Josh Bell
In this week’s minor VOD releases, sharks stalk a shipwreck, a ballet company reinvents Swan Lake, and Alec Baldwin gets paid.
Clear Cut (VOD and select theaters July 19): For anyone wondering how Alec Baldwin ended up on the set of a low-budget movie like Rust, even before the tragic accident, Clear Cut exemplifies the recent trajectory of his career, which is full of paycheck-cashing B-movie supporting roles. Here Baldwin plays a logger who hires fugitive Jack (Clive Standen) for a job in a remote forest, and he provides some awkward exposition and a recognizable name for the poster before exiting the story fairly quickly. Jack is looking for revenge against some drug dealers who harmed his family, although screenwriter Joe Perruccio and director Brian Skiba dole that basic information out slowly via poorly placed flashbacks. There’s nothing mysterious or interesting about Jack’s motives, and he’s just as one-dimensional a character as the criminals he’s tracking. The action is abysmal, with punches that land nowhere near their ostensible targets, and lots of fake-looking CGI fire. Baldwin looks suitably embarrassed to be involved — and he’s not the only one who should be. Grade: C-
Camera (VOD July 23): Considering that his last movie was a treacly inspirational drama about a town coming together to save a pencil factory, Camera represents a slight step up for director Jay Silverman, who recruits a higher-caliber cast for his latest shameless tearjerker. Part of the problem with the overlong Camera is that its central intergenerational friendship is just one of numerous heartstring-tugging storylines competing for attention in a quaint fishing town, where the mute nine-year-old Oscar (Miguel Gabriel) has moved with his mother Evelyn (Jessica Parker Kennedy). Oscar bonds with curmudgeonly shop owner Eric (Beau Bridges) over their shared interest in vintage film cameras, and they both have tragic pasts to overcome. Add in tween bullies, Oscar’s drug-dealing uncle, and an estranged father and son (Bruce Davison and Ross Partridge) who offer competing plans to save the town, and Camera collapses under the weight of its own sentimentality. It tries so hard to get the audience to feel something that the result is just numbing. Grade: C
The Last Breath (VOD and select theaters July 26): It’s a shame that the late Julian Sands’s final onscreen moments come opposite a cruddy CGI shark, but he brings the expected professionalism to his supporting role as a crotchety sea captain in this forgettable shark-attack thriller. Levi (Sands) runs a ramshackle ocean-tour operation out of a rickety shack and even ricketier boat in the Virgin Islands, where his right-hand man is the much younger Noah (Jack Parr). The day after Levi and Noah discover the sunken remains of a World War II warship, Noah’s college friends arrive to visit and insist on taking an unsanctioned dive among the wreckage. Cue: sharks. The murky underwater cinematography obscures both the mediocre special effects and the characters’ mask-covered faces, and the clumsy performances don’t help. It’s easier to root for the sharks than for the annoying twenty-somethings who consistently make the dumbest decisions possible. Sands delivers world-weary wisdom while wearing a snazzy knit cap, but he can only do so much. Grade: C
Starve Acre (VOD and select theaters July 26): This slow-burn British folk horror movie opens with some familiar creepy-kid material before shifting focus to grieving couple Richard (Matt Smith) and Juliette (Morfydd Clark), after their creepy kid suffers a sudden — and creepy — death. Writer-director Daniel Kokotajlo devotes most of the movie’s first half to vaguely unsettling events at the remote country estate where Richard grew up, which seems to harbor some kind of malevolent spirit. The performances from Smith and Clark are frequently more mopey than disturbing, but the horror eventually picks up, as the couple tap into the ancient evil force that inhabits their land. Starve Acre shares familiar beats with folk-horror revival movies like The Hole in the Ground and the underrated Matriarch, but Kokotajlo (working from a novel by Andrew Michael Hurley) takes the climax in an unexpected direction, paying off the couple’s obsession with death in a particularly nasty way. Starve Acre is often too wispy to be fully satisfying, but its haunting atmosphere has a cumulative power. Grade: B-
Swan Song (VOD and select theaters July 26): Director Chelsea McMullan immerses viewers in the preparations for the National Ballet of Canada’s 2022 production of Swan Lake in this engrossing, gorgeously shot documentary. The format is fairly straightforward, following a handful of key players in the two months leading up to the premiere, but McMullan finds fascinating, complex artists to include, and she depicts difficult social issues without taking the focus away from the production itself. McMullan also beautifully captures the dancers in motion, both during frustrating rehearsals and on the magnificent opening night. This Swan Lake is helmed by the National Ballet’s retiring artistic director Karen Kain, a dance icon in her own right, and she reworks the show to give its female characters greater agency, while also addressing ballet’s history of racial inequality. That’s a lot to take on, and the movie provides a solid overview without coming off as glib or dismissive. It’s a thoughtful and entertaining glimpse into a world of almost inhumanly dedicated artists. Grade: B+
