Demi Castro) and Spencer Ross (played by Kamran Shaikh), Oliver finds out that the medication (which comes in the form of pills) can be sold for $50,000 per pill. The company is expected to make billions of dollars after it goes public. Oliver and Cooper are understandably ecstatic, as Oliver tells Cooper how Oliver plans to spend some of these probable riches.

At the same time that Oliver was celebrating this business success at a party, Katy had been kidnapped. Caroline feels guilty because she had been looking after Katy but had taken her eyes off of Katy for only a few minutes. Caroline frantically tried to reach Oliver by phone many times after Katy went missing, but he ignored her messages because he was too busy partying with his colleagues.

Oliver eventually gets Caroline’s messages and rushes home. But it’s too late. Katy has disappeared, and there are no clues about who kidnapped her and why. The movie shows that nine months later, Katy kidnapping is still a mystery, with no progress in the case, although Oliver eventually finds out that Katy has been murdered.

In the nine months since the kidnapping, Oliver has become very wealthy because of his company’s “miracle drug.” However, Oliver and Caroline are heartbroken and feel guilty over the disappearance of Katy and have not given up hope of finding her. The marriage of Caroline and Oliver has been unraveling because Oliver has been coping with his grief by spending even more time away from home than he did before Katy’s kidnapping.

One of the things that Oliver did after he became rich is buy a bed-and-breakfast resort called Spring Manor, a place that has happy memories for him because he has been going there every year since he was a child. Oliver continued the tradition after he became a husband and father. His attorney Cooper advised that Oliver should not buy Spring Manor, which Cooper described as “a bottomless pit of repair bills,” but the sentimental value of Spring Manor had too much appeal to Cooper, so he bought the property anyway.

The Spring Manor parts of the plot are among the weakest links in an already poorly constructed screenplay. At Spring Manor, Oliver has been friendly for years with the manor’s elderly custodian Jack (played by Lance Henriksen), who is obviously a ghost, as viewers see when Jack shows an ability to vanish and appear suddenly. Oliver is so unobservant, he doesn’t think it’s strange that Jack appears out of nowhere like a ghost.

Jack also claims to have known Oliver’s ancestors who died hundreds of years ago. Oliver marvels out loud to Jack about how Jack has looked the same the entire time that Oliver has known Jack. “How do you do it?” Oliver asks Jack about why Oliver doesn’t seem to get older. Jack replies, “I see a lot of strange things here.” Oliver says, “It’s the energy of this place.”

As soon as these things are revealed, you just know that Jack has some secrets that have to do with Oliver’s ancestors, and there will be a time-traveling element that centers on Spring Manor. The cinematography lighting turns brown in the time-traveling scenes. It’s all so hokey and predictable. The musical score by Andrew Morgan Smith is trying to evoke noirish thrillers from the 1950s, but it sounds very out-of-place in a movie that takes place mostly in the 2020s.

One day, Oliver and Jack are having a private conversation outside at Spring Manor. Jack takes out a pill bottle after Oliver says he has a headache, and he gives Oliver a pill. Jack tells Oliver to take the pill only after Oliver finds out what the ingredients are. Oliver says he’s had these headaches for a while—and the reason why he has these headaches is the most obvious reason when Oliver predictably finds out that he can time travel. It takes an awfully long time in the movie (after two-thirds of the movie have passed) before he discovers this time-traveling ability.

After Oliver gets this pill from Jack, there’s trouble in the Cook household when Oliver comes home to find out that a woman (whose face isn’t on camera in this scene) is in the living room, is claiming to be Oliver’s mistress, and has exposed their alleged affair to Caroline. This self-described mistress shows Caroline proof on her phone that Oliver has been cheating on Caroline. Caroline is devastated and immediately tells Oliver that she wants a divorce. This scene is shown early in the movie’s jumbled timeline, and the scene is revisited much later to reveal the identity of this “mistress.” This identity reveal is also no surprise.

Oliver is so distraught over Caroline wanting a divorce, he becomes suicidal. Before he goes somewhere with the intent to hang himself, he stops off at a strip club and gives a wad of cash to a stripper named Brittany, whose stage name is Vixen (played by Kayla Adams), and he tells her to use to money for the future college education of Brittany’s underage daughter. Oliver met Brittany on the night he went to this strip club with Cooper and Cooper’s date Alex Parker (played by Krista Dane Hoffman, also known as Krista Dane King), a seductive fashion executive who happens to know Caroline casually because they’re in the same yoga class.

