Josh Bell
This week’s minor VOD releases feature Italian porn performers, Japanese MMA fighters, and Serbian serial killers, plus subpar star turns from American C-listers Billy Zane and Brian Austin Green.
Golden (VOD and select theaters March 20): Brian Austin Green doesn’t have the grit or the charisma to play a roguish counterfeiter, and he gives an inert performance in an inert movie. Allegedly based on true events, Golden starts in what feels like the middle of the story, as Green’s Frank Swain has been making counterfeit American currency to trade for genuine currency in Mexico, where he can use it to build himself a house, for reasons that remain unclear. No one’s motivations make much sense — not the bar owner who blackmails Frank into providing him with counterfeit money, nor the kingpin who happens to live next door to Frank’s Mexican property. There are vague references to a criminal past that Frank attempted to leave behind, but this isn’t a film about redemption, or about an aging outlaw pulling off one last job. Writer-director Nick Leisure keeps throwing in new obstacles and adversaries until the movie is nearly over, but he never finds a convincing reason to follow these people from one half-baked plan to another. Grade: C
Int. Hallway / Night (VOD March 20): Actor Billy Zane’s recent filmography is full of low-budget DTV releases, so he seems well-equipped to direct and co-write a movie that takes place on the set of a scrappy independent horror film. But that’s not really what Int. Hallway / Night is about, even though it offers a few mild observations about the chaos of the small-scale production that director Andrew (Zane) takes over. The previous director departed after unspecified creative differences, and Andrew is conveniently available because he’s already there visiting his actress wife Janet (Helena Mattson). Andrew suspects that Janet is having an affair with her co-star Bryan (Matthew Jacob), and his suspicions intermingle with the plot of the movie he’s directing, blurring the lines between the two. Rather than deal directly with his characters’ emotional conflicts, Zane abstracts them into meaninglessness, padding out the slim running time with tedious montages set to atrocious soft-rock songs by his sister Lisa Zane. An actual cheap, schlocky horror movie would be more entertaining — and much less self-indulgent. Grade: C-
Videotheque (VOD March 20): Taking its cues from the V/H/S franchise, this Serbian horror anthology begins with a framing story set in an abandoned video store, where a robber is hiding out from the cops. To bide his time, he watches three mysterious videotapes featuring three fairly underwhelming tales. The second segment, with its predictable but reliable Tales From the Crypt-style twist, is the most satisfying, while the first and third both end up too ambiguous to be terrifying. Unlike the V/H/S movies, Videotheque is entirely the work of a single writer-director (Luka Bursac), although he varies his approach a bit, presenting the first segment’s period folk horror in a vintage grindhouse mode, with grainy visuals and a constrained aspect ratio. The storytelling is less varied, and even the more conventional Faustian plotting of the second segment unfolds slowly and sedately, without the immediate sting that makes for an effective horror anthology installment. Bursac is good at mimicking the look and structure of his influences, but he falls short on narrative substance. Grade: C+
Blue (VOD March 24): Instead of dumping her idiot boyfriend after he gets into debt with some dangerous people over a lost package of drugs, spoiled college student Luce (Alexia Cozzi) decides to make back the money by signing up for an online porn site. Luce’s poor judgment is part of the point, and this Italian drama from director Eleonora Puglia bounces from softcore titillation to sex-worker empowerment to prim moralizing, sometimes within the same scene. It’s thematically muddled but frequently stylish, especially once Luce sets up in the panopticon-like studio of her friend Vittoria (Shaen Barletta). Porn legend Rocco Siffredi adds some extra-textual resonance as Luce’s stern doctor father, and while his performance is somewhat, uh, stiff, the rest of the acting is strong. There’s a rewarding dynamic between Cozzi and Barletta as two women from different economic classes both turning to sex work as a form of independence, although Puglia is more interested in sensuality than social commentary. Still, that can be excusable when the sensuality is this striking. Grade: B-
Blazing Fists (VOD and DVD/Blu-ray March 31): In the U.S., Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike is best known for extreme horror offerings like Audition,Ichi the Killer and Visitor Q, but he’s an incredibly prolific director who’s worked in a multitude of genres across 100-plus feature films. The latest Miike film to get an American release is much gentler, with a cheesy story about a pair of teenage friends who dream of becoming professional fighters. Ikuto (Danhi Kinoshita) and Ryoma (Kaname Yoshizawa) meet in juvenile detention, where they attend an inspirational lecture by real-life MMA star Mikuru Asakura (putting minimal effort into playing himself). Once paroled, they start training for a kickboxing reality show, but Miike and writer Shin Kibayashi keep getting sidetracked with soapy subplots. The main characters face multiple colorfully dressed gangs of local thugs, with frequently shifting loyalties. It’s all played for maximum melodrama, and the fight scenes are mediocre, without any forward momentum. Miike directs with unremarkable competence, just adding another title to his resume before moving on. Grade: C
