Amateurishly staged and unevenly acted, microbudget indie L.A. Superheroes is an indulgent, mishmashed immigrant/fringe-dweller‘s drama in which a couple artistically inclined Los Angelenos struggle to stay afloat (and in the country). Co-directed by multi-hyphenates Yelena Popovic and Alexandros Potter, from what they claim to be a collection of true-life stories witnessed firsthand, this dramatically impotent film serves as ample further evidence that, absent a unifying aesthetic and an artistic hand on the tiller, a camera simply turned back upon “real life” does not a compelling movie make.

Helena (Popovic) is a thirtysomething model who, after her work visa expired, apparently never got around to getting her paperwork in order. She has a wildly terrible manager, Angie (Catherine Carlen), who in addition to borrowing money from her client to make her car payment, also advises her to get a forged passport so she can go to Paris and do this big gig that’ll magically solve all her problems. Helena’s acting class friend, Auto (Alexander Zisiades), is a struggling musician who gets by delivering pizzas, though that doesn’t much seem to quell the rage he has toward the Los Angeles dating scene. After Helena secures a phony birth certificate through a contact of another friend, Sunny (T.J. Castronovo), things go sideways, and she becomes convinced she’s in danger for her life.

Weirdly titled, L.A. Superheroes unfolds in a series of languorously staged vignettes surrounding the fallout of this passport dilemma, but Short Cuts this isn’t. It aims for what is ostensibly a seriocomic tone (Auto’s advice to Helena before entering a potentially dangerous situation is to take a rock and not get shot in the face), but apart from a scene in which a woman feigns an injury in Runyon Canyon to catch the eye of a potential suitor, there’s nothing particularly amusing, clever or insightful about its eye and ear for random detail, and there’s additionally no compelling forward momentum, plot-wise. Helena’s husband gets quickly shunted off to the side, robbing the movie of at least the potential for some greater interpersonal dramatic friction.

Though it does feature a bit of decent music, L.A. Superheroes is shot through with nonsense — full of other tangents that never go anywhere. In theory Helena is also a would-be actress (hence the acting class), but the script attaches no particular aspiration or energy to her plight; indeed, there’s an extended sequence where an old New York friend shows up, invites her to dinner and then harangues her, reminding her that she in fact knows the director of “the year’s biggest movie,” Scumbag Club. Oh yeah, Helena realizes with a shrug… there’s that. Then it’s never really addressed again, leaving a viewer only their own glorious imagination in daydreaming up that fictitious hit. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Simeon Productions, unrated, 78 minutes)

Agreeably cast but burdened with an overly predictable narrative and junior flyweight comedic punching power, New York-set indie Hannah Has a Ho-Phase is one of those post-Bridesmaids laffers (no matter its exact date of origin) that tries to put a Title IX spin on (slight) raunchiness and sexual acting out. In the zeitgeist shadow of works with much more strongly defined voices, however, like Lena Dunham‘s HBO series Girls, this slice of mock-shock has little going for it except for that great title and a few likable performances.



While her roommate and best friend Leslie (Genevieve Hudson Price), a pole-dancing instructor who digs no-strings-attached flings, frequently keeps her up at night with her bedroom antics, 25-year-old advertising associate Hannah (Meredith Forlenza, above left) finds herself in a bit of a dry spell. She’s dating a guy, but not having sex, and so after she spots said dude at a bar making out with another girl, Hannah impulsively accepts a bet from Leslie that she can more easily bed 10 guys in six weeks than Leslie can go without sex for the same time period.

Ergo, titular sexual oat-sowing ensues. All this coincides, of course, with an assignment at work where Hannah is paired with ladies man Donny (Quincy Dunn Baker) to research a potential campaign for a branded, vanity vodka line that a rapper wishes to launch. As Hannah starts to inch closer to hitting her target number, though, she begins to wonder if developing feelings for Donny are, a) sincere, and b) requited. Freed up from base-level attraction, meanwhile, Leslie accepts a date offer from schlubby, mustachioed Seth (Mike C. Nelson), but then struggles to convince him of the genuineness of her romantic interest.