All of these storylines and subplots are shown or explained in a very messy way in “Altered Reality,” which clumsily mishandles flashbacks with sloppily edited scenes that take place in the present day. There’s also a pivotal plot development involving someone from the past named Kate (played by Kate Reilly), who has a personal connection to certain people in the story. Ed Asner shares top billing in “Altered Reality,” but his screen time in the movie (as Jack’s family member Mike Wilson) consists of less than five minutes.

As the writer, star and one of the producers of “Altered Reality,” Agron looks like he made a vanity project, because his acting performance is among the worst in a movie filled with bad acting. The movie tries to blend several different story ideas into one big concept, but it just doesn’t work, like pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit. Even without all the plot holes and unanswered questions, “Altered Reality” is a very dull movie that’s supposed to be a sci-fi thriller but is really just a sci-fi clunker.

K Street Pictures released “Altered Reality” in select U.S. cinemas on February 16, 2024.

Review: ‘The Tutor’ (2023), starring Garrett Hedlund, Noah Schnapp and Victoria Justice

April 3, 2023

by Carla Hay

Noah Schnapp and Garrett Hedlund in “The Tutor” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

“The Tutor” (2023)

Directed by Jordan Ross

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City and on New York state’s Long Island, the dramatic film “The Tutor” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with a few people of Asian heritage) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A financially desperate tutor is hired by a mysterious billionaire to tutor the billionaire’s 17-year-old son, who becomes obsessed with the tutor, and dark secrets emerge that could be deadly.

Culture Audience: “The Tutor” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching low-quality mystery thrillers that have muddled and disjointed stories.

Victoria Justice in “The Tutor” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

After watching “The Tutor,” it’s obvious that the filmmakers need lessons on how to make a good movie. This flimsy drama about a tutor stalked by a student ends up falling apart with avoidable plot holes and a stupid ending. It looks like a movie that started out with a fairly good concept, but the filmmakers decided to just throw in a bunch of ludicrous ideas, and then tack on a very lazy ending that leaves many questions unanswered.

Directed by Jordan Ross and written by Ryan King, “The Tutor” could have had many clever and interesting things to say about the abuse of power and privilege from ultra-wealthy people. Instead, the movie rehashes many of the same storylines found in third-rate stalker thrillers that are throwaway, forgettable movies on TV. There are a few surprises in “The Tutor,” but they are badly mishandled and further damage what little credibility that “The Tutor” had.

In “The Tutor,” Garrett Hedlund portrays a tutor named Ethan, who works for an agency in New York City called Tutornym, which has many wealthy clients who hire the tutors to teach the clients’ underage children. (“The Tutor” was actually filmed in Alabama, mostly in the Birmingham area.) A montage in the beginning of the film shows that Ethan is a tutor to a variety of rich teenagers at their lavish homes. “The Tutor” immediately looks phony and outdated, because these kids aren’t shown doing any schoolwork on a computer. The movie makes it looks like Ethan mainly teaches his students by using flash cards to quiz them.

Ethan and his pregnant live-in girlfriend Annie (played by Victoria Justice) are expecting their first child together. Later in the movie, they find out the baby’s gender from a medical exam. It’s also mentioned in “The Tutor” that Annie and Ethan have been a couple for five years. They have some trust issues because Ethan apparently cheated on Annie in the past.

For now, Ethan’s tutoring salary is the couple’s only income. And they’re a little worried about how they’re going to be able to afford the expenses of raising a child. One day, Ethan gets a call at the Tutornym office from his hard-partying boss Chris (played by Joseph Castillo-Midyett), who is rarely at the office and spends a lot of time getting drunk in nightclubs. Chris tells Ethan about a summer job offer that has a salary that Ethan thinks is too high to refuse: a billionaire (whose name Chris refuses to tell Ethan) wants to hire Ethan to tutor the billionaire’s 17-year-old son for $2,500 a day.

Chris tells Ethan that the payments will be made “under the table” (not reported to the Internal Revenue Service) and that Ethan has to live at the family’s property on Long Island, for a one-week trial period. After that first week, the family will decide if they will hire Ethan for the rest of the summer. Ethan might be “book smart,” but time and time again, he shows that he’s not “street smart.”

