For all the visual thrill that modern studio moviemaking provides, there’s still a special charge that comes from discovering or submitting to, essentially, just a wordsmith — someone with a fresh, canted comedic perspective, damn any sort of slick camera razzmatazz. It’s just that sort of loose-limbed joy one finds with Stags, a New York-set, sort of Jewish-inflected version of Swingers, in which an on-the-prowl group of guys approaching 40 cope with a friend’s marriage and sudden death. The feature film directorial debut of television veteran Jamie Greenberg (co-creator of Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, and story producer on Michael Moore’s TV Nation), Stags just world premiered at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, and could easily find wider embrace in arthouse distribution, among that cross-section of cinephiles who enjoy watching men act a bit like cads, and then defend or justify ,their actions in hyper-articulate fashion.

Because every group must have one, Snedden (Mark Giordano, above left) is the confident ladies’ man of Stags. A member of the “Oy Meets Girl” dating site, Victor (Matthew Rauch, above center) is the nebbish of the group. Price (Jesse Joyce, above right) is a jaded, cynical stand-up comic who unceremoniously destroys his relationship from the stage. The movie’s narrator and central figure, meanwhile, is Jack (Benim Foster), a frizzy-haired trophy store employee who in a pinch could serve as a stunt double for Michael Richards. Owing in significant part to the fact that she doesn’t understand how her name relates to the national Democratic ticket of 2004, Jack’s friends regard his girlfriend, Keri Edwards (Kimmy Gatewood), as something of a dim bulb, and he doesn’t much disagree. In fact, he loathes even calling her his girlfriend, and when a longtime pal returns from Los Angeles and springs his wedding on the aforementioned quartet, Jack weasels out of even asking Keri to accompany him.

When their friend suddenly passes away on his wedding night, however, Jack and his pals are thrown for a loop. It doesn’t bring about teary reflection and maturation, though, even after an awkward shiva. Emboldened by the newly discovered fact that their pal was a porn star, Snedden decides to “screw his way through the alphabet,” while Jack strikes up a friendship (and possibly more) with the quasi-widow, Amber (Jessica Faller). Victor, in the mean time, ponders procuring an escort. Against this backdrop of pitched lunacy, the guys individually and collectively spin their wheels, kicking and screaming against the sort of benchmarks of adulthood that they, in unspoken fashion, fear as death by papercuts.

Greenberg’s writing experience is on ample display, and gives Stags its lift. There’s some terrific observational humor throughout (Snedden muses about olives’ “little anuses,” while Price assays the tendency of liberal white guys to say “man” to blacks working in retail or service industry jobs), and the rapport between the lead actors is solid. Though it’s definitely nowhere near as black-hearted, the movie sort of recalls something like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where there’s a value placed on the pace and connectivity of the patter itself, above and beyond any emphasis on its emotional content. Stags bears the mark of a sitcom soul, in other words, though that’s hardly a disqualifying sin in this context. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Stags Films, unrated, 101 minutes)

A world premiere presentation at the just underway Dances With Films festival, The Millennium Bug boasts a simple, streamlined concept, and features poster art that strongly echoes Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, so one could be forgiven for prematurely celebrating the birth into the genre world of a groovy, gory and blissfully self-aware new creature feature. Unfortunately, writer-director Kenneth Cran’s film, while admirably incorporating some low-tech elements, never has any fun with its zonkers conceit, and even touches let alone rises above the sum of its clichéd parts.

The movie is on New Year’s Eve, 1999, as Byron (Jon Briddell) takes his new wife Joany (Jessica Simmons) and 18-year-old daughter Clarissa (Christine Haeberman, the second runner-up on VH-1′s Scream Queens 2) camping. Hoping to escape the Y2K computer glitch (aka “the millennium bug”) that he believes will cause the civilized world all sorts of problems, Byron drives his family deep into the Sierra Diablos mountains, to an abandoned lumberjack town known as Mason’s Grove. What he doesn’t count on, however, is a rampaging clan of in-bred hillbillies, who — in part since Pearlene (Ginger Pullman) has recently birthed another deformed monstrosity — abduct the trio and drag them back to their secluded cabin in an effort to replenish their stagnant, infested gene pool.

