In this week\u2019s minor VOD releases, Sigmund Freud faces Adolf Hitler, a Filipino drag queen seeks redemption, and Ron Perlman and Willem Dafoe half-heartedly add to their villain r\u00e9sum\u00e9s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Play Dirty<\/em><\/strong> (Tubi April 4):<\/strong> The cops and criminals in this desultory thriller are mostly just playing at being dirty, because director and co-writer Tom DeNucci can\u2019t come up with anything convincing or authentic. The movie just offers a weak variation on genre clich\u00e9s, as corrupt Atlantic City police detective Frank Grady (co-writer Theo Rossi) has to pull off one final job before he can escape the wrath of both local crime boss Murray (Ron Perlman) and his own department\u2019s internal affairs investigators. Pointlessly told in flashback, Play Dirty<\/em> follows Grady over the course of a single night as he takes out Murray\u2019s primary rivals, each representing a basic gangster stereotype, from Italian goombahs to grizzled bikers. Rossi struggles to give Grady any moral complexity, and the charismatic Perlman is on bad-guy autopilot as the threatening mobster. The macho dialogue is sloppy (multiple characters say \u201ccalvary\u201d when they mean \u201ccavalry\u201d), the action scenes are perfunctory, and the visual style barely reaches the level of a network TV procedural. Grade: C<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n V13<\/em><\/strong> (Vimeo On Demand April 4; other VOD services May 13):<\/strong> The prospect of Sigmund Freud taking on Adolf Hitler is a lot more enticing than what writer-director Richard C. Ledes offers in this tedious, stilted drama, adapted from a stage play by Alain-Didier Weill. Like Ledes\u2019 previous historical fan-fiction film Adieu, Lacan<\/em><\/a>, V13<\/em> features characters delivering what sound like dramatic readings of freshman-year philosophy papers, without any actual insight or emotion. V13<\/em> opens with a quote from theorist Walter Benjamin that provides a justification for the present-day New York City locations, with characters mostly in modern dress and speaking English with American accents, but rather than connecting the current moment with 1913 Vienna, it merely comes off as an excuse for budgetary constraints. Ledes shifts aspect ratios and switches from color to black and white depending on the setting, but the excessive stylization just adds to the distancing effect, so that the impassioned rhetoric from both Freud (Alan Cumming) and Hitler (Samuel H. Levine) is equally meaningless. Diagnosis: overcompensation. Grade: C-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Asog<\/em><\/strong> (VOD April 11):<\/strong> There\u2019s a lot of necessary cultural context that might make this docu-fiction hybrid less accessible for audiences outside the Philippines, but star Rey \u201cJaya\u201d Aclao has enough charm to keep viewers engaged even without that extra-textual knowledge. Jaya and most of the cast members play versions of themselves, survivors of 2013\u2019s devastating Typhoon Yolanda, which killed more than 6,000 people and caused nearly $3 billion in property damage. Those statistics aren\u2019t in the movie, though, and there\u2019s just a general sense of anger and loss as Jaya, a non-binary schoolteacher and drag performer, quits their job and decides to travel to an island resort to enter into a Ms. Gay beauty pageant. The shaggy-dog road-trip story is one of several disparate, discursive elements in Canadian director Se\u00e1n Devlin\u2019s fiery but unwieldy film, which includes magical-realist fables and unvarnished interviews with displaced typhoon survivors. The combination of environmental and queer activism is often rousing, though, and Devlin finds some beautiful imagery amid the storm\u2019s lasting aftermath. Grade: B-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n