Its innocuous title recalls some perfectly anonymous Steven Seagal flick, sure, but this frenzied French thriller from co-writer-director Fred Cavayé is much more rooted in humanistic impulses and recognizable motivations than most of its skull-cracking brethren on the other side of the Atlantic.

At the center of the film is male nurse Samuel (Gilles Lellouche, above), who unwittingly sets into motion a madcap chain of events when he saves the life of a mysterious thief, Hugo (Roschdy Zem). This then leads to his pregnant Spanish wife Nadia (Elena Anaya) being kidnapped by Hugo’s compatriots… or possibly someone wanting to kill him. Powered by on-the-fly deduction, a harried game of cat-and-mouse ensues, with an on-the-lam Hugo and Samuel being framed for a cop’s murder by rogue elements of the police force, led by Commandant Werner (Gérard Lanvin), for some reason at odds with their own.

The crooked-cop particulars here are in the end not very interesting, and handled with a dismissive air of obligation. And Point Blank‘s ridiculous final act, set amidst the hustle and bustle of a police station, basically cedes any reasonableness in favor of jumbled catharsis, marking the movie (in case there were some doubt) as a pure exercise in genre calisthenics. Still, the acting is invested (Lellouche is fantastic), and Cavayé’s stylish, briskly paced film is refreshingly less about chase-thrill razzmatazz and more about the innate human panic of its characters, especially Samuel. After all, what other recent American action movie can you recall in which an escape sequence ends with the protagonist throwing up? (Magnolia, unrated, 81 minutes)

There are true stories that make good movies and then true stories that are so rife with implausibility that they make terrible movies, and in Tabloid, masterful, Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris has taken the latter and made an incredibly entertaining nonfiction film with all the wily narrative surprise of a tawdry B-movie run amok. A jaw-dropping, wonderfully bonkers look back at one of the stranger gossip-rag human interest tales of the 1970s, Tabloid is a streamlined treat that offers up a crafty, academic case-study overview of both romantic obsession and journalistic overreach, all without sacrificing for a moment any of the wonky side-street particulars that make the unlikely story so deliciously engaging.

Morris’ film focuses on Joyce McKinney, a former North Carolina beauty queen who in the 1970s moved to Utah and fell in love with Kirk Anderson. When Anderson, a devout Mormon, left for the United Kingdom on his church-mandated, two-year mission, McKinney became convinced that the man of her dreams had been indoctrinated into a cult. So, in a most peculiar way, she focused her attention on tracking him down and setting him free. Hiring a prop-plane pilot and a personal bodyguard for accompaniment, the lively blonde flew from California (where she was living by that time) to England, determined to pry her would-be husband from the oppressive clutches of the Mormon church. What ensued — decades before Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters — was a surreal blooming of celebrity for McKinney, and a tabloid tug-of-war in which two competing papers would paint very different portraits of her innocence, past and motivations. In its third and final act, Tabloid pivots again, jumping forward in time. Those thinking McKinney’s story couldn’t get any weirder have a surprise, involving the attempted cloning of her beloved dog, Booger.

A checklist of the Tabloid‘s ingredients — infatuation! sex! trans-Atlantic intrigue and escape! kidnapping! self-delusion! Mormonism! bondage! pay-to-play journalism! identification by dogs! — comes across as a shopping list for two or three labyrinthine scandals, not merely one, and in their insane, commingled glory they’re almost all as timely today as ever, especially in the wake of the recent phone hacking charges against Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and the endless, cable news loop reportage of Casey Anthony’s private life during the trial over the death of her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. A good part of Morris’ film is about the disruptive and transformative power of libidinal surge, yes — how love can make one see what they wish to see. But Tabloid is also very much about journalistic ethics, both past and present, how the media can choose to frame a narrative or cast a character, and then pursue doggedly confirmatory evidence to support that vision.

Those familiar with The Fog of War and Standard Operating Procedure will recognize Morris’ use of his patented off-camera interview machine, which he calls the “Interrotron.” Though he relies only a small, very trimmed and intimate roster of interviewees, the director gives Tabloid a proper dollop of scope via smart use of archive material and re-purposed media. Competing reporters from the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror, the two papers which served as the main conduits of information on the case to a hungry British public, offer up their blow-by-blow reminiscences of the case, which are by turns fascinating, hilarious and slightly unnerving.

