Hollywood Punks and Hippie Scientists: New VOD Movies to Stream This Weekend

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out With Hollywood on hold during the COVID-19 shutdown, and many movies moving to VOD (or hitting VOD early), we've got a mini streaming round-up for you here, offering up quick bite reviews for three notable films hitting digital this weekend. The first is a musical adaptation the cult '80s film Valley Girl, starring Happy Death Day's Jessica Rothe and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Chloe Bennet. It's a movie that sat on the shelf for a while due to the 2018 controversy surrounding YouTube star Logan Paul, who appears in the film as Rothe's jock boyfriend. Though delayed, it was still planned as a theatrical release (and even played at some drive-in theaters on Friday). Now however, it's ready for you at home. The second film, Arkansas, is a quirky Elmore Leonard/Tarantino-esque neo-noir from Hot Tub Time Machine's Clark Duke, who makes his directorial debut while also co-starring and co-writing. Liam Hemsworth, Eden Brolin, John Malkovich and Vince Vaughn also headline. The third slice of streaming is the documentary Spaceship Earth, which recounts the wondrous and wild Biosphere 2 experiment from the early '90s in a way that might satisfy those looking for another "truth is stranger than fiction" story to satiate their need for out-there exploits post-Tiger King. The film also takes viewers inside one of history's most notable voluntary quarantines, as the eight individuals agreed to remove themselves from society and live  in a dome for two years. [poilib element="accentDivider"]

Valley Girl

• VOD Date: May 8
• Available on Amazon, GooglePlay, Vudu, YouTube, Apple, Redbox, FandangoNOW, Xbox, and other local cable and/or satellite providers.

2020's Valley Girl may feel juiced-up when compared to the original 1983 Nic Cage/Deborah Foreman movie it's based on, but all the dancing and hullabaloo makes for a sweet and lively romance that's accentuated by fun performances. Jessica Rothe and Poldark's Josh Whitehouse -- as the stylish Encino mallrat and angry abandoned punk who fall in love -- work well together and help create a nice emotional spine that supports a bevy of throwback hits - ranging from Madonna's "Material Girl" to The Go-Go's "We Got the Beat" to The Cure's "Boys Don't Cry." The musical aspects of this star-crossed caper land with vivid enthusiasm and the frame of the film, which resembles The Princess Bride, as a mother (Alicia Silverstone) shares the story of first true love with her teen daughter, gives us a nice narrative reason to revisit the '80s as we watch everything unfold as a totally tubular flashback. Guest spots from Judy Greer, Rob Huebel, Randall Park, and Thomas Lennon (who appears as legendary KROQ DJ Rodney Bingheimer!) add some pep to the steps while cameos from original Valley Girls E.G. Daily and Heidi Holicker act as a whimsical wink to fans of the first film. Heck, you can count this now as a notable cameo too as 2020 quarantine star Mary Neely, who reenacted a ton of famous musicals on Twitter while self-isolation, is in here too as a dorky classmate. If you're looking for a spirited diversion while holed up at home, Valley Girl is a great pick. SCORE: 8.0 [poilib element="accentDivider"]

Arkansas

• VOD Date: May 8
• Available on Amazon, GooglePlay, Vudu, YouTube, FandangoNOW, Apple, Xbox, and other local cable and/or satellite providers

Arkansas isn't without merit. It never quite takes flight, but as an oddball, relaxed-fit Cornbread Mafia movie, it has a few surprises up its sleeve. Its blood pressure never gets too high as everything, including the violence, plays out in a very matter-of-fact manner, which brings to mind the pacing employed by indie fables like Sling Blade, One False Move, and even S. Craig Zahler's Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete. The latter two, of course, also star Vince Vaughn, who seems to have found his later-career niche as a low-level lowlife. You can include his role in Season 2 of True Detective here too. Arkansas never fully grabs you on an emotional level, or even offers up anything ultimately clever enough to laud, but it works on some very basic surrogate family levels as Liam Hemsworth's laconic sociopath and director Clark Duke's verbose sleaze just sort of "exist" their way through a career as drug runners for a mystery kingpin named Frog. Coen Brothers and Tarantino-lite happenstance occur all around them as a parade of famous faces -- like Vaughn, John Malkovich, Vivica A. Fox, and Michael Kenneth Williams -- enter and exit the scene as pawns and players in a very hodgepodge drug trade. Eden Brolin (daughter of Josh) makes a nice showing here, in one of her first major film roles (with famous faces, that is), as a local nurse who fall for Duke's character, Swin. There's a lazy melancholy heart underneath Arkansas. The film, while slight in all the wrong places, still leaves you with something even though it never settles on an overall message. SCORE: 6.0 [poilib element="accentDivider"]

Spaceship Earth

• VOD Date: May 8
• Available on Hulu and Apple

About thirty minutes into Spaceship Earth, which boasts a certain sect of (successful) '60s counter-culture "weirdos" at its core, one begins to marvel at the driving spirit and ingenuity of John Allen, and the rest of the Synergia collective, in his efforts in ecology and engineering. The Biosphere 2 project from 1991 -- the fantastical research facility that became a pop-culture phenomenon, and eventually a media punchline (which includes 1996's Bio-Dome, starring Pauly Shore) -- was done, ostensibly, to see if humans could set up habitation on other planets. But at its core was a desire to solve Earth's many human-caused ecological problems in the here and now. Biosphere 2 was a noble project that fell apart due to a myriad of reasons. Spaceship Earth may not have the sensational, or criminal, aspects of Netflix's Tiger King, but it's still am intriguing look at a mostly-forgotten about chapter of scientific history. With so many now discussing the possibly colonization of Mars, it's important to look back at how Biosphere 2 failed...because it wasn't allowed to be a failure. The whole purpose of Biosphere 2, which still remains the largest closed system ever created, was to learn. No one expected a home run during a first at-bat, but the more the media latched onto it, and hubris took over, the more it was going to be a categoric failure if it wasn't a 100% success. It was meant to teach but so many, too many, glommed onto the sensational sci-fi aspects of it. Spaceship Earth, as a documentary, is a gentle ride. It's always interesting but it also never peaks or crescendos. You'll meet a lot of very "lost" theater boobs (some with kooky nicknames), who bounced from job to job, purpose to purpose, until they fell into a community of dreamers and, most importantly, doers. Then there are the eight who volunteered to live inside Biosphere 2 for two years. A group of excited pioneers who succumbed to the worst aspects of isolation, and the dangerous aspects malnourished and oxygen-starved while in isolation. It hits home for all those currently self-distancing and hiding themselves away during the pandemic. SCORE: 7.0 [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=new-movies-coming-to-vod-early&captions=true"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

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