Thrills, tension and laughs dominate this month’s straight-to-video releases, with a murderous oversexed nurse rubbing shoulders with a grubby ship’s cook; a young thief standing alongside interplanetary explorers, and a bit of Statham and Van Damme for you too. Plus, another superlative motor sport documentary makes its way to your living room…
Nurse 3D
In a Nutshell: In a rare case of a title telling you most of what you need to know, Nurse 3D is a movie about a Nurse that is in 3D. Want to know more? How about the fact that Paz de la Huerta – renowned for not being able to keep her clothes on in Enter the Void, The Limits of Control and TV’s Boardwalk Empire – plays Abby Russell, a nurse who spends her nights seducing and killing cheating men. When a nursing student starts to suspect her, Abby has her hands full keeping a lid on her murderous ways.
The Buzz: 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, where opinions range from “It’s truly sleazy, and it’s ridiculous […] the kind of bad movie that a certain type of discerning connoisseur longs to discover” (Badass Digest) to ” isn’t nearly as fun as a movie about a homicidal, sex-obsessed, clothing-averse health care provider ought to be” (New York Times).
Reason to Watch: Check out the poster, that’s going to tell you if you’re in or out…
Bad Milo!
In a Nutshell: Ken Marino (Wet Hot American Summer, TV’s Party Down and Burning Love) can’t deal with his stress levels, which in turn seem to be causing him no end of gastrointestinal trouble – except he soon finds out his stomach pain is actually caused by a demon living in his intestines that pops out to kill the people who’ve angered him. Yes, a monster comes out of his butt.
The Buzz: 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. Time Out New York says Bad Milo! is “Sick – but it’s the right kind of sick”, Simon Abrams at RogerEbert.com reckons “On paper, Bad Milo! sounds loosey-goosey-crazy-go-nuts. But in practice, it’s understated, if only in relation to its bonkers premise”. However, AV Club says
“Like a lot of intentionally shoddy or derivative movies, Bad Milo! can’t overcome what it’s trying to be”.
Reason to Watch: The comedy-horror concept is stupid, which we’re not against, and the great comedic cast includes Community‘s Gillian Jacobs, Patrick Warburton and Stephen Root.
A Hijacking
In a Nutshell: You might think you’ve seen this before if Captain Phillips has already beamed its way into your eyeballs, but this Danish tale of a commercial freighter seized by pirates offers a different take on a similar scenario. Writer-director Tobias Lundholm, co-writer of The Hunt and much of TV’s Borgen, splits A Hijacking‘s time between the ship’s cook (Forbrydelsen and Borgen‘s Johan Philip Asbæk) and the shipping company’s CEO (Søren Dyrberg Malling – also from Forbrydelsen and Borgen) trying to negotiate an end to the hijacking from his home in Denmark.
The Buzz: 95% on Rotten Tomatoes – more than Captain Phillips (!) – with Variety saying “Tobias Lindholm’s superb [film] actually grows more chillingly subdued as its nightmare scenario unfolds”; Time Out New York noting the “starkly commanding thriller cuts out all the action heroics usually associated with hostage movies, replacing them with an underlying, nauseating sense of dread; it’s a nail-biter about being under the gun”; and Salon.com tempting fate by saying (ahead of Captain Phillips‘ release) “No mainstream American thriller could ever be made about this subject that resisted simple-minded narrative clichés the way A Hijacking does, or that refused to depict its characters as either heroes or villains”.
Reason to Watch: If you’ve been sucked into Danish drama as much as we have, you’ll enjoy the familiar faces – even if not, there’s a gripping drama to grab you by the scruff of the neck.
Sister
In a Nutshell: Special Award winner at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2012, Sister centres on two siblings who live in a housing complex beneath a resort in the Swiss Alps. 12-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein) heads up to the resort each day to steal from tourists, helping to support his family and earning the gratitude of his older sister (Léa Seydoux) – until a stranger arrives to test their relationship.
