In this week’s low-profile VOD releases, teen girls wield rifles and SAT study books, a pair of filmmakers traverse the multiverse, and some obnoxious janitors steal a bunch of money from the mob.
Smoking Tigers (Select theaters August 16; Max August 23): Writer-director So Young Shelly Yo doesn’t deviate much from the basic teen coming-of-age structure in her debut feature, but the details are what make Smoking Tigers distinctive and affecting. Set in Southern California in the early 2000s, the movie stars Ji-young Yoo as restless Korean-American high schooler Hayoung, who’s forced to spend the summer at a tutoring center when her mom decides that she needs to improve her chances of getting into a top-tier college. Hayoung struggles with her parents’ recent separation, her family’s money problems, and her efforts to impress prospective new friends who all seem wealthier and more confident than she is. Yo takes a low-key approach to the teen angst, never sensationalizing any of Hayoung’s misadventures, and offering a glimpse into a specific community at a specific time via a single person’s experience. Smoking Tigers also looks gorgeous, with evocative images often capturing the characters in reflected surfaces, as they feel disconnected from themselves. It’s a well-crafted, heartfelt take on a reliable formula. Grade: B+
The Clean Up Crew (VOD August 20): Things never work out well for movie characters who stumble upon cases full of money, but there’s usually at least a brief moment of deluded optimism. The title characters of this irritating, hyperactive thriller don’t even get past the crime scene where they discover a discarded mob payoff before one of its owners comes to collect it. That’s apparently not a red flag for these reckless idiots, who progress from hapless cleaners to hardened killers with unconvincing speed. Stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Melissa Leo are a long way from the acclaimed heights of their careers, although they give Oscar-caliber performances compared to Antonio Banderas, whose overacting makes his cartoonish crime-boss villain less menacing than Puss in Boots. Director Jon Keeyes matches that manic desperation with unnecessary split screens and constant whooshing sound effects for nearly every scene transition. The jokey tone and CGI blood spatter ensure that all of the violence is meaningless, just like the characters’ decision to take the money in the first place. Grade: C-
Catching Dust (VOD and select theaters August 23): There’s plenty of dust on this creaky, lumbering pseudo-thriller, which takes its time going nowhere in particular. An opening flash-forward promises a violent confrontation to come, but that moment isn’t any clearer by the time the movie ends. Instead, there’s a lot of glowering and inchoate bluster between two markedly different couples who find themselves unlikely neighbors in the middle of the Texas desert. Clyde (Jai Courtney) and Geena (Erin Moriarty) are living in a rundown trailer on what used to be a commune, apparently hiding out from the law. They’re alarmed by the arrival of New Yorkers Andy (Ryan Corr) and Amaya (Dina Shihabi), who bring an entire tiny house with them on a tractor trailer, expecting a thriving collectivist community. The set-up doesn’t make much sense, and writer-director Stuart Gatt doesn’t seem interested in exploring it, just using the desert isolation to pit these emotionally damaged people against each other. Their vague interpersonal conflicts are as insubstantial as the blowing dust, and equally tiresome. Grade: C
Hostile Dimensions (VOD and select theaters August 23): Documentary filmmakers Sam (Annabel Logan) and Ash (Joma West) are remarkably chill about discovering a portal to other dimensions while researching their movie about a missing woman. That freewheeling attitude defines writer-director Graham Hughes’ horror comedy, which takes a similarly cavalier approach to its found-footage format. The characters are so likable that it’s easy to follow their lead and just go along with the strangeness, especially as Hughes hurtles them through various endearingly low-budget alternate universes. The fast pace and snappy editing keep the audience off-kilter, and Hostile Dimensions is often surprisingly scary, despite being fundamentally goofy. Hughes’ late-breaking efforts at pathos are less successful, because he never makes time for the necessary character development, and the ending is rushed and not particularly satisfying. Still, there’s enough flashy ridiculousness to keep things entertaining, and Hostile Dimensions has just opened up the possibilities of its multiverse by the time it ends, with a tantalizing (and silly) tease for potential future installments. Grade: B
Place of Bones (VOD and select theaters August 23): Perhaps because she played so many high-profile ditzy roles early in her career, Heather Graham has never quite gotten the recognition she deserves. But she does a solid job anchoring this sparse Western, even if the movie itself is largely forgettable. It’s a familiar story of a band of outlaws laying siege to a remote homestead, with Graham as the hardened pioneer determined to protect her teenage daughter (Brielle Robillard). Corin Nemec veers uncomfortably close to Yosemite Sam territory as the wounded bandit who shows up on their doorstep, pursued by dangerous rivals. As a stark three-character drama, Place of Bones is a bit repetitive, but it livens up once the bad guys arrive, and director Audrey Cummings stages some decent action within a limited scope. Through it all, Graham projects grim single-mindedness, with the occasional twinkle of something more devious. Those hints pay off with a crazy final twist that suggests a bolder movie about to arrive, only for the credits to roll almost immediately. Grade: C+