But you don’t have to be “street smart” to have the common sense to know that a shady deal like this sounds too good to be true. The obvious red flags are that the employer doesn’t want Ethan to know his name and wants to secretly pay Ethan. (This deal also makes Chris corrupt too.) Ethan eagerly takes the job because he and Annie need the money. When he tells Annie about this new job, she doesn’t question the warning signs either, which is basically the movie’s way of showing that Annie is less-than-smart too.

When Ethan arrives at the Long Island estate for this new tutoring job, he is dazzled by all the first-class service he gets and the wealth on display at this estate. He is driven to the property by a chauffeur (played by Escalante Lundy), and he is given a private tour of some of the property by a butler (played by Kamran Shaikh), who are both polite and professional. How rich is this family? An awestruck Ethan tells Annie in a phone conversation that he saw 50 motorcycles on the property. Ethan also seems very impressed that his guest lodging has its own pool table.

The father who hired Ethan is nowhere to be seen during Ethan’s first few days on the job. Ethan has been hired to tutor Jackson (played by Noah Schnapp), who is highly intelligent but socially awkward. Jackson is apparently prepping to go to whatever elite university he is expected to attend. However, when Ethan asks Jackson what his SAT scores are, Jackson says he doesn’t know. Jackson tells Ethan, “I’ll have my dad’s assistant forward them.”

One of the many ways that “The Tutor” looks very fake is that this huge property has very few employees. It’s understandable that a low-budget independent film isn’t going to have a large number of people in its principal cast. However, it wouldn’t be that hard or expensive to get some background extras to portray a realistic number of servants that would be needed for the upkeep of this estate.

Ethan gives Jackson some initial tests in math and English. He finds that Jackson has perfect scores on these tests. The question somewhat crosses Ethan’s mind about why he’s even needed as a tutor, because apparently this kid is smarter than Ethan. However, Ethan (who’s mostly thinking about the money he’s getting paid for this job) tells Annie that he was probably hired to keep Jackson company. Ethan says to Annie that he suspects that Jackson is somewhere on the autism spectrum.

During Ethan’s first day on the job, he also meets Jackson’s creepy cousin Gavin (played by Jonny Weston) and his smirking girlfriend Jenny (played by Kabby Borders), who are both in their late 20s. Gavin and Jenny apparently don’t do anything but lounge around and party. Later, it’s explained to Ethan that Gavin doesn’t live there, but Gavin usually visits Jackson every summer.

One day, Ethan ends up riding in a car with Gavin as the driver, and the other passengers are Jenny and an attractive woman in her 20s named Teddi (played by Ekaterina Baker), who is a friend of Gavin and Jenny. Gavin makes a strange comment to Ethan that Ethan can have Teddi whenever he wants, as if Teddi is merely a plaything to be passed around. Ethan declines the offer and says he already has a girlfriend. It’s another red flag that Ethan doesn’t seem to notice or doesn’t care to notice. Another red flag that Ethan chooses to brush aside is how he gets conflicting information about why Jackson has an absentee mother.

The rest of “The Tutor” goes through the expected motions in showing Jackson’s obsession with Ethan, as well as the escalating danger involved. Hedlund and Schnapp try very hard to be convincing in their roles, but many of their melodramatic scenes are downright cringeworthy because of all of the over-acting. In other scenes, their acting is listless and hollow. All of the other cast members play two-dimensional characters and give unremarkable performances.

As more ominous things start happening to Ethan, viewers will be wondering why Ethan doesn’t do what most people would do in his situation: Find out exactly who hired him to tutor Jackson. He has a lot of information at his disposal, starting with the address of the mansion. But no, this dimwit doesn’t do any common-sense research, because there would be no idiotic “plot twists” in “The Tutor” if he found out this information earlier. Instead, Ethan wastes a lot of time whining to Annie and some other people about how he’s teaching a mentally ill student who’s become obsessed with him.

The plot twists in the “The Tutor” just further tangle this mess of a story. The movie has some atrocious film editing choices that add to the sloppy filmmaking. It’s ironic that one of the main characters of “The Tutor” is supposed to be highly intelligent, but the movie spends almost all of its time relentlessly insulting the intelligence of viewers.

Vertical released “The Tutor” in select U.S. cinemas on March 24, 2023.

Review: ‘India Sweets and Spices,’ starring Sophia Ali, Manisha Koirala, Adil Hussain, Deepti Gupta, Rish Shah and Ved Sapru

January 19, 2022

by Carla Hay

“India Sweets and Spices”

Directed by Geeta Malik

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional city of Ruby Hill, New Jersey, and briefly in Los Angeles, the comedy/drama film “India Sweets and Spices” features a cast of characters of Indian heritage representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: While on a summer break after her first year in college, a young upper-middle-class woman has some conflicts with her parents, including her parents not approving of her working-class boyfriend, and how she’s affected when she finds out her parents’ biggest secrets.

