In 2004 Jonathan Caouette made a film, Tarnation, about his tumultuous upbringing with his maternal grandparents and fractured, on-and-off-again relationship with his disturbed mother, Renee, who suffered from psychosis after undergoing shock treatments in her adolescence following a period of time being paralyzed. The movie became something of a media sensation for being edited on free iMovie software on a Mac and having a budget of only a couple hundred dollars (though subsequently brushed up sonically prior to a theatrical release), but it was no parlor trick. An intense and unsettling autobiographical bricolage, the movie had important things to say about psychological abuse and the familial legacy of mental illness.

Walk Away Renee represents Caouette’s follow-up to Tarnation, as it also centers around his 58-year-old mother, now living in a group home in Houston, diagnosed with acute bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. While partially framed around a 2010 road trip to bring Renee to an assisted living facility closer to him, in New York, the film is, more broadly, an achingly melancholic, fairly haunting and inescapably human document that shines a light on some of the less typically discussed dimensions of mental illness.

The mode of its telling conforms to Caouette’s collagist instincts, incorporating digital home video footage, large swathes of photo flashback montage, probing but casual conversational footage, and even a staggering string of answering machine messages from his mother that captures the wild swings of her many moods. During the road trip, Caouette — wearing under his eyes the bags of someone who’s had to spend a lifetime emotionally bobbing and weaving — deals with lost medications and seemingly ad hominem attacks. But what gives this material extra depth and resonance (whether or not one has seen Tarnation) is his skillful touch with tapestral downheartedness.

In a sense, Walk Away Renee is both a love letter and a break-up letter. It shows a deep bond between single mother and only son, but also the limits of this relationship, and the veritable chasm that mental illness represents between those struggling with it and those who love them. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. To view the film online via VOD, click here. (Sundance Now, unrated, 88 minutes)

A generally agreeable but perhaps hopelessly meandering documentary snapshot of one young guy’s attempt to hit the road for 31 days and live off the alms of America’s new, digital age thrift store, Craigslist Joe isn’t the first nonfiction film to throw a light on the namesake popular classified advertising website, but it is the first to arrive with the imprimatur of executive producer Zach Galifianakis.

Departing Los Angeles with only $200, his laptop and bookbag, a cellphone, tooth brush and the clothes on his back (oh, and a cameraman, whom he of course met on Craigslist), Garner relies on listings — both his own, and those already on the site — for food, shelter and transportation. Via a couple ride-shares, he heads north, to Portland and Seattle, and then finally east, along the way trolling Craigslisted free events (charity gatherings, open-mic nights, breakdancing classes, Hanukkah celebrations) where he can mingle, grab a bit of warmth and try to find a place to crash for the evening.

Garner — who hatched the idea for his feature film debut while serving as an assistant to Todd Phillips on The Hangover — is a pleasant and engaging enough guide for this trip. And as a travelogue litmus test of human kindness, Craigslist Joe is satisfying entertainment, on a surface level. It warms the heart a bit, and certainly proves to be an emotional and enlightening experience for Garner. So watching him achieve some emotional fulfillment and growth emits small pulses of positive energy. But even on just a personal/psychological level the movie lacks a strong enough thesis, definition and stakes, and could benefit enormously from more direct-address confessionals. It doesn’t necessarily need the personality infusion of a chattering Morgan Spurlock, but Craigslist Joe does cry out for more of a sense of Garner’s state of mind during his actual travels.

Craigslist Joe isn’t bad, and will in fact prove quite enjoyable to those utterly bewitched by its mere conceit. But in terms of pure slice-of-life quirkiness, melancholy and Americana, Austin Lynch (David Lynch’s son) and his friends achieved more with Interview Project, a striking series of three-minute shorts they produced traveling across the country. With Garner’s film, one can’t help but feel that it’s also a case of a concept not quite completely cracked — a tech-age experiment entered into with more feeling than thought. For more information on the movie, visit its website. For the full, original review, meanwhile, click here to visit ShockYa. (CLJ Films, unrated, 90 minutes)