Using Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz’s found-footage horror flick Grave Encounters as a self-referential leaping-off point, Grave Encounters 2 gathers up a head of loose-limbed steam and bundles it up in a rather impressive technical package, but ultimately fumbles it away on a story that buckles under the weight of layered self-consciousness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 98 minutes)

A sweet-natured and loose-limbed coming-of-age tale that delivers by way of its smart, sympathetic performances and an accumulation of telling details, actor Matthew Lillard’s directorial debut, Fat Kid Rules the World, tells a simple and familiar story, but one with not inconsiderable emotional purchase. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Outsider Pictures/Arc Entertainment, R, 94 minutes)

There may not be a more important documentary released this year for the general health of especially sports-playing American kids than Head Games, director Steve James’ impactful look at the trauma inflicted by repeated concussions. Using Chris Nowinski’s November 2006 book of the same name as a leaping-off point, the film digs into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or CTE) and its longterm links to memory loss, early-onset dementia, depression and even suicide.

Nowinski, a former Harvard football player and WWE wrestler, knows of what he writes and speaks. After his professional wrestling career was cut short from the lingering after-effects concussion, he went on to research and write his exhaustively footnoted book, and eventually co-found the Sports Legacy Institute with Dr. Robert Cantu, in reaction to a new crop of medical research showing brain trauma to be both a latent and booming public health crisis. Nowinski was at the forefront of some of this research, too, convincing the families of a handful of recently deceased athletes to donate their brains for scientific study.

Owing to the fact that the NFL is where the story broke and played out, after the 2006 suicide of ex-Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Andre Waters, Head Games devotes about the first half of its 91-minute running time to professional football before cycling through progressively less time devoted to NHL hockey and soccer — as funneled through the perspectives of former player Keith Primeau and Olympic medalist Cindy Parlow, respectively — and, essentially, a third act-as-closing argument. Nowinski shares his own experiences, as does his best friend and college teammate, while New York Times writer Alan Schwarz walks viewers through the unfolding story from his perspective.

Still, Head Games isn’t just a jeremiad or hand-wringing assault on all physical activity, though. While the brutal collisions of football get the most attention, James (Hoop Dreams) uses the articulate Nowinski and others to sketch out a timeline of changing dynamics, and how research can hopefully be used to foster better concussion diagnosis, and perhaps even develop better equipment. Smartly, the director doesn’t overload his movie with voices; the doctors number no more than a half dozen, and this tightened focus benefits the material.

The first-person testimonials of the aforementioned ex-athletes carry a lot of significance as well, and give the movie sympathetic heft. Parlow talks about suffering from chronic headaches during her career, and even now always leaving on her car’s GPS guidance system, even on familiar streets. The grander importance of Head Games — what makes it a movie that isn’t just about a problem in professional sports — lies in how James also spotlights the competitive drive of various kids playing these sports, often with less equipment and certainly with less medically informed training and supervision than their sports idols. Late in the film, one doctor estimates that around 15 percent of even one-time concussion sufferers endure persistent cognitive dysfunction. Darkly, plenty of viewers might leave Head Games wondering if why they can’t find their car in the parking lot has some connection to all those Pop Warner football games years ago. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information, click here to visit the movie’s website. (Variance Films, PG-13, 91 minutes)

If the key to girl-next-door romantic comedy appeal is said to lie in an actress’ aspirational qualities, then the same is true of another subset of comedy embodied by Kevin James, whose stocky physicality but surprising grace with it feed an affable, self-effacing demeanor that serves as a pleasantly embraceable stand-in for legions of weekend warriors with anecdotes of past athletic glory and romantic prowess. Conventionally plotted but bighearted, crowd-pleasing teacher-turned-fighter tale Here Comes the Boom serves as James’ most well-rounded starring vehicle to date. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Sony, PG, 104 minutes)

A thunderously stupid horror movie of slapdash construction and ping-pong tonalities, Smiley builds its narrative around the notion of a viral video serial killer who’s summoned by way of a specific web chat incantation. Impressive only for its ability to chase unlikeliness and viewer frustration down an ever-increasing rabbit hole of bewilderment, director Michael Gallagher’s motivation-free genre exercise is populated with characters who, when not busy exhibiting the decision-making and inner emotional landscapes of 12-year-olds, are pantomiming the same age group’s mindset of adults and scariness — all ideas which they’ve absorbed through cultural osmosis.



College freshman Ashley Brooks (Caitlin Gerard, possessing a nice smile and beatific presence) is still recovering from the suicide of her mother just a year earlier, but becomes fast friends with Proxy (Melanie Papalia) when she moves into an off-campus house with her prior to her first semester. Proxy takes Ashley to a party where she introduces her to a bunch of anonymous users of a message board she frequents. These include alpha male Zane (Andrew James Allen, getting his “acting” on), who flirts seemingly by talking up his interest in “the intersection of the strange and the retarded,” as well as Binder (Shane Dawson), a meek kid bullied and kicked out of the party ostensibly for flagging inappropriate content like child pornography.

