Don’t miss this ultra-violent ‘brutal and bloody masterpiece’ on Netflix that kicks you in the teeth-Steve Charnock-Entertainment – Metro

Green Room, featuring the most dangerously explosive backstage waiting area since Miriam Margolyes was given unrestricted access to a jar of pickled eggs before an early appearance on Parkinson (Picture: Metro.co.uk / Rex)

Each week our man Steve Charnock breaks into the vast vaults of the UK’s many streaming services, emerging with a swag bag of deserted diamonds, hidden gems and genre gold. Forget the latest in disposable ‘content’, it’s time to work on your watchlist…

Streaming services are always telling us all about their endless new films and TV shows. Some of it’s worth watching, while a lot of it is a bigger waste of time than trying to work out which is Willem Dafoe’s ‘best side’.

Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney Plus, NOW TV, BBC iPlayer… They’re all jammed solid with high-quality old stuff, though. Or ‘content’ as they rather off-puttingly refer to it.

When it’s not being pushed at you, it’s all rather easy to overlook.

So why waste time watching potentially ropey new films and TV series, when you can enjoy excellent old ones?

Just like these…

Green Room (2015) – Netflix

According to Hollywood insiders, a prequel to Green Room is in pre-production now under the working title ‘Brown Van’ (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)

Fans of the colour and literal film titles will be pleased to learn that the main room in Green Room is actually quite green. Despite the context for the phrase here being the waiting area reserved for performers backstage at venues, director Jeremy Saulnier still opts for a pleasing palette of olive, pea, emerald, sage, sea and puke greens throughout this incredibly urgent and gut-wrenching sucker punch of a film.

Similar to how he tinged his previous film, 2013’s incredible-yet-muted revenge thriller Blue Ruin – you guessed it – blue.

Saulnier surely must be a candidate for the best lesser-known director working in Hollywood right now. Fans of his work are eagerly anticipating the release of his newest film Rebel Ridge, which should be out at the end of the year.

By skinheads’ smooth-headed standards, these lads are practically hippies (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)

In that green room of the title are an ambitious young leftist Dead Kennedys-loving punk band called The Ain’t Rights who are touring the Pacific Northwest in an old van, picking up gigs at dive bars and clubs and crashing on floors.

They find themselves booked to play a grubby fleapit run and frequented by skinheads. But not the cool 1970’s rude boy/2 Tone type skinheads. I mean the horrible 1980’s-style racist type skinheads.

It’s Maeby! (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)

Post-gig, the band witnesses a murder in the eponymous room and it’s soon decided by the club’s neo-Nazi owners that the entire band are also best off dead. The band disagrees. Absolute chaos ensues.

Callum Turner (Fantastic Beasts), the late Anton Yelchin (Star Trek Beyond), Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development) and Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders) make up the band.

Dr X himself, Patrick Stewart, puts in a chillingly restrained performance here heading up the far-right skinhead bad guys. It’s a good role for Stewart, this. He didn’t even need to shave his head for it.

Stars Imogen Poots and the late Anton Yelchin, who tragically died in an accident at his home just a year after Green Room was released (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)

Green Room is fast, compact, uncompromising and brutal. It’s also ultraviolent and bloody as all Hell.

Yet while it’s happy to take on a punk aesthetic, this grimy genre piece is still only too pleased to revel in the traditional tropes of other classic siege films like Assault on Precinct 13, Dawn of the Dead and Rio Bravo. And that’s to its credit.

It’s tense, nasty, fast and leaves an impact. It’s proper punk.

If you like it, try streaming: Panic Room, Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, From Dusk Til Dawn

Bone Tomahawk (2015) – Amazon Prime Video

Desert-dwelling Richard Jenkins and Kurt Russell, sporting unkempt beards, stained shirts and weather-beaten skin: Grizzlier than a grizzling grizzly bear (Picture: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)

Sorry to keep rattling on about directors, I’ll stop in a minute – promise. But one of Jeremy Saulnier’s main rivals for the Best Lesser-Known Director Working in Hollywood Award has to be the man behind this second pick of the week’s best overlooked streaming picks…. S Craig Zahler (although if I were in charge of handing out the prize it’d probably go to Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding’s Rose Glass).

Zahler is the current King of Genre Movies, making ferocious modern-day exploitation films like no one else. Something anyone who’s seen the head-stomping Vince Vaughn prison flick Brawl in Cell Block 99 or the laconically cool crime-noir Dragged Across Concrete can attest to.

Lost star Matthew Fox, who you don’t really hear about anymore since he took a sabbatical from acting after wrapping filming on Bone Tomahawk a decade ago (Picture: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)

Let’s talk about his directorial debut for a bit; a film that created its own sub-genre… the utterly insane cannibal western Bone Tomahawk.