Co-directed in flatly shot fashion by Nadia Munla and Jamie Jensen, from a script written by the latter, Hannah Has a Ho-Phase (and yes, that hyphen kind of bugs me) surfs along on a somewhat saucy wave, but it lacks the relative sophistication — and certainly the Dorothy Parker-esque dialogue snap — of films like Lola Versus or L!fe Happens, to name but two other femme-centric comedies of sexual exploration, acting out and/or consequence. A bit of the frank sex talk is funny, but once Hannah enters her blue period, the film’s qualified chasteness comes through; there’s no nudity herein, making for some awkward sex scenes that run counter to the dialogue. Munla and Jensen also seem afraid to mine supporting characters for laughs; the whole idea of the rapper, and especially him wanting to name his brand “Get It,” as a sexual come-on, is amusing, but the character appears once, as a third act throw-away.

Thankfully, though, the performances are for the most part enjoyable. Forlenza — who physically favors a mash-up of Rachel Weisz and Nia Vardalos — has a certain girl-next-door coquettishness, and a nice rapport with Price. Nelson, though, rather quietly steals the show. He’s gifted with a few funny lines (as when Seth queries Leslie as to her “art stance” when they visit a museum), but also nails the probing humor and deferential physicality of a guy punching up above his number. If only the rest of Hannah had his same slyness. In addition to its theatrical engagements, Hannah Has a Ho-Phase is also available on iTunes and across VOD platforms. For more information, click here to visit its website. For the full, original review, click here. (Hourglass Entertainment/Kitty Kat Productions, R, 93 minutes)

A choppy adaptation of Max Brooks’ beloved novel of the same name, World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, aims for a putative classy, ruminative sweet spot somewhere between pandemic thrillers like Contagion and Children of Men and pulse-quickening zombie survival tales like Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later and its sequel. But it ignores or fudges various geopolitical realities, and in fumbling away one of the chief strengths of its source material it morphs into just another anonymous quasi-post-apocalyptic blockbuster.

A poorly reasoned first act gives way to a number of admittedly crackling, professionally mounted set pieces largely unburdened by any necessary unification, but the degree of satisfaction with World War Z for many viewers will be inversely proportional to their familiarity with the source material — or indeed, even just a desire for intelligent complexity. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Paramount, PG-13, 116 minutes)

The evocative title conjures up an immediate sense of intrigue, and Twenty Feet From Stardom, a new documentary about the unique lives and role of back-up singers, does not disappoint. Directed by Morgan Neville, this fascinating and eminently watchable little movie shines a deserving spotlight on those for whom singing is often chiefly about just sharing in a sense of harmonic enlightenment, not competition or means-to-an-end fame.

The subjects at the heart of Twenty Feet From Stardom are a varied bunch, but the film predominantly centers around five talented women. There’s 71-year-old Darlene Love, one of the bricks in Phil Spector‘s groundbreaking “Wall of Sound,” and a back-up singer to heavy hitters such as Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke and Dionne Warwick; Merry Clayton, a preacher’s daughter whose voice has colored everything from Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Sweet Home Alabama” and Carole King’s “Way Over Wonder” to the Rolling Stones‘ “Gimme Shelter;” Lisa Fischer, who has a Grammy-winning solo album under her belt but tours with the Stones and Sting; Judith Hill, a back-up singer for Michael Jackson at the time of his death; and Tata Vega, whose turbulent career was improbably revitalized by The Color Purple.

Neville uses the interview recollections of these women as the backbone of his movie, but livens it up with a smartly curated collection of archival footage (and tunes, of course) that buoys their stories. More recognizable faces like Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow (herself a former back-up singer) and Bette Midler also pop up, sharing their thoughts both generally and specifically on back-up singing; Jagger and Clayton’s intercut reminiscences of the latter’s summoned-in-the-middle-of-the-night contributions to the unforgettable “Gimme Shelter” provide the film with an electric high point.

Like a great melody, Twenty Feet From Stardom sticks around in one’s head for a while, and stands a chance of popping up unannounced in a thought, weeks later. Its characters are lively, intelligent and articulate women who in several instances bear the marks of a system that took undue advantage of them. Perhaps this is why the mere cursory manner in which Neville touches on some of the racial and sexual components of his protagonists’ stories is by comparison so disappointing. The women here share a lot in common (backgrounds in church choirs, for instance) and yet Neville seems afraid or unable to dive past the surface of some of these similarities and examine them in relation to the music industry, and its legacy of a certain exploitation.

