Monte Hellman’s first film in more than two decades, Road To Nowhere, is, whatever else one says about it, first and foremost a work that wouldn’t exist were it not for other movies. A referential slice of film noir which enjoyed its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year, recently screened as part of a retrospective of the director’s work at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, and now opens wider in Los Angeles and other markets throughout the summer, Road To Nowhere takes grab-bag elements and splintered fractions of dramatic conflict — blackmail, a murder mystery, dubious identities, a woman in trouble — and flings them at the screen, excusing any rigidity of plotting by having certain characters involved in the making of a (same-named) movie, scenes of which are then interspersed throughout. The result is a jumbled, unengaging mess that counts on the awestruck quietness of an audience certain that the film’s makers are pursuing “art.”

It’s simpler and perhaps just as instructive to talk about what Road To Nowhere lacks as much as what it has, given its putative areas of interest. The big, easy thematic touchstones in the script, by former Variety executive editor Steven Gaydos, are the three works of David Lynch, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire, that make use of multiple and/or fractured identities, film production, and more generalized Hollywood deceit. Unfortunately, there’s nothing particularly compelling about any of the film’s characters, and certain no woozy charm or charged sense of danger in its construction.

Is there a moodiness to cinematographer Josep Civit’s work that informs a larger, accumulating sense of tension? No. Are there moments of pin-prick terror or dark comedy? No. Are there breathtaking performances, alternately eerie, heartrending, erotically charged or flat-out unnerving? No. Is there at least a teasing, palpable sense of how all these events fit together, and a larger point or singular emotion? No. A mere sense of momentum, then, perhaps? No. Hellman — who’s achieved a sort of industry-insider legendary status due in large part to Two-Lane Blacktop and “discovering” Quentin Tarantino, and producing his film debut — dutifully pulls the levers of Gaydos’ script, but there is no slickness, nor danger, nor joy. There is no “there” there, in other words. Road To Nowhere is, sadly, aptly titled, because it is exists merely as a yawning collection of indulgent scenes. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Monterey Media, R, 121 minutes)

When has justice been served, and a criminal debt paid? When a victim’s family announces its forgiveness, and lobbies for the release of imprisoned? When new evidence casts a pall over a guilty plea? When an inmate is diagnosed with a terminal illness? These and other questions are at the heart of director Yoav Potash’s Crime After Crime, a documentary that spotlights the extraordinarily heartrending case of Deborah Peagler, a woman convicted in 1983, under a variety of extenuating circumstances, in the death of her abusive spouse, who it turns out pimped her out while she was still in high school and sexually abused his stepdaughter.

Potash delivers a methodical and effective but very posed drama, leaning heavily on pro bono attorneys Nadia Costa (above right) and Joshua Safran (above left) as his guides through the case, even though Peagler appears throughout as well. The evidence the movie cites is compelling, and the fact that the film spans such a lengthy period of time gives it an additional, natural dramatic pull; unexpected, complicating factors pop up, repeatedly lengthening the odds for Peagler. Still, while the film chronicles emotionally charged subjects like sexual and physical abuse, as well as unjust imprisonment, it has a fairly dispassionate heart, which is something of a blessing or a curse depending on one’s point-of-view. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, meanwhile, click here. (Independent Pictures/Oprah Winfrey Network, unrated, 93 minutes)