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: THEY’RE OUT OF THE BUSINESS (IFC Films).

THEY’RE OUT OF THE BUSINESS Looks For Biz On Demand
By Chris Claro

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the early 90s, when the indie film sandbox was filled with boys named Quentin, Kevin, Spike, and of course, Eric. “Eric who?” you ask. Why, Eric Schaeffer, of course. The heir apparent to Woody Allen – in his own fevered imagination, anyway – Schaeffer’s niche was the New York-based comedy, in which the lovably neurotic, Upper West Side Jew, almost always portrayed by Schaeffer, contemplated life, love, and his own supposedly rakish charm.

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: THE PERFECT HOST (Magnolia Pictures).

On Demand Welcomes THE PERFECT HOST
By Chris Claro

Though they’re still around today, via such networks as Lifetime, Hallmark, and SyFy, the made-for-TV movie had its heyday in the 1970s. B-level features that ran anywhere from 70 to 95 minutes, TV movies had the feel of the lower half of a double bill. With their pulpy plots and recognizable character actors, they were junk food, a cinematic bag of Bugles with special guest star Dick Van Patten.

As I watched THE PERFECT HOST, I was transported back to the days of my nerdy youth, when, on many a Saturday night, stuck in a three-network hell, I consumed thousands of those empty TV-movie calories.

A tight little comic thriller that – almost – moves quickly enough to leap over its fairly prodigious plot holes, David Hyde-Pierce is the eponymous character, an effete Angeleno named Warwick who is putting the finishing touches on a dinner party in anticipation of the arrival of his guests. After John, a crook on the run from the police, ingratiates his way into Warwick’s house, each man employs wits and will to maintain dominance over the other.

Hyde-Pierce is one of those truly talented actors who can disappear into a role and make the audience forget his eleven-year stint as fussy Niles on FRASIER. His slow, deliberate revelation of what drives Warwick is one of the film’s biggest pluses. Swishy one minute, menacing the next, Hyde-Pierce calibrates his performance for maximum laughs.

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:  SALVATION BOULEVARD (IFC)

Can Pierce Brosnan Save SALVATION BOULEVARD?
By Chris Claro

George Ratliff’s SALVATION BOULEVARD is a madcap, scattershot comedy that makes a block party of the hypocrisy-filled confluence of big business and big religion. Starring Pierce Brosnan as a charismatic preacher who believes only in himself, Jennifer Connelly as a parishioner who believes too much, Ed Harris as a writer who believes nothing, Greg Kinnear as a guy who doesn’t know what to believe, and Marisa Tomei as a Deadhead who doesn’t remember what she believes, SALVATION BOULEVARD has star power to burn.

With strong supporting turns from Ciaran Hinds (ROME) as Connelly’s skeptical father, and Jim Gaffigan (AWAY WE GO) as Brosnan’s lackey, Ratliff’s film avoids cheap shots at religion in favor of a “Wrong Man” scenario that sends Kinnear pinballing hither and yon to clear himself of a murder rap.

With a cast like that, you can’t go wrong, right? Well, no. Some of the biggest comedy bombs of all time have had a Murderers’ Row of stars that couldn’t save them. Look at the runaway train that was TOWN AND COUNTRY, with Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Garry Shandling. Or check out Shandling’s own Mike Nichols-directed debacle, WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM, which featured the aforementioned Kinnear as well as Annette Bening, John Goodman, and Ben Kingsley. As these titles and other prove, despite able casting, comedy can’t fly without a serviceable script.

So it is with SALVATION BOULEVARD. Taking its title – and little else – from the novel by Larry Beinhart, who also authored WAG THE DOG, the film’s preposterousness is trying. When Carl Vanderveer (Kinnear) sees Brosnan’s Pastor Dan Day shoot atheist Paul Blaylock, (Harris), it clumsily triggers a schematic narrative that puts Carl on the road to clearing his name and questioning his faith.

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: FLYPAPER (IFC Films).

FLYPAPER - On Demand
By Amy Slotnick

FLYPAPER is a hybrid that combines the heist film genre with comedy, in which two teams of bank robbers descend on the same bank at the same time, while the bank’s security system is down for several hours of upgrade.

The bank robbing teams are opposites - one is a group of sleek, seasoned criminals with the equipment and experience to do the job, and the other is a pair of hillbillies who lack any clue as to what they are doing. The two groups resolve to work together and share the hostages, who include Patrick Dempsey as a charismatic savant, and Ashley Judd, as a practical and beautiful bank teller.

As people begin to be mysteriously killed, Dempsey’s character pieces together that another burglar with his/her own agenda exists among them. Like in an Agatha Christie story, he is able to solve the whodunit by process of elimination. However the plot has some holes and lacks suspense and believability.

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: TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL (Magnet Releasing)

Click Here For On Demand Weekly's Exclusive Interview With Director Eli Craig

TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL On Demand
By Chris Claro

Rare is the truly original idea. With virtually every movie pitched as a mashup of two (or more) established properties – “It’s AMERICAN BEAUTY meets THE BOURNE IDENTITY” – it isn’t often that a film shows a glimmer of originality.

Paradoxically, TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL,

a film that takes on the tropes of hillbilly slasher films

and turns them on their bloody ear,

is one of the freshest and funniest films to come along in a while.

Full of all the expected chainsaws, wood chippers, and obnoxious college students, the film mixes gore and comedy to tell a story about how appearances can deceive. Seemingly stereotypical hillbillies Dale (Tyler Labine, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) and Tucker (Alan Tudyk, FIREFLY) want nothing more than to fix up Tucker’s cabin in peace and quiet. But a series of misunderstandings and overreactions sets off a chain of bloody slayings that upend expectations and turn the victims into their own worst enemies.

Throughout, director Eli Craig – son of Sally Field – makes the most of what was clearly a shoestring budget to twist the clichés of the form in much the same way that John Landis did thirty years ago with AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. By casting a knowing eye toward the hoary devices of the rural horror flick – nubile skinny-dippers, campfire ghost stories, graphic deaths – Craig, as Landis had before him, tweaks the genre while maintaining its traditions.

The screenplay, by Craig and Morgan Jurgenson, is predicated on the idea that people – and movies, for that matter – shouldn’t be judged solely on their looks. In subverting the expectations of the audience by inverting the conventions of the film, Craig and Jurgenson offer a kind of meta commentary on thirty years’ worth of slasher flicks.

Universal Pictures' comedy film BRIDESMAIDS is now the most-ordered video on demand title of all time, with over 4.8 million rentals in just over four months of release, according to Rentrak's OnDemand Essentials.

BRIDESMAIDS has grossed over $24 million in VOD revenue since it debuted in September and $40 million domestically with all digital transactions accounted.

BRIDESMAIDS was one of Universal’s biggest hits of 2011 and the highest grossing R-rated female comedy of all time. The film grossed over $288 million at the worldwide box office during its theatrical run and continues to dominate the home video charts with over $100 million in Blu-ray and DVD sales in the U.S.
 

What movie on demand is #2? How much money have the rest of the Top 10 most rented movies on demand made? We don't know. It's not available. Now if only the Movie On Demand providers and Rentrak would publish all of the VOD results so we could compare accordingly and not read this in a vacuum.

Kudos to Universal for sharing this information.