The hyper-articulate, decidedly strange McKinney, though, is of course the chief attraction. Somewhere in the gulf between her account of events, crimes with which she was charged, and stories that subsequently came out in the tabloids, there is the real story of what happened in 1978. But Morris delights in this muddy ambiguity, and makes this point besides: what is a definitive and objective truth if one or more parties still never concedes to it? While it is about love, obsession, self-delusion, journalistic ethics, the gulf between sexual need and religious stricture, and many more things, Tabloid is, in the biggest sense, a fascinating story about the sometimes slippery and illusory nature of truth, especially as it relates to matters of interpersonal connection. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sundance Select/Moxie Pictures, R, 88 minutes)

In Salvation Boulevard, repentant Grateful Dead follower Carl Vanderveer (Greg Kinnear) has given up his wild ways, settling down with wife Gwen (Jennifer Connelly, in the throes of some feverish acting exercise) and her teenage daughter Angie (Isabelle Fuhrman, of Orphan), where he’s a lapdog member of the local super-church run by the charismatic if somewhat oily Pastor Dan Day (Pierce Brosnan). Following a debate between Dan and noted atheist author Dr. Paul Blaylock (Ed Harris), there’s a terrible accident, and Dan tries to pin the blame on Carl, leading to all sorts of shenanigans.

Kinnear and Brosnan made for an intriguing pair before, in the 2005 down-tempo black comedy The Matador, but here they connect with less success. Salvation Boulevard has a certain pedigree, being based on a book by Wag the Dog author Larry Beinhart, but so much of this material doesn’t rise to the level of its putative conceit. Two characters seem to initially figure more prominently into the proceedings, but fall out in the middle, only to lamely pop up again later. And when the film loops in a business contractor (Yul Vazquez) with designs on blackmailing Dan, it sags under the weight of a misguided focus.

In both his documentary Hell House and 2007’s Joshua, director George Ratliff has handled religious themes before (though not always well), so it’s somewhat strange that this film feels so toothless and schizophrenic — broad at times, and either unwilling or unable to commit to a darker path. More pointed religious satire would have been good, or even just crisper characterizations across the board. In a small part as a hippie security guard who crosses paths with Carl, meanwhile, Marisa Tomei gives the movie some lift. It’s a source of considerable frustration that viewers can’t pivot, follow her character off on another path, and look for their own salvation. (IFC Films, PG-13, 107 minutes)

A unique slice of Southern Gothic that premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, Septien is sort of the embodiment of what more American indie film should be doing and trying — which is to say identifying universal themes or feelings worthwhile of exploration for the creators, and then coming at them in a roundabout or subversive manner. An off-kilter dramatic mystery that trades in low-level mischievousness, and a kind of quietly comedic snapshot of deep-fried familial dysfunction, Septien is the ultimate chameleonic cinematic experience — it is chiefly what one wishes it to be, based on their mood while watching it, and interpretation of its rhythms. Regardless, it’s sure to be unlike almost any film you see this year.

Writer-director Michael Tully stars, along with Onur Tukel and Robert Longstreet (each of whom receive story credit), as a trio of brothers, the Rawlings, who occupy a rundown house somewhere in the rural South. (The movie was filmed in Tennessee.) Septien opens with the return of Cornelius (Tully), the prodigal son who now sports a crazy prospector’s beard that makes him look like a homeless Vincent Gallo or the disaffected stunt double for Joaquin Phoenix in I’m Still Here. In the years-long absence of their brother (which he doesn’t much want to really explain), Amos (Tukel, above center) has taken up outsider art, painting twisted and sexually perverse living hellscapes, while Ezra (Longstreet, above right) has doubled down on henpecking oversight, and (over-)embraced his caretaker’s role by sometimes sporting dresses.

The Rawlings’ friend Wilbur (Jim Cunningham) also hangs around like a stray mutt, eventually sparking the idea for an “art party” when he finds an old, buried video camera and shoots some random footage of nature. Cornelius, meanwhile, just kind of loafs about, sleeping and occasionally hustling unsuspecting dupes in unlikely sports wagers. As the brothers — individually and collectively, but also somewhat implicitly — try to figure out if they can repair their fractured family, a plumbing problem brings an old codger, “Rooster” Rippington (Mark Darby Robinson), to their home, and in tow a young girl, Savannah (Rachel Korine), who might be but probably isn’t his daughter. Eventually, an old connection to Rooster comes bubbling to the surface, forcing the brothers to confront difficult issues and emotions head on.

Septien is, by turns, curious, bemusing, inviting, standoffish, darkly funny, quietly unnerving and pleasantly confounding — but always relaxed, and comfortable in its own skin. It’s not some wildly esoteric waste of time, but neither is Septien comfortable completely and solely in any of the little genre sandboxes in which it dabbles. It moves to and fro, touching on themes of repression, fraternal connection, gender identity, trauma, religion, revenge and redemption.

Shot on Super-16mm, the film feels like an ageless assemblage of time periods every bit as much as genres. With an understated acting ensemble that teases along a viewer’s interest, Septien is, with just a couple exceptions (a self-conscious evocation of Of Mice and Men, for instance) a strikingly original and enchanting work, the type of which we need more of. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Note: In addition to its theatrical engagements, the film is available
nationwide on VOD via IFC Midnight. To follow its makers on Twitter,
meanwhile, hit up @SEPTIENFilm. (Sundance Selects, unrated, 79 minutes)