Against the ongoing backdrop of a reason and ethics class taught by Professor Clayton (Roger Bart, coming the closest to escaping this mess unscathed), Ashley and Proxy decide to test out the urban legend of Smiley by typing three times “I did it for the lulz,” which sounds like something a stoned, kitten-loving Limp Bizkit fan would have dreamed up circa 2000. They then witness a murder, and soon other members of their little group are felled as well. Fearing that her fragile sanity is unraveling, Ashley reaches out at various points to Proxy, Zane and Binder, trying to get to the bottom of this brutal killer.

The script for Smiley, by Gallagher and Glasgow Phillips, is a hodge-podge of clichés and nipped bits from many other horror movies, from The Ring and Bloody Mary to the Scream sequels. Its handling and portrayal of the average twentysomething’s relationship with technology is frequently silly, and its efforts to achieve notional topicality by way of basing its story around a Chat Roulette-type website already feel dated and lame. The movie tries to paper over all these deficiencies by way of spurious leaps in logic and some half-hearted mumbo-jumbo about the Internet achieving a greater consciousness (“From The Terminator, like Skynet — or like Neo!”). All other shortcomings (of which there are many) and red herrings are “solved” by a lazy, post-modern twist that feels cobbled together like a Mad-Lib.

Smiley is a movie of obviously limited budget and resources, but its failures run much deeper than that. The result leans on jump-scares and sound design in an attempt to summon some small modicum of dread or tension. On a purely visual level, the actual character of Smiley — with stitched shut eyes and a carved jack-o-lantern grin — is creepily effective, not unlike the striking slasher Chromeskull of a couple years ago, from Laid to Rest and its sequel. But everything about Smiley is nonsensical, derivative, or both — right down to an air-quote shocking ending that then tries to leave room for ambiguity or a sequel but only further undercuts the stupid narrative choices made by its makers. Leave this turd alone. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Fever Productions, R, 90 minutes)

No, this is not the story of a crayon-obsessed kid and his plot to nourish and grow seedlings of Stubhub’s “Ticket Oak,” alas. A rangy coming-of-age drama based on Marianne Fredriksson’s Swedish book of the same name, Simon and the Oaks spans a couple decades in telling the story of an outcast adolescent of partial and secreted Jewish heritage growing up amidst the considerable political and social turmoil of World War II. Arthouse appreciation for this attractively photographed recipient of 13 Guldbagge nominations, Sweden’s Oscar equivalent, will depend on a given viewer’s tolerance for broad-strokes melodrama of intertwined fates that lacks the ambition and emotional complications of many similar screen works.

Simon and the Oaks is directed by Lisa Ohlin, and there’s no doubt that the film’s technical package is a solid one. The cinematography and score are both superlative, and the film never feels phony or even less than entirely authentic in its period piece detail and evocation of a bygone era. The acting, too, is solid, giving the movie a collection of many strong, self-contained scenes.

It’s just that the sum is less than the whole of its parts, since the film continuously opts for narrative forward movement rather than a deeper exploration of motivations and feeling. Ohlin’s film is beautiful, but John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas — both its 2008 cinematic adaptation, and the original source material — remain stronger evocations of Jewish-rooted World War II drama, the early intrusion of “the dark hour of reason” upon adolescence, and the dramatic consequences thereof. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Simon and the Oaks opens this week in New York City at the Paris Theater and in Los Angeles at the Landmark, expanding nationally from there. For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Film Arcade, unrated, 118 minutes)

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)

A best-selling author, lifestyle coach and proponent of Eastern medicinal practices, Deepak Chopra is known to and beloved by millions. Of course, he’s also just a man — and a sometimes distant and curious one to his son, Gotham Chopra. Decoding Deepak, then, is a documentary devoted to unraveling a bit of the myth surrounding the public figure, as the younger Chopra follows his father for a year, chronicling his brokered ordainment as a Buddhist monk in Thailand and subsequent book tour for a fictionalized autobiography of Muslim prophet Muhammad. Smart, warm-hearted and inquisitive, it digs into one of the under-examined (and ongoing) difficulties we all face — recognizing and understanding our parents as actual people, and not just a mom or dad.

Chopra recognizes and respects his father’s intelligence and drive, but his relationship with him is also leavened by skepticism, and a certain disconnection from what he eventually characterizes as Deepak’s insatiable hunger to be relevant on a grand scale. Like any son or daughter, he’s frustrated when his father thinks he has nothing left to learn, and he sketches out the contours of their relationship thusly: for engagement, follow him into his work, and listen to him talk about… whatever.

