Capsule reviews of the this week’s video releases, on DVD and Blu-ray:
• “What We Do in the Shadows” (unrated, 86 minutes, The Orchard/Paramount): Co-writers-directors-stars Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement lovingly impale bloodsucker mythology with the sharpened wooden stick of comedy in their delightfully silly vampire mockumentary. As with “Shaun of the Dead,” their satire is a crude but effective tool. Clement is half of the comedic folk-music duo Flight of the Conchords (also featured on the HBO series). This new movie, based on their 2005 short, is set in a Wellington group house, where four undead housemates — ranging in age from 183 to 8,000 — are being followed by a film crew. The guys here — Vladislav (Clement), Viago (Waititi), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) and Petyr (Ben Fransham) — spend a fair amount of time squabbling over chores and housekeeping. The visual special effects are simple but efficient. Waititi and Clement’s jokes, which are often delivered directly to the camera, a la “The Office,” are sometimes lowbrow, but often very funny. Contains obscenity, cheesy blood and gore, some suggestive dialogue and a drug reference.
• “Tangerines” (unrated, 87 minutes, in Estonian, Russian and Georgian with subtitles, First Run Features): Nominated for Oscar and Golden Globes as best foreign-language film, this Estonian-Georgian gem is set in the 1990s, in a war-torn corner of the Caucasus Mountains. The film takes place in Abkhazia, a disputed region claimed by Georgia that is trying to separate from the former Soviet republic. Fighting against the Georgian army are Abkhazians, their Russian allies and miscellaneous mercenaries. As the film opens, almost every civilian has left the battleground, except for Margus (Elmo Nüganen), a tangerine farmer, and Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak), a man who builds crates for his neighbor’s produce. Into this no-man’s land wanders Ahmed, a Muslim Chechen soldier of fortune fighting on the side of the Russians and Abkhazians, and Nika, a Georgian volunteer. When both fighters are gravely wounded in a skirmish outside Margus’ house, Ivo takes them in and nurses them back to health, while struggling to keep them from killing each other. Except for brief outbursts of violence, “Tangerines” is, like its hero Ivo, a stoic and introspective thing. The story moves slowly and methodically, tempering the expected — and only fleetingly heartwarming — rapprochement between enemies with a more acerbic outlook about human nature. Contains violence and obscenity.
