Kneel Before VOD: June 6th
Welcome to Kneel Before VOD, where the latest offerings on various video-on-demand platforms are highlighted for your streaming pleasure. With so many options these days from a range of different services, it can be daunting to select just one film without ending up making a list of a couple dozen. Below, find what we've selected as great entertainment choices to keep things simple.
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
The live-action Disney Musical Cinematic Universe gets its second entry after 2015's Cinderella. The adaptation of the 1991 animated classic mostly stays true to the source, telling the story of Belle, a young woman who is kidnapped and held in a fancy castle, full of magical talking fixtures, by the Beast, and the two ultimately fall in love despite his horrid exterior. The lavish musical numbers and well-done CGI impress, but the additional subplots make for an overall less tight experience than the original. (Check out Manish Mathur's review here.)
Land of Mine (2015)
Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee Land of Mine hits US home video this week. The Denmark production tells the true story of a group of young German POWs being forced to rid a beach of thousands of landmines after the war has ended. The Second World War has been well documented through film, but this drama finds a new angle, an important untold chapter in history that uses its riveting setting to teach lessons that still ring true to this day.
Netflix: Catwoman (2004)
So, you're fresh out of the theatre seeing the great Wonder Woman and want to see a bad female-led superhero movie, what do you do? Netflix has your back. Catwoman is an enigma. The plot is horrendous, by and large the acting is laughable, and the action scenes are confusingly filmed, playing out like a bad early 2000s music video. Halle Berry has exactly what it takes to play the cunning, sexy anti-hero we know from the comics, but this film throws all that out the window to cast her as a shy woman brought back from the dead by Egyptian cats and tasks her with fighting against an evil Sharon Stone and her makeup product that horribly dries out your skin if you stop using it.
Also Streaming: Mean Girls, Jackass: The Movie, Zodiac, The Sixth Sense, Full Metal Jacket, Young Frankenstein, 13 Going on 30, Rounders.
HBO Go/Now: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Tim Burton once again provides a fantastically dark and visually beautiful landscape for a children's film. When young Jacob discovers that he has the ability to see otherwise invisible monsters, he finds the titular Home that provides a safe space for kids with paranormal powers just like him, and gets hunted by a group of evildoers attempting to achieve immortality by consuming the "Peculiar" children's eyeballs. The effects vary from impressive to lackluster, and the action is sure to not thrill anyone above a certain age, but it's worth watching for its inventiveness and to see another stellar performance from the underrated Eva Green.
Amazon Prime: Blue Velvet (1986)
After discovering a severed ear in a field, Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) sets out with Sandy (Laura Dern) to solve the case. The search leads to nightclub singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), who is wrapped up with insane gas-sniffing, sex-maniac Frank (Dennis Hopper), who has kidnapped her family and forces her to have sex with him. The provocative, disturbing movie is one of David Lynch's best works, and it's the perfect time to watch it if the Twin Peaks revival has you on a Lynch kick.
Also Streaming: Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, The Matrix, Apocalypse Now, Aeon Flux, Magnolia, Over the Top, City of God, Gone Baby Gone, Girl Most Likely, Arbitrage, I Am Not Your Negro, De-Lovely.