In short, Twenty Feet From Stardom seems largely content to trade on its anecdotal punching power. The chasm in psychology and personality between would-be lead singer and back-up singers is frequently evoked and discussed, but only up to a certain point, in a kind of thumbnail fashion. In this manner, Neville’s film leaves one wanting just a bit more. Fortunately, though, its stories are so rich in detail — and, alternately, humor, heartache and triumph — that one will leave never quite being able to listen to the FM dial in quite the same way. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Radius-TWC, unrated, 90 minutes)

From Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone to The Simpsons Movie and Stephen King’s Under the Dome, the notion of an area being impenetrably sealed off from contact with the outside world is a well-worn one, full of rich and easy dramatic veins through which to explore notions of human fallibility and transcendence. Unfortunately, said concept gets a tired workout in writer-director Julian Roman Pölsler’s plodding adaptation of Marlen Haushofer’s eponymous 1962 novel — a German/Austrian import so weighed down by a stereotypically angst-ridden voiceover of emotional numbness and philosophical despair that one could be forgiven for thinking Werner Herzog wrote it as a goof.

Set against a beautiful and at times stark northern Austrian mountain landscape, The Wall tells the tale of a nameless woman (Martina Gedeck) who finds herself suddenly and inexplicably cut off from all human contact when an invisible barrier surrounds the cabin where she’s vacationing. At first her only companion is a loyal dog, Lynx. Later, there’s a cow she comes across and names Bella; later still, a kitten she dubs Pearl. The only people she sees, however, exist frozen in time, outside this bubble. After only a couple rather cursory attempts at breaching the wall, the woman focuses her time on survival (changing weather continues unabated in said space) and channels her psychic energies inward; the film then cuts back and forth in time, as she records in a diary notes from her stay of several years.

Certain critics have praised The Wall as intensely cinematic, but apart from its natural scenery and superb sound design (the wall is given an electromagnetic hum) this could scarcely be further from the truth. Rather than even try to let his audience live, labor and panic alongside Gedeck’s character Pölsler instead ports over or invents large swaths of morose narration marked by maddening equivocations. A typical passage goes like this: “I sometimes think X. (pause) I don’t believe that, though — I just wish it so.”

The result is a movie that feels antsy, uncomfortable in its own skin and, somewhat paradoxically, intellectually manic — a schematic exercise in theory and philosophy, with writ-large Metaphorical Import. It takes place in the wild, but is disconnected from it. For a much more interesting portrait of the unforgiving nature of the wild, consider Herzog’s Happy People: A Year in the Taiga instead. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In Los Angeles, The Wall opens at the Laemmle Royal, the Laemmle Pasadena Playhouse 7 and the Laemmle Encino Town Center 5. (Music Box Films, unrated, 108 minutes)

The idea of an Earth-bound fistfight between a foul-mouthed God and equally lewd Satan, complete with shots to the groin, sounds anarchic and wild. And certainly the participation of a roster of comedically gifted talents inspires some level of buzzy expectation. But in a post-South Park world, lazy execution of a ribald, potentially controversial concept will not suffice — especially not when the apocalypse is being handled with much more wit, vim and verve just across the megaplex, in the form of This Is the End. Thus the judgment of hearty disappointment falls upon Rapture-Palooza, a yawning, slapdash, would-be laffer in which a twentysomething Seattle native grapples with the discomfort and awkwardness of finding herself the object of the Anti-Christ’s affection.

After several billion people are raptured up to heaven, Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) and her boyfriend Ben (John Francis Daley) find themselves left back on Earth, with all the other heathens. The young couple tries to continue to lead some semblance of a normal life, amidst the downpours of blood, pot-smoking wraiths, and cursing crows and locusts, but it’s not that easy. Ben’s sycophantic father (Rob Corddry) has gone to work for the Anti-Christ (Craig Robinson), a garrulous taskmaster born Earl Gundy but who now goes by the moniker of Beast. When he whimsically settles on Lindsey to be his new bride, threatening to kill everyone she knows unless she assents, Lindsey and Ben concoct an on-the-fly, four-part plan to foil the Beast and cage him for 1,000 years.

