Josh Bell
Both Fyodor Dostoevsky and Jean-Claude Van Damme make comebacks in this week’s low-profile VOD releases, which also feature grieving parents, Danish lesbians, and vampire drug addicts.
The Karamazovs (VOD June 3): Paring down Fyodor Dostoevsky’s sprawling 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov into an 86-minute feature film necessitates jettisoning lots of characters and subplots, but director and co-writer Anna Brenner successfully turns the vast story into a chamber piece with a handful of players. Adapting her own stage play, she transmutes Dostoevsky’s brothers into sisters and one brother, all converged on their childhood home where their tyrannical father Fyodor (Ezriel Kornel) is dying of cancer, largely offscreen. Brenner mixes naturalistic drama and literary stylization, with Fyodor’s caretaker Liz (Rami Margron) often speaking directly to the audience and guiding the narrative. The dialogue combines florid philosophical digressions with modern angst, and while the balance isn’t always effective, the strong performances help smooth over the rough transitions. Brenner’s limited resources curtail her ambitions when profligate brother Dimitri (Ross Cowan) ends up on trial for murder, but whenever the movie returns to these dysfunctional relatives in a room confronting their troubled past and fraught future, it’s emotionally and existentially gripping. Grade: B
The Venus Effect (VOD June 2): There’s a gorgeous, sun-dappled look to this Danish romantic dramedy, which takes place mostly on an idyllic farm where 20-something Liv (Johanne Milland) works with her parents. Her seemingly settled life is upended by the unexpected arrival of free-spirited lesbian artist Andrea (Josephine Park) at the neighboring apple orchard. Although she’s dating a man and always considered herself straight, Liv is immediately drawn to Andrea, and their relationship progresses quickly from flirty photography sessions to steamy backseat sex. It’s all fairly standard, but Milland and Park have sweet, appealing chemistry, and writer-director Anna Emma Haudal introduces conflict without relying on clichéd small-town homophobia. Liv’s sexual awakening is just one aspect of her life that is thrown into chaos after Andrea arrives, and those changes add up to a minor but serious crisis that culminates at an uncomfortable Christmas dinner. The lovely nature shots and soundtrack full of Scandinavian pop create a relaxed vibe that extends even to the family drama. Grade: B
Barron’s Cove (VOD and select theaters June 6): Garrett Hedlund begins this overwrought thriller at such a heightened level of anguish that there’s nowhere left for him to go as his brutish underworld enforcer deals with the horrific death of his young son. Writer-director Evan Ari Kelman sets the grim tone in an opening scene that involves a child getting run over by a train, and things do not get more upbeat from there. Caleb (Hedlund) is determined to uncover the truth, even if that entails kidnapping the child of a powerful, corrupt local politician (Hamish Linklater). As more gloomy secrets come to light, Kelman delivers a bargain version of Denis Villeneuve’s equally histrionic Prisoners, with weaker performances and clumsier twists. Hedlund plays every scene with unearned intensity, without any build-up or modulation. Linklater makes for an ineffectual villain, and Stephen Lang coasts through his role as Caleb’s menacing mob-boss uncle. Kelman treats every scene like it’s a profound revelation, but the only revelation is how seriously he takes this pulpy nonsense. Grade: C-
The Gardener (VOD and select theaters June 6): It’s refreshing to see Jean-Claude Van Damme return to working in his native language late in his career, but this dreadful French action comedy does not make proper use of his talents. Van Damme and director David Charhon previously collaborated on the similarly irritating 2021 Netflix original movie The Last Mercenary, and Van Damme is clearly game for Charhon’s brand of manic slapstick. That doesn’t make The Gardener any less of a chore, though, especially when Van Damme is sidelined in favor of French comedy star Michaël Youn as Serge, a buffoonish government functionary targeted for assassination. Conveniently, Serge’s gardener Leo (Van Damme) is a former covert military operative with a particular set of skills, and he takes on the task of protecting his boss. The hook should be watching Van Damme mess dudes up with rakes and pruning shears, but the fight scenes are relatively sparse in the interminable 110-minute movie, which spends far more time on Youn’s mugging than on Van Damme’s still-formidable roundhouse kicks. Grade: C
Bleeding (VOD and Screambox June 10): There’s a long history of movies using vampirism as a metaphor for drug addiction, and writer-director Andrew Bell is working in the tradition of films like Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction and Larry Fessenden’s Habit with his debut feature. He ends up with something closer to a scared-straight melodrama, though, failing to find a new angle on either vampires or addicts. Stars John R. Howley and Jasper Jones spend nearly the entire movie yelling at each other as a pair of teenage cousins who are desperate to pay back a local drug dealer after accidentally losing a fronted supply of “dust,” a narcotic made from vampire blood. The vampire angle is essentially irrelevant for long stretches of the movie that simply deal with generic addiction issues, and when bloodsuckers come into play, they’re disappointingly basic and familiar. Set in a series of nondescript, interchangeable houses, Bleeding has a flat, grubby look that successfully takes the glamour out of vampires, but replaces it with grating, repetitive bluster. Grade: C
