On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: GOD BLESS AMERICA (Magnolia) is available now On Demand before in theaters on May 11, 2012

GOD BLESS AMERICA

By Chris Claro

Satirizing popular culture becomes an increasingly difficult job as media further saturates the public consciousness. Television and the Web provide a bottomless maw into which product must be shoveled so that consumers and advertisers will cough up time and money – and a little piece of their souls. The problem with the product is that it constantly needs to top itself in outrageousness, thereby edging closer to being parody itself.

Of course, the most piercing and prescient view of how media could literally end up driving people to murder is NETWORK, written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet. With an almost clairvoyant sense of what reality programming and news-as-entertainment would become, NETWORK was pitch-black comedy executed by creators who knew they didn’t have to go too far to show how American media one day would.

In the 36 years since NETWORK, viewers have been assaulted by real-life variations on the insane pitches that Faye Dunaway’s Diana Christensen took from program producers: shows about teen mothers, competitive weight loss, battles over plastic surgery, spousal swapping, consumption of any and all manner of food and non-food products, even fights over the unseen contents of storage lockers; crap that is so broadly drawn and laden with stereotypes that it feels like it jumped off the pages of MAD Magazine. Why satirize anything that’s already doing the job itself?

That was the question I asked as I watched Bobcat Goldthwait’s tedious and laugh-free GOD BLESS AMERICA. The story of the divorced, jobless, terminally ill Frank, GOD BLESS AMERICA moves to the insistent beat of the verbal and visual noise that emanates from screens that are seemingly everywhere – homes, offices, restaurants, phones. Driven to the edge by both his circumstances and the noxious narcissism, rudeness, and greed of virtually everyone around him, Frank embarks on a killing spree, picking off those he considers the worst offenders one by one.

Frank (Joel Murray, MAD MEN) makes fast friends with Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr, in her feature debut), a hyperverbal teen who resents comparisons to another loquacious adolescent, Juno. (Goldthwait has Roxy go off on a tear about Diablo Cody’s facile characters and shallow stories that sounds like nothing more than a diatribe he overheard from a disgruntled screenwriter at Starbucks) With a relationship both chaste and psychotically inappropriate, Frank and Roxy set off to track down all those they think are ruining society, including reality TV stars, noisy theater patrons, and people who use “literally” when they mean the opposite.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: A LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN (Millennium), starring Kate Hudson is available now On Demand before in theaters on May 4, 2012

A LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN
By Amy Slotnick

It is hard to make cancer funny. Many have tried -- 50/50, WHEN GOD SAID HA! and THE BIG C, come to mind. Like those, A LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN, the new film from director Nicole Kassel and screenwriter Gren Wells, succeeds with bringing levity and romance to a serious, and frightening subject.

Kate Hudson plays Marley Corbett, a successful, wildly funny and flirty advertising exec. Besides a few friends and a loyal bulldog, she lives a workaholic lifestyle, with one-night stands being a matter of course, along with regular breakfasts of Pepto Bismol. Emotions and commitment are generally kept at an arms length. So when Marley learns she has advanced stage colon cancer, it is not surprising that at first she attempts to hide and laugh at it, in order to avoid the grave meaning at all costs.

Marley’s doctor, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, is unable to resist her charm and their chemistry emerges, even when Hudson is made to look pale and drained from treatments. It takes Marley longer to open herself up to love, but when she finally does, she is all in, embracing feelings of joy along with her physical pain.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: COMIC-CON EPISODE FOUR: A FAN’S HOPE (Gravitas) .

COMIC-CON EPISODE FOUR: A FAN’S HOPE

By Chris Claro

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a new doc from stuntumentarian Morgan Spurlock. After taking on fast food in SUPERSIZE ME, terrorism in WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN, and the business of product placement in POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, Spurlock’s new film faces the final frontier, the San Diego Comic-Con. With his cameras floating amidst over 130,000 fanboys, geeks, and sci-fi mavens, Spurlock tells the buoyantly enjoyable story of the people who make an annual pilgrimage to the shrine devoted to all things comic, sci-fi, and fantasy-related.

And one of the best things to say about the film: Spurlock isn’t in it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Spurlock has made some of the most entertaining docs of the last ten years, but as it with Michael Moore’s oeuvre, Spurlock’s subject matter is often secondary to the carnival barking of its filmmaker. No matter what he is tackling, Spurlock undercuts his subject by making himself the center of attention and often comes off as tiresomely indulgent. No such problem plagues COMIC-CON EPISODE FOUR: A FAN’S HOPE and the film is better for it. Just as Spike Lee showed his faculty for a genre piece with INSIDE MAN, Spurlock proves that by remaining behind the camera, he can tell a fuller, more character-centric story.