The Buzz: 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the Los Angeles Times saying the chemistry between the two leads is “a razor’s-edge dance: feral, childish, tender and always complex”; TIME Magazine calling the film “a penetrating study of familial bonds, quietly devastating in parts”; and the Philadelphia Inquirer reckoning it’s “haunting and sad. And absolutely worth seeing.”
Reason to Watch: If you live in Queenstown, Wanaka or Ohakune you might really relate – the rest of us can probably handle watching it without firsthand experience of ski-field scallywags.
Homefront
In a Nutshell: Jason Statham is an ex-DEA agent and soldier keeping a low profile in a small town with his daughter, until he runs afoul of meth kingpin Gator. So far, so standard, except Gator is played by James Franco in what must be one of the least-expected face-offs in modern action cinema. Oh, and Sylvester Stallone wrote it (for himself originally).
The Buzz: 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, where an allegedly negative review in the New Yorker says, encouragingly, “The screenplay for this violent retro schlock was written by Sylvester Stallone, and the movie feels like something out of the early eighties.”; but Rolling Stone disappointingly note “Everyone cast against type. Everyone breathtakingly bad, reciting dialogue by Sylvester Stallone that begs for a “mute” button.” Not to be outdone in bullying the film, the Chicago Tribune state Homefront “ends up being a swampy, derivative action film, indebted to B movies of the ’70s but unable to pay the debt in an interesting way”.
Reason to Watch: Statham and Franco completists will not be able to go past Homefront, others will have to decide how much their curiosity is piqued.
Welcome to the Jungle
In a Nutshell: On a desert island corporate retreat, office workers including Adam Brody, Rob Heubel and Kristen Schaal battle the elements and each other when the former marine running things (Jean-Claude Van Damme) loses his marbles.
The Buzz: Ouch, just 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. “Pushed from the bowels of cinema hell” says Village Voice; “No matter what the title says, there is no welcome waiting for you” reckons the Los Angeles Times; and the New York Daily News advise “this movie’s biggest audience will come from Jean-Claude Van Damme’s fan base, and boy will they be disappointed”.
Reason to Watch: Um. Over to you.
Europa Report
In a Nutshell: Reconstructed from “found footage” and “interviews”, depicts a team of astronauts travelling into Jupiter’s orbit to land on its moon Europa for the first time, although things don’t go as smoothly as hoped.
The Buzz: 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Scott Weinberg on FEARnet describes the pic as “Smart, suspenseful, and fascinating. Maybe the best indie sci-fi film since Moon“; Salon.com reason “If this isn’t quite a great movie, it should be an immensely gratifying one for sci-fi fans tired of the conceptual overkill and general dumbness of Prometheus or Star Trek Into Darkness“; and Time Out New York gush:”t he sights are gorgeous – a seamless mix of archival imagery and impressively rendered digital views of our galaxy – and the science is, to layman’s eyes and ears, more than credible”.
Reason to Watch: Priding itself on scientific accuracy, Europa Report doesn’t beat you over the head with it – it’s a thrilling experience whether scientfically-minded or not.
Reissue of the Month
Weekend of a Champion
In a Nutshell: Roman Polanski’s up-close-and-personal documentary of Formula 1 legend Jackie Stewart, intimately/strangely portrayed wearing his underwear for hotel room conversations with Polanski as well as where petrolheads expect to see him – screaming down the racetrack
The Buzz: 71% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Hollywood Reporter says it “begins as a motorsports movie but ends up a portrait of two wily elder statesmen who have survived into their seventies by skill, stealth and sheer luck”; “Stewart, found here at the height of his prowess and celebrity, proves a rather charming and loquacious subject, long ago inured to the spotlight and thus comfortable indulging our interest with candor” reckons the Village Voice
Reason to Watch: This time capsule allows a glimpse into a strong friendship and an era of danger and romance, doing more to capture the allure of motor sport than probably anything else to date.