A lack of something to say is certainly not a condition normal to Deepak, who is adept at elegantly phrased, bite-size morsels of wisdom, and a master of wrapping philosophical poetry around terrible moments of human despair or depravity. In Gotham’s view, his father can turn “any mundane question into a talking point for a book,” so ripples of an understated adolescent longing for more personal connection come bubbling to the surface by way of his innocent needling of his dad over the lack of his books at a train station kiosk (“You’re not as popular as The Secret“) during a trip to India.

The film doesn’t quite crack the ineffable remoteness of its subject, but it is humanizing. The portrait that emerges is an interesting and engaging one — of Deepak as a perhaps deep but also innately restless thinker, not a phony, really, but a spiritually-minded guru who also enjoys many of the material pleasures of life. He’s a man of contradictions, like us all. This is always why he can be seen as pondering the big questions of life, while still obsessed with both his Blackberry and a contentious Nightline debate with professional skeptic Michael Shermer from months earlier.

As a kind of well-captured travelogue, Decoding Deepak is of course quite specifically about its namesake subject, but it also has a much wider reach and sense of reflection and purpose than that. The film actually shares a good deal in common with Doug Block’s superb, little seen 2009 documentary The Kids Grow Up, and Agnès Varda’s slightly better known The Beaches of Agnès, both of which were highly reflective nonfiction self-portraits refracted through the lens of modern parenting, and by degrees about the difficult but necessary notion of evolving familial relationships. If life is about answering but a few questions and the process of discovering more and more with which to grapple, Decoding Deepak suitably captures that. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, and to view its trailer and information about its availability on VOD platforms, visit its website by clicking here. (Snag Films, unrated, 74 minutes)

A recognizable cast does nothing except raise the level of viewer befuddlement attached to Butter, a heartland-set train wreck of purported satire. Set against the true-to-life backdrop of the Iowa State Fair’s annual butter-carving contest, this sluggish, unfunny and poorly stitched together tale of competitive impulse run amok is too leavened and scattershot to qualify as a dark comedy, and not smart or pointed enough to score as a lampoon. Instead it merely lurches from half-baked comedic conceit to conceit, indulging a painful-to-watch lead performance by Jennifer Garner.



With his sculptures of Schindler’s List, Newt Gingrich astride a horse, and Christ’s Last Supper, Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) is Iowa’s reigning butter carver, 15 years running. When the powers-that-be figure it might be time for someone else to finally have a chance, he graciously steps aside. But his wife, Laura (Garner), possesses a manic ambition, and views the butter-carving crown as somehow “theirs.” Indignant, she decides to enter the competition herself.

Unlikely opposition arrives by way of Bob’s affable number-one fan, Carol-Ann (Kristen Schaal); Brooke (Olivia Wilde), a bad-girl stripper with whom Laura just caught Bob having a one-time fling; and Destiny (Yara Shahidi, above left), a preternaturally mature 10-year-old African-American girl just adopted by Julie and Ethan Emmet (Alicia Silverstone and Rob Corddry). Laura is hellbent on winning at all costs, and when a ruling in the country competition doesn’t go her way and she senses her chance slipping away, Laura recruits some nefarious assistance from her high school ex, Boyd Bolton (Hugh Jackman, channeling some great himbo charm), now a dimwitted but successful used car salesman.

Taken in darker directions, Butter could conceivably summon up recollections of something like Election, or even Red Rock West — other regionally specific tales of people overwhelmed by snowballing circumstances. If tightened narratively and executed more slickly, it could at least rate comparative mention to the best of Christopher Guest. As is, though, Butter just seems like a strange and unconvincing blend of Sugar & Spice and Lovely & Amazing, with a side serving of political commentary that is less veiled than toothless, and without meaningful follow-through. Apart from the admitted originality of its setting, whatever verve and pop was originally part of Jason Micallef’s script, the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship 2008 award winner, is undone by various editorial nips and tucks, and the hapless oversight of director Jim Field Smith (She’s Out of My League).

Butter is confusingly edited throughout, likely reflecting the behind-the-scenes turmoil over a movie that was completed some time ago and originally scheduled for release this spring before being yanked from schedules only a couple weeks before its bow, after it had already been screening for entertainment journalists. One assumes there was initially a reason for the inclusion of the character of Kaitlen (Ashley Greene), Bob’s daughter and Laura’s stepdaughter, but there’s scarcely one now. A big part of the movie’s problem, though, seems to lie in its unwillingness to cast Garner (also a producer on the project) more fully into the role of a shrill villainess, and invest narrative time elsewhere. Ergo, Butter seems unfocused.

It’s also chock full of thunderously false moments that betray a lack of rigorous conceptual thought and honesty. Case in point: before flashing back in time, the film opens at a glad-handing political-type rally, where a short biographical video plays to a friendly and enthusiastic crowd. In it, Laura is identified as “Bob’s second wife,” which makes absolutely no sense, other than as a needless way to try to identify and explain potential tension between her and Kaitlen. There are a handful of other examples of this lazy, sloppy filmmaking, too.