Written by Chris Matheson and directed by Paul Middleditch, Rapture-Palooza locates a lot of its comedy in polarity. The Beast is a filthy-mouthed asshole who sings songs about his penis and spouts coarse come-ons like, “I bet your vagina tastes like pistachio mint ice cream” (and much worse). Shy-gal narrator Lindsey, meanwhile, is removed in a what-are-you-gonna-do? sort of manner, while the perpetually frustrated Ben finds himself in the awkward position of having his manhood undercut by Satan-in-waiting. To the extent that Rapture-Palooza is appealingly cast, this tack works in fits and starts.

The problem is that the Kevin Smith-type or South Park-y, sacrilegious stuff doesn’t play, because it’s not elevated, smart and specific enough. Plus, there’s no inner logic, even given the very low ceiling of the conceit. With the collapse of civilization, the idea of Ben and Lindsey saving money to operate their own sandwich cart so they in turn can afford to buy a house seems off. Presumably there would be lots of homes newly available, yes?

The movie is basically one big extended, inch-deep riff. It establishes the Beast’s infatuation with Lindsey in short order, gives her eight hours to decide a course of action, and then has she and Ben devise and then attempt to implement said plan to take him down. Laden with voiceover, a compacted first 15 minutes sketches out some of the specifics of this particular post-apocalyptic world, but Rapture-Palooza ignores much fun that could be had with the notion of the Anti-Christ as a former politician, even in ancillary fashion. In fact, pretty much every good idea it has — the notion, for instance, that Lindsey’s mom (Ana Gasteyer) is sent back to Earth after complaining too much at the gates of Heaven — it abandons in short order (frequently in favor of some bit of borderline obscenity from Robinson), as if it’s engaged in a game of plot-point hot potato.

The film’s high point, for those who remember the fifth season “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons, and its glorious Sideshow Bob rake-to-the-face bit, involves a litany of repeated shootings when Lindsey and Ben’s plan goes sideways. In its sheer over-the-top absurdity, it elicits out-loud laughs. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late for Rapture-Palooza, a movie bogged down in a tedious spin cycle of crassness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Lionsgate, R, 85 minutes)

A recent world premiere at the 16th annual Dances With Films, the Los Angeles-set Us offers up an unusual yet sympathetically pitched examination of mental illness through the rubric of a weird love triangle. Anchored by a superlative lead turn from Alanna Ubach, this micro-budgeted, worthwhile indie feature could, given a wide enough audience, serve as an important pivot-point for the actress, leading her into more dramatic terrain.

At first glance, Margaret (Ubach) seems like just a garden variety alcoholic — another thirtysomething wounded bird who drowns her unhappiness in booze and unfulfilling sexual encounters with seedy and abusive men. When she comes to after having blacked out in a bar, a lonely employee there, Jeff (Patrick Russell), lets her out before locking up. Later, a sympathetic social worker named Walker (Michael Navarra) happens upon Margaret on the street, and after a bit of conversation, leaves her his phone number. Once sober, Margaret relents to a proper date with him. Though cautious at first, she even begins to entertain the idea of having a real relationship.

One problem, however, lies in Margaret’s multiple personality disorder, which keeps Walker at bay and feeds an often less-than-healthy decision making process. The additional rub is that Jeff becomes a sort of guardian angel stalker — though not a very good one. Margaret finds out about Jeff’s peeping-Tom trailing of her, and invites him in for tea and conversation. Their strange and uneasy platonic bond, then, eventually intersects with Walker’s efforts to intervene in what he views as Margaret’s downward spiral into self-destruction.

In his feature debut, writer-director Sam Hancock concocts an interesting prism through which to refract a more serious mental illness; it obviously says something about both Walker and Jeff, and their co-dependence, that they’re drawn toward Margaret. The chief problem is that these supporting characters are so thinly and problematically sketched. For a supposed social worker, there’s a downright implausible lack of insight to Walker’s understanding and treatment of Margaret as he gets to know her better (“She’s moody,” he says at one point, after he should know much better). Jeff, meanwhile, is kind of a cipher — a vaguely free-form loner version of Wes Bentley’s disaffected character from American Beauty, minus any daddy issues or videocamera equipment. Despite game efforts from Navarra and Russell, these characters don’t rise to multi-dimensionality. As such, Us doesn’t feel like an equilaterally apportioned narrative but rather just a character piece with a couple wobbly wheels.