There’s something undeniably exciting about movies that make unexpected tonal shifts halfway through their running time, isn’t there? Alfred Hitchcock made the first major example of this back in 1960 with Psycho, a film that starts like a classy crime film and suddenly turns into a twisted horror.

Kurt Russell stars as Sheriff Franklin Hunt, a man who soon discovers that a six-shooter’s not much use against a posse of murderous prehistoric cannibal giants (Picture: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)

Fellow master Stanley Kubrick took inspiration from Hitchcock 27 years later with Full Metal Jacket, which begins as a psychological thriller before pulling a 180 and becoming an all-out Vietnam War movie.

Dang. I promised to stop rattling on about directors, didn’t I? Sorry. Onto the film… An impressively-bearded Kurt Russell is in full Tombstone mode here as the fearless sheriff who leads a rescue mission into hostile territory to save some townsfolk that have been kidnapped by man-eating troglodyte tribespeople. 

It’s set in The Old West and starts off much like any other cowboy film, albeit with slightly sharper dialogue and a keener eye for cinematography.

Lili Simmons and Patrick Wilson during the calm part of the movie, before things go bananas (Picture: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)

As a sense of impending dread ratchets up, you know something savage is coming up over the dusty horizon. Yet even knowing it’s coming can’t prepare you for the sheer barbarity of what’s in store. I’ve already said too much. 

If you’re yet to catch Bone Tomahawk, don’t read any more about it. Just stream it. Although if you’re of a sensitive disposition, you’ll likely have a bone to pick with me afterwards for recommending it to you.

If you like it, try streaming: Ravenous, Near Dark, From Dusk Til Dawn (again)

The Patient (2022) – Disney Plus & AppleTV

NBC’s decision to hire Lars von Trier as showrunner on the new Office reboot was widely derided as a mistake (Picture: FX)

TV fans will likely think of Steve Carell as Michael Scott in The Office. The 61 year-old played the American version of David Brent for nine seasons of the global smash sitcom, after all. Movie buffs might also think of his mirth-making skills in comedies like The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Evan Almighty. 

There’s much more to the man’s range than just playing daft though, of course. Consider Carell’s work in big screen outings such as Little Miss Sunshine, Vice, Foxcatcher and The Big Short for proof.

Domhnall Gleeson – like someone cheered Brendan Gleeson up a bit and then stretched him (Picture: FX)

Here, he plays Alan Strauss, a kindly therapist mourning the recent death of his wife. Playing opposite him is Domhnall Gleeson, who film fans will recognise from his work in things like Brooklyn, The Revenant and Peter Rabbit. And Brendan Gleeson will recognise from growing up in his house as his son.

Domhnall is Sam Fortner here, a quiet and pensive young man who lives in his mother’s basement, is a restaurant inspector and loves the music of popular US country singer Kenny Chesney. Oh, and he’s also a serial killer. That last bit’s worth mentioning – it’s sort of key to the plot.

The Patient can accurately be described as a ‘dark drama’, but largely because of the 20 watt lightbulbs they insisted on using on the set (Picture: FX)

Fortner murders people, sure. But he’s trying not to. In pursuit of a new non-slaughter-heavy lifestyle, he decides to start seeing a therapist. His sessions with Strauss prove fruitless, however. Given he’s unable to go into too much depth about his issue without it leading to his almost immediate arrest. So he strikes upon an idea: kidnap and chain up Alan and relocate the therapy sessions to his basement-based bedroom. Foolproof.

Alan is then forced to use his wit and guile to try to help curb Sam of his homicidal urges. In order to help keep others – and himself – from being offed by the redheaded psychopath holding him hostage.

Cheer up, Al! It could be worse, you could be about to be abducted by a serial killer! (Picture: FX)

It’s something of a slow boiler, this. Stick with it throughout its ten episodes, however, and you’ll be rewarded with a clever and taut drama propelled by a pair of memorable powerhouse performances from the leads. Between the two, they subtly force the viewer to consider some pretty hefty topics such as mental illness, empathy, the limits of therapy, religion, mortality, existentialism and how bad Kenny Chesney’s songs are.

Given the claustrophobic scenery and limited number of other actors involved, this is something you could quite easily see being repurposed into a gripping two-role play.

The Patient may require patience, but with its weighty themes and classy approach, it might just prove therapeutic watching. Just don’t expect any hilarious scenes of Steve Carell’s chest hair being waxed. Only you’ll be left quite disappointed.

If you like it, try streaming: Hannibal, Homecoming, Mindhunter

Entertainment – MetroRead More