Josh Bell
A killer shark, a sexy schoolteacher, and a Jean-Luc Godard film festival highlight this week’s low-profile VOD releases.
Maneater (VOD and select theaters August 26): There’s a reason that so many low-budget shark-attack thrillers feature ridiculous concepts, which are convenient ways to cover for shoddy special effects and shaky performances. Maneater has no such distractions, so its poorly rendered killer shark and stiff acting are tough to overlook. A group of tourists in Hawaii are easy pickings for a homicidal great white, but there’s almost no suspense in awaiting their inevitable deaths, or in the efforts of a determined hunter (Trace Adkins) to track down the shark that killed his daughter. Adkins is a weak substitute for Robert Shaw in this Jaws riff, and the tourist characters are just generic chum. Writer-director Justin Lee throws in lots of filler, ranging from some nice travelogue shots of Hawaii to tedious conversations about the characters’ day jobs. The shark is far too fake-looking to be scary, and even the gore is minimal. Without a sharknado or a sharktopus, Maneater amounts to no more than meager leftovers. Grade: D+
Adieu Godard (VOD August 26): There isn’t really anything Godardian about this Indian drama, other than how infuriating it can be to watch. The premise sounds like fodder for light comedy: A man in a rural Indian village accidentally gets Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic Breathless instead of his expected porn on a bootleg DVD, and he discovers that he loves the work of the cantankerous filmmaker nearly as much as he loves porn. Ananda (Choudhury Bikash) decides to spread the gospel of Godard by putting on a Godard film festival in his village, to the bafflement and frustration of his neighbors. Writer-director Amartya Bhattacharyya shoots in a half-hearted black and white that looks like someone has just turned down the color settings, aside from awkward full-color framing scenes of Ananda’s daughter (Sudhasri Madhusmita) recounting the story. It seems meant to be playful and self-reflexive like Godard, but it’s alternately heavy-handed and inscrutable, with annoyingly broad performances and a lumbering, disjointed narrative. Grade: C-
Root Letter (VOD and select theaters September 1): In terms of video game movies, Root Letter is a pretty far cry from the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog and Uncharted. This loose adaptation of a Japanese mystery-solving game moves the setting to the U.S. and connects the story to the opioid crisis, while retaining the central concept of a character investigating the disappearance of a former pen pal. Carlos (Danny Hernandez) and Sarah (Keana Marie) start writing to each other as a high school assignment, forming a bond over time until Sarah’s letters abruptly stop. Carlos travels to her hometown to look for her, and the movie clumsily switches between his efforts and the details of what happened to Sarah. The actual mystery is wispy and confusing, and the connection between the two characters who never meet is nebulous, despite the actors’ best efforts. Director Sonja O’Hara aims for contemplative and haunting, but mostly ends up with a ponderous bore. Grade: C
The Book of Delights (VOD September 2): A schoolteacher experiences lots of sexy ennui in this languid Brazilian drama, adapted from the Clarice Lispector novel. Lori (Simone Spoladore) gazes longingly out her window at the beach, reads existentialist poetry to her seven-year-old students, and picks up various anonymous sexual partners. She’s grieving the death of her mother and searching for meaning in her life, and Spoladore makes that internal quest compelling, without the need for explanatory voiceover. The moody visuals and sometimes impressionistic editing add to that sense of disconnection. Lori has repeated encounters with philosophy professor Ulisses (Javier Drolas), who challenges her to break out of her stupor and make a commitment. He’s occasionally a bit overbearing, but the characters are matched in their penchant for musings about the nature of existence, and in their sexual chemistry. Director and co-writer Marcela Lordy delivers genuine eroticism and genuine personal engagement, making Lori’s journey emotionally satisfying—and totally hot. Grade: B+
Tiny Cinema (Select theaters September 2; VOD September 6; Blu-ray October 11): It’s not surprising that the person responsible for Butt Boy has a bunch more weird ideas, and director/co-writer Tyler Cornack presents six of them in this horror-comedy anthology. Like all anthologies, it’s a mixed bag, although it helps that it has a unified creative vision, even if the stories themselves vary in tone and style. Some are short enough to come off as overgrown comedy sketches, often relying on a single bizarre joke, as in the segment about a man who drives himself insane wondering who the “she” is in “That’s what she said.” Most have some kind of twisted sexual element, and the best is a surprisingly emotional story about a man whose supposed future self claims that the world will end unless they screw. The line between amusing and irritating is quite thin with this material, but just enough of Tiny Cinema falls on the right side of it. Grade: B- 