In terms of the performances, Shahidi (Imagine That, the forthcoming Alex Cross) is actually quite good, and, as mentioned, Jackman is able to locate an incandescence in dim bulb Boyd. But Garner communicates in scrunched faces and mimeographed stridence, never able to make Laura either a real character or a deliciously camp, larger-than-life antagonist. She’s just the loudest from a fanciful grab-bag of characters sprinkled over a melted mess. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Radius/Weinstein Company, R, 92 minutes)

An unconvincing portrait of downward-spiral alcoholism anchored by a noisy, look-at-me lead turn, Smashed trades on surface-level melodrama before it finally fumbles away any credibility with fundamentally false notions of what co-dependence and addiction look like. The recipient of almost universally positive notices following its Sundance Film Festival premiere earlier this year, director James Ponsoldt’s sophomore feature is a sterling example of herd-mentality hype.



Young, married Los Angelenos Kate and Charlie Hannah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul) exist in a pleasant haze of near-perpetual intoxication. She’s a first-grade teacher, he’s a freelance music writer set up to coast financially courtesy of a sizable endowment from an unseen family. After Kate vomits in her classroom in front of her kids, she goes along in the affirmative with one of their queries, and lets folks believe she is pregnant.

Principal Patricia Barnes (Megan Mullally) is thrilled. Kate later confides her secret to co-worker Dave (Nick Offerman), who shares that he is in fact a recovering alcoholic. Fed up with the cyclical partying and hangovers, Kate takes steps toward improving her health, and starts attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where she secures a sponsor, Jenny (Octavia Spencer). Charlie isn’t ready to quit his partying ways, however, leading to more friction in their relationship.

The script for Smashed, co-written by Ponsoldt and Susan Burke, is a hodge-podge of clichés that cycles unpersuasively through montages of self-betterment in order to make more time for “outrageous” acting out and gabby reflection. Its many positive reviews talk up the modesty of Smashed, and its unsensationalized, to-scale drama. But there is nothing particularly bright or insightful here. In fact, beat for beat, Smashed feels phony. Its story is wildly contrived; after supposedly being sober for months, Kate still hasn’t seemed to consider how to mask the lie of her pregnancy, until after co-workers throw a baby shower and her students start asking her about weight gain, leading to a terribly imagined conversation about abortion and miscarriage. And the movie’s idea of payoff is, when Kate and Charlie go to visit the former’s mother, Rochelle (Mary Kay Place), showing the frozen meal of choice from her less-than-ideal childhood which Kate previously held forth on in a drunken monologue.

Worse still, Smashed lacks emotional and psychological credibility with respect to how addicts co-exist and, more importantly, unravel and lash out when one gets sober and “leaves behind” the other. Damningly, it also misrepresents a character nine years sober, trading his dignity for a cheap and entirely unearned laugh. Smashed is not a movie that knows or understands the human condition, in states either altered, otherwise damaged or even normal.

The film’s insistently gritty technical package further feeds this self-satisfied sense of mock-faithful portraiture. Cinematographer Tobias Datum trades in handheld work just because it seems “real.” Ponsoldt, though, doesn’t even completely trust this tack, so he makes sure to have Kate hoist a beer when she belts out karaoke tune; it’s as if he believes that if alcohol isn’t in the frame, a viewer might forget that she’s stricken with addiction.

Then there are the movie’s performances. Emmy winner Paul (Breaking Bad) is a fine young actor, but given precious little with which to work here. Similarly, Winstead fails to truly access Kate’s dark places or shame, resorting to atonal yelling and volume modulation as dramatic substitutes. It’s intense, but self-limiting. Smashed is loud, and certainly sure of itself, but it’s a whole lot of noise signifying nothing much. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 85 minutes)

A rich, thoughtful conversation-starter about changing notions of religious damnation, Hellbound? invades notoriously touchy territory with an open mind, steady focus and civil disposition. Director Kevin Miller interviews an eclectic group of authors, theologians, pastors, social commentators and even musicians in exploring how and why so many modern-day Christians are so bound to a particular and specific vision of hell, and the manner in which that predominance in turn affects that world in which all of us are living.

The idea of hell, for those who believe in its existence, breaks down broadly along three lines: those who accept it in literal terms, as a place of eternal torment for the souls of the damned; those who adhere to Annihilationism, in which true believers join God in Heaven while the souls of the wicked are on the other hand extinguished, snuffed out like a candle flame; and those who tout Universalism, in which God’s grace and love eventually restores to right relationship the souls of all human beings.

