It’s perhaps something of a nautically-titled coincidence, the meandering nature and theatrical roots that Drunkboat share with Jack Goes Boating, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s 2010 directorial debut. But both movies represent passion projects ill suited to cinematic adaptation, or at least sludgy, unresolved, mannered and grating in their realized incarnations.

Drunkboat centers around a down-and-out Vietnam veteran and drunkard, Mort Gleason (John Malkovich), who has an epiphany of sorts and returns to his childhood home in the Chicago suburbs, where his sister Eileen (Dana Delaney) still lives with her son and Mort’s other nephew, Abe (Jacob Zachar). She’s at first distrustful and suspicious of his newfound and fragile sobriety, but eventually leaves him in charge of Abe to go on a date out of town. With dreams of busting out of this sleepy one-horse burgh, teenager Abe has dreams of… buying a boat? Yep. And his desires dovetail with the latest scheme of con man and salvage dealer Fletcher (John Goodman), who’s puttied and painted up a heap of wooden maritime garbage with an eye on unloading it for a couple hundred bucks. Abe is interested, but needs an adult signature on the bill of sale.

Drunkboat is directed by Bob Meyer, and co-adapted from his own (apparently semi-autobiographical) stageplay of the same name. Its music occasionally seems to posit that the movie is some sort of vaudevillian comedy, and Fletcher is written as a comedic figure as well. But the movie is a stilted, tonal mishmash, and its insights are spare. Drunkboat toggles listlessly between the conceptual and specific, never successfully translating to screen ideas that might connect more readily on stage, in the abstract.

As an alcoholic ex-poet teetering on the edge of self-destruction, Malkovich is great, lost in a boozy self-reflection laced with notes of pained regret. Naturalistic and reactive, Zachar is also good. But Goodman grates, and the movie invests a regrettable amount of time in his pointless shenanigans. Many other films assay the slippery qualities of drunkenness and repentance in far more arresting fashion. Drunkboat unfortunately just ambles along, in languid fashion. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, click here. (Seven Arts/Lantern Lane, PG, 98 minutes)

Warped, testosteronized rivalry has informed the cinematic canon of the Duplass brothers, Jay and Mark, in films like Cyrus and Jeff, Who Lives at Home, but that area of inquiry actually has its roots in The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, a fun little bauble they shot in 2008 as their third feature film, after The Puffy Chair and Baghead and before those two aforementioned movies. Buzzing with a low-fi honesty and intimacy, the movie exudes a charming quality of realness and small, to-scale catharsis that mark it as a treat indie film fans should definitely seek out.



Based loosely on a pair of ultra-competitive brothers who grew up down the street from the Duplasses, the film centers on Mark (Steve Zissis, above left), a schlubby thirtysomething guy who’s visiting his mom (Julie Vorus) with his family when his estranged brother, Jeremy (Mark Kelly, above right), shows up. The pair, once close, have basically stopped speaking to one another as the result of a massive, three-day, 25-event athletic competition as teenagers that ended in a disputed tie (their underwater breath-holding contest was interrupted). Egged on by Jeremy’s sniping and clucking dismissal, Mark finds his competitive impulses re-awakened. Even though his wife (Jennifer Lafleur), worried about his health and stress levels, tries to limit Mark’s contact with Jeremy, the duo conspire to hold a clandestine rematch, and settle the matter of brotherly superiority once and for all.

As a comedy of men behaving badly, The Do-Deca-Pentathlon is a lot of fun. Zissis and Kelly needle each other in fine fashion, and the Duplass brothers capture in smart, shorthand strokes how self-esteem can get caught up in sibling rivalry, and battles for parental attention. But the movie is also about awakened fraternal bonding. While the events — everything from pool and ping-pong to arm-wrestling and basketball — offer up the chance for a few fun little set pieces, the Duplass brothers’ film (a focused and unfussy domestic snapshot, at only 75 minutes) is mostly concerned with assaying masculine norms and methods of communication and respect. There’s a lot of recognizable truth here, amidst the considerable silliness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Red Flag Releasing, unrated, 75 minutes)

A horror movie in only the loosest sense, writer-director Nicholas McCarthy’s The Pact is actually more of a psychologically rooted chiller, in which the dark, repressed memories of a turbulent and unhappy childhood come bubbling to the surface. Whether its disturbing twists are meant to be taken literally or as intense manifestations of trauma is a matter of debate up until the final reel, and then even afterward.

Following their estranged mother’s death, Nicole (Agnes Bruckner) leans on her sister Annie (Caity Lotz) to return to their childhood home and help settle her affairs. Annie is reluctant, but when she arrives, Nicole is nowhere to be found. After the funeral, a series of unnerving events follows — noises in the night, objects moving about, and then more even powerful paranormal disturbances. Annie reports her sister’s disappearance to the police, and also discovers a hidden room in the house. Further digging then leads her to more revelations about her mother’s past.

Though it’s his feature debut as a filmmaker, McCarthy’s movie is based upon a short of the same name, and his familiarity and level of thought, investment and comfort with respect to the material is evident. There are echoes of the same sense of weighty familial and inter-generational guilt explored in movies like Steve Kloves’ Flesh and Bone, from 1993, and 2001’s Frailty, directed by Bill Paxton, and McCarthy also possesses a good grasp of effective, tension-building technique. The low-key production design and level of attention to detail is also superlative. If some of its narrative pivots come off as a bit fantastical as The Pact winds its way to its conclusion, the performances help hold an audience’s interest. Lotz is a solid guide on this journey, and the troubled Annie’s quest invites considerable sympathy. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (IFC Midnight, unrated, 91 minutes)

If a catchy, memorable and/or weirdly evocative title made a film, then surely Nipples & Palm Trees would be among the year’s best releases. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of color and sizzle but precious little of substance in this unenlightening tale of a down-and-out Los Angeles artist and his fitful relationship with his muse. The script for Nipples & Palm Trees smacks of Eric Schaeffer-dom, which is to say that it’s centered around an angsty, capital-a artistic protagonist, and created seemingly with the prime objective of giving the creator (in this case writer-actor Matt James) the chance to roll around naked with lots of ladies. Here, the nonsensical fantasy constructs include dinner-party gang-bangs and busty women who offer up joints and handjobs to strangers within five minutes of meeting them. Energetically shot enough to qualify as a travelogue curio for hardcore indie fans in search of another City-of-Angels valentine, there’s otherwise little to recommend this low-budget misfire. Nipples & Palm Trees plays July 13-19 at the Laemmle NoHo 7; for the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Cinema Epoch/Jackson County Films, R, 90 minutes)

A half-sketched tale of familial floundering, Nancy Savoca’s Union Square is a suffocating and pantomimed sisterly drama that makes an unconvincing and headlong dive into sentimentality for its finale, wasting a lot of effort and investment from lead actress Mira Sorvino.