While Byron and Joany are held elsewhere, the family prepares Clarissa for her “wedding” to young Billa (John Charles Meyer), the group’s hotheaded leader-in-waiting. What none of these folks know, however, is that a giant, fanged bug — a phenomenon that excited cryptozoologist Roger Patterson (Ken McFarlane) has been tracking for most of his adult life — is about to be born in their neck of the woods, and enter the world none too peacefully.

Unfortunately, while its inspiration may lay in movies like The Evil Dead and The Hills Have Eyes, as well as a rich litany of Japanese creature features, The Millennium Bug wears a lot of these influences too readily on its sleeve. The hillbilly characters especially (and all their behaviors) are just a yawning collection of things seen many times before, from an old man picking feverishly on his banjo to a deformed, Quasimodo-like sibling. The characters shout and hoot and holler in menacing fashion, and there’s no particular rhyme or reason to the mock-creepy set design of their rotting cabin. Other tidbits, too, don’t track or follow, as when Billa curses, is admonished not to do so by a fired shotgun… and then immediately curses again, free of consequence. It sounds idiotic, simplistic and perhaps more than a little unfair to criticize a movie like this for being all surface and no clever subtext, but The Millennium Bug never deepens in intrigue in any fashion that might grab or focus your attention beyond the fleeting moment. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Squire Film Shoppe/No CGI Films, unrated, 89 minutes)

A world premiere, in-competition title at the just underway, 14th annual Dances With Films festival, writer-director Steve Garrett’s Wake is a rangy, philosophically-tinged drama that connects mostly on the value of its production design, which gives the movie a certain grungy Venice Beach authenticity.

For a while it looks as though Wake may be a low-fi companion piece to Lords of Dogtown, chronicling the So-Cal skate scene. Bobby (Jerad Anderson) is a talented but emotionally isolated skater who’s trying to scrape together enough money to procure a better life for his stripper girlfriend Carmen (Monica Pitpit), and her little kid from a previous relationship. Unfortunately, her psychotic ex, Tony (Joseph Raymond Lucero), is still in the picture, and not always at the discouragement of Carmen. Lacking sponsorship deals, and facing pressure from Carmen, Bobby is forced to attempt a series of dangerous jumps for pay. One of them goes awry, paralyzing him from the waist down.

When he gets out of the hospital, Bobby goes to live with Carmen’s grandmother, Chelo (Renee Victor), and ponders what he’s going to do with his life. While there, he’s witness to a backyard brawl involving Tony, and gives assistance to a seriously wounded guy, seemingly healing him. This catches the attention of Father Tom (writer-director Garrett, pulling triple duty), who believes that Bobby has been divinely blessed with the ability to heal the sick and wounded.

In this regard, Wake is very much of a piece with the recently released Sympathy For Delicious, in which a cynical paraplegic (Christopher Thornton) fitfully connects and withdrawals from a skid-row priest (Mark Ruffalo) trying to similarly channel (some would say exploit) his faith-healing gifts. One of the differences is that in Wake, though, Bobby is actually able to heal himself, and so in short order he’s standing, walking, and then even skating again. While Father Tom pushes for him to continue using his gifts, though — including to benefit Paula (Janna Bossier), a young girl stricken with some vague terminal illness — Bobby is more concerned with recapturing his burgeoning skating career.

Working in HD video, cinematographer Sacha Riviere captures a fair amount of nice outdoor images, and he and Garrett bring to bear their ample commercial experience to convey a realistic backdrop, and also showcase the movie’s skating bits in a way that is engaging without being ostentatious. Anderson, too, has a nice, relaxed screen presence. While a lot of young actors would attempt to overdial the emotion, he never gets too high or too low.

Still, Wake isn’t rigorous enough in its plotting, design and execution to really sink its emotional hooks into an audience. And while the story covers a lot of ground, the ways its pieces fit together don’t always make immediate sense, and the film’s end twist isn’t the knockout blow its creators believe it to be. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Always Moving Pictures, unrated, 81 minutes)