The week of April 2nd is fairly light in terms of new Blu-ray releases, so I'm splitting the column into two categories: B-movie thrillers and B-movie comedies. Onto the thrillers - the most interesting title is Jamie Dagg's Sweet Virginia, which Shout Factory is releasing. It's a modest, small-scale little noir, to be sure, but it's also much better than its limited release and VOD-showing might suggest. Jon Bernthal, in the best performance he's ever given, stars as an Alaskan motel owner trying to rebuild his life after his time as a rodeo rider. That's easier said than done - Bernthal moves with the uneasy lumber of a person who's taken one too many falls, and in a brilliant touch, his hands shake with early-onset Parkinson's. At its best, Sweet Virginia has this kind of fine-grained character detail, and I do think I'd prefer a version of this tale that just followed Bernthal's broken athlete through his day-to-day grind. At least when blood spills, it comes in unpredictable jolts (Dagg has a great sense for staging suspense) and courtesy of Chris Abbott, who is as terrifying here (as a very bad man that drops into Bernthal's orbit) as he was obnoxious on HBO's Girls. And Sweet Virginia looks even better when you compare it to Tim Hunter's Looking Glass, which Momentum Pictures is dumping after its VOD showing. Hunter is an interesting cat: he began his career working on the terrific teen dramas Over the Edge, Tex, and River's Edge, and since then he's become a kind of prestige TV auteur, directing episodes of such high-quality fare as Twin Peaks, Homicide, Carnivŕle, Deadwood, American Horror Story, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men. But he can't do much to save this tired caper, which watches as a grieving couple (Nicolas Cage and Robin Tunney) heads out to the desert and buys a hotel for a fresh start, only to then discover the building's far more nefarious history. Other than Psycho, the apex in the "twisted motel" subgenre is probably Nimród Antal's underrated Vacancy, and I assumed Looking Glass would be following in its footsteps. Nope - what we get aspires for salacious more than thrilling yet satisfies neither quality. And Cage doesn't help. We get precious few flashes of the man who made Vampire's Kiss or Adaptation (or the soon-to-be-released Mandy, which is awesome); the "just cashing a paycheck" star of Inconceivable rolled into the Looking Glass set, apparently.
That said, even a high-quality encode can't fix a problematic movie, and Kino is releasing three mediocre B-movie comedies. As much as we venerate comedy writer-producer-director Judd Apatow today, his path to success was not a smooth one, and films like Celtic Pride demonstrate why. Maybe his original screenplay was more interesting, and to be fair, I'd be down for a look at the perils of sports fandom in Boston, Massachusetts. However, Apatow (and co-writer Colin Quinn, so, again: these people should know better) blow that idea with a beyond-misbegotten kidnapping farce after two Celtics superfans (Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern, convincing as neither Bostoners nor Celtics fans) abduct the star player (Damon Wayans) from the rival Utah Jazz. The jokes just aren't there, and what little funny there is finds no assistance (ha ha) from Tom DeCerchio's leaden approach to shooting comedy. I think Celtic Pride might be a hair better than the other Wayans-starring basketball comedy this week, if only because the fantasy setup of The 6th Man is trite and obvious. Damon Wayans' brother Marlon plays a basketball player whose more talented brother (Kadeem Hardison) dies, and then the brother's ghost possesses Wayans and causes all kinds of shenanigans, and it plays out exactly as you might expect. I adore All of Me, but if its existence means we have to suffer through bland retreads like this one, count me out. However, I'd watch The 6th Man on a loop for a week if it meant I could wish the gross comedy My Father the Hero out of existence. The film is based off an old Francis Veber script, and if you're a fan of the great '80s All Over podcast (and really - you should be), you know that you should avoid Veber like he's irradiated waste. So it goes with My Father the Hero, which centers around the wacky misadventures of a father (Gérard Depardieu) and his teenage daughter (Katherine Heigl, looking far younger than her sixteen years) on vacation: see, she wants to look older to impress a boy, so she pretends that her father is her lover. Read that underlined part again, and get back to me when you've stopped vomiting. That's the one joke of this gross movie, repeated ad nauseum for your "amusement." Thank you, Mr. Veber!
Of Celtic Pride, Brian Orndorf wrote that "there's a pure idea in the fanaticism Mike [Stern] and Jimmy [Aykroyd] share for their hometown basketball team, and Celtic Pride bleeds Boston, having fun with the volatile nature of local team supporters as they gather in the Boston Garden for one last run at a championship inside an historic arena. Apatow embraces the combustibility of such an occasion, and he exaggerates playfully, turning the lead characters into frightfully superstitious fans who want nothing more than a trophy to call their own, taking the Celtics and their ups and downs with the utmost seriousness. They're Garden institutions, making sure to kiss walls and rearrange seats due to the game schedule, and Jimmy even has an admirer in a hot dog vendor who keeps his buns toasty. "Celtic Pride" carries lightly with its introductions, and there's plenty to work with when observing men who've devoted their entire lives to the sporting performance of others, fighting to be part of something they truly have nothing to do with. At least Apatow makes an effort to grasp the emptiness of such a pursuit, with Mike facing the end of his marriage due to his maniacal appreciation of professional sports. Instead of following through on the ridiculousness of super-fandom, Celtic Pride becomes a kidnapping comedy, and not an effective one. The plot soon turns its attention to Mike and Jimmy's efforts to outdrink Lewis [Wayans], showing up at a nightclub and pretending to be Jazz fans to get close to their target (the film's lone bit of hilarity comes with an unfortunately timed run-in with Larry Bird). Their mission is a success, but most of the movie details Lewis's imprisonment, with the no-nonsense basketball star trying to outwit his captors, even trying to talk Jimmy into shooting himself with a gun. There should be jokes everywhere, but DeCerchio prefers dim slapstick and argumentative encounters, making the picture more about noise than timing"