Different texts in the Bible on the surface teach all three, lending plenty of fuel and ammunition for the often vehemently expressed passions of various adherents. The struck fuse for this perhaps internecine conflict exploding more into the mainstream came about when Rob Bell, pastor of one of the largest and most influential churches in America, in February of 2011 released a two-minute trailer to promote his new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. His virtual excommunication by many prominent evangelicals was swift and fiery.

Miller, though, picks up this question about hell as a place of eternal torture for the wicked, and asks what it says about the notion of God as an all-loving creator (admittedly not the shorthand doctrine of a broad swath of Christianity) if he really allows presumably allows billions of people to suffer in hell for eternity. Miller rather thankfully eschew man-on-the-street reportage and querying, and the banality such an approach would engender. Instead, he aims for a more elevated and informed level of discourse, and the result is a work of considerable eloquence and intrigue.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates Miller’s prudence and levelheadedness than when he engages in conversation with a couple members of the Westboro Baptist Church — the ultra-Calvinist Kansas house of worship who espouse a litany of hateful viewpoints and prance about at funerals of armed service members with signs reading “God Loves Dead Soldiers” and the like. Their exchange, intercut throughout the movie in relevant portions, unfolds along a theological rather than emotional axis. Miller keeps his cool. It is a woman from Westboro that becomes somewhat unhinged and veers into strange ad hominem attacks, leading Miller to ask, “Are you expressing God’s anger toward me right now, or yours?”

Hellbound? of course does not arrive at a pat conclusion, but the questions it raises — amongst them, Does or would God respond to evil in the same way we on Earth do? — are weighty and, for the properly enlightened and engaged mind, stimulating and even a certain type of fun to ponder. Evil, empathy, love, duty, eternity, free will and acquiescence — all are part of Miller’s heady cerebral stew, sure to connect at least as a curio with open-minded viewers of various religious beliefs. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie and to view its trailer, visit its website. (Area 23A, unrated, 85 minutes)

Hit small screen series like ER, Chicago Hope and Grey’s Anatomy have for years wrung drama out of gunshot wounds, helicopter crashes, siege stand-offs and all manner of exotic diseases — as well as, of course, by cycling through various super-charged romantic couplings that occasionally make its characters seem just like slightly more erudite but no less sexed-up members of some lost season of The Real World. What happens in a real public hospital emergency room, however? That’s the focus of the stirring, verité-style documentary The Waiting Room.

Directed by Peter Nicks, this raw, character-driven movie unfolds at Oakland’s Highland Hospital, the primary care facility for 250,000 citizens, about 250 of which — most of them uninsured — crowd its emergency room every day and night. It’s perhaps shot over the course of a couple days, but constructed to basically track as one single 24-hour period, weaving together stories of a frightened girl stricken with a dangerous case of strep throat, a young man with a testicular tumor desperately in need of surgery, a blue collar laborer beset with chronic pain, a familiar addict caught in a hazy, frightening relapse, and many more.

There are also, of course, less serious ailments and issues (in addition to the obligatory collection of abusive patients), but among the most heartbreaking cases might be the steady stream of those with recurring health issues — victims of diabetes, and a guy who’s suffered a stroke a couple weeks prior, and now keeps falling down — who so obviously need more consistent, affordable care. This digs into the ugly reality of those who dismiss the need for national health care overhaul, and think that emergency rooms, as they now function, are a solid enough stop-gap. As a doctor points out, his job has a social as well as medical component; simple “bed math” must be considered, but when faced with discharging a stable but otherwise incapacitated patient who has literally no place to go, the greyness of morality looms.

The gut-punch effectiveness of Nicks’ film lies in its forthrightness, and how it avoids speechifying. There are no direct-address, sit-down interviews with the care providers — the film simply captures doctors and nurses’ interactions with patients, and then artfully layers on additional thoughts from the former by way of sparsely used voiceover. It ends, too, not with lengthy codas and grand statements, but merely the tribute to another day of human service and assistance. The result is at once gripping and terribly sad; time spent in this Waiting Room is emotionally obliterative. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, meanwhile, click here. (International Film Circuit, unrated, 83 minutes)

A somewhat pedestrian and air-quote small story of blue-collar despair, familial fracturing and choking uncertainty, writer-director So Yong Kim’s mastery of tone and elements turns For Ellen into a thing of tender, forlorn beauty. Anchored by a strong performance from Paul Dano, this wonderfully wrought character study is a spare, intimate treat that should find welcome reception with arthouse audiences.



Struggling singer-songwriter Joby Taylor (Dano, quite good) takes a break from life on the road — and rather purposefully leaves behind girlfriend Susan (Jena Malone) — to come in and try to amicably settle his impending divorce from wife Claire (Margarita Levieva), whom he has not seen in a very long time. Joby’s willing and ready to sign off on the house and other assets, but is distraught to learn that Claire does not want him to have any visitation rights to Ellen (Shaylena Mandigo), their six-year-old daughter that he long ago abandoned. As his buttoned-up lawyer, Fred (a bearded Jon Heder), tries to negotiate matters, Joby reflects on whether he can really walk away from Ellen for good.

