Josh Bell
In this week’s low-profile VOD releases, gay Mexican brothers figure out their lives, Jeffrey Dahmer returns in doll form, and the magic of the movies inspires senior citizens in Canada and villagers in Azerbaijan.
Jeffrey Dollmer (VOD November 3): From the producers ofTed Bunny comes another installment in their pun-based “Twisted Serial Killer Universe,” this time about a doll possessed by the spirit of Jeffrey Dahmer. It seems that Dahmer (Brian Joseph Mange) pulled a Chucky before his arrest in 1991, imbuing a lookalike doll with his essence. Thirty-plus years later, the doll is liberated from a police evidence locker and goes on a killing spree. After an opening scene in which Dollmer bites a guy’s penis off at a gay-bar glory hole, the movie settles into a dull, tedious rhythm, spending way too much time on annoying characters at a remote photo shoot as the homicidal doll slowly picks them off. The doll, designed by Eris Deo, is amusingly janky-looking, but it has no personality, speaking solely in grunts and gurgles. The movie around it is abysmal, with terrible performances, clumsy kill scenes, and some shockingly brazen uses of eye-searing AI effects and backgrounds. It makes Ted Bunny look like The Silence of the Lambs. Grade: D-
The Divine Tragedy (VOD November 3): The concept for this Mexican dramedy could be the set-up for a sitcom, and the execution isn’t far off. After getting unexpectedly dumped by his husband of nearly 25 years, former TV actor Cristian (Artús Chávez) moves in with his much-younger half-brother Roy (Pablo Gómez), sharing an apartment they technically co-own. Cristian is fussy and sentimental, unable to let go of his marriage, while Roy is messy and hedonistic, taking drugs and hooking up with multiple men every night. Can they learn to get along and live together? Of course they can, and their journey toward brotherly understanding is pretty unremarkable, aside from the inclusion of numerous explicit sex scenes. Writer-director Sergio Tovar Velarde splits the difference between Pedro Almodovar movies and Mexican telenovelas, with colorful characters and an often ugly, harshly lit visual style. The acting is variable, and while Cristian and Roy are likeable enough, there’s little emotional investment in their efforts to grow as people and find common ground. Grade: C+
The Return of the Projectionist (IndiePix Unlimited November 6): Even in a remote village in Azerbaijan, going to the movies isn’t the event it once was, given the availability of home viewing options. That doesn’t stop former film projectionist Samid Idrisov from embarking on a seemingly quixotic effort to return cinematic presentation to his hometown, in Orkhan Aghazadeh’s engaging if slightly scattered documentary. Samid exhumes his Soviet-era projector and secures a venue in the local community center, but even a simple task like ordering a replacement bulb is difficult in such an isolated location. While Samid waits around for the bulb to arrive, he strikes up a sweet friendship with teenage budding filmmaker Ayaz Khaligov, who makes short animated videos. Aghazadeh also explores Samid’s grief over losing his son two years earlier, and the wonder of cinema gets a bit lost in the various detours. Constructed like a narrative film, The Return of the Projectionist builds to a somewhat anticlimactic opening night, but that doesn’t deter the movie’s quietly indomitable subjects, or cinema itself. Grade: B
Silver Screamers (BloodStream November 6): It would be easy for this documentary about senior citizens participating in the production of a horror short film to come off as cutesy and condescending, and there are moments when it’s a bit too glib. But for the most part, director Sean Cisterna takes his subject seriously, devoting time to learning about each participant rather than focusing on their foibles during the production of The Rug (which Cisterna also directed). Cisterna’s initial motivations may be mercenary, thanks to a grant that helps finance the film if seniors make up a certain proportion of the crew, but he offers thoughtful, concise profiles of each of his collaborators, letting them tell their personal stories with humor and compassion. While there are some minor bumps along the way, the filmmaking process mostly goes smoothly, and Silver Screamers is a celebration of solidarity and vitality among the elderly. It’s also an insightful documentary about the work that goes into making even the shortest films, which the seniors discover alongside the audience. Grade: B+
The Correspondent (Limited theaters November 6, VOD November 10): Australian journalist Peter Greste deserves all the admiration he’s received for enduring a horrific ordeal in Egypt in 2013, when he was arrested and imprisoned for more than a year for the crime of reporting on the country’s civil unrest. That doesn’t mean the movie about him is equally admirable, although it’s a sufficiently competent summary. Veteran Australian star Richard Roxburgh plays Greste, an Al Jazeera correspondent on temporary duty who’s detained by Egyptian authorities along with two other Al Jazeera employees. Accused of supporting terrorism, he has to navigate a hostile judicial system while maintaining a level of hope and integrity. Working from Greste’s own book, screenwriter Peter Duncan and director Kriv Stenders deliver a straightforward account of the incident without much personality. There are minor conflicts between Greste and his fellow detainees, along with superfluous flashbacks to a previous assignment gone wrong in Somalia, but it all feels like just marking time until the requisite closing title cards and real-life footage. Grade: C+
