2012 in film: Pre-Theatrical VOD goes mainstream...

This will be the first in a series of essays detailing 'the year in film', spotlighting certain trends (mostly positive, I'm taking a break from complaining for a bit) of the nearly finished year.  Obviously I can't amass a best-of list until I see a few more alleged gems, mainly Les Miserables and Django Unchained, but I can start a retrospective of the movie year that was 2012.   

Normally when a film opens with $3,181 on three screens it's considered a pretty big flop.  Yet this past weekend saw the theatrical release of the surprisingly very good Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, which marked the proverbial end of a seemingly successful run on pre-theatrical video on demand.  I say 'seemingly' because studios aren't yet releasing the proverbial grosses of films on this format, even ones that debut on VOD prior to theatrical release (Bachelorette made news as the top iTunes download on its opening week, but we have yet to know how much money that is).  It's release followed on the heels of Barry Levinson's The Bay, which is quite frankly the scariest American horror film I have seen since Frank Darabont's The Mist.  It opened in theaters and VOD on the same day and earned a whopping $30,000 during a two-week theatrical run.  Following the somewhat surprising VOD performance of Margin Call, which debuted day-and-date in theaters and VOD and rang up decent numbers on both formats (the $3.5 million picture earned $16 million worldwide in theaters), 2012 has seen an explosion of pre-theatrical and/or day-and-date theatrical/VOD content like never before. The sheer amount of content, relatively high-quality content, available on VOD amounts to a second film release schedule.

Review: ATM (2012) is a lean genre exercise that does its business and sprints.

ATM

2012
90 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

ATM isn't high art and it's not even great trash.  But it has a clever set-up, somewhat relatable characters, and a lean efficiency that I frankly admired.  This is a movie that does exactly what it sets out to do and then gets the hell outta Dodge.  It is too short to wear out its welcome, and director David Brooks gets a surprising scope out what is basically a single-location horror picture.  While the main characters are not quite as smart as they should be, the film operates less on watching how they react to the core conflict but more on making we, the audience, ask what we would do if confronted by the specific situation.  On that note, it is a moderate success.

Review: Kill List (2012) is an experiment in genre-switch that fails to truly engage.

Kill List
2012
95 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Ben Wheatly's Kill List suffers from the believe that it is far more clever and original than it actually is.  It earns points for not exactly beginning and ending in the same genre, but the journey is frankly not worth the destination.  The film is technically a dime-a-dozen crime story about a hit man trying to do a job under trying circumstances.  Where it goes in the third act I will not reveal (although don't look too closely at the poster), but the majority of the film is taken up by somewhat cliched characters and relatively unengaging drama  Only the uncommonly gruesome violence, delivered in a clinical and brutal fashion, serves to distinguish the picture.  Even the third-act turn, while somewhat organic and slightly clever, loses points for eventually ending in an almost identical fashion to another 'extreme' horror drama from last year.

Review: The Human Centipede II (2011) - I get the joke, but it's still boring.

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
2011
85 minutes
Not Rated

by Scott Mendelson

I get the joke.  Really, I do.  I get that Tom Six has made an 'up yours' movie that is basically an attack against everyone who had anything to say about the first Human Centipede (review). It sticks its tongue out at those who thought the film was grotesque and morally offensive.  It reams those who were upset at how much of the violence was suggested or off screen.  It mocks those who called it a grand piece of art, finding hidden meanings and symbolic complexities that arguably were never there in the first place.  It is a meta-film, an overt post-modernist commentary on the series, the nature of sequels, and the horror genre itself, as well as those who make and watch them.  That's nice, but The Human Centipede II is a genuinely boring and ultimately obnoxious motion picture.  Despite some genuine attempts of some kind of social commentary unto itself, the film remains only worth seeing purely for the sake of saying that you've seen it.  

How Kevin Smith's Red State could have been the new face of Video On Demand.

There are people with stronger feelings one way or another about Kevin Smith than I. I loved Clerks II and Dogma, hated Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, liked Clerks and Chasing Amy, and I have yet to see Mallrats, Zack and Miri Make A Porno, Jersey Girl or Cop Out. So I'm not going to get terribly worked up over the hurt feelings allegedly inspired by Smith's decision to distribute Red State in the classic Road Show style (sometimes called 'four-walling'), taking the film around the country as if it were a traveling circus attraction. It would seem that Smith is, if anything, guilty of announcing a perfectly-okay personal choice in a manner that put him in a most negative light. Similar to James's press-conference last summer, Smith basically failed at that whole 'tact' thing. James had every right to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers after seven years, but the self-aggrandizing press-conference probably wasn't the best way to go about it. Same thing here: if Smith wanted to turn his film into some kind of sideshow exhibit, then more power to him. But perhaps the Sundance Film Festival wasn't the best place to criticize the various means of distribution for smaller films (while showing a token amount of ignorance about how smaller films are marketed), especially after (allegedly) implying that the film was going to be put up for sale following the first screening last night. More importantly, even if much of the fanboy criticism of Smith was truly overblown, Kevin Smith doesn't realize that he missed out on the chance to truly be a pioneer.