Here are two films that dropped recently. Love Lies Bleeding is a visceral, disturbing movie that will likely be hidden from cinemas here. At the same time, Unfrosted is a direct-to-Netflix release and, hopefully, doesn’t permanently tarnish the comedic reputation of Jerry Seinfeld.

Love Lies Bleeding (Amazon Prime on Demand) - This comes from British director Rose Glass, who previously gave us the disturbing Saint Maud, and this new one could be described as her ‘dirty Western’, her filming in the USA and coming up with an LGBTQ version of Breaking Bad. There’s a multi-generational crime family, the daughter’s attempt to carve her own identity as a gym manager, and the overreaching shadow of her despicable father. Caught in between all this is the woman who heads to the gym to train, as she’s an ambitious, professional female bodybuilder. Kristen Stewart takes on the role of Lou, the reclusive gym manager, while Katy M. O’Brian is Jackie, the bodybuilder. Ed Harris’s portrayal of Lou, Sr., is a once-in-a-lifetime take on seedy, immoral, and disgusting - and we can’t stop watching him. 

In vicious, bloody detail, there are people shot; there are grotesque wounds and disturbing sound effects - welcome back to the world of Rose Glass. And yet, while Saint Maud was full of sorrow and despair, Love Lies Bleeding has pitch-black humor and an almost funny forced optimism. There is a fixation on flesh, but it comes in many forms and interpretations. Set in 1989, we don’t really ‘see’ Jackie until we see her through Lou's eyes and what Jackie represents to her. The blossoming affair happens quickly and intensifies, and at some point, we’re not even sure about the motives of the two - but how passionate and intense they are, and we wait to see how this will implode and set against the father and his machinations. This film features a surfeit of smoke and sweat, and it helps channel the sinister atmosphere. It's not a pretty film, but it's riveting to watch.

Unfrosted (Netflix) - It is time to examine how Netflix green-lights these special films that they drop occasionally. For many of them, it seems they’re lit purely on the strength of the name attached to it. Adam Sandler has done equal Hits and Misses for the streaming platform, while Kevin Hart is definitely on the more miss-than-hit side of the equation. And now we have the comeback of Jerry Seinfeld, whose pedestal position in the august chamber of TV comedy is in for a bad landing, thanks to this misguided satirical origin story. Unfrosted is supposed to be the story behind the pop tart and how, back in the 1960s, there was a breakfast cereal war between Kellogg’s and Post. As corporate rivals, the ‘war’ was real and is part of the historical record. But as dramatized here, it’s all hot air, if not air that carries a foul odor. 

Jerry Seinfeld directs and co-writes. If you loved his TV series, the Jerry Seinfeld Show, I’d stay far away from this movie. It boasts many veteran comedians and some names of actors and actresses. No doubt, the call from Seinfeld carries weight, and all these actors and comedians were ready to contribute to the film. But you’ll soon find there wasn’t much of a script to hang this film on and even fewer funny lines to make us forget that an actual script doesn’t exist. It doesn’t even serve as an origin story in the manner that we were given the Flaming Cheetos or BlackBerry last year. While taking on the cultural phenomena of the past, they also told interesting stories and had people who captured our interest. This one is structured like The Princess Bride but lacks charm or wit.