Culture Audience: “India Sweets and Spices” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching appealing but not particularly outstanding movies about Indian American culture.

Manisha Koirala in “India Sweets and Spices” (Photo courtesy of SK Global Entertainment/Bleecker Street)

As a blend of a romantic comedy and a family drama, “India Sweets and Spices” can be somewhat erratic in its tone and pacing. The second half of the movie is much better than the first half. It’s ultimately a charming story about a young woman finding her identity and coming to terms with how family baggage and family traditions affect her life. Written and directed by Geeta Malik, “India Sweets and Spices” benefits from having an engaging cast that can hold viewers’ interest, even when certain parts of the movie start to drag into a predictable formula.

Fortunately, there are some surprises in “India Sweets and Spices,” but they don’t come until the last half of the movie. The first half of the film gives the impression that’s it’s going to be a typical romantic comedy about a young woman who defies her parents’ wishes, by dating someone from a family that’s looked down on by her parents. In the second half of the movie, her parents’ secrets lead to the more dramatic parts of the story, which at times resembles a soap opera. “India Sweets and Spices” had its world premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

In the beginning of “India Sweets and Spices,” Alia Kapur (played by Sophia Ali) has just completed her freshman year at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and is about to go on a summer break. Her last party on campus before her vacation is a “social justice social,” which is the type of party she’s been going to on a regular basis. Alia gets drunk at the party and impulsively cuts her long hair into a mid-length bob.

Alia has already declared biology has her major. It seems that she’s planning to be a scientist or medical doctor, which would be a profession that her parents would approve of, since her father Ranjit Kapur (played by Adil Hussain) is a heart surgeon. Alia’s mother Sheila Kapur (played by Manisha Koirala) is a traditional homemaker. Alia has two siblings: sister Jiya Kapur (played by Rhea Patil) is about 13 or 14 years old, while brother Sahil Kapur (Ansh Nayak) is about 10 or 11 years old. Alia and her siblings were born in the United States, while their parents were born in India and immigrated to the U.S. not long after they got married.

The Kapur family lives in an upper-middle-class home in the fictional city of Ruby Hill, New Jersey. (“India Sweets and Spices” was actually filmed in Atlanta.) Alia is spending her vacation at her parents’ home. She’s looking forward to a summer of being free from school and hanging out with her childhood best friend Neha Bhatia (played by Anita Kalathara), who is a loyal and cheerful pal. However, since Alia and Neha follow their family traditions, they know they have to spend a lot of time at their parents’ social gatherings. These parties often take place at the Kapur family home.

Only other upper-middle-class or wealthy Indians in the area are invited to these parties. It soon becomes clear in the movie that these soirees are excuses for many of the party attendees to show off, brag about their lives, and gossip. Alia’s parents are extremely status-conscious and love to give the impression that they’re highly intellectual and cultured. As an example of their pretentiousness, there’s a scene later in the movie where Alia and her love interest are in the library of the Kapur family home, and she shows him that some of the “intellectual” books on the bookshelves are really just empty façades.

Alia’s love interest is Varun Dutta (played by Rish Shah), who works in his parents’ local convenience store that carries a lot of Southeast Asian food. The name of the store is India Sweets and Spices. Alia happens to go in the store one day to buy some biscuits for her family’s upcoming house party. The movie has a rom-com contrivance of Alia seeing Varun and being so instantly attracted him, she gets flustered and buys more biscuits than she needs.

Alia and Varun have their “meet cute” moment when they lock eyes and they strike up a flirty conversation. (In a self-deprecating nod to predictable “meet cute” moments in romantic comedies, the movie even has a wind-flowing-through-hair effect and angel sounds when Alia first sees Varun.) Alia tells Varun that she’s on a summer break from UCLA. And what a coincidence: Varun mentions that he’s completed community college and will be transferring to UCLA later that year when school starts again in the fall.

During this conversation, Alia also meets Varun’s parents—father Kamlesh Dutta (played by Kamran Shaikh) and mother Bhairavi “Peru” Dutta (played by Deepti Gupta)—and Varun’s sister Puja Dutta (played by Jia Patel), who’s about 12 or 13, and who helps out in the family store. Alia finds out that the Dutta family recently moved to the area. The entire family is friendly, so Alia impulsively invites Varun and his parents to her family’s house party. They happily accept the invitation.

