Josh Bell
This week’s minor VOD releases aim for big statements about sexism, spirituality, and the sweep of history, but only manage occasional success with simple emotions and even simpler beatdowns.
Upon Waking (VOD February 14): There must be a better way for two people on a first date to get to know each other than being exposed to carbon monoxide, falling unconscious, and communing in a sort of purgatory while waiting for their bodies to either die or be revived. But that’s what sweet, wholesome Irene (Elsie Hewitt) and snarky, cynical Molly (Vanessa Dubasso) face at Irene’s house when Irene accidentally leaves the oven on. Stuck as disembodied spirits while time passes at a much slower pace in reality, Irene and Molly play board games, cook, learn new languages, and confront their personal demons, sometimes in the form of cheesy-looking apparitions from their pasts. Hewitt and Dubasso have minimal chemistry, and writer-director Max Rissman seems as timid as the initially prudish Irene, allowing his characters only a couple of chaste kisses. The already ridiculous movie leans heavily into quasi-religious messaging in its final half-hour, with muddled lessons about sacrifice and forgiveness that turn a potentially cute, upbeat romance into a dour sermon. Grade: D+
Jade (VOD February 18): Rising action star Shaina West looks the part, but director James Bamford doesn’t have the vision to pull off the Blaxploitation homage that his title character calls for. Instead, Jade sticks to tiresome DTV action beats, with intermittent visual flourishes. Whenever West’s reluctant avenger is beating up bad guys, Jade is watchable enough, and West (who’s amusingly credited as her own stunt double) clearly has the goods for a higher-profile action career. Bamford rarely lets her moves do the talking, though, relying on slo-mo and cutesy graphics to overemphasize Jade’s badassery. The disjointed story feels interminable at just 88 minutes, with multiple unnecessary twists and double-crosses, as factions on both sides of the law vie for a hard-drive McGuffin that Jade has inadvertently acquired. Mickey Rourke mumbles his way through a listless villain role, and B-movie veteran Mark Dacascos does a bit of baton-passing to West as Jade’s mentor. If only he could have passed her a better movie to star in. Grade: C
Three Birthdays (VOD February 18): This three-part family drama starts out strongly before eventually getting dragged down by contrived melodrama. Married academics Rob (Josh Radnor) and Kate (Annie Parisse) and their daughter Bobbie (Nuala Cleary) all celebrate their birthdays within the span of a few weeks in April and May 1970. Bobbie’s opening segment is the most intriguing, a coming-of-age story about a teenager who’s been raised with the values of the sexual revolution and is figuring out how to apply them to her own life. The tension between openness and tradition defines all three birthdays, and while the marital concerns between Rob and Kate are less compelling, most of Three Birthdays is a solid, small-scale film about flawed people during a time of major cultural upheaval. That falls apart in the finaOur mini-reviews of “Jade,” “Three Birthdays,” “Trigger Happy,” and more of this week’s VOD and limited-release offerings. l act, which inserts the characters into a real-life tragedy in a way that feels phony and manipulative. A rushed epilogue hand-waves the complex interpersonal issues away in favor of somber but unearned historical resonance. Grade: C+
Everyone Is Going to Die (VOD and select theaters February 21): Not that many people actually die in writer-director Craig Tuohy’s smug home-invasion thriller, which offers a tedious, violent wind-up to a disingenuous and somewhat distasteful pseudo-feminist reveal. Jaime Winstone channels a bit of her father Ray’s coiled volatility as the more vocal of a pair of attackers who break into the lavish, isolated home of divorced financier Daniel (Brad Moore), just after the arrival of his teenage daughter Imogen (Gledisa Arthur). The nameless assailants run Daniel and Imogen through a series of humiliating demands, marking time until Tuohy can deploy a flashback that unveils their true motivations. Winstone’s unhinged ranting loses its impact after a while, as do Tuohy’s attempts at both shock value and moral complexity. He introduces numerous distracting red herrings, and sacrifices suspense for whiny, equivocating lectures. There are a lot of speeches about accountability and abuse, but the movie ends up as empty as the excuses the characters make for their terrible behavior. Grade: C
Trigger Happy (VOD February 25): Set in a surreal, stylized dystopia that mixes the aesthetics and technology of the 1950s and the present day, director and co-writer Tiffany Kim Stevens’s dark comedy fails to capitalize on its satirical potential, settling for a wan battle of wills between a bitter husband and wife. Sad-sack waiter George (Tyler Poelle) has racked up massive debt and dreams of escaping to the Bahamas, while his domineering wife Annie (Elsha Kim) is obsessed with getting a job as an infomercial spokesperson for a miracle sponge. George makes some half-hearted attempts to murder Annie in order to collect her life insurance, while their friends Gemma (Christina Kirkman) and Mikey (Matt Lowe) deal with their own marital dysfunction. The absurdist scenarios are never quite absurd enough to produce real laughs, the characters are grating, and the world-building is sloppy. There are a few amusing touches — including an apparent gun-ownership requirement for obtaining health insurance — but Trigger Happy is too incoherent to succeed either as bizarre expressionism or pointed social commentary. Grade: C
