A Hole In My Heart is a major departure for director Lukas Moodysson, this is a disjointed captured on handheld and in your face tale in which an adult scene between Rickard (Thorsten Flinck), Geko (Goran Marjanovic) and Tess (Sanna Bråding) is being filmed in an apartment while Rickard’s son Erik (Björn Almrot) attempts to avoid the rapidly disturbing events in the next room.

Yet that attempts to put some form of narrative on this film, which is disconcerting, filled with blasts of noise and horrific imagery of vaginal reconstruction surgery, a female masturbation scene that involves licking a filthy bathroom floor, toys reciting the dialogue and time and space being decimated by how the story unfurls, curls and is torn into shreds. Meanwhile, as the world sends next door and the line between mondo and snuff is about to be crossed, Erik remains in his room, blasting himself with industrial music and attempting to bring dirt inside the home to grow plants, nature reclaiming itself inside a suffocating small place nearly as destructive as the people within it.

I get the feeling from reading about how this was made that this was a horrific film to make for the actors and that Flinck claimed that he had to be high to make the movie. What emerges feels raw, dangerous and something you get the feeling that you might not want to watch but can’t look away from.

The limited edition The Lukas Moodysson Collection from Arrow includes high definition blu rays of seven films, as well as interviews with Moodysson and other cast and crew, moderated by film programmer Sarah Lutton. There’s also a two hundred page featuring new writing by Peter Walsh, excerpts from the original press kits for each film, interviews with and directors’ statements from Moodysson and essays on his films from a 2014 special issue of the Nordic culture journal Scandinavica by C. Claire Thomson, Helga H. Lúthersdóttir, Elina Nilsson, Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerståhl Stenport and Kjerstin Moody.

Extras include interviews with Moodysson, a behind-the-scenes feature, a trailer and an image gallery.

You can get this set from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on December 24, 2022, but I’m excited to share that this New French Extremity classic will open in theaters — with an HD remaster — beginning February 24 followed by arriving on digital on March 3, 2023. Yellow Veil Pictures will also release it as a collector’s edition blu ray available soon.

Directed by Fabrice Du Welz, who wrote it with Romain Protat, this is the story of Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas), a struggling singer who lives in his van as he performs soft rock for nursing home residents. As he drives toward a Christmas concert, his van breaks down and he’s helped by former stand-up comedian and innkeeper Mr. Bartel (Jackie Berroyer), yet if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never break down in the European countryside, particularly in the kind of town where the locals gather to watch a boy lose his virginity to a pig and the only sign of women are the naked selfies a fan (Brigitte Lahaie!) gave to our protagonist.

Gloria, Bartel’s wife, left him years ago but not before destroying him, sleeping with every man in town, an event that has seemed to decimate everyone in her wake. Marc must now pay for her sins, his van burned, his head shaved and his body wearing one of her old dresses, now on the run from everyone as they chase him through a muddy cemetery and treat him as if he were a dog.

This has a horrifying scene where Bartel screams at the bar in town and says that his wife has come back and no one can have her while men play strange waltz music out of synch and then everyone starts to dance with each other. There’s also a speech about the meaning of the season ended with a bullet through the head and the first time I’ve seen a quicksand death in a movie for a long time.

The director says that there are only two characters in the film, Marc and Bartel, and everyone else is just another version of Bartel. That makes more sense after you watch this. Just you know, maybe save your Christmas viewing after the family has said good night.

Directed by Fabrice Du Welz, who wrote it with Romain Protat, this is the story of Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas), a struggling singer who lives in his van as he performs soft rock for nursing home residents. As he drives toward a Christmas concert, his van breaks down and he’s helped by former stand-up comedian and innkeeper Mr. Bartel (Jackie Berroyer), yet if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never break down in the European countryside, particularly in the kind of town where the locals gather to watch a boy lose his virginity to a pig and the only sign of women are the naked selfies a fan (Brigitte Lahaie!) gave to our protagonist.

Gloria, Bartel’s wife, left him years ago but not before destroying him, sleeping with every man in town, an event that has seemed to decimate everyone in her wake. Marc must now pay for her sins, his van burned, his head shaved and his body wearing one of her old dresses, now on the run from everyone as they chase him through a muddy cemetery and treat him as if he were a dog.

