Indulgence and inanity collide in the bewildering vanity project The Gun, the Cake and the Butterfly, a punch-drunk mixture of Tarnation, The Room and some lost, axed-in-run-through Saturday Night Live sketch of skewered, oblivious privilege. A kaleidoscopic memoir from director Amanda Eliasch — a socialite and part-time photographer who exists seemingly only to be seen — this navel-gazing non-starter offers zero of interest to anyone not immediately connected to its maker (and even that audience might be a stretch). For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Butterfly Movies, R, 78 minutes)

He’s won a Tony Award on stage, for 2005’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, but Dan Fogler‘s film career has been defined chiefly by crass and/or live-wire best friend roles, in movies like Good Luck Chuck and Take Me Home Tonight. A wild-eyed, barrel-chested bundle of energy loosely in the mold of a Chris Farley, he’s the guy (along with Josh Gad, whom he lost out to on a starring role in the forthcoming HBO biopic of Sam Kinison) who gets the offers that six to eight years ago were going to Jack Black and Zach Galifianakis.

Naturally, though, as with many a true creative type, Fogler has chafed a bit at this limited vision of his talents. He’s delved into some indie productions over the past several years, to sometimes very engaging effect, as with Kevin and Michael Goetz’s Scenic Route, penned by Kyle Killen. He also apparently watched a bunch of the History Channel’s old Mayan prophecy programming and surveyed the viral mania rampant in the culture at large to inform his second effort behind the camera, and as whacked-out a passion project as one is likely to see this calendar year, Don Peyote. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (XLRator Media, R, 98 minutes)

The trial, convictions and subsequent quasi-voiding of the guilty verdicts of West Memphis, Arkansas teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley in the 1993 killings of three other, younger adolescents have already served as the basis for four high-profile documentaries, so director Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot arrives somewhat anticlimactically for those who have been gripped by the lurid true crime tale over the past two decades — a queasy, repackaged hits collection of judicial incompetence and malfeasance heaped on top of human tragedy. For those wholly unfamiliar with the case, meanwhile, it’s no less of a mixed bag. If the narrative muddle is somewhat understandable, given the many unanswered questions surrounding the terribly sad events, neither does its lack of a clear mandate gel into something heady and artistic, like a vivisection of crime’s impact on community. Instead, Egoyan’s film embraces posed and expeditious dramatic signifiers, rather than plunging more daringly into the mouth of madness. For the full, orignal review, from Paste, click here. (RLJ/Image Entertainment, R, 114 minutes)

Arriving in the middle of the NBA playoffs, just as its subject tries to put the finishing