Middle of Nowhere may have a nondescript title, but the skill of its staging is anything but pedestrian. An intimate, confidently directed and superbly acted humanistic drama that is utterly at home in the subtle push-and-pull of long-standing family arguments and tensions, the Los Angeles-set film casts a long spell — not unlike the recent For Ellen — through its beguiling maintenance of melancholic mood.

Written and directed by publicist-turned-filmmaker Ava DuVernay, and released via a distributor, African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement, that she helped co-found, Middle of Nowhere focuses on Ruby (the wonderful Emayatzy Corinealdi), a bright medical student who puts her dreams on hold and suspends her career when her husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) lands in prison — hopeful that he can be released early for good behavior, after five years of an eight-year sentence.

Four-plus years later, as an important parole hearing looms, Derek seems more than a little ambivalent about a return to domestic normalcy. Against the backdrop of a pair of complicated relationships — with her sister Rosie (Edwina Findley), a single mother, and their own mom Ruth (Lorraine Toussaint) — Ruby is forced to stare past some of the walls she constructed to convince herself of her marriage’s solidity. She also meets Brian (David Oyelowo), a bus driver who seemingly offers her a stability and presence that Derek cannot.

DuVernay picked up Best Director honors at the Sundance Film Festival for the movie, and it’s easy to see why. The film’s plotting is familiar, and a couple of its gambits tired (the moment where the phone call of a daughter is briefly mistaken for that of another love interest), but there’s a lyrical quality to the direction, and the movie doesn’t attempt to distill Ruby’s contradictory emotions into neatly parceled, clear and direct motivations.

Much of Middle of Nowhere, DuVernay’s second film, is naturalistic in its own way, but cinematographer Bradford Young shoots in a muted fashion that underscores the movie’s melancholic, deeply interior vibe while not calling attention to itself. The result is earnest without being cornpone, slight without being simple, and beautiful without being overly adorned.

Corinealdi’s performance, an utter revelation, has a lot to do with this connection. She headlines a cast who captures, in smart, affecting and concise strokes, the inner restlessness and not easily articulated regret of characters fumbling toward an emotional equilibrium. Middle of Nowhere is an honest and moving account of some of the tough decisions that face those left on the outside when a loved one goes to prison — and when the not-yet-extinguished dreams of a life they wanted are commingled with a sense of shame over what their life actually is. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (AAFRM, R, 104 minutes)

A contemplative, puzzle-box anti-thriller of the sort that seemingly only the French now make (even though it’s adapted from an American novel by Douglas Kennedy), The Big Picture is an artful if overlong drama that connects chiefly as a compelling vehicle for star Romain Duris. To call it understated is its own special sort of understatement; this is a film-as-character-study, but also one that hovers drone-like over its subject rather than digging in for deep psychological insights. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (MPI Pictures, unrated, 114 minutes)