Josh Bell
This week’s low-profile VOD releases feature message movies about autism awareness and animal rights, revenge thrillers about a blind swordsman and an angry father, and 5,000 space aliens.
When Time Got Louder (VOD and select theaters November 17): Writer-director Connie Cocchia combines two melodramatic tearjerkers in this family drama about a teenager caring for her non-verbal autistic brother and exploring her first same-sex relationship. That’s a lot for aspiring artist Abbie (Willow Shields) to take on, and it’s more than either she or the movie can handle. Abbie and her brother Kayden (Jonathan Simao) have been close for their entire lives, and Kayden doesn’t understand when Abbie moves away to attend art school, upending his familiar support system. Abbie deals with guilt over leaving Kayden behind, plus further guilt over hiding her burgeoning romance with fellow student Karly (Ava Capri) from her well-meaning but overwhelmed parents (Elizabeth Mitchell and Lochlyn Munro). The misguided plot drags on through contrived, anguished confrontations with the limited nuance of an Afterschool Special. Mitchell spends at least half the movie in or on the verge of tears, and the overall effect is emotionally exhausting rather than enlightening. Grade: C
5000 Space Aliens (VOD November 21): It wouldn’t be accurate to call filmmaker Scott Bateman’s work a movie in the traditional sense—it’s more like an art installation, or something that would play in an underground bar during a performance by an avant-garde noise-rock group. Bateman presents a series of 5,000 one-second images that the opening title cards describe as depictions of aliens living on Earth. The segments are distorted clips from vintage advertisements, home movies, and other found footage, manipulated and augmented with animation. Occasionally, there appears to be a familiar face, although the clips flash by too quickly to be sure. Is that Bettie Page? News anchor Sam Donaldson? Does it matter? Almost none of the figures look particularly alien, and there’s nothing eerie or threatening in the bright colors and pulsating, repetitive electronic score. It’s an impressive one-man production that might catch your eye for a few minutes in a gallery, but watching it for 85 minutes straight is a serious endurance test. Grade: C
Liberty (VOD November 21): Of all the ways that writer-director Phil De Witte could have delivered his message about animal rights, a thriller about an unhinged activist who kidnaps and tortures innocent people was probably not the best option. De Witte mainly succeeds in making animal-rights advocates seem deranged, with his story about a park ranger who abducts six people and places them in zoo-like captivity, to make a point about the cruelty of keeping animals under similar harsh conditions. Matt (Nicholas Michael McGovern) isn’t even providing Jigsaw-style comeuppance to hunters or furriers, just tormenting randomly chosen victims with his condescending speeches. There’s no character development for those victims, and the scattered efforts to generate sympathy for Matt only make him come off as more of a sociopath. It’s like watching a smug, heavy-handed documentary combined with a plodding, suspense-free thriller. “We get it!” yells one of the prisoners during Matt’s latest lecture, speaking for both her fellow captives and the audience. Grade: D
Due Justice (VOD and select theaters November 24): Somehow, the justice that is supposedly due never actually arrives in this incoherent thriller. Writer-director Javier Reyna fails to deliver the necessary elements of a rudimentary revenge story, about lawyer and military veteran Max (Kellan Lutz) pursuing the criminals who killed his wife and brother and kidnapped his daughter. The criminal operation is confusingly presented, and the movie spends as much time on the personal life of a weary police detective (Efren Ramirez) as it does on the central conflict. There’s a curious lack of urgency to the events, from conversations to explosions, given what’s theoretically at stake. The performances are unconvincing, and the dialogue sounds like it was randomly generated from snippets of other low-budget thrillers. “To cut up kids for money? That shit ain’t Christian,” says a character who may be an undercover FBI agent, explaining the illegal organ-trafficking operation to Max, who spends the entire movie with a pained, baffled look on his face. Viewers will likely have the same expression. Grade: D
Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman (VOD and DVD/Blu-ray November 28): The blind swordsman is a staple of martial-arts movies thanks to long-running Japanese character Zatoichi, and this Chinese take on the concept doesn’t offer any bold reinvention. It’s still an effective, entertaining action movie, though, with some exciting fight scenes and a charismatic lead performance from Xie Miao. He plays the nomadic bounty hunter known as Blind Cheng, a Tang dynasty-era warrior who lost his sight in battle but hasn’t let that get in the way of his profession. Cheng befriends a young winemaker who invites him to her wedding, and when her family is slaughtered by a ruthless gang, he pledges to enact revenge on her behalf. Writer-director Bingjia Yang packs a few too many plot twists into 78 minutes, but the only truly important story beat is Cheng’s vengeance against a steady stream of bad guys, whom he dispatches with graceful, stylized swiftness. Grade: B
