WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM | APRIL 29 - MAY 5, 2021 | 23
SCREEN TIME
NEW ON DVD
Jim Keogh
The pandemic doldrums can be felt, with just one in DVD release of note for the week of April 27. “Vanquish”: Filmed in 2020 amid the pandemic, Morgan Freeman stars as Damon, a retired police offi cer who blackmails Victoria (Ruby Rose), his caretaker with a hidden special set of skills, to eliminate the gangsters who have dirt on him. In his review for the Star Tribune, critic Chris Hewitt said the crime thriller “is an example of the sort of pandemic-friendly fi lmmaking that, for a while, it looked like we were going to be stuck with but hopefully won’t be.” While praising the fi lm’s leads, Hewitt notes that “Vanquish” suff ers from the performance of the actors in supporting rolls. “Freeman and Rose are fi ne in the movie, even if the best that can be said about it is that it kept capable actors busy while they waited for something better to come along, and Patrick Muldoon is surprisingly eff ective as an evil sleaze. But, elsewhere on the cast list,
Needles scarier than the ‘Vanquish’ stands alone COVID-19 vaccination! among new releases Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
I’ve been amused by the Facebook traffi c generated by people of a certain age who one moment are complaining about the “everybody gets a trophy” culture they claim is ruining today’s children, yet in their own posts they’re pleading to be publicly acknowledged for getting their COVID-19 vaccine. The comments of support and congratulations are their prize for bravely making and keeping an appointment at CVS. (By the way, in his terrifi c HBO standup special “The Great Depresh,” Gary Gulman makes a compelling argument that any player who endures the endless boredom of a typical youth baseball season deserves a trophy, at the very least.) I’m pro-vaccine (got mine — trophy please!), but I do harbor sympathy for people who may be avoiding the shot because they suff er from trypanophobia — a fear of needles. I imagine that asking a trypanophobe to voluntarily have a needle inserted into their arm is the equivalent of asking someone with coulrophobia, a crippling fear of clowns, to sit in the front row at a circus. I’m not great with heights, and at this stage of my life you’d only get me on a rollercoaster at gunpoint. Of all the phobias, the fear of needles seems to me one of the most logical. The invasion of the body by a pointed metal shaft is an unnatural act, even if that shaft is ultrathin and the pain nothing more than a pinch, I can understand the anxiety it produces in a way the fear of, say, cotton candy does not. Movies are no friend to the trypanophobes among us: You could easily stage a mini-fi lm festival featuring scenes in which needles are applied in the direst ways, the kind that would convince the truly affl icted to never get the vaccine. So as a public service to my needle-averse friends, I recommend they avoid the following movies and one TV show, or at least fast forward through these particular scenes: h Saw II (2005) – A group of people
John Travolta and Uma Thurman star in “Pulp Fiction.” MIRAMAX
will be imprisoned in a room until they starve to death unless they can retrieve the key to unlock the door. Sadly, the key rests at the bottom of a pit fi lled with fi lthy hypodermics. An unlucky young woman is tossed into the pit to retrieve the key, and watching this sequence unfold would leave any true trypanaphobe on the fl oor curled in a fetal position, gently rocking until they reach their happy place. h Pulp Fiction (1994) – After a dinner date with her husband’s underling, Vincent Vega (John Travolta), Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) snorts from Vincent’s stash of heroin and overdoses herself into a near-coma. Vincent races her over to the home of his dealer, who frantically fi lls an enormous hypodermic with adrenaline, which Vincent plunges directly into Mia’s heart. The enduring image: a revived, disoriented Mia, with the hypodermic protruding from her chest, being asked to say something and managing only to reply, “Something.” h Requiem for a Dream (2000) – Darren Aronofsky’s hellscape of drug addiction in Coney Island ends with a See SCREEN TIME, Page 28D
there are hints that adding a COVID-19 safety line-item to the budget resulted in slashing the money available for actors.” Out on demand April 27 “Here Are the Young Men”: Based on the Rob Doyle novel of the same name, the movie follows three Dublin teens celebrating high school graduation with a debauched bender marked by increased violence. Stars “Queen’s Gambit” breakout star Anya TaylorJoy, Travis Fimmel and Finn Cole. “Justice Society: World War II”: The Flash travels back in time to join the fi ght between DC’s superhero team and Nazis in this animated fi lm, the latest entry in the DC Universe Movies line. Out on demand April 30 “The Virtuoso”: Anson Mount plays an assassin sent to a small town on a job by his mentor (Anthony Hopkins). The methodical assassin must decipher a cryptic clue to identify his target, with an added complication presented by an alluring woman (Abbie Cornish).
Morgan Freeman plays a corrupt retired cop who wields an enormous amount of power in the action thriller “Vanquish.”LIONSGATE
