Finally, there’s David Lowery’s much-lauded and highly anticipated Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which I haven’t had the chance to see yet at the time of writing this. Its release in theaters and on demand is scheduled for August 27th (and I think it’s even later in Canada—maybe being up here isn’t all it’s cracked up to be after all). What I know about it is as follows: Lowery is a kind of wannabe Terrence Malick, and for many people who have seen the film it serves either as a worthy homage or a poor imitation, or else it’s aspiring toward material that’s not worth imitating because Malick sux. Also, it stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, which frankly is reason enough to see it.
The good news is that many of us will indeed get to see it far sooner than we would if we had to wait for it to arrive at our local independent arthouse cinema venue. That venue is quickly becoming our various screens, be they our HDTVs, our laptops, iPads, cell phones or whatnot. The fear that these private screenings are replacing the public ones seems fallacious to me; rather than taking the place of the cinema experience, one we enjoy with people around us and the communal aspect of all that, video on demand acts as a kind of stopgap between the locations, allowing those less privileged to live in cultural centers to be as much a part of the culture as the upper crust of moviegoers. It’s democracy at its finest. Not only does it level this playing field, it levels the playing field between audiences and critics who often get the benefit of screener copies before theater releases. As a matter of principle, this openness is worthy of celebration. And there’s no better time to celebrate the rise of Video On Demand than right now, because these 6 titles are some of the best the home video market has had to offer.