Actually, Spurlock tells multiple stories, spotlighting a cross-section of Con attendees who represent a variety of races, ages, and genders. His through-lines are diverse and compelling, focusing on two aspiring comic artists, a costume fabricator who creates replicas of videogame characters, a Denver-based comics dealer seeking a big sale, and even a self-proclaimed “geek couple” for whom the Con will be a life-changing event.

Heartfelt, goofy, and never condescending, COMIC-CON EPISODE FOUR: A FAN’S HOPE is a buoyant look at an event where, no matter what your denomination, Trek or Galactica, you’re welcome. Spurlock highlights that camaraderie that permeates the event, which is populated by a huge cross section of ages and races. Throughout the film, Spurlock offers Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, and others to wax rhapsodic about the annual gathering as “a big reward for being passionate about something that doesn’t exist.”

Media savant T Tara Turk goes deep inside cable TV to reveal Video On Demand's Hidden Gems so even the busiest of our readers can get the most out of On Demand TV. Tell Tara what VOD shows you think deserves her attention.

DARK TIDE
In Shark Alley, Courage Runs Deep

By T. Tara Turk

I hate being conflicted over actors I love and the projects they pick. I think Halle Berry needs an intervention.

Not for her personal life, for her career. As much as I think I love drama - I like fake TV drama and not real life drama. I am not going to call it the curse of the Oscar® because I think it’s larger than that. She really might not know a good story yet she clearly pays people to figure out that out for her and yet...I for one didn’t love MONSTER’S BALL so, while I was happy and proud Halle won an Oscar, crushing an obstacle for black women that hadn’t been crushed since Hattie McDaniel’s GONE WITH THE WIND Oscar® win, I was sure that movie went along with Halle’s other project picks - in the trash.

Berry’s newest film from Lionsgate, DARK TIDE, is really no exception. BEAUTIFULLY shot (it really does look like National Geographic was behind the camera), the story doesn’t start until an hour into the film. The first part is a very long set up. Berry plays a shark diver in South Africa who experiences a tragedy early on along with her small crew consisting of a friend/crewman, her husband played by Olivier Martinez who also is her cameraman and a beloved friend/shark back-watcher (Berry and Martinez are now reported to be engaged).

This tragedy regulates Berry into being estranged from her husband for no specific reason and no longer shark diving but doing day trips out on the lovely coast of South Africa. One day, the estranged hubs comes back with a rich idiot who’s desire to get close to sharks spells trouble for everyone on the trip, including his poor son along for the ride.

The first hour aka “the long setup” is filled with awkward dialogue, a choppy plot and not as much sea footage as you’d like. There’s a random non-sequitur scene where some local kids set to find treasures in the sea in the pitch black dark knight have a crazy run-in with some sharks that will leave you kind of scratching your head. There’s some fights and some make-ups that happen between Berry and Martinez that make zero sense as we never really can tell for sure what the root of their separation is as it doesn’t seem to be the early on tragedy since everyone else involved is still around regularly except for Martinez.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH (IFC Films).

4:44 THE LAST DAY ON EARTH
By Adam Schartoff

It’s the last day of life on the planet. You’ve only got a few hours left, what do you do with that time?

It’s a terrifying thought but a provocative one as well. On the heels of Lars von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA which explores that same question but on a more transcendental level, comes Abel Ferrara’s latest movie 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH. This movie, too, explores the question of what one might do with those precious last hours and provides the most outrageous answer of all... not much.

The film, staged almost like a one-set play, takes place almost entirely inside the Downtown NYC loft of couple former addict Cisco (a superb Willem Dafoe) and artist Tina (Natasha Lyonne). The In their remaining hours, the couple make love, Skype with family and friends, order in Chinese food, make love again, argue and forgive. While outside their window some desperate events are taking place, mostly it’s just business as usual; taxis driving passengers around, people walking the sidewalks, shops open for business.

It’s an intriguing idea and Ferrara shoots New York like New Yorkers see it.

Ferrara has generally been more concerned with more extreme vistas in past films.; most notably films like KING OF NEW YORK and BAD LIEUTENANT. But since GO GO TALES came out to less than an illustrious reception (wrongly so) a few years ago, Ferrara has toned down the volume and made a couple of feature length documentaries.