Korean-American Kim, born in Pusan, South Korea but raised in Los Angeles, has a deft touch with alienation expressed through environmental chilliness. This was especially true of In Between Days, her semi-autobiographical feature debut, which in 2006 picked up a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and it remains true here. Working with cinematographer Reed Morano, Kim crafts a movie whose haunting, beautifully captured wintry landscapes are a physical stand-in for the roiling, distressed and self-destructive inner feelings of Joby.

Kim’s works also frequently touch upon issues of parental separation and abandonment, and it’s her comfort level and communicative skill with this theme that make Joby’s eventual visit with Ellen so arresting. Spanning more than 25 minutes, this sequence between Dano and the young Mandigo is masterfully orchestrated — almost a short film unto itself, full of carefully dosed regret, pain, ambivalence. Plenty of other films, and filmmakers, could (and have) tread the same terrain Kim does in For Ellen. She makes it personal, however, which — combined with her shrewd powers of observance, reservoir of passion for her characters, and refusal to indulge in a pat or “correct” conclusion — make her movie something special. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 93 minutes)

An offbeat, hipster-inflected road movie that almost steadfastly refuses to conform to expectation and sense, multi-hyphenate Ryan O’Nan’s Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best is a to-scale victory of quirky charm and feeling over sagacity. If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, which it kind of is, it’s also one certainly fitting for its protagonists. The tale of two struggling musicians trying to find their place in the world, Brooklyn Brothers is a film with a restless soul. It likely wouldn’t exist in a world without Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen movies, and yet for all its considerable outlandishness it doesn’t concern itself with or model itself after those comedies. It’s something of an analog dramedy in a digital world.

When it rains it pours for underachieving New Yorker Alex (O’Nan), a would-be musician who can’t seem to catch a break. Dumped by a girlfriend and ditched by bandmate Kyle (Jason Ritter), Alex snaps and quits his mind-numbing day job at a low-level real estate office, only to land in further hot water when one of his weekly musical therapy performances for special needs teens goes awry. Seemingly out of nowhere appears Jim (Michael Weston), a gung-ho oddball who channels his unique musical sensibilities through a variety of children’s instruments.

Jim tells Alex he’s a huge fan of his, and that he has a cross-country tour for which he needs a partner already booked, culminating in a battle-of-the-bands contest out west. Throwing caution to the wind, Alex finally agrees to join Jim on this unlikely journey. Hijinks ensue, naturally. Along the way the pair pick up Cassidy (Arielle Kebbel), a small town Pennsylvania girl looking for adventure, and even end up paying a visit to Alex’s much older brother Brian (Andrew McCarthy), where Alex connects with his 10-year-old nephew, Jackson (Jake Miller).

Drafting several friends and colleagues from past projects, O’Nan (The Dry Land) crafts a broad enough palette to capture and hold a viewer’s interest. Abetted by good work from cinematographer Gavin Kelly, Brooklyn Brothers is rangy enough that the sort of discrete set pieces that road movies naturally engender feel fairly practical, and diverse to boot. If there’s a problem, it lies in the movie’s sometimes whiplash-inducing tone, and its scattershot focus. Weston feels like he stepped out from an It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia-based improv class, while O’Nan has a raw-nerve melancholy that — even when filtered through dialogue meant to be a bit funny — bends toward the realistic. That’s not really the case with Jim.

Certain narrative beats, too, feel more like duty-bound inclusion than honestly invested in, as if O’Nan had some Conventional Story Nazi peering over his shoulder and rapping his knuckles, preventing him from fully veering off into wild, Napoleon Dynamite-type territory that the movie’s opening initially augurs. A more disciplined “bromance,” sifting through personality and attitudinal changes in Alex and Jim triggered and enforced by one another, might have made for a film of deeper and more lasting interest. The inclusion of Cassidy perverts that focus, however.

Still, Brooklyn Brothers is different in many other respects, and its atypicality and handcrafted qualities make it more endearing than something more polished. The film’s music, too — a kind of nerdy synth-pop characterized by one character as “the Shins meets Sesame Street” — is one of its undeniable selling points. If its romance feels forced, the original songs by O’Nan and others (an album is forthcoming from Rhino Records) root Alex’s journey and the movie as a whole, and give it a sincere heart. Brooklyn Brothers isn’t the best, but it beats plenty of other indie offerings out there. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Oscilloscope, unrated, 98 minutes)

A well-groomed, funny and altogether special musical comedy starring Anna Kendrick and set against the backdrop of collegiate competitive a cappella singing, Pitch Perfect hits an abundance of right notes, resulting in one of the most full-bodied mainstream comedies of the year. Suffused with a joie de vivre, this enjoyable adaptation of Mickey Rapkin’s 2008 nonfiction book of the same name augurs good things not only for freshman feature director Jason Moore but also its various young cast members.

