On Demand picks

December 24, 2009

BUG

(Comcast Free Movies) William Friedkin’s comic horror flick delivers Ashley Judd at a full neurotic tilt (a new angle for her). She plays a coked-up woman who gets toxically codependent with a stranger (Michael Shannon) who tells her they’re both infested with insects. It’s a love story, tragic in a gonzo sort of way. Judd and Shannon know they’re playing something simultaneously ridiculous and emotionally for-real, and the intensity is exciting. Tracy Letts adapted his 2003 play. (R; runs through Dec. 31) WESLEY MORRIS

JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE

(Encore on Comcast) By-the-numbers moves in this remake of a French comedy about a workaholic commodities-broker father and his wild-child son, transplanted from the rain forest. But it’s warmer and more amiable than the original, thanks to the smiling nice-guy charm of Tim Allen. (PG; runs through Dec. 29)

NATURAL BORN KILLERS

(Encore on Comcast) Oliver Stone’s cinematic joyride through the heads of a pair of serial killers - Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis - is unforgettable. They aren’t as warped as tabloid-TV vulture Robert Downey Jr. or sadistic prison warden Tommy Lee Jones. Stone means to indict the media and the justice system, not just the murderers, and does, brilliantly, in a dazzling mix of styles, with the heat turned on high. (R; runs through Dec. 30)