Streaming Recommendations for the Week of July 24th
Donnie Yen Travels Through Time While JCVD Gets Artsy-Woozy
Hi!
It’s Wednesday and while I don’t celebrate New Comic Book Day anymore—in this economy??—I do respect humpday. We’re halfway through the week, though *some of us* work on Sundays. Point being, you might perhaps like some streaming recommendations before the weekend takes over. That’s a service I can provide. This week’s tips are mostly action stuff, but don’t worry, I’ve got some surprises for you…
-The Bouncer (on Prime Video): Easily one of my favorite of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s recent vehicles, partly because it’s so unlike the others (I also like Jean-Claude Van Johnson, his meta-comedy series, also on Prime). When I interviewed JCVD, he spoke highly of his collaborations with Hong Kong filmmaker Ringo Lam, mostly because Lam took him seriously as an actor. In The Bouncer, Van Damme gets to do a lot of backting, as my friend Sheila O’Malley might say. The Bouncer is mostly a character study about a middle-aged scrapper who just wants to take care of his kid. It’s an artsy-woozy mood piece that makes me wish more Euro-action filmmakers watched the Dardenne brothers’ movies.
-Iceman (Prime Video): Oh, man, The Iceman! I have a very soft spot for Donnie Yen’s remake of The Iceman Cometh, the 1989 Yuen Biao time travel action rom-com, mostly because it’s a bit nutty. Iceman’s a two-part time travel action-adventure that puts Yen to better use than many of his other recent movies just because it lets him be a little goofy and more than a little weird. I mean, the man’s traveling through time to seek Linga, the Hindu god Shiva’s penis. That and three traitorous childhood friends, but let’s not lose track of what’s important here, people—Shiva’s penis. Anyway, I love a vanity project that soars well past normal logic and lands in its own category of weird-ness. Don’t bother with the sequel. It’s not worth your…time…
-Kuyang (Netflix): Kuyang stands out among this year’s ever-rising wave of new Indonesian horror movies, not least because it’s atmospheric and creepy despite a glaring plot twist and some janky computer graphics. It follows a married couple, a school teacher and his pregnant wife, and the disembodied krasue that haunts them. A krasue is a Southeast Asian spirit that floats around without its head; its guts and internal organs trail behind it like a kite’s tail. I haven’t seen too many krasue in recent Indonesian horror movies, but Trinil (also on Netflix), my other favorite Indonesian horror movie from this year, also features one. Both it and Kuyang are pretty eerie and relentless.
-Skin Trade (Prime Video): it’s Tony Jaa and Dolph Lundgren against a human trafficking ring, whaddya want, a road map?
-This Closeness (Mubi): Happy to have stumbled into this intimate, well-observed indie drama about an ASMR specialist (writer/director Kit Zauhar) and her callous boyfriend (Zane Pais), who stay at an Airbnb, and form an awkward, glancing relationship with their host’s gawky roommate (Ian Edlund). I was pretty charmed by the uniformly strong ensemble cast, including Jessie Pinnick as the boyfriend’s overly familiar childhood friend, as well as Zauhar’s knack for naturalistic-ish post-mumblecore dialogue. The ending’s a bit soft and the ASMR scenes drag a little, but beyond that, this is pretty charming.
I don’t have any reviews or articles this week, mostly because I’ve been focusing on hitting back-to-back-to-back deadlines for blu-ray supplements. The Criterion Collection still hasn’t called me up, somehow, but I have recently been providing some audio commentaries (and a booklet essay) for Vinegar Syndrome…the next one that you can check out is about The Sadness, the 2021 grossout Taiwanese pandemic chiller. I recorded an audio commentary for that movie, whose new 4K blu-ray release seems to be pretty popular. I also reviewed The Sadness a couple of years ago for Roger Ebert dot com. Amazon says that you can still pre-order Vinegar Syndrome’s blu-ray, in case you didn’t pick it up when it went on sale last month. It’s out this upcoming Tuesday, the 30th, so get in there!
I might write another post later this week, but let’s see. In the meantime, feel free to ask me (almost) anything and keep spreading the good word. We’ve already got our first paid subscribers, for which I’m grateful. But we could always use more!