Because of the very simple nature of the human voice, and what its sound means to us, music captures the human experience in a special way that other art forms cannot. If joy is nearly impossible to contrive, then listening to the joyous, excited and unblinkingly forthright celebration and expression of community, faith and gratitude to simply be alive can be a profoundly moving experience, one impractical to resist. Such are the life lessons communicated by Don McGlynn’s Rejoice and Shout, an exhaustively comprehensive documentary about the 200-year musical history of African-American Christianity.

Gospel music is of course informed by the plantation and slavery experience of African-Americans many generations ago, and McGlynn — a filmmaker well-versed in musical documentaries — connects that historical fact to the unbowed spirit of its earliest practitioners and progenitors, while also tracing it all the way forward in time to the emotional, participatory qualities of worship still found in many predominantly African-American churches. Using a wide-ranging roster of interview subjects, from academics like The Gospel Sound author Anthony Heilbut to singers like Ira Tucker, Smokey Robinson, Mavis Staples (above) and more, McGlynn crafts a genre-specific portrait that may be among the most detailed in all of music-related nonfiction film. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, unrated, 115 minutes)

Scalene, a recent world premiere at the Dances With Films festival, opens with a jolt, in large part because one doesn’t expect to see Margo Martindale, a veteran character actress with more than 80 credits under her belt, doing physical battle with Hanna Hall, the young Jenny from Forrest Gump, and later costar of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake. And yet there they are — one with a gun, the other in flight. They scuffle, yell and run about, giving clues of a greater familiarity with one another. Soon we’re winding backwards in time, and learning more about the specifics of just how things went so wrong.

Scalene bills itself as a perceptual thriller, which is a perhaps fancy way of saying it’s a psychological drama that toys with audience sympathies via shifting perspectives. Martindale stars as Janice Trimble, the single mother of Jakob (Adam Scarimbolo), a 26-year-old, live-in mute with other unspecified developmental and/or behavioral disabilities. When she starts quasi-dating divorcee Charles (Jim Dougherty), Janice places a few fliers for a part-time caregiver, and soon-to-graduate college student Paige Alexander (Hall), looking for work to bolster her resume with potential social work further down the line, responds to Janice’s need. Eventually there’s an accusation of rape, which pits the two women against one another.

Scalene unfolds more or less in reverse, actually, with a mediator advising Janice to accept a court-ordered psychiatric hold and multi-year rehabilitation program for Jakob, and the tearful mother swearing that her son is innocent. As director Zack Parker, working from a script co-written with Brandon Owens, navigates back in time, the film juggles two slight and eventually increasingly divided points-of-view in regards to Janice’s treatment of Jakob.

There’s a wonderful ambiguity captured by scenes in which Janice greets Paige curtly, or acts toward Jakob in the same manner in Paige’s presence. The screenplay, though, doesn’t allow Martindale a lot of chances to trade in quiet subtlety, of which she is certainly capable. Certain scenes drag on for too long, though, past the point of conveying either the emotional essence of a given bit, or what’s functionally necessary to advance the narrative. Hall, too, is required to do some silent heavy lifting, and the contrast of her woodenness versus later emoting does the movie no favors.

Scalene is much more interesting when it flexes its ambition some, working to try to also incorporate Jakob’s subjective, jumbled recreated memories — which at one point find his mom recast as a physician, and introduces Paige to him in the doctor’s office, which is different from the reality we’ve seen. For a film that otherwise pivots on the offscreen spaces around a couple distinct, concrete scenes — albeit ones glimpsed from two different points-of-view — these bits are quite intriguing, a wily X-factor in how any given audience member might ultimately interpret Janice’s relationship with her son, and Paige’s accusation. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Along the Tracks/Kachi Films, unrated, 97 minutes)

A Los Angeles-set indie flick which recently enjoyed its world premiere at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, The Comedian at the Friday offers up an almost serially listless look at an interesting and creative occupation. Instead of getting caught up in the vicarious or behind-the-curtain thrill of even a fringe comedian’s quirky, atypical lifestyle, an audience watching it is much more likely to go through and ultimately bog down in the first half of the seven stages of grief — denial, pain, anger, bargaining, depression, etcetera — than enjoy any sort of fulfilling entertainment, let alone cathartic uplift. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Comedian at the Friday LLC, unrated, 92 minutes)

Based on the British television series of the same name, director Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip finds Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon again playing loose, bickering versions of themselves, uneasy partners on a restaurant-tasting road trip across the British countryside. After some contretemps with his girlfriend, Coogan is left without a partner for his weeklong foodie vacation, so he begrudgingly invites his actor pal Brydon. They then proceed to preen for attention, and spar in competitive, passive-aggressive fashion.

Largely improvised, The Trip is an example of something that probably works a lot better in its short-form incarnation, as an exploration of the cresting nature of comedic riffing. There are moments of pure, unadulterated delight here, in Coogan and Brydon’s arguments over Michael Sheen, or the latter’s hilarious impression of Michael Caine, even modulated to take aging into account. Other impersonations, like the guys’ dueling James Bonds or Woody Allens, are also funny. But the whole is far less than the sum of its parts, and the framework upon which it hangs — which purports to also tangentially assay the insecurity of actors — creaks under the weight of injudicious oversight by Winterbottom and editor Mags Arnold, who overindulge their stars. Like almost any journey, there are a few interesting sights along the way, but this Trip is too long and winding — a scenic route that becomes tedious. (IFC Films, PG-13, 107 minutes)