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: XXY (Film Movement).
Email Chris

Androgyny has long been a way for people, particularly those in the arts, to garner attention. From Quentin Crisp to Boy George to k.d. lang, presenting female as male, or vice versa, is a sure way to make people sit up, notice you, and wonder where you got that fabulous hat. But what happens when androgyny isn't about style or statement? When the confluence of male/female is visited upon a single person, is it a cosmic joke or an epic tragedy?

Lucia Penzo's XXY is a shattering meditation on our fluid definitions of gender. What makes someone male or female? Are those our only options? How does gender identity inform sexual preference? Penzo's film raises such questions and forces viewers to reconsider their perception.

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: HELLO LONESOME (Film Movement).

HELLO LONESOME, Hi On Demand
By Adam Schartoff

Three stories about isolation and the desire to connect; provocative, funny and painful all at the same time. These stories are woven together to create HELLO LONESOME, Adam Reid’s debut feature film.

In one storyline, shallow on-line gambler Gordon (Nate Smith) meets pretty Debby (Sabrina Lloyd) through an Internet dating service. Whether its Debby’s charm or her wide screen television —one’s never sure initially— it isn’t long before Gordon has moved in. When Debby discovers that she is ill, will Gordon rise to the occasion or make a dash for the door?

In a second storyline, widow Eleanor (Lynn Cohen, Magda from SEX AND THE CITY) has lost her driver’s license due to her failing vision. She ends up relying on her young single next-door neighbor, Gary (James Urbaniak) for more than just trips to the supermarket.

Lastly, aging voice over actor Bill (Harry Chase) has to talk his postal deliveryman Omar (Kamel Boutros) for social time and an overnight play date from his black book to fill the void of actual family relationships. Recording out of his built-in studio doesn’t help his sense of claustrophobia, even though he lives in the middle of the woods.

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: KAREN CRIES ON THE BUS (Film Movement).

KAREN CRIES ON THE BUS - Colombian Cinema On Demand
A simple, eloquent story that smashes stereotypes…
By Cynthia Kane

It’s rare in the U.S. that we get to see fiction films from Colombia – even rarer stories from Colombia that don’t depict drug cartels, the FARC, paramilitary groups, etc. In fact, the first time I screened KAREN CRIES ON THE BUS, I knew little to nothing about what I was going to watch and I spent way too much time wondering where I was, which country, which city in Latin America.

I was stunned to find myself in Bogota, Colombia. I felt absolutely guilty and watched it again immediately to focus on the story.

All that aside, this is a beautiful, simple, yet eloquent story with tremendous performances – in some ways it’s more of a character portrait than a story with great action. Meaning story arc does not loom large, but the characters will stay with you for a long time.

Angela Carrizosa is Karen, a woman in her mid-30’s who has really, really lost herself; a woman absolutely suffocated by the upper middle class life she leads. She flees her boring, repressive life and belittling, macho husband, Mario (Edgar Alexen) like a dying creature gasping for its last breath. For her it’s flight or cease to exist. And though she flees crying on a bus – one wonders if it’s the first time she’s ever been on a bus – and lands in a filthy, low rent hotel in part of the city that may – or may not – be familiar to her, there’s a sense that she just might make it and survive, because she’s taken this first, brave step.

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: THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER (Film Movement).

THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER
There’s a reason why it’s a long journey home...
By Cynthia Kane

Based on a celebrated Israeli novel by A. B. Yehoshua, “A Woman in Jerusalem”, THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER – or as the title is known in Hebrew, THE MISSION OF THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER - is an intricately woven, absurdist, tragic-comedy that feels as equally Israeli in its dark humor as it does Eastern European, tying the past to the present and then more.

One feels the historical connection what once was - although this and the Arab-Israeli conflict that propels the film’s beginning is never discussed or mentioned. Yet it adds to the allegorical essence of this “small” but significant film by Israeli filmmaker, Eran Riklis (LEMON TREE, THE SYRIAN BRIDE). To be honest, I do not know Riklis’ other films, but after watching this, I will seek them out on (on Netflix… or MUBI.com, Film Movement or wherever they may be available…)

The story is simple, and it’s not. The year is 2002. An immigrant worker, a Christian woman from an unnamed Eastern European country (it becomes clear via the language that it’s Romania – and indeed a good deal of the film was shot there in the Carpathian Mountains) has been killed in a suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem. Her name is Yulia Petracke and the authorities find a paycheck on the body, the only identity she has, then track her to a large, industrial, family-owned bakery.

When a angry punk journalist (Guri Alfi) from a tabloid writes a scathing article about the bakery connecting it to her death and the abandonment of the body, the Human Resources Manager (Mark Ivanir) is given the grueling task to find out exactly why no one has noticed her absence and why no one has claimed her body at the morgue. It seems she hadn’t even been working for some weeks at the bakery, but the night shift supervisor, in love with her and had to fire her when his wife discovered their affair , had agreed to keep her on the payroll until she found something else.