Narrated in stentorian tones by Kelsey Grammer, documentary Until They Are Home shines a light on the extraordinary dedication of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a military subset that works to locate and identify the bodies of American service members spanning various conflicts — and specifically their search for the missing remains of U.S. Marines killed in the Battle of Tarawa in November 1943 during World War II. Earnest and well-meaning but a bit sludgy and unfocused, this flag-wrapped documentary offering should find a home on PBS or elsewhere as part of future Memorial Day small screen programming.

The attack on the Japanese stronghold of Tarawa — an island parcel of land one-third the size of New York City’s Central Park, and the first major amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater — was designed to wrest control of an important 4,000-foot airfield landing strip that could then be used as a forward base for future operations. Combined, six thousand U.S. Marines and well dug-in Japanese soldiers lost their lives in the heated, three-day battle. American service members felled on the beach were hurriedly buried in mass trench graves. Decades later, the aforementioned Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command travels to the now-developed Tarawa to try to find human remains and bring closure to American families.

Part of the unresolved tension in Until They Are Home seems to result from its uncertainty of focus, in whether to tell the story of the assault of Tarawa more broadly, as funneled through the specific memories of a small band of Marines, or indeed just the charter mission of the JPAC team in general. Steven Barber, who takes the main directing credit, ping-pongs back and forth between different narrative angles, and picks a weird point of entry for his story to boot, resulting in a choppy narrative that struggles to hold viewers’ interest in a manner that it shouldn’t necessarily have to. Until They Are Home tells a solemn story, but just not very well. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, meanwhile, click here. (Vanilla Fire Productions, unrated, 66 minutes)

Set against the backdrop of what’s been coined the Olympics of oratory, nonfiction film Speak takes viewers on an intimate and emotional journey, through the paralyzing grip of the fear of public speaking, and into the Toastmasters International Speech Contest finals, which serves as a reminder that in order to connect on a human level one’s tale need not necessarily be sensational, but merely sincere.

Speak recalls movies like Spellbound, Make Believe: The Battle To Become the World’s Best Teen Magician and ventriloquist documentary Dumbstruck, all of which centered around specific subcultural contests, and tracked contestants through their preparations for the big event. For fans of those films, the enormously sympathetic figures in Speak will create a strong emotional pull. Its half dozen main subjects include an out-of-work father of six with an amputated foot; an architect turned actor with an incurable heart disease; a university professor who pulled herself up out of poverty; a single mom living with lupus; and a retiree who reconnected with his high school crush after more than five decades.

There are a couple other interviewees as well — Hardball host Chris Matthews (an ex-Toastmaster member himself), disgraced college TV sportscaster Brian “Boom Goes the Dynamite!” Collins, and Caite Upton, the Miss South Carolina Teen USA pageant participant whose rambling, nonsensical response to a geographical education question achieved an unfortunate national infamy — but these chats are mostly front-loaded, and not particularly well integrated into the movie. Other attempts to explain the Toastmasters organization and its charter come across as at once perfunctory and a bit shaggy and half-considered.

Most of Speak, though, is an uplifting portrait of friendly competition, and it’s when the film identifies this narrative track and embraces as its core mission the illumination of positive thinking and dream pursuit that it really takes off. Co-directors Paul Galichia and Brian Weidling eschew directorial flashiness, and instead double down on the basic human connection of their subjects, almost all of whom have experienced some considerable health problem or other emotional setback.

The competition parameters at this national convention — seven-minute speeches, sans notes, differing from the material that has passed the speakers through various area and regional feeding rounds — are kind of loosely defined, but in the end it doesn’t much matter. Author and would-be professional motivational speaker Rich Hopkins, the aforementioned family man amputee, is an especially relatable figure. In his humble obstinance, one glimpses the heartening strength of American character. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more about the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, meanwhile, click here. (Tumbleweed Entertainment, unrated, 89 minutes)

The notion of a kiddie horror film may seem or sound like a weird mix, but any moviegoer of appreciable devotion can surely recall a film from their early adolescence that got under their skin a bit in a good way, providing a cathartic jolt. Mostly funny but also plenty scary for the elementary school set, the new 3-D animated adventure ParaNorman, from the makers of Coraline, fits that bill.



A kind of inventive and visually engaging melange of the aforementioned flick, Monster House and A Nightmare Before Christmas, ParaNorman unfolds in the town of Blithe Hollow, whose locals profit from tourism mining the town’s history as the site of a famous witch hunt 300 years earlier. For 11-year-old Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee), though, ghost lore and other spookiness isn’t just part of some dusty old history book — he still sees his deceased grandmother (voiced by Elaine Stritch), as well as all other manner of dead people.

This flusters his father Perry (voiced by Jeff Garlin) to no end, but when Norman’s black sheep uncle (voiced by John Goodman) unloads on him the responsibility of halting a centuries-old witch’s curse from coming true, the requisite race-against-time unfolds, with a pack of risen zombies unleashed upon the town. Caught up in the mix alongside Norman are amiable and impressionable classmate Neil (voiced by Tucker Albrizzi); thick-headed bully Alvin (voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse); his perpetually exasperated older sister, Courtney (voiced by Anna Kendrick); and Mitch (voiced by Casey Affleck), the school quarterback on whom she nurses a none-too-secret crush.

The film’s exacting stop-motion animation has a fabulous and inviting tactile quality, a bit like The Fantastic Mr. Fox. One wants to reach out and touch the characters, and tumble headlong into their world. Director Sam Fell oversees a funky style, too, with great imagination to the movie’s framing. And with his bacon strip eyebrows, Bart Simpson-esque spiky hair and melancholic, crushed-confidence vocal timbre, Norman cuts a sympathetic figure.

The plot bogs down a bit as the movie shifts gears into its second and third acts — the audience is on the outside looking in on the specifics of Norman’s quest, much like the character himself. A bit more clarity and early revelation here wouldn’t have hurt. And the supporting players — cheerleader, himbo jock, bully and chubby geek — are more functional than deeply sketched, and deployed in a manner that doesn’t really add much, in either assistance or obstacle, to Norman’s journey. But Chris Butler’s script knows how to push the right buttons of squirmy gross-out and slapstick comedy, and features plenty of winning set-ups and jokes.

In its own small way, ParaNorman is also a product of its time, and a salvo against sociocultural nastiness. While it focuses on a misunderstood kid, and again preaches a familiar strain of diversity appreciation and inclusiveness, its parallel moral — indeed, even stated outright by Norman’s mother at one point — is that when people get scared, they’re apt to do terrible and stupid things. It’s not too much of a leap to assign that description to our current political climate. (Focus/Laika, PG, 100 minutes)