With its just-so production design, characterized chiefly by rust, and a gallery of weathered and otherwise stunted characters fumbling toward some vaguely defined senses of purpose or peace, Bloodworth, based on William Gay’s novel Provinces of Night, slots comfortably in the cinematic canon of Southern Gothic, wherein everything and everyone is dadgum country-fied, and, well, ain’t that interesting and grand? This isn’t to say that the film, a drama about the long shadows of alcoholism, familial neglect and demons unaddressed, is a terrible or hokey thing, just that its dramatic payoffs come across as relatively meager, and second fiddle to the sense of frozen-in-time place it seems chiefly concerned with conveying.

After abandoning his wife Julia (Frances Conroy) and three sons decades earlier, E.F. Bloodworth (Kris Kristofferson) returns to his dusty, rural Tennessee hometown, where his only real solace comes in the form of a relationship with the grandson he’s never met, Fleming (Reece Thompson, of Rocket Science). Warren (Val Kilmer), a drunken, philandering traveler in the mold of his father, is more open to reconciliation, but Boyd (Dwight Yoakam) and Brady (W. Earl Brown) are full of anger, and continually lash out at those around them. E.F. sets up shop in a trailer at the edge of his estranged wife’s property, and Fleming keeps occasional company with him, while also striking up a relationship with Raven (Hilary Duff), the daughter of a troubled party girl (Hilarie Burton). As the summer wears on and Fleming makes plans to leave town, tension mounts all around, and a few bad things eventually happen.

A lot of actor-screenwriter Brown’s adaptation is nicely restrained, but there are a couple false notes here and there (including Raven commenting on Fleming’s embarrassment with his beat-up car as a positive thing, something no teenage girl has ever done), and the movie’s solemn voiceover narration also overreaches at times. Additionally, Bloodworth ostensibly unfolds in the 1950s, but the director, Shane Dax Taylor, and other filmmakers seem intent on obscuring any degree of greater specificity that might inform the story, as if they’re trying (too hard) to lend Bloodworth a parabolic weight and significance that is beyond the grasp of its narrative. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Samuel Goldwyn, R, 105 minutes)

Documentaries are great, in that they can shine a light on all sorts of niche subjects heretofore unexplored, but they can also be a major drag or bore, especially when their makers become too convinced of the grand, sweeping importance and inherent interest level of their subject matter. Case in point: L’Amour Fou, a hagiography of haute couture legend Yves Saint Laurent that played at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Solemn to the point of utter suffocation, director Pierre Thoretton’s wildly tedious exploration of the French-Algerian designer– who studied at the feet of Christian Dior, and following his death briefly stood in line for ascension at his company, as artistic director — unfolds through the eyes of his business partner and mostly life-long lover, Pierre Berge (above right), but provides a maddeningly circumspect and vague portrait of the man in question. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (IFC/Sundance Select, unrated, 104 minutes)