The Video on Demand Report: Now With 100 Percent More ‘Human Spankipede’

Too lazy to go to a movie theater, but still want some fresh-from-the-Hollywood-meat-grinder entertainment? Good news! We’ll plumb the depths of Video on Demand so you don’t have to!

The Headliner

A Dangerous Method
Canadian master of venereal horror David Cronenberg takes it to the couch to treat further psychosexual infections. Hoping for outtakes where Freud (Viggo Mortensen), Jung (Michael Fassbender), and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) all spank each other in a triangular formation, forming a human spankipede. If you cut A Dangerous Method together with Shame, you could potentially have a movie where Michael Fassbender treats himself for his own sex addiction, and solve the whole “porn for women” thing at the same time.

New and Notable

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Maybe we should just stop trying to make “the 9/11 movie” for a while, capisce?

Camel Spiders

Desert horror about the hand-sized arachnids, starring C. Thomas Howell. Seriously, google them. (Or don’t, if you ever want to sleep again.)

Air Collision

From the IMDb comments: “There’s just so many factual and continuity errors in this so-called movie that it’s probably a great tool for amateur filmmakers to watch to get a sense of what a director should not do when making a movie.” The trailer makes it look so awesomely bad I bet it’s pretty entertaining. Starring Reginald VelJohnson, father Carl Winslow from Family Matters.

The Trouble With Bliss
As far as I can tell, Michael C. Hall just makes one face. I don’t know how to turn it into an emoticon, but just thinking about it I can feel my mouth hanging open a little and my eyes squinting slightly, as if staring off into the distance. This is a rom-com also starring Sarah Shahi, Lucy Liu, Peter Fonda, and Rhea Perlman. Does it surprise you to find out that the main character, played by Hall, is named Morris Bliss? I stopped reading after, “When he finds himself wrapped up in an awkward relationship with the sexually precocious, 18-year-old daughter of a former classmate.”

4:44 Last Day on Earth

Abel Ferrara Willem Dafoe Abel Ferrara Willem Dafoe Abel Ferrara … you get the point. If you need any more encouragement: Anita Pallenberg, Natasha Lyonne, and Paz de la motherfucking Huerta. This postapocalyptic romance looks genuinely interesting and bizarre. Director Ferrara said, “If there’s nobody to see it, I’ll watch it.” The Tom Waits sound-alike in the trailer is Francis Kuipers, former guitarist for Gregory Corso.

Brake

Stephen Dorff torture porn. (Dorffture porn.) [Ed. note: Standing ovation.]

Weird “In Theaters” VOD Pick

Dark Tide

Top Gun‘s “Cougar” (John Stockwell), who directed the surprisingly great Blue Crush and Crazy/Beautiful — as well as the very bad Into the Blue — gets back in the water. In this goofy-looking thriller, Halle Berry is tragically attracted to sharks as a “shark whisperer.” From the trailer it looks like Indecent Proposal with oceanic predators. Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez met on this movie and are currently engaged. The shark is the maid of honor.

Weird Indie of the Week

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie

To quote a friend: “It’s not very good, but occasionally great, which means it is the perfect Tim and Eric movie.”

Early VOD Premiere of the Week

Goon

A hockey comedy directed by Michael Dowse (best known for Ibiza DJ comedy It’s All Gone Pete Tong) and written by Judd Apatow player Jay Baruchel and Seth Rogen’s writing partner, Evan Goldberg. If you kept reading after “hockey comedy,” you are probably Canadian or a big fan of (all-time classic) Slap Shot, and this is definitely the movie for you! Goon has Seann William Scott punching the shit out of people, the amazing Alison Pill as a hockey-groupie version of Rocky‘s Adrian, a mustachioed Liev Schreiber as Scott’s rival, and lots of Canuck-accented head-smashing.

Masochist’s Pick

Answers to Nothing

“Against the backdrop of a missing girl case, lost souls throughout Los Angeles search for meaning and redemption and affect each other in ways they don’t always see.” Is that the description for Crash? No! It’s Dane Cook in a serious role! Opposite Juliet from Lost (Elizabeth Mitchell)! Watch Dane Cook act the shit out of lines like, “It’s been nine years. He’s never coming back. I don’t know why my mother can’t get that through her skull.” What we talk about when we talk about Dane Cook.

Filed Under: David Cronenberg, Michael Fassbender, Video On Demand

Molly Lambert is a staff writer for Grantland.

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