This has a horrifying scene where Bartel screams at the bar in town and says that his wife has come back and no one can have her while men play strange waltz music out of synch and then everyone starts to dance with each other. There’s also a speech about the meaning of the season ended with a bullet through the head and the first time I’ve seen a quicksand death in a movie for a long time.

The director says that there are only two characters in the film, Marc and Bartel, and everyone else is just another version of Bartel. That makes more sense after you watch this. Just you know, maybe save your Christmas viewing after the family has said good night.

Despite the name, Cruel Intentions 3 has nothing to do with the original film, much less the sequel that was reedited from the canceled series. Instead, it has Kristina Anapau as Cassidy Merteuil, the cousin of the first movie’s Kathryn, who was played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. She’s caught up in the sexual schemes of roommates Jason Argyle (Kerr Smith) and Patrick Bates (Nathan Wetherington), which include revenge porn and sexual assault because…look, I don’t know. It seems like the rich think they can — and do — get away with everything.

The turnaround is that she wanted it and had pre-roofied herself and had been working with Jason to make their own bets. See, I saved you the time in your life that I have wasted.

This was directed by Scott Ziehl, who also made the direct-to-video Roadhouse 2, and written by Rhett Reese, who rose above this to make Zombieland, Deadpool and G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

This is an absolutely dreadful movie and when I die, I will do so lamenting the time I wasted watching it and so many other direct-to-video sequels.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Roland Emmerich is German for dumb movie, in case you don’t feel like looking that up on Google, and he based this movie on the book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, two of the carniest people in the history of carnies and therefore, part of me loves this.

The world may fall to bits, CGI wolves may stalk the icy streets, but NOAA paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), his wife Dr. Lucy Hall (Sela Ward) and son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) are going to survive, right? Otherwise, everyone else is fair game.

Much like every disaster movie, Jack tries to warn Vice President Raymond Becker (Kenneth Walsh) to listen but it’s too late once that superstorm starts freezing everything in mere moments. Tokyo is hit with hail, the British royal family is stranded and Los Angeles is destroyed by tornadoes.

America has to move into Mexico, who at first closed their border, which is pretty funny. That said, it’s cool that a movie was made about climate change even if the science isn’t right. It’s something we should be talking about and working on, but you know, it’s not convenient and people would have to change how they do business and why should they care, right?

This movie has a 6.4 on IMDB. That’s the real problem.

Dougie is obsessed with a video game in which he plays Satan’s helper. So when he meets a serial killer in a Satan mask, well, why shouldn’t he believe that he can really help the Lord of the Flies in this world? After all, his sister Jenna picked her new boyfriend Alex over him for Halloween. Also: Amanda Plummer is his mom, so you may understand why he’s a little strange.

Jeff Lieberman is perhaps better known for Squirm, Blue Sunshine and Just Before Dawn. Yet this is a really fun movie that more people should be watching, a silly — but never dumb — dark film that somehow has Bob Dylan and Joe Walsh on the soundtrack despite a low budget. The ideas and situations are directly opposite of how original this is. And Satan’s mask? Perfect.

The Synapse blu ray of Satan’s Little Helper has a commentary track by Lieberman, a behind the scenes feature, a making of, a tour of filming locations and a trailer. You can get it from MVD.

The Surgeon General (Kurt Carley) is really the coolest looking slasher I’ve seen in so long. Also: this movie is absolutely deranged, but what else should I expect from Gabriel Bartalos, who also made Saint Bernard which is somehow even stranger than this. I also love any movie that has Warwick Davis play a character named Plates that throws plates at people and just screams.

The whole Rockwell family gets killed by the strange family of old people and mutants, which also includes Brain, a kid with a gigantic brain. Well, Tina lives, but they wall her into a room covered with newspapers and try to turn her into a killer. They succeed but then things go down an even deeper rabbit hole, if that’s possible. I mean, a headless god beneath the gigantic trailer park? An entire town of killers? A gang of bikers called the Ancient Ones?

This movie made me happy to no end, a film that destroys bodies and looks gorgeous all the way. This is so filled with production design gone insane in the very best of ways.

This is the movie Rob Zombie has been trying to make.

You can get this from Severin or watch it on Tubi.