Feeling justifiably bullish about its word-of-mouth prospects, Universal is opening Pitch Perfect in select theaters this Friday, September 28, before rolling it out wider the following weekend. The film’s focus on singing rings bells of comparison to the High School Musical franchise and small screen hit Glee, but its adolescent artistic focus more broadly recalls movies like Bring It On, Drumline, Step Up and Fired Up! — sub-cultural celebrations that found (or should have) warm embrace by mostly younger audiences. Positive peer review and critical notices alike should help drive solid eight-figure box office business and significant ancillary value; the movie’s soundtrack should be a big player for Universal as well. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Universal, PG-13, 112 minutes)

With its achingly archetypal cold open — which unfolds in North Africa in the 1600s, and describes its setting as “a time of witchcraft and sorcery, when no one stood against evil” — writer-director Michael Bassett’s adaptation of the pulpy old Marvel Comics serial Solomon Kane seems poised for another rather dunderheaded dive into brawny action adventure swashbuckling. Amidst the backdrop of a bunch of grimy cretins, a hero with impossibly white teeth emerges, dispensing brutal justice. Somewhat improbably, however, this movie soon settles down into a fine if square-jawed groove, delivering rousing, no-nonsense adventure of a sort which should generally please fans of Conan the Barbarian, The Legend of Zorro and other throwback, morally black-and-white entertainment.



James Purefoy stars as the title character, a warring English captain whose bloodthirstiness initially knows no bounds. After attacking a mysterious nearby castle with an eye on plundering its riches, Kane finds his soul cursed by the Devil’s Reaper (Ian Whyte). Renouncing violence and devoting himself to a life of peace and purity, Kane finds his oath of spirituality and nonviolence put to the test when, after having been aided by a Puritan family headed up by William Crowthorn (Pete Postlethwaite), he is unable to stop their slaughter and the kidnapping of their daughter, Meredith (Rachel Hurd-Wood), by a band of followers of sorcerer Malachi (Jason Flemyng). Strapping back on his cutlass, pistols and rapier, Kane aims for absolution through a trail of deserved dead. Think of it as a historical (and less hysterical) sort of spin on Ghost Rider, by way of Robin Hood or Zorro.

As first envisaged by pulp author Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian), the character of Solomon Kane was a somber Puritan (which, yes, meant the inclusion of a funny hat) who wandered the Earth striking out against evil and injustice. Howard’s stories, from the 1930s, were mostly published in Weird Tales, and the character was then resurrected in the 1970s and ’80s by Marvel Comics, and later Dark Horse Comics. The massively delayed arrival of Solomon Kane on Stateside shores (a French/Czech/British co-production, Bassett’s movie saw an international release almost three years ago) speaks to a relative lack of stature in the comic book/pop cultural canon, but perhaps owing to this fact the film largely escapes the gravitational pull of source material adherence that weighs down so many projects of this ilk.

Solomon Kane feels old-fashioned, yes, but its streamlined narrative rather quickly becomes something of a virtue. The script is straightforward in its presentation of obstacles — this isn’t a movie of much complication — but Purefoy’s dark brooding and emoting are a nice match for the material, and the rest of the cast is all on the same page, tonally. If the film’s mediocre budget hampers the execution and delivery of a couple more broadly imagined action set pieces, writer-director Bassett otherwise nicely choreographs the movie’s hand-to-hand combat sequences, while Dan Laustsen’s cinematography and a superlative production design package mesh nicely with composer Klaus Badelt’s stirring offerings. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Radius/Weinstein Company, R, 104 minutes)

A tepid domestic hostage drama with the additional elemental garnish of cannibalism, Serving Up Richard tries to blend together pas de deux psychodrama with suspense, dark humor and a side serving of gore. It fails, in yawning fashion. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Dance On Productions, R, 97 minutes)

When they’re not prescribed solely by box office haul, the deeper ambitions of most genre films extend only to technique, or state-of-the-art special effects. Killing Them Softly, a grimy, well orchestrated, coiled-spring crime drama from writer-director Andrew Dominik, centers around a knocked-over high stakes card game and its bloody after-effects, which is kind of appropriate, given that its gnarled, underworld plotting is itself a bluff for the multi-faceted intentions it really has. Darkly entertaining and perfectly absorbing on its own surface terms, Dominik’s third feature film takes on a grander stature as it stretches its legs and morphs into a pessimistic disquisition on the systemic nature of corruption in unregulated markets.



