On VOD: 7 Films Far Preferable to The Human Centipede

Hubbub aside, there are other slabs of fresh kill available on VOD besides The Human Centipede, which reminded me mostly of the Franken-toys crawling through Sid's bedroom in Toy Story, a scene that was far more chilling. And you didn't pity the actors. (Also, come on: The "centipede" idea wouldn't work at all. After one G.I. tract is done with foodstuff, there's nothing left for the next two! They'd starve! Come on!) No, better to search the cloud for more life-affirming grist -- because, well, you're alive, and your mouth isn't sewn to my anus.

Far from Heaven (Encore On Demand)

Todd Haynes's 2002 retro-beaut, reinvigorating the old hot-blooded Douglas Sirk melodramas of the 1950s with a tear-stained straight face. Julianne Moore has actually played this plastic-Mom-in-mid-meltdown role numerous times since (The Hours, Savage Grace, etc.); there's something about her wide, wavering eyes that suggests June Cleaver with vodka. But here her take on suburban lostness is minted in gold.

Private Century (Doc Alliance)

This Czech mini-series, available per episode, is another portrait of bourgeoisie families in the process of entropic destruction. But its method is a heart-render: filmmaker Jan Sikl uses only each Czech family's actual 8mm home movie footage, tracing generational arcs from the 1920s through the Nazi era and into the postwar era. Mothers' infidelities, divorces, betrayals, memorials, lakeside vacations -- it's all there. Doc Alliance is a Euro-service, but they can convert dollars.

Burn After Reading (HBO On Demand)

Maybe it's not the most potent and inventive Coen Brothers movie, but this off-kilter 2008 satire on Beltway espionage and health fads is Coen all the same. And you don't shrug off mid-shelf Coen because mid-shelf Coen is still Coen, the way cold pizza is still pizza and warm beer is still beer.

Moon (Starz On Demand)

David Bowie's son Duncan Jones debuts as a filmmaker, and it's a small-boned, thoughtful sci-fi indie worth pursuing if you missed it last year. Sam Rockwell meets himself, for real, alone on the moon, and of course corporate greed is to blame. Think of it as Tarkovsky's Solaris turned from a existential romance into a done-right remake of Multiplicity.

Saltimbank (The Auteurs)

Jean-Claude Biette was a French film critic (worked for Cahiers du cinema, founded Trafic with Serge Daney) who also occasionally made movies before he died in 2003. This quintessentially French tapestry of modern Frenchness, surrounding a theatrical rehearsal just as Jacques Rivette's films often have, was his last. It's all about nuance and textures, not about progressive drive - and the cast includes iconic vet Micheline Presle (in her 150th film, or something), and Rivette vets Jeanne Balibar and Michelle Moretti.

Cotton Comes to Harlem (Epix)

Ossie Davis's 1970 grit-fest is the pimp-king of blaxploitation movies, because it wasn't about Richard Roundtree or Pam Grier being beautiful and cool, but about real Harlemites, real crime and black detectives knee-deep in a swamp of drug-pumped urban crime the likes of which we just don't know from anymore. (Unless you live in Mexico City.) Written by Chester Himes, it's unglam and raw as a streetcorner during a garbage strike.

The Long Riders (Epix)

Walter Hill's dusty, proto-Peckinpah retelling of the James Gang saga ain't The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but it's the only film in which three sets of brothers (Keach, Carradine, Quaid) play three sets of brothers (James, Younger, Ford), and luckily all seven look the period and can all act.