Co-written by Savoca and Mary Tobler, Union Square is devised with strict parameters (of space, cast and type of story) in mind. But it’s not merely that the movie feels cramped (eschewing handheld camerawork in favor of boxy formalism, Savoca and cinematographer Lisa Leone fail to figure out a way to open up the apartment space that dominates the film’s middle) and lifeless; it offers no significantly deep insights into its characters, beyond a well-tailored set of pedestrian baggage. Union Square recalls plenty of other thorny big screen sister relationships, including those on display in Margot at the Wedding, Rachel Getting Married and Pieces of April, to name but a few. The complications here, though, are given surface-style treatment, and eventually swept aside for a strange and emotionally phony ending.

Sorvino does a good job of channeling her character’s angsty, overwhelming energy; it’s actually a credit to her performance that you kind of want to strangle or slap her. Like Lesley Manville in Mike Leigh‘s Another Year (albeit in different fashion), Sorvino’s Lucy is a totally suffocating presence, an unending cascade of breaking waves of neediness. The movie’s other performances, though, fail to catch fire. It doesn’t help poor Tammy Blanchard that she’s playing the habitural doormat sister, but even an inversion which is meant to reverse audience sympathies with respect to the characters provides no relief from her dour, unimaginative reading of Jenny. Mike Doyle, meanwhile, registers as a complete zero as Jenny’s live-in fiance Bill. Movies characters need not all be likable or interesting. But Union Square has so few characters that it would certainly help if at least one of them were, in even the most remote fashion. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Dada Films, unrated, 80 minutes)

Sports as a tool for upward social mobility is of course nothing new — in generations past, boxing was a big way out of miserable poverty, and followed in short order by baseball, football and basketball. As the world has grown smaller, however, enterprising clubs in various sports, seeking to better compete, have turned their attention abroad, with an eye on harvesting young talent at less than premium prices. Nowhere is this truer than in baseball, as illustrated by the engaging new documentary Pelotero: Ballplayer.

While it compares to just two percent of the total population of the United States, the tiny island country of the Dominican Republic currently fills a whopping 20 percent of combined major and minor league rosters, and has produced a steady stream of impact players and big stars, from Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz to Neftali Feliz and Hanley Ramirez. The craze has its roots in the huge success of the 1962 San Francisco Giants, which included Juan Marichal, Felipe and Matty Alou, and Manny Mota — major talents, all. The reasons for the significant uptick in Latin American investment over the past 15 to 20 years in particular are myriad, but in the broadest strokes relate to a relative downturn in American-born talent (see also: the surge in popularity of football, combined with the fact that baseball still takes more kids to play than hoops), or at least the cost to develop that talent over the course of several years, in a far more expansive and rigorous feeder system than other major sports leagues employ.

Narrated by John Leguizamo, Pelotero (which translates as ballplayer) focuses on two top prospects and their trainers as they prepare for July 2, the national signing day during which players can ink formal contracts with teams on their 16th birthdays. Miguel Angel Sano is a rangy shortstop with a smooth swing and plenty of power; Jean Carlos Batista is an infielder with quick hands and a quicker bat. Their respective trainers have each invested plenty of time in them (and other prospects), so they look to the 35 percent commissions on what they hope will be seven-figure signing bonuses as a means to fund their pro bono work, and keep their academies open. Before things are over, though, both Sano and Batista will have the validity of their ages called into question — not uncommon in the Dominican Republic. Hospital records, DNA tests and even bone scans (!) will ensue, spotlighting both the work and extraordinary pursuits and measures of an inter-American dream.

Pelotero: Ballplayer would make a great double feature with last year’s Elevate, which examined a Senegalese basketball academy which served as a feeder to the United States. Both movies examine, in interesting and sometimes uncomfortable fashion, the strange combination of moral benevolence (having lost his dad several years earlier, Jean Carlos talks candidly about his need and search for a father figure) and almost parasitic business interest that informs non-familial adults helping shepherd these kids.

In the sport of basketball — and particularly coming from Africa, where pro leagues are few — while the ultimate goal is to get paid to play professional basketball in the NBA, the Senegalese academies work their charges with an eye on prep school scholarships in the United States, and then college grants. There’s some focus on education, as well as a sense of collective social responsibility being instilled. In the Dominican Republic, these kids are signing binding financial contracts at younger ages. It’s hard not to have some moral ambivalence about that, and Pelotero indulges a bit more curiosity on this front than Elevate.

With as of yet no international draft, Major League Baseball has a clear and understandable motive to keep down foreign player development costs relative to Stateside signing bonuses, which routinely run into seven-figure territory for the most valued prospects. And in lifting up a few rocks in the stories of its two chief subjects, Pelotero seems to shine a light on that (other) dirty “c word” — collusion. Would teams mutually agree upon not paying the same rates to a foreign player that they might to an American-born prospect? Or even smear, malign and spread rumors in order to drive down competition and market price on a player? Well, it’s a sport, and a sunny summer pastime for many, but baseball is also a business. And Pelotero is the athletic equivalent of an unannounced Nike or Apple factory tour. (Strand Releasing/Endeavor Films, unrated, 77 minutes)

A respite from his more recent sociopolitical filmography, and an unapologetically bawdy blast of violence, backstabbing and revenge, Savages represents Oliver Stone’s most streamlined and overtly commercial movie in more than a decade. It also feels less than the sum of its parts. A super-stylish but overlong drug-running kidnap drama starring Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively, Savages skates by on colorful but sometimes thin characterizations, evincing no great point beyond the mode of its telling. How disqualifying that damnation is rests in the eye of the beholder.

The film’s main redemption lies in its evocative telling — Dan Mindel’s gorgeous, sun-dipped cinematography alternates between gritty fever dream and beguiling travelogue — and its acting. In the latter category, John Travolta gives a tack-sharp performance shot through with desperate self-preservation, while Salma Hayek plays a chilly matriarch. It’s Benicio Del Toro, however, who steals the movie — exuding a dark, magnetic charm and pumping rich, intense depth into the untold backstory of his character, a brutal enforcer. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Universal, R, 130 minutes)

The Best Screenplay award winner at the Sundance Film Festival, Safety Not Guaranteed is an entertaining and endearing little seriocomic bauble that, while having a smidge of fun tweaking genre conventions and expectations, also richly mines for laughs the pained regret and fumbling desires of its characters in much the same manner as Alexander Payne. A movie of exquisite silver linings — which locates the humor in the swallowed ache of emotionally stunted men without ever selling out the legitimacy of their feelings — director Colin Trevorrow‘s debut offering heralds a solid new talent on the indie film scene.



Needing a story, Seattle magazine writer Jeff (Jake Johnson, of New Girl) pitches his boss (Mary Lynn Rajskub) on tracking down the person responsible for a strange classified ad seeking someone to go back in time with the author, reading in part, “Must bring your own weapons, safety not guaranteed — I have only done this once before.” Given the go-ahead, Jeff snatches up two interns — Darius (Aubrey Plaza), a disillusioned live-at-home college grad, and the timid Arnau (Karan Soni, above center), a studious biology major trying to diversify his resume — and sets out for the tiny seaside community of Ocean View, where the ad has a listed post office box number.

There, they discover Kenneth Calloway (Mark Duplass), an eccentric and paranoid grocery store clerk who’s convinced he’s solved the riddle of time travel. The real impetus behind Jeff’s desire to hit the road turns out not to be the story on Kenneth, but instead an old… well, adolescent sexual conquest, Liz (Jenica Bergere). With Jeff spending his time pursuing her, the specifics of getting the actual journalistic scoop fall mostly to Darius, who slowly gains Kenneth’s trust. In the process, she finds herself becoming decidedly intrigued with his nerdy survivalist ways, and the fact that, Kenneth’s weirdness notwithstanding, people really do seem to be following him.

As penned by Derek Connolly and directed by fellow New York University graduate Trevorrow, the film is a beguiling combination of pin-prick comedy (Darius is told she’s “not a quality hire” by a restaurant manager after a painfully blunt interview) and melancholic character notes. There’s a breezy, lightweight quality to a lot of the movie’s banter, but it never seems false or out-of-step with the characterizations, which are actually quite nicely sketched, and deepen emotionally with time. As Darius and Kenneth kind of trip and fumble toward something approaching romantic bloom, and the movie flits about the edges of the grander sci-fi fantasy its conceit suggests, Jeff’s blossoming disillusionment and unhappiness is rendered in contrast to Darius’ emotional thawing.

Duplass, kind of jittery and guarded, nicely captures both the hurt and hope in Kenneth (who will only say that his mission involves “mistakes, regret and love”), and Johnson delivers a winning turn as a man-child who finally if improbably seems to discover the tools that might enable him to grow up. If not for all its other considerable pleasures, Safety Not Guaranteed is also, at the very least, a winning feature showcase for Plaza, an ensemble player on Parks and Recreation whose sardonic wit is here, for perhaps the first time, leavened with grace notes of vulnerability and longing. It’s the look of someone who wants more, and is realizing that she’s capable of it, and it’s a look that suits both the character of Darius and Plaza herself. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (FilmDistrict, R, 87 minutes)

The directorial debut of Alex Kurtzman, co-screenwriter of big-budget genre fare like Star Trek, Cowboys & Aliens and the Transformers movies, People Like Us takes aim at the intense affection and resentment that only family can inspire, telling the story of a young man’s discovery of a half-sister he never knew he had. An affectionate drama marked and buoyed by engaging performances, the movie’s apex of catharsis is a genuinely nice payoff, but the home stretch of the road it takes to get there bends a bit too much toward convenience.

Still, if one can overlook various road-bumps and the obviousness with which the dramatic boil gets turned up, there’s much to enjoy. The movie’s technical package is solid. Shooting in a bevy of locations, cinematographer Salvatore Totino delivers a Los Angeles that feels palpably rooted as these characters’ homes instead of some tourist snapshot fantasy of the same.

The performances are winning, as well. Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks have a legitimately nice chemistry, and the latter brings a sardonic, self-defensive pop to scenes even if the movie shrugs off her character’s disease of alcoholism in short order. Michelle Pfeiffer, meanwhile, showcases a fragility laced with surprising reserves of flintiness. And in his feature film debut, young Michael Hall D’Addario is solid. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney/DreamWorks, PG-13, 115 minutes)

Like last year’s Life in a Day, which also aimed to catalogue a single day on this planet, documentary One Day on Earth is the result of a massive undertaking from a diverse group of volunteer filmmakers assembled by a participatory media experiment. Beguiling as well as meandering, but thought-provoking and frequently gorgeous, it’s an interesting nonfiction snapshot that — in capturing the wide variety of life, human and otherwise — is much cheaper and more exotic than any similarly farflung, passport-stamped itinerary a viewer could put together on their own.



Overseen by director Kyle Ruddick, and wrangled into shape from more than 3,000 hours of footage in more than 70 different languages (subtitled here when necessary), the one day from One Day on Earth is October 10, 2010 (yes, 10/10/10). A web site helped spread the words regarding submissions, but a few grants and a United Nations connection of the filmmaking team also helped place cameras with more than 95 UN offices in an effort to allow people to film in countries where it would normally be difficult. Amazing footage from a few other countries (North Korea, we’re looking in your general direction) arrives via what one supposes are smuggled in cameras.

The country of origin for each piece of footage is labeled. And, like an old VH-1 pop-up video, One Day on Earth is tagged with statistical trivia that holds true on the film’s date of production — some hopeful or pause for thought (26.3 percent of the world’s population is under 14 years of age), and some sad and grim (45 percent live on the equivalent of $2.50 per day, or less). Mostly, though, despite its thematic groupings and standard-of-life comparisons (food preparation, transportation, water potability), this movie is just a field trip through life, with all the wide-eyed skips of the heart it implies.

A young girl in Tajikstan picks cotton to earn money for her books, while elsewhere another parent admits her disappointment with the one daughter of hers that has continued in school past fourth grade, since it means she can’t assist in making money for her family. In Haiti, a young woman talks about the emotional after-effects of the earthquake, and how they are channeled into her art. In Kosovo, a bride (above) gets made up in elaborate fashion for an orthodox wedding ceremony.

Given its more esoteric roots, there’s a certain ceiling for a movie like this, it’s true. But One Day on Earth highlights the interconnectivity of life on this planet, and the simple fact that our fates are bound together in this wonderful, perilous journey. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, meanwhile, click here. (One Day on Earth, unrated, 104 minutes)

Mental health issues are but one of many elephants in the room when it comes to any serious national political discussion of social services. Severe mental illness is often the ultimate disease of “the other” (schizophrenics who don’t take their medications and the like), additionally marginalized because those with the resources to care for afflicted family members are more likely to be wrapped up in shame and silence than advocacy.

But what of dozens of other crippling mental illnesses, and the treatments that exist and could help so many people but for the proper resources and opportunity? Funny and poignant and suffused with all the complication of life, OC87 is a nonfiction film that leaves one pondering that question. As its full title suggests, it’s a movie about depression and mental illness. But it’s also unique and affecting in that it’s a very subjective document, co-directed by Bud Clayman, a diagnosed major depressive with the good fortune of support and assets not within the reach of so many.

A therapeutic undertaking with co-directors Glenn Holsten and Scott Johnston, OC87 takes as its subject Clayman, the only child of loving, upper-middle class parents. Its title derives from a dark period in 1987, when Clayman tripped headlong into a major depression, shut out everyone and everything around him, and tried to exert a meticulous control over every element of his life. Diagnosed with all of the disorders present in the title, the present-day Clayman — who matriculated at Temple University and rolled the dice on a movie career in Hollywood before eventually finding some much-needed structure working at his father’s business — is an affable enough guy who physically resembles a sort of sad-sack cross between Bob Saget and Jeffrey Ross.

He’s gripped by wildly intrusive thoughts, though. A hoarder who carries around a massive collection of keys that he doesn’t need in his pocket, Clayman lives in a seemingly perpetual state of crippling anxiety. The movie conveys this in a variety of ways — including a stirring breakthrough moment in an appointment with his therapist, who has Clayman poise a pocket knife over his wrist as a means to illustrate living with nervousness. Most effectively, though, it has Clayman provide a voiceover narration of his everyday manic thoughts as he goes about riding the bus and walking down the street.

At once intensely personal and universally moving, Clayman’s film is of a piece with Doug Block’s 2010 nonfiction portrait of his family, The Kids Grow Up, which documented the filmmaker’s own struggles in letting go of his teenage daughter. OC87 is Clayman’s story, but it connects his struggles to the outside world in smart fashion, having him also visit and talk to his doctors and other folks coping with mental illness.

On a certain level, OC87 is a work of advocacy, no doubt. But it transcends those parameters, and the condescension such a description connotes. Perhaps even more remarkable, the film locates a stirring, amusing and improbable climax rooted in Clayman’s love of Lost in Space. “Ever tried, ever failed — no matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” Samuel Beckett once wrote. This unusual and genuinely involving film is a testament to that dictum. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Therapy Productions, unrated, 91 minutes)

Jaycee Chan, the 29-year-old son of Jackie Chan, headlines Double Trouble, a slickly packaged action comedy that, for both better and worse, gets much of its inspiration from Western sources. Seemingly composed as homage to both the elder Chan’s mismatched-cops Rush Hour series and the recent Ocean’s movies, this lithe genre effort has a surface engagement that melts like a pat of butter as the film winds its way toward its preordained conclusion. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (China Lion, unrated, 89 minutes)

A dark testimonial to the notion of artistic bloom and creative salvation through misery, Pawel Pawlikowski’s The Woman in the Fifth is an intellectually engaging puzzle box, a movie that happily dances about on both literal and metaphorical planes. Starring Ethan Hawke as an emotionally wayward novelist and Kristin Scott Thomas as his mysterious new muse, this very European film should find intrigued and mostly unpiqued embrace in the arms of Stateside arthouse audiences for whom the cast will be the main factor that gets them in the door.



American author Tom Ricks (Hawke) arrives in Paris with the intent of reconnecting with his estranged wife (Delphine Chuillot) and young daughter (Julie Papillon). The attempt at reconciliation goes poorly and Tom, after his luggage is stolen, ends up in a flophouse at the edge of the city. The proprietor, Sezer (Samir Guesmi), sort of takes pity on him, letting Tom stay without paying, and later giving him a mysterious security job at a run-down warehouse, buzzing people in if they speak the right name.

During this time, while spending his nights writing long letters to his daughter, and trying to scrape up the money to hire an immigration and child custody lawyer, Tom strikes up a relationship with Ania (Joanna Kulig, of Elles), a Polish waitress with an interest in poetry. Taking a flyer on a bohemian writers’ event, he also meets Margit Kadar (Thomas), an enigmatic translator who seduces Tom and, while complimenting him and his work, also asserts that he presently has the makings of something grander — “a real tragedy if you play your cards right.” A series of strange, inexplicable events ensue, leaving Tom even further racked with doubt over the course of his life.

No paean, this, The Woman in the Fifth takes as its source material Douglas Kennedy’s novel of the same name. Pawlikowski, however, isn’t interested in plumbing the notion of the tortured artist solely for purposes of masturbatory self-exaltation. He constructs his movie as a kind of lightheaded, slightly buzzed mystery of the tension between the id and ego, something that composer Max De Wardener’s music wonderfully and slyly abets. In this respect, Tom’s corralled consciousness is both literal and a bit of a metaphorical dream device, but neither alone.

As a conundrum that’s perhaps a bit too proud of it, there are plenty of lingering questions the movie doesn’t answer. But the performances here are so finely modulated — Hawke shines, in owlish, large-lensed glasses that make him look slightly like a younger, more intellectual Mr. Magoo, while Thomas luxuriates in caginess and a mature sexuality — that for most of its running time its refusal to sketch out much by way of its characters’ pasts hardly matters. The film is savvy about slow-peddling Tom’s neediness, and smart about what gets its hooks in him; “You have a voice, I believe in you,” says Margit, which is like catnip to a creative type like Tom.

If there’s a complaint, it’s that The Woman in the Fifth — whose title refers to Margit’s lodging, a European colloquialism — seems a bit slim, and dodgy especially in its end game. It clocks in at only 83 minutes, and misses the chance to plumb Tom’s cultural isolation to further moody effect. And when its most intriguing and unsettling twist occurs, it’s a short, 15-minute sled ride to the off ramp, which comes across as an abortive wrap-up that, no matter the ambiguity of its ending, feels like it deserves a bit more investigation. Perhaps that’s intended for the post-viewing conversation over coffee, however. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Art Takes Over, R, 83 minutes)

A pulpy, low-budget slice of film noir cross-pollinated with a martial arts flick, the curiously titled The Girl From the Naked Eye will certainly win no awards for great originality, but nonetheless serves as a stylish and engaging little vehicle for the surly charms of star Jason Yee, as well as its filmmaking team. The sophomore effort of director David Ren (Shanghai Kiss), the movie is a case of style over substance, to be sure, but boy is that style impressive on what must have been a true shoestring budget.

When a young Los Angeles escort, Sandy (Samantha Streets), is murdered, her protective and grief-stricken driver, Jake (Yee), confronts strip club owner Simon (Ron Yuan) about who might have been the culprit, as flashbacks fill in the story of their unusual friendship. Sensing that Simon isn’t telling him everything, Jake then starts dropping beatdowns left and right, cutting a swathe of retribution across the night. This leads him to Simon’s gun-dealing gangland benefactor, Frank (Gary Street), who also has the benefit of a police shield. Dominique Swain pops up in a small, flirty role, as does adult film star Sasha Grey (the lead in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience); that they’re well integrated amongst all the fisticuffs is a further credit to Ren and his collaborators.

If the hardboiled plot description above inspires little more than a yawn, unabashed B-movie The Girl From the Naked Eye actually has a lot going for it. Shooting digitally (and almost entirely at night), Ren and cinematographer Max Da-Yung Wang concoct a rich, foreboding visual palette that doesn’t get lost in the murky darkness of the film’s noir-ish roots. And Ren — working with Yee on the choreography of the fight sequences — doesn’t overdo it on the spastic edits, gifting his movie the benefit of a real personality.

Still, the story here is thin, and propped up less by real characters and more by a referential love for its genre forerunners. Both in the name of its crusading protagonist and various tossed-off bits of dialogue (“You don’t know when to quit, do you Jake?”), The Girl From the Naked Eye echoes Chinatown and a dozen another miniaturized knock-offs. Story-wise, there aren’t reasonably enough obstacles to stretch this out to feature-length, even at a paltry 84 minutes that includes an extended closing credits crawl.

All that said, those demerits almost all relate to sins of omission, and/or the movie’s basic DNA make-up. If it doesn’t live up to the wildness of Park Chan-Wook’s Old Boy, another obvious antecedent and inspiration, The Girl From the Naked Eye at least makes good on its modest aims, allowing Yee to slap silly a bunch of would-be human roadblocks. There are some moments of sly charm and connection here, making this polished movie a treat for fans of indie genre fare. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Archstone Entertainment, R, 84 minutes)

The gleeful, stunted-maturity idiocy at the heart of Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore and Andy Samberg’s Hot Rod is the target at which That’s My Boy, their new comedic collaboration, is aiming. Unfortunately, if a wild, anything-can-happen philosophy permeated those delightfully warped offerings, the same thick, indolent haze of self-satisfaction that characterized 2010’s Grown Ups, Sandler’s previous latter-day nadir, is manifest here, in a laboriously programmed vulgar comedy of air-quote outrageousness.

Director Sean Anders, who in 2008’s Sex Drive delivered as fun, lived-in and casually assured a teen sex comedy as since the original American Pie, here serves as a pace-master and little more. There’s no frisky independent personality to this tale, only an inexorable slog from set piece to set piece, and scenes written to seemingly fold in as many friendly cameos as possible. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Sony, R, 116 minutes)

A stupendously inane and pointless slice of revenge-based horror whose title might as well describe the audience watching it, The Tortured chronicles the story of a young married couple’s capture and torment of the man convicted of kidnapping and murdering their five-year-old son. Told in hammy fashion and marked by a pair of hysterical, uneven lead performances, this inept genre entry is an embarrassment to almost all involved.

A mass of expository set-up opens the movie, which centers around suburbanites Craig and Elise Landry (Jesse Metcalfe and Erika Christensen). Craig witnesses their son being snatched from their front yard, and a feverish search ensues, along with glimpses of the psychotic abductor, John Kozlowski (Bill Moseley, adding another demented jewel to his crown of leering, morally detestable reprobates), terrorizing and presumably molesting the boy. The police finally nab John, but not in time to save the Landrys’ son. When he’s convicted with the possibility of parole, Elise and Craig, a doctor, hatch a plan to extricate John from police custody and extract their own systematic retribution, keeping their victim alive for as long as possible. As a detective (Fulvio Cecere) works to locate the presumably escaped John, the couple hole up in an abandoned house, but soon find their own moral compasses put to the test.

Other films, including Dennis Iliadis’ recent remake of The Last House on the Left, have with some success delved specifically into parents pushed too far, and/or confronted with harm to their child. So the failings of The Tortured do not lay with its conceit; instead, they’re a matter of vision and execution. The movie, penned by Mark Posival and directed in stirringly bungled fashion by Robert Lieberman, stumbles out of the gate, never seeming to come up with a good “in” for its story. From its first panicked scene, The Tortured starts off at such a high emotional pitch that it renders nearly everything that follows almost neutered by comparison.

For a movie in theory about the warping, darkly transformative power of parental grief, there’s a striking paucity of intellectual application or even basic ideas here. The film clocks in at a meager 82 minutes, but its first 20 minutes could easily be collapsed to but five or six. After plodding along and setting up its torturing-the-monster conceit, the third act stupidly hinges on poorly reasoned flip-flops in intestinal fortitude between Craig and Elise. There’s an almost obligatory end twist, of course, but the movie doesn’t even see this through to the end, instead wrapping things up in a manner almost as tidy is it is risible.

Metcalfe and Christensen most bear the weight of this problematic narrative; they’re not particularly convincing as parents, and, individually and collectively, their interpretations of grief chiefly exist in volume. This film is a mess, and not in a campy, entertaining way. Avoid the torture. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. NOTE: In addition to its theatrical engagements, The Tortured is available on a variety of VOD and digital platforms, including iTunes. (IFC Midnight, R, 82 minutes)

The thirteenth animated feature film from Pixar Studios, Scottish-set Brave is essentially a body-swap movie impressed upon a comfortable fable-of-yore narrative template, wherein an at-odds parent and child rediscover their love for one another against a backdrop of magic-infused conflict. Amiable and action-packed without being overbearing about it, and marked by a new level of visual complexity, even by Pixar standards, the film peddles with assurance and panache the pleasant tale of a new young heroine, even if the payoff of its more traditional legend elements is a bit stilted. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney/Pixar, PG, 100 minutes)

As it gets out of the starting gate, 6 Month Rule, from writer-director-star Blayne Weaver, seems like it’s going to be an Eric Schaeffer-type cinematic exercise, infused with a pinch of Swingers. After all, multi-hyphenate Weaver contrives situations for him to make out with multiple women, postulates a strict theory about dating and relationships, and puts himself at the center of a universe in which others’ feelings, need and wants are all secondary piffle, collateral damage to be shrugged off. His movie gamely rallies from the awkwardness and all too evident seams of its conceit, but still, despite some atypicality and a few memorable supporting turns, lacks the sort of roundhouse kick and spice that would truly make this Rule a golden one.



Weaver stars as Tyler Watts, a commercial photographer who the audience knows is brilliant since, 1) he had a book of art photos published, and 2) every character keeps talking about how brilliant he is. After a couple meet-cutes with a gal, Sophie (Natalie Morales, above left), who breaks him down, Tyler turns his attention toward trying, in tough-love fashion, to cheer up his best friend Alan (Martin Starr), who is fresh off a break-up with Claire (Jaime Pressly), his fiancée of three years. It’s only when Tyler pulls a big photo assignment for an up-and-coming rocker, Julian (Patrick J. Adams), that Tyler discovers Sophie is the one who actually recommended him for the job, and is Julian’s kinda-sorta-but-not-really girlfriend. Awkwardness ensues as Tyler faces down his disinclination for conventional relationships and Sophie tries to sort out her feelings for the two men in her life.

6 Month Rule, so named for Tyler’s self-imposed romantic term-limit, is constructed almost entirely of familiar parts: pop-infused psycho-analysis that immediately cuts to the bone; the sudden-rush-at-one-another make-out scene (which last seemed fresh in Moonlighting); montage arguments about literature (Camus, Wuthering Heights, Hemingway!); the premature break-up where any reasonable discussion is undercut by one party speeding away in a taxi cab; the list-type speech of pitched woo to try to win the girl back. Better films — movies with a bit more forceful personality, sparkling banter and/or convincingly sketched leads — can more capably transcend the creakiness of these conventions. 6 Month Rule has some nice moments, but doesn’t quite fully do that, so an embrace rests more on one’s acceptance of these elements than anything else.

It doesn’t help, mainly, that the movie is funneled so singularly through Tyler’s point-of-view. The material between Tyler and Alan — with the former often lecturing the latter, in somewhat condescending mentor-like fashion — is where the film’s humor mainly lies, and those scenes mostly work, but Sophie’s ennui is unfortunately thinly sketched. A platonic sounding-board-type relationship for her would have given the movie a comfortable parallel construction, and also more firmly established her independent thinking and personality, which would make the third act payoffs in 6 Month Rule resonate a bit more deeply.

If the plotting and payoffs of this love triangle are a bit problematic and less satisfying than they one wished, there are also pleasant inversions to be found in the film’s finale, reminding more pensive viewers that every down is a prelude to an up, and vice versa. For the full, original review, from Shockya, click here. For more information on the movie and its VOD offerings via FilmBuff, click here to visit its website. (Abramorama/FilmBuff, R, 93 minutes)

A gassy, self-satisfied adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s 1885 novel of the same name, threadbare Parisian period piece Bel Ami purports to tell the rise from poverty to wealth of a savvy if caddish war veteran and self-made man — a sort of less sociopathic, more rakish Mr. Ripley, if you will. Instead, it merely bores and grates, in alternating fashion. Making up what it lacks in dynamism or attentive psychological detail with lots of love scenes with its hunky, tween-beloved pin-up star, Robert Pattinson, Bel Ami belies the erroneous notion that costume dramas automatically have a higher IQ than their contemporary dramatic brethren.



Georges Duroy (Pattinson) is but a penniless North African war veteran looking for enough money to score a prostitute when he crosses paths with a fellow ex-soldier, and accepts his invitation to dine with him the following evening. By the end of supper, he’s won a guest newspaper editorial spot, a sort of diary of a cavalry officer, from a powerful and influential publisher, Rousset (Colm Meaney), in part because his wife, Madame Walter (Kristin Scott Thomas), is kind of smitten with him.

Having little better to do, Madeleine Forestier (Uma Thurman) then takes it upon herself to basically pen all of Georges’ columns, while Georges seduces the married Clotilde de Marelle (Christina Ricci), with whom he promptly sets up a love nest. When his himbo status and near-illiteracy are almost outed, Georges manages to connive his way further into the good graces of those who ensure him continued access to the finer things in life, eventually even marrying Madeleine, who seems ill suited to conventional love.

Co-directed by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerond, Bel Ami is a bundle of phony psychology and false motivations wrapped up in pretty, trite packaging. The costumes are nice and eye-catching, and the pompous, swelling orchestral compositions, from Rachel Portman and Lakshman Joseph de Saram, nudge viewers in the ribs, repeatedly, attempting to inject menace and substance into the proceedings, and letting the audience know what a Big Deal they’re watching unfold.

Except they’re not. Pattinson, pallid and sweaty throughout, seems in over his head, and never quite comfortable. He’s had success before at pulling off layered angst and agitation, but here he seems resolutely of modern times, and not at all believable in the context of 1890s France. With a cipher’s smile and that great sweeping hairdo, he fills a ruffled shirt, and little more. The other performances are, by degrees, much more engaging — Thurman is somewhat mesmerizing as the ahead-of-her-time Madeleine, and Thomas gets to have some fun as a society lady uncharacteristically gripped by hormonal fever — but given the degree to which Bel Ami rests on Pattinson’s shoulders, and the dearth of insight it possesses, the movie falters early on, and never recovers.

Most fatally, there is neither a sense of canny manipulation nor a honest occupational rooting of Georges’ social climbing in the status afforded him by his job as a newspaperman, the latter of which is a crucial component of the novel. Instead, there is only a series of thin contrivances and machinations through which various women throw themselves at Georges’ feet. His wit and seduction are evidenced less by anything manifest in the script and more by the apparent absence of any other (nominally) single lad willing to throw these women a (literal) bone. With a tip of the cap to fellow critic Tim Grierson, the hackneyed, yawning Bel Ami would have been more entertaining if it were about Bill Bellamy, or at least just starred the same. For my full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, R, 104 minutes)

Modern-day American independent filmmaking, in such large measure, apes Hollywood product — or, alternately, movies made during the last great frontier boom of indie cinema, in the 1990s — in large part because the (perceived) reward seems to be informing the creative process. The increased democratization of film comes at the same time as a slew of TV reality show contests where “winners” are ushered inside the palace, and given a shot at all their professional and personal dreams.

Perhaps perversely, this seems to have seeped into the national well-water of the collective creative subconscious; would-be filmmakers so want to make films that they often make their first film with an eye on how it can be used to get them their next film. (This may be changing, but slowly; avant-garde and micro-budget movies like ¶ or Tarnation may have left their marks, in a way, but they hardly ushered in an era of widespread experimental cinema, or an army of Junior John and Johanna Sayles.) None of this aforementioned symptomatology, thankfully, is evident in Ultrasonic, a savvy, artful, well constructed little domestic drama of paranoia that builds its story around its limited production means but never sacrifices its thematic inquiry, its essence, its core.

Set in Washington, D.C., director Rohit Colin Rao’s movie centers around Simon York (Silas Gordon Brigham, above right), an aspiring musician with a pregnant wife, Ruth (Cate Buscher), and financial problems that are beginning to take their toll. When Simon starts hearing a persistent buzz that’s imperceptible to anyone else, Ruth tells him it’s probably work-related, but urges him to see a doctor. Simon does, and he learns that he can hear in lower and upper registers unlike any other patient the doctor has ever seen. As the ailment worsens, Simon’s brother-in-law Jonas (Sam Repshas, above left), an eccentric conspiracy theorist, peddles the notion that this is all the result of a strange government experiment gone wrong. Shadowy figures and mysterious black boxes posted on nearby lampposts trip the wires of Simon’s dark and panicked imagination. But is this merely a shared psychosis, his psychological vulnerability attaching itself to Jonas’ troubled mind, or actually part of something more sinister?

Rao, working from a script co-written with Mike Maguire, serves as his own composer and cinematographer, lending Ultrasonic a carefully manicured, just-so production package. The film is crisply, engagingly and digitally shot on a Canon T2i, its black-and-white hues only slightly sepia-toned and punctuated by but a few notable splashes of color. The framing, meanwhile, feeds Simon’s increasing sense of isolation.

The story? Well, it’s not dark or really edgy, per se, but there’s an often hypnotic and occasionally unsettling quality to Rao’s marriage of sound and image. Ultrasonic is a resolutely mid-tempo affair, one of the more difficult modes to sustain in feature-length filmmaking. Songs from two of Rao’s erstwhile bands, Tigertronic and the Translucents, open and close the movie, respectively, serving as nice bookends, but the electronic compositions in between give Rao’s debut a moody and sometimes frenetic feeling. Ultrasonic doesn’t really work if one is leaning forward constantly, in search of clearly delineated narrative markers. There’s an aura of mystery that hangs like an early morning mist, but the menace never manifests itself in overly hammy ways. Instead, Rao trusts in himself, and his collaborators. And he’s quite rewarded by his locally assembled talent.

Especially in its ambiguous ending, Ultrasonic slots in alongside an impressive recent spate of little film festival-minted diamonds in the rough — the biggest being  Sound of My Voice, starring Brit Marling; a couple others still awaiting or searching for distribution — that arrive at a place of tonal settledness without answering all of the big(gest) questions of their respective narratives. Does this indicate a barometric shift, a change in the creative appetite for the sort of distinct indistinctness that real life most readily provides? Maybe. One can hope. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, including its playdates and VOD options, visit its website, why don’t you? (Garden Thieves Pictures, R, 90 minutes)

Part Scarface, part In America, immigrant’s tale For the Love of Money puts a Jewish-American spin on the hardscrabble and borderline-illegal fight for entrepreneurial rooting that colors dramatic depictions of so many stories of strangers trying to find their way in opportunistic and upwardly mobile fashion in a new country. Touting itself as based on true events (and feeling very much financed by some of the parties depicted in the movie), it’s a period piece that breaks no great new ground, but neither does it terribly embarrass itself.

The film opens in Tel Aviv in 1973, in a family bar/illegal gambling den that’s a haven for all sorts of seedy characters. Eventually ready for a change, Izek (Yehuda Levi) moves to Los Angeles while still a teenager, trades up on a number of business ventures assisted by a kindly real estate agent (Jeffrey Tambor), and eventually hooks up with his cousin Yoni (Joshua Bitton) to open an automotive repair shop. Izek even lands a wife, in the form of comely Aline (Delphine Chaneac).

Years pass, and Izek still dreams big, though — wanting to open an even bigger auto mall, and get into real estate and construction. His business is threatened when Izek unwittingly crosses a hotheaded mobster (James Caan), and shortly after that situation resolves itself further temptation arrives via a recently paroled cousin, Levi (Oded Fehr), who is all too eager to return to a life of crime. Against this turbulent backdrop, Izek must try to juggle his outsize ambitions while also deciding how married he is to his moral compass.

Directed by Ellie Kanner-Zuckerman, For the Love of Money leans fairly heavily on its performers to make something out of the material, cycling through a bunch of similarly temperamental, two-dimensional, mid-level mob-type villains, kind of like a Nintendo videogame circa 1991. Throwing money at expensive music cues (“Spirit in the Sky,” “Magic Carpet Ride” and “Cult of Personality,” among many others) and trading in fancy stock footage to flavor the proceedings and mark/pass the time, the movie works more on almost academic level rather than an emotional one — as a thumbnail, period piece sketch of small business appetite and its intersection with gotta-get-mine criminal intent.

Penned by Jenna Mattison, For the Love of Money features familiar characters doing familiar things, and even when crisis pops up it’s more apt to be tamped down or smoothed over by coincidence than any great action by its protagonist. It’s not that the movie is aggressively bad, it’s that its presentation too often feels reductive. Males bond by doing the hearty shoulder-clasp thing, a slow-motion automobile hit is set to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” and threats of grand bodily harm are conveyed in the absence of repayment. Viewers have traveled this road of criminal menace before, only this time it’s peppered with more exclamations of “L’chaim!” For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Archstone, R, 93 minutes)

Over the past century more than 45,000 large dams have redefined river corridors around the globe, taking fresh rainwater deposited for hundreds of years into the oceans and re-directing it for human purposes of energy and commerce. Patagonia Rising takes as its area of inquiry the fight over one such controversial plan in Chile’s famed wilderness. A well-meaning but dry and pedantic documentary, the movie doesn’t do much to bring fire, passion or interest to this story outside of a demographic consisting of the most ardent environmentalists. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (First Run, unrated, 88 minutes)

An interesting documentary that rather criminally buries its lede, Pink Ribbons, Inc. examines the ubiquitous pink ribbon campaigns for breast cancer awareness, and how — in distressing but perhaps classically American fashion — the movement has moved from activism to consumerism. Director Lea Pool assembles a fantastic collection of medical experts, authors, activists, social psychologists and others, but never quite tames her unwieldy collection of thought-provoking opinions into a coherent and cohesive entity any grander than the sum of its disparate parts.

Candid, focus-group-style personal discussions amongst women living with breast cancer (including one of the country’s few Stage IV-specific support groups) lends Pool’s movie an emotional pulse, but it’s the commingled pique and critique of Barbara Ehrenreich, Dr. Samantha King, Dr. Charlene Elliott and others that give Pink Ribbons, Inc. a most gripping sense of intellectually rooted provocation. Examining how, over the last two to three decades, certain parties have pushed and backed a culture of corporate philanthropy in place of governmental investment in medical research and social issues, Pool’s film delivers a pretty unsettling indictment of the phoniness of cause-marketing, which is what corporations and brands like Yoplait, Ford and KFC do when they ply consumers with advertisements and promotions promising charitable donations on their behalf in exchange for purchases.

This debate over the commodification of breast cancer, and the militaristic metaphors often deployed in the realm of public discussion (a “battle against,” “survivors,” etcetera) is an important one, because it gets to the heart of a two-fold pattern in American life — the cynical manipulation of a widespread basic decency in the country, and a tendency to commercialize the treatment or tamping down of problems and ills rather than attack underlying systemic causes. This has everything to do with socioeconomic inequality, but while Pool doesn’t run from this line of inquiry neither does she find a way to truly focus on it in laser-like fashion.

The underwater portion of the issue iceberg, of course, lies in the fact that in the 1940s breast cancer impacted about one in every 22 women, while today that rate stands at roughly one in eight. And it’s here, in its treatment of possible environmental factors for this terrible boom (think: plastics), that the movie stumbles most badly. It’s more than 50 minutes into the film before this question is even addressed, and the issue of suppressed corporate chemical research and testing is treated as an adjunct, when it really says everything about the silent conspiracy at the heart of this go-go capitalist machine. For hardcore documentary fans this smart but problematically constructed film is still definitely worth a look, but Pink Ribbons, Inc. doesn’t deliver enough of a knockout blow to win over audiences not already predisposed to lend an ear to its message. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (First Run Features, unrated, 98 minutes)

A hot mess whose sub-par direction kind of neutralizes its fantastic comedic premise, as well as the delight of some of its wonky supporting performances, High School is a willfully “stupid” stoner comedy, yes, but it also illustrates the gap between stupid done right and merely indulged too far.

Co-written and directed by John Stahlberg, the film centers on a straight-arrow kid and soon-to-be valedictorian, Henry Burke (Matt Bush), who takes a healthy hit of potent weed from his estranged stoner friend, Breaux (Sean Marquette), on what turns out to be the day before his deranged principal, Leslie Gordon (Michael Chiklis), institutes a sweeping anti-drug policy that jeopardizes the academic goodwill and standing for which Henry has labored so long.

Faced with being unable to pass a mandatory drug test for students, Henry and Breaux concoct a masterful on-the-fly scheme — to steal some even more extra strength ganja from an epically eccentric dealer, Psycho Ed (Adrien Brody), in an aim to spike the offerings of their school’s bake sale, get everyone blazed and thus invalidate the tests. This eventually leads to assistant principal Brandon Ellis (Colin Hanks) and others wandering around dazed and confused, while a panicked Henry and Breaux try to scrape up enough money to stave off a beatdown and/or murder at the hands of the aptly named Psycho Ed.

High School‘s basic premise is a fantastic one, ripe with possibilities for misdirection and commingled genre hijinks. Unfortunately, its execution leaves much to be desired; half-sketched storylines and scenes jostle and abut one another in awkward fashion. Stahlberg reworked the script a couple times, with Erik Linhorst (who also gets a co-story credit) and Stephen Susco, and the movie — especially its messy third act and harebrained finale — seems to bear traces of different drafts never quite smoothly integrated into one final, cohesive story. Several characters and beats could and probably should be easily jettisoned.

The leaves the movie leaning mightily upon the efforts of its cast. For a good while, that works. Bush, who cut such an amusing supporting figure in Adventureland, has comedic chops, and is an engaging and sympathetic lead. And Brody has an absolute blast, chewing scenery left and right as a corn-rowed, pop-eyed nutjob. But a deeper exploration of some of the things that could have helped make High School truly unique and memorable — the idea that Breaux is Henry’s ex-best friend from middle school, and a guy he “outgrew,” for instance — get traded and/or bypassed too often for recycled, low-grade laughs. In embracing yawning and pointless authority-as-villainy shtick, Stahlberg illustrates that, well, he’s happily left his mind back in high school. The movie High School, meanwhile, requires a bit smarter and more focused treatment. For more information on the movie, click here to check out its website. (Anchor Bay, R, 100 minutes)