Adapted from George V. Higgins’ novel Cogan’s Trade, and relocated from Boston to New Orleans, the movie tells the story of a group of guys who hatch what they believe to be an ingenious plan to take down a Mob-protected card game, figuring that its blowhard host, Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), will take the fall since he already feigned the robbery of one of his games in the past. Down-on-his-luck Frankie (Scoot McNairy) brings volatile junkie Russell (Ben Mendelsohn, of Animal Kingdom) into the fold as the other gunman, but things go sideways after the supposedly easy boost, and their identities are compromised.

Mid-level enforcer Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) is called in to clean things up, consulting with underworld consigliere Driver (Richard Jenkins). The decision is made to deal with Markie and the others by calling in Mickey (James Gandolfini), an out-of-town assassin of unhealthy and indiscreet appetites who’s fallen on hard times. But that, too, proves to be a decision fraught with unintended consequences, obligating Jackie wade further into the breach to clean up matters himself.

Its plot proper is fairly simple, but Dominik tucks the film’s narrative neatly under delicious dialogue and colorful characterizations, so it has an extra layer of intrigue, and almost creeps up on viewers. He and cinematographer Greig Fraser shoot much of the action in shallow focus, creating a world of seemingly authentic scumminess. Most notably, though, Dominik also sets his movie against the backdrop of the great autumnal financial collapse of 2008; on televisions and radios in the background, speeches from politicians serve to underline the parallel economic crunches destabilizing criminal enterprise and society more broadly.

In doing this — in dragging subtext forward into the light, albeit a dim one — and vivisecting institutional decay with such flourish and forcefulness, Dominik achieves something special, a work at once gracefully streamlined and kind of artistically blunt. It’s not a subtle film, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a cinematic jab. Its contours are angular, not smooth.

Abetted by great performances that spotlight squirrely, desperate aspiration as well as held power both hard and soft, Killing Them Softly carries a big stick. Its thesis, in tethering capitalism to corrosive self-interest and other, even baser instincts: even scummy ne’er-do-wells have to answer to someone, and they to their puppeteers as well. Social contracts are a fraud. However uncomfortable that makes a viewer feel, however, one can take or leave this sociopolitical metaphor without a whit of impact on their enjoyment of the overall product — one of the most stylish and evocatively nihilistic crime dramas of recent years. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Weinstein Company, R, 97 minutes)

A fairly strong performance from newcomer Ashley Hinshaw can’t save About Cherry, director Stephen Elliott’s coming-of-age drama about a girl who escapes a broken family life by slowly shuffling into the adult industry. Rather shockingly lacking in dynamic plotting given its subject matter, the film descends into mystifying incomprehensibility in its final couple reels, showing a surprising shortage of understanding of its characters, as well as basic human motivations.



Eighteen-year-old Angelina (Hinshaw, who had a bit role in 20th Century Fox’s surprise hit Chronicle) is worn down by serving as the surrogate mother to her younger sister, given that her own mother (Lili Taylor) is an unreliable alcoholic. After her boyfriend Bobby (Jonny Weston) convinces her to take some nude photographs, Angelina takes the money and moves up the California coast to San Francisco with her quietly resentful platonic best friend, Andrew (Dev Patel). They settle into an apartment with a third roommate. In short order, Angelina then gets a job working as a cocktail waitress at a strip club; lands a slick lawyer boyfriend, Frances (James Franco); starts shooting some girl-girl adult stuff under the moniker Cherry; and then ponders the more lucrative pay that would come with boy-girl work. At the same time, porn director Margaret (Heather Graham) starts developing a crush on Cherry, to the detriment of her relationship with her own girlfriend (Diane Farr).

The script, by Elliott and fellow former adult industry worker Lorelei Lee, is thin in its sketching of motivations, but has a certain breezy authenticity in the matter-of-fact way it addresses the work of enrolling with an agency and shooting nude photographs or sex scenes. Other snippets of dialogue, too (“Wait, look: flowers,” says Frances, in the sort of rakish apology that only rich guys can get away with), occasionally showcase a nice ear for streamlined affect that otherwise awkwardly abuts platitudes.

Owing chiefly to its performances (Franco is a sly hoot, and Graham’s nonplussed quietness hints at an inner monologue otherwise only barely audible), About Cherry stands poised almost always just on the precipice of a greater intrigue. It’s frustrating that Elliott and Lee seem unwilling (or unable) to better develop Angelina’s personality and motivations, but what’s ultimately most maddening is that About Cherry takes an utterly bewildering turn in its third act, coming completely unglued in a variety of ways that all ring false and hollow.

There’s not much inherent narrative conflict in the movie to begin with, so it basically lives or dies as a character study of the impressionable Angelina as a bobbing cork in these heaving seas, and when the screenplay requires Frances to turn on her suddenly or her to react with anger and confusion over something like why Andrew might possibly want to be with her, or even have a normal compulsion to masturbate to her pornographic scenes, it becomes merely ridiculous. To accept the decisions and directions About Cherry makes and takes is to embrace witlessness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (IFC Films, R, 100 minutes)