This week\u2019s minor VOD releases feature an unlikely friendship in Luxembourg, a queer detective in Dublin, and a super-soldier hanging out in a hotel bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Io Sto Bene<\/em><\/strong> (IndiePix Unlimited and virtual cinema September 15; DVD October 10):<\/strong> Curmudgeonly senior citizens can befriend headstrong young people anywhere, including Luxembourg, which submitted this lackluster drama as the country\u2019s official selection for the 2022 Oscars. The connection between elderly Italian retiree Antonio (Renato Carpentieri) and recent Italian immigrant Leo (Sara Serraiocco) doesn\u2019t even get the proper time to develop, since writer-director Donato Rotunno devotes substantial time to Antonio\u2019s early years in Luxembourg after arriving from Italy in search of work. Young Antonio\u2019s personal struggles aren\u2019t particularly engaging, and they don\u2019t meaningfully relate to Leo\u2019s own difficulties as an aspiring musician. Instead, those drawn-out flashbacks just distract from the potential cross-generational connection. Carpentieri and Serraiocco have an appealing rapport when they get screen time together, but their sweet, understated friendship is barely starting by the time the movie is over. The title translates to \u201cI Am Fine,\u201d and that generic expression of adequacy captures the movie\u2019s inoffensive blandness. Grade: C+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Barber <\/em><\/strong>(VOD and select theaters September 22):<\/strong> Nobody gets a haircut in this solid, small-scale Irish crime drama, which stars Aidan Gillen as Dublin private investigator Valentine Barber. A concerned woman hires Barber to find her missing granddaughter, whose disappearance has been dismissed by the police as a case of a troubled runaway. Barber has a lot going on in his personal life, too, including a teenage daughter recovering from a traumatic brain injury after a car accident, as well as his clandestine romance with a married man. Director and co-writer Fintan Connolly takes a subdued, matter-of-fact approach to both the criminal investigation and the queer content, exploring social issues in what one character calls the \u201cnew woke Ireland\u201d but never sensationalizing them. The mystery is pretty basic, and the movie sometimes plays like an extended TV pilot, but that\u2019s not necessarily a problem. Gillen\u2019s lived-in performance as the weary but upstanding Barber would be a welcome sight on TV every week. Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Condition of Return<\/em><\/strong> (VOD and select theaters September 22):<\/strong> The prominent presence of Dean Cain and the focus on churchgoing would seem to indicate that this is a faith-based movie, but if that\u2019s the case, then it has a pretty messed-up perspective on faith. The core is the interplay between AnnaLynne McCord as a captured mass shooter and Cain as a psychiatrist evaluating her mental fitness to stand trial. She recounts the increasingly ludicrous story of her life leading up to her decision to open fire inside a Catholic church, killing 13 people, while he easily falls for her Hannibal Lecter-lite quid pro quo <\/em>requests to divulge details about his own life. It\u2019s laughable when the doctor refers to the killer as \u201cvery smart,\u201d especially when we\u2019ve seen her attempting to summon the devil by Googling \u201chow to summon the devil.\u201d The acting is atrocious, the theology is incoherent, and the harsh lighting makes it all look like a cheap soap opera. Grade: D<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n