Thankfully, though, Us has Ubach. Better known for her comedic performances in movies like Legally Blonde, Meet the Fockers and Waiting…, Ubach brings a full-bodied complexity to Margaret, capturing both her vulnerability and the steely resolve and investment she has in protecting the walls she’s built up around her. She’s abetted by a script that really understands the relationship between a multiple personality disorder and sexual acting out (“That’s how people respond to me,” says Margaret at one point), as well as the character’s real angst and panic at the idea of letting go of the personalities, of letting them “die” (“They’re all I know!” she later rages).

In its atypical focus, Us does the broader issue of mental illness a great service. It showcases the impaired thinking that can lead to a variety of bad and dangerous situations. But it also examines the inwardly reflected insecurity that comes with trying to cope with such problems absent any greater support structure. When Margaret says, “You don’t want me — you want some cleaned-up, stripped-down version of me,” it’s heart-piercing in its directness, and the cold truth that informs Walker’s good-hearted desire to “fix” her. Us knows human complication, and puts a light on it. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on Us, click here to visit its website. (Umbrage Entertainment, unrated, 107 minutes)

A recent world premiere at the 16th annual Dances With Films, the evocatively titled micro-budget indie film Steve Chong Finds Out That Suicide Is a Bad Idea tries to put a bearded, decidedly fraternal spin on the whole Return of the Secaucus 7 sub-genre, wherein young adults gather and grapple with changes in life and their relationships. If there’s a certain easygoing charm to the movie, there’s also a lack of forward-leaning momentum or insight to make these characters stick to the psyche.

Scripted by Owen Hornstein, from a story concocted by his other three male costars and director Charlie LaBoy, Steve Chong breezes along nicely, a kind of down-tempo riff on The Hangover, in which guys get together, imbibe alcohol and give each other some shit. (Fear not, neither tigers nor Mike Tyson make an appearance. Sadly, neither does Heather Graham.) Big-punchline jokes aren’t really on the agenda here, but rather comedy of awkwardness and humiliation rooted in grudges over an old love triangle and the like.

Unfortunately, while the title holds true in the literal sense, Steve (Stanley Wong, also an editor on the project) is mostly a cipher, and interesting details regarding the other characters remain half-sketched. Most frustratingly, though, the film doesn’t really try to tap deep into Steve’s pathological shyness, or any of the cultural considerations that may inform it. So is it a comedy, or a drama? It’s sort of both, really, but without much punch or bite in either direction. Lacking much in the way of dynamism, the movie merely bobs along — pleasantly, for the most part, but in ultimately forgettable fashion. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Steve Chong The Movie LLC, unrated, 81 minutes)

Fleshing out their unreleased 2007 short film Jay and Seth vs. The Apocalypse, multi-hyphenate Seth Rogen and co-producer Jay Baruchel delve into end times with the winning, unabashedly vulgar This Is the End, in which a bunch of comedic Hollywood actors, playing themselves, cope with panic and paranoia while Armageddon unfolds outside around them. Befitting the backslapping nature of its casting, there are inside jokes and side-winding conversational riffs aplenty, but Rogen and his cowriter-director, Evan Goldberg, honor the conceit in all its zonked-out glory, studding their movie with slapstick gore, eccentric supernaturalism, some skewering of disaster and horror movie conventions, and lots of smart digs at particularly masculine vanity and insecurity.

While a lot of the humor in This Is the End trades in baser instincts (there are drugs, projectile vomiting and even point-of-view footage from a decapitated head, and an array of phalluses also make appearances, including the largest glimpsed onscreen since Watchmen), all the irreverent bickering and lashing out leads to some terrifically funny bits. And the movie gets in enough shots at horror films and the recent glut of siege tales to partially qualify as genre parody. Mostly, though, This Is the End is a relationship picture, with an improbably sincere ribbon of fraternal feeling and uplift. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Sony, R, 106 minutes)

Hardcore fans of Dancing With the Stars may find ancillary enjoyment and reward in the nonfiction offering Kumpania, which just enjoyed a Los Angeles premiere at the 16th annual Dances With Films. A concise documentary look at flamenco dancing and music, director Katina Dunn’s movie is a subcultural curio invested with much depth of feeling. Those with a predetermined investment in its rhythms will want to get up and dance along. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Piece O’ Work Productions, unrated, 61 minutes)

The directorial debut of multi-hyphenate Livia De Paolis and a mid-week world premiere at the Dances with Films Festival, Emoticon 😉 (yep, smiley face included, technically) delves into early-onset mid-life uncertainty by way of a career-minded woman’s unexpected pregnancy, and the unlikely friendships she develops with the two teenage kids of her much older lover. Professionally mounted and attractively photographed, this independent production is a fresh, off-the-beaten-path conceit that gets mileage from its willingness to examine notions of non-nuclear family and changing identity.

The story centers around Elena (De Paolis), a 33-year-old PhD. candidate whose boyfriend, Walter (director Michael Cristofer, taking a turn on the other side of the camera), is a divorced father in his 60s. His two kids — teenagers four months apart adopted from separate birth mothers when they were babies, Mandy (Diane Guerrero) and Luke (Miles Chandler) — are at first wary of the presence of yet another new woman in their dad’s life, but when it seems like Elena will be sticking around they open up a bit and Elena wins them over. After having never wanted children previously, meanwhile, when Elena becomes pregnant, she weighs whether her attitude has changed.

Working from a script co-written with Sarah Nerboso, De Paolis proves herself to be a capable filmmaker and an interesting writer, at least from a theoretical perspective, as Emoticon avoids a lot of the pitfalls of vanity writer-director-actor projects, wherein supporting characters get shunted off to the sides. There’s an easy, unforced quality to in particular the adolescent performances here, and Emoticon connects early on for these very reasons. It’s rooted in character, and not concerned with the overly rigid dictates of a capital-N narrative.

Unfortunately, once Elena’s pregnancy is introduced, the film’s plotting starts to lean more heavily on artificial construction. There’s forced parallelism (a pregnancy scare involving Luke’s girlfriend), and when Elena suffers her own tragedy, both Walter and Elena’s mother (Sonia Braga) have to offer up inappropriate and/or tone-deaf responses, in order to baldly goose the dramatic stakes. This is kind of a shame, just because it feels like a punt — the trading in of a messier, more interesting reality for something less honestly derived from character, and more about unnatural catharsis.

Overall, Emoticon isn’t bad, but it also doesn’t reach down quite deep enough for something gritty and true. Its title — which on the surface seems like an odd fit — relates to Elena’s putative research into teens’ use of social media, and how it shapes their relationships, but De Paolis, who has a generally appealing on-screen presence, doesn’t dig deep enough into her character’s intellectual endeavors. When it’s kicking around on the fringe, Emoticon flirts with some interesting things to say about the shifting nature of identity and how it’s tethered to other groups, and even fertility. Too bad that the movie doesn’t bound off into the weeds, but instead stays too close to the familiar, carved garden path. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Circus Road Productions, unrated, 79 minutes)

Four separate magic performers come together, Avengers-style (“Magicians assemble!”), in Now You See Me, a jaunty, Ocean’s-style heist thriller with comedic overtones. Smart casting, agreeable performances and a fresh narrative backdrop power this facile, twisty treat, helmed by Louis Leterrier. If the Robin Hood-esque redistribution-of-wealth undertaking which its protagonists undertake remains a bit undersketched and opportunistic, it barely dents the momentum of this rolling, pleasure-delivering puzzlebox, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Mark Ruffalo and Morgan Freeman, among others. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Summit, PG-13, 115 minutes)

Its title conjures visions of mythological battle or perhaps a questing journey, but the story at the core of the animated family film Epic is actually a much more familiar, environmentally-friendly tale. Centering on a teenage girl who gets shrunken down to a couple inches and must then band together with a whimsical set of characters in order to protect a surrounding forest, Epic takes aim mostly at the lowest-hanging fruit of entertainment, and achieves serviceable delight around the edges. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG, 102 minutes)