Josh Bell
In this week’s fringe VOD releases, athletes and ballet dancers play fictional variations on themselves, horror comes to NYC and the Old West, and Lena Headey seeks revenge.
Ballistic (VOD and select theaters April 17): Lena Headey digs into the role of a grief-stricken, vengeance-seeking mother in this uneven drama, which isn’t quite equipped to handle all the big issues it takes on. Headey maintains the story’s emotional core even as writer-director Chad Faust barrels through his unfocused social commentary, starting with the irony that Headey’s Nance Redfield works at the same munitions factory that manufactured the bullet that killed her son Jesse (Jordan Kronis). The factory is just one target of Nance’s inchoate rage after Jesse dies while deployed in Afghanistan, and her small Ohio town conveniently offers avatars for all of the conspiracy-fueled blame she dishes out. Although Nance makes numerous violent threats, Ballistic never quite turns into a thriller, and Headey keeps it from descending into hokey melodrama. Faust regularly dials up the ominous music to suggest that Nance is becoming completely unhinged, and those teases hinder what is intermittently an affecting story about loss and forgiveness. Headey, at least, seems to understand what’s important here. Grade: B-
Cherri (VOD April 21): A largely inscrutable character study about an uninteresting character, this Cuban drama is sometimes stylish but mostly inert. Real-life dancer and choreographer Juan Miguel Más may be talented onstage, but he lacks charisma as the title character, a depressed, middle-aged, plus-size gay man whose small pleasures come from planning a ballet performance for his obesity counseling group. That unique hook is only a small part of the movie, though, and writer-director Fabián Suarez devotes substantial time to Cherri moping in various locations, pining over the abusive quasi-boyfriend who treats him with contempt, and caring for his ailing, elderly first love. Más wears the same blank expression whether Cherri is in ecstasy or despair, and Suarez leaves many details of his life unexplained, making it even more difficult to understand or connect with him. There are some lovely, fascinating glimpses into Havana culture and nightlife, but the movie is a mediocre travelogue, and Cherri is the kind of guide you’d hope to ditch as soon as possible. Grade: C
Itch! (VOD April 21): Despite a title that sounds like it belongs to a 1950s creature feature, Itch! is a surprisingly somber zombie-adjacent horror movie, in which the plague of itchiness just ends up as a stand-in for the familiar undead. Writer-director Bari Kang stars as grieving widower and single father Jay, whose family owns a New York City bodega that becomes an impromptu stronghold as a deadly disease ravages the city. The movie takes place almost entirely inside the store, with typical tensions arising among the handful of people barricaded inside as the world starts falling apart. The condition causes people to scratch themselves bloody, but it also turns them violent, scratching others, and death doesn’t stop that aggression. So Kang dutifully runs through the zombie tropes of hidden infections and sudden resurrections. The cast isn’t strong enough to make the characters’ belabored personal anguish compelling, and the storytelling listlessly plays out its predictable zombie scenario, with minimal creativity and no sense of direction. Grade: C
Agon (MUBI April 24): It takes an unfortunate amount of extratextual information to process what Italian writer-director Giulio Bertelli is aiming for in his debut feature, and even then, much of Agon remains deliberately opaque. Sometimes that can be mesmerizing, as when Bertelli’s impressionistic images of machinery and abrasive sound design come together to inspire a visceral response, but more often it’s just baffling, especially when attempting to understand the trio of main characters. They’re all athletes competing in the fictional 2024 Ludoj Olympic Games, in the respective sports of judo, fencing, and riflery. Agon begins with documentary-style realism, including graphic footage of actual knee surgery, but it becomes more and more abstract, staging the games themselves in what looks like a bare soundstage, with no spectators or media. The athletes all face substantial setbacks and seem consistently miserable, and Bertelli portrays sports as grueling and inhumane. Opening and closing title cards offer some real-world context, but the supposed historical references are as impenetrable as the imagery. Grade: C+
The Wolf and the Lamb (VOD and select theaters April 24): The horror in this horror Western feels like something of an afterthought for much of the running time, as writer-director Michael Schilf focuses on the politics of eminent domain in a Montana frontier town in 1873. While corrupt officials are pressuring the local brothel owner to sell at below market value, children are mysteriously disappearing, and Schilf treats both concerns with equal urgency. Schoolteacher Josephine Beckett (Cassandra Scerbo) is horrified when her young son Henry (Jaydon Clark) goes missing, and even more horrified when he returns as some sort of possessed monster. It’s not hard to figure out the nature of Henry’s transformation, but Schilf drags out the underwhelming mystery, while making time for some similarly uninspired armed showdowns. The dialogue is full of awkwardly ornate old-timey speech, which none of the actors can convincingly pull off, and the setting rings just as false. Only Adrianne Palicki, underutilized as the brothel madam, has the screen presence to make this clumsy historical cosplay feel genuine. Grade: C
