Josh Bell
This week’s minor VOD releases feature love stories set in early 1900s Prague and modern Seattle, plus a grim reaper trying to parent, and irritating influencers running from mutant mutts.
A Breed Apart (VOD and select theaters May 16): You’d think it would be easy for the characters in this dreadful horror movie to escape the killer dogs they encounter on a remote island, since the humans and animals rarely appear to be inhabiting the same physical space. The janky, suspiciously AI-looking special effects are only one problem with this mess of a film, which at times comes off like it was abandoned partly through post-production. The atrocious sound design makes half the dialogue unintelligible and the other half unexpectedly loud, but it’s not like anything the annoying characters say is worth hearing, anyway. They’re all obnoxious online content creators invited to the island by an even more obnoxious MrBeast-like mogul, with the pretext of turning it into an animal sanctuary. The lengthy set-up is essentially irrelevant, and the nature of the mutated canines is never coherently explained. It’s just an excuse for weak jokes and weaker kills, leaving these typically competent actors without anything to work with, either in the script or onscreen. Grade: D-
Chambermaid (VOD May 23): This handsomely mounted Slovakian historical drama starts as an understated exploration of a cross-class queer relationship before losing focus once the characters get caught up in World War I. Even then, the connection between poor Slovakian villager Anka (Dana Droppová) and the young noblewoman whose family she works for remains strong, leading inexorably toward its melancholy conclusion. Teenage Anka’s new stepfather ships her off to Prague to serve as a maid in a wealthy German household, where she meets the rebellious Resi (Radka Caldová), who resents being forced into an arranged marriage that serves her father’s interests. Anka and Resi’s halting romance is sweet and sensual, but director and co-writer Mariana Cengel-Solcanská aims for a more sweeping story about the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which leaves the main couple’s concerns in the background during the second half. Still, the movie always comes back to their passion for each other, and the larger scope gives their love story a sense of grand, meaningful tragedy. Grade: B
Worth the Wait (Tubi May 23): Taiwanese director Tom Lin crams multiple mediocre romantic dramedies into his English-language debut, a mash-up of interconnected stories in the Love Actually mode, featuring a primarily Asian-American cast. Lin recruits an impressive lineup of actors for a Tubi original (including Elodie Yung, Ross Butler, Karena Lam, and Sung Kang) and mostly leaves them adrift, with stock romantic scenarios that play out dully and predictably. Only Lana Condor, bringing some of the effervescence she displayed in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before movies, has the right amount of charm and enthusiasm to make her character appealing, but she’s stuck pining away for Butler’s mopey businessman in a long-distance relationship. Their brief courtship, during his Seattle stopover, finds the right mix of cute and heartwarming, only to end abruptly in a jarring mid-film time jump. The other stories are less compelling, with awkward dialogue and clumsy tonal shifts from matchmaker shenanigans to grief support groups. The underwhelming outcomes with tidy life lessons are not worth the wait. Grade: C
Nora (Veeps May 24): Live Nation’s concert-focused streaming service Veeps expands into narrative films with this earnest musical drama about a singer-songwriter rediscovering her artistic voice. Nora (writer-director Anna Campbell) was once half of a moderately popular duo, but while her one-time partner is now a major pop star, she’s moved back to her suburban hometown following the failure of her solo career. With her band-manager husband out on tour, she adjusts to life as a stay-at-home mom to her young daughter and struggles to redefine her identity. Amid the low-key, sometimes overly subdued interpersonal drama, Campbell intersperses music video-style interludes featuring well-crafted alt-rock songs she co-wrote with The Airborne Toxic Event’s Noah Harmon. Presented as various pastiches (from Archie Comics to 1980s New Wave), those segments elevate the somewhat rote coming-of-middle-age storyline, allowing Campbell to show off her visual inventiveness. As Nora, she gives a grounded, engaging performance, but the musical flights of fancy are where the character and the movie truly shine. Grade: B-
Ba (VOD May 27): The deal that desperate single father Daniel (Lawrence Kao) is offered at the beginning of writer-director Benjamin Wong’s supernatural drama doesn’t seem to have any upside: In exchange for a modest amount of money, he is cursed to become a grim reaper, tasked with harvesting souls for the afterlife until he can pay back 11 times what he was given. Not only that, but he also now looks like a gruesome skeleton, and his touch is instantly fatal. He has to cover himself from head to toe and hope that his daughter Collette (Kai Cech) doesn’t accidentally touch him or notice his hideous visage. Wong has a tough time wringing pathos from this increasingly absurd scenario, although he takes it extremely seriously. Even at just 79 minutes, Ba feels padded, with convoluted additions to its mythology and repetitive crises as Daniel works to escape his predicament. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the cycle of poverty, but the dour tone and heavy-handed sentiment obscure any worthwhile message. Grade: C