Not everyone is happy about this invitation. Alia’s mother Sheila, who is a very uptight snob, is annoyed that this working-class family was invited to the party without Sheila being consulted first. And sure enough, when the Dutta family arrives, Sheila and her husband Ranjit treat the Duttas somewhat dismissively. And so do many other people at party, when they find out that the Duttas make their living by owning a convenience store.

The Duttas graciously brought food to the party as a gift, but Sheila turns her nose up that too, because the food is in a plastic Tupperware container instead of a more upscale container. Sheila is also somewhat annoyed by the gift because she sees herself as a socialite who hosts parties where guests don’t need to bring their own food and drinks. As Alia tells Varun later, Sheila is the type of person who looks down on anyone who isn’t wearing designer clothes. When Alia and Varun go upstairs to an empty room to make out with each other, they see something that turns Alia’s world upside down. It’s her father’s big secret.

Alia’s parents make it clear to Alia that they think it’s more appropriate that she date someone who can afford to pay for the privileged lifestyle in which Alia has been raised. The parents think an ideal match would be Rahul Singh (played by Ved Sapru), the son of their longtime friends Gurvinder Singh (played by Raj Kala) and Uma Singh (played by Priya Deva), who apparently have more money than the Kapur family. Alia and Rahul have known each other since childhood, but there aren’t any real romantic sparks between them. Rahul, who’s a student at Duke University, can be conceited and arrogant, but he’s not a complete jerk.

Even though Alia’s parents think that the Dutta family isn’t good enough to be in their social circle, Alia has a mind of her own and starts dating Varun anyway. As Varun and Alia get to know each other, and their feelings for each other grow stronger, they find out that their parents had very different courtships. Alia’s parents had an arranged marriage, while Varun’s parents married for love and of their own free will.

The differences between these two sets of parents cause tensions between the two families, mainly because Alia’s parents treat Varun and his family as if they’re second-class citizens. It’s not quite a “Romeo and Juliet” story, because there are other complications besides family disapproval of a romance. It turns out that when Varun’s mother Bhairavi saw Alia’s mother Sheila at the party, Bhairavi immediately recognized Sheila as a former friend she knew when they were students at Delhi University. Bhairavi hugged Sheila, who responded in a standoffish way and pretended not to know Bhairavi.

Eventually, Sheila admits that she and Bhairavi knew each other, but Sheila says she’s a different person now. How different? When she was in college, Sheila was a progressive feminist who formed a women’s rights activist group with some other female students. Bhairavi was one of those students. (This isn’t spoiler information because it’s already revealed in the movie’s trailer.)

Alia, who considers herself to be a liberal feminist, is shocked to find out that her mother used to be a liberal feminist too when Sheila was Alia’s age. Sheila has completely opposite beliefs now. What happened to make Sheila change so drastically? That’s the secret that Sheila doesn’t want a lot of people to know.

“India Sweets and Spices” is by no means a boring movie, but it seems like writer/director Malik tried to cram in too many ideas that sometimes don’t flow too well together. The first half of the movie is almost like a breezy, lightweight comedy about Alia and Kapur’s budding romance, but the second half takes a very different and much more serious tone as Sheila has to deal with the secrets that she finds out about both of her parents. Both of these secrets will have negative effects on their parents’ reputations if these secrets are revealed to the people in their stuck-up and judgmental social circle.

The movie takes an interesting look at how upwardly mobile immigrant families in the United States can act to assimilate into American culture and achieve the American Dream. Alia’s family represents the toxicity of what can happen when any family puts too much emphasis on appearances and wealth and not on being genuine and compassionate human beings. Alia thinks she’s not like her image-conscious and materialistic parents, but there’s some friction in her relationship with Varun when he points out to Alia the ways in which she behaves like an elitist snob.

All of the cast members are convincing in their roles, but Ali as Alia and Koirala as Sheila are the ones who get to show the most acting range. That’s because Alia and Sheila are the ones who have the most depth to their personalities in this movie. Even though “India Sweets and Spices” does have a boyfriend-girlfriend romance as a big part of the story, the mother-daughter relationship is ultimately the one that has the most impact and will be remembered by viewers the most.

Bleecker Street released “India Sweets and Spices” in select U.S. cinemas on November 19, 2021, and on digital and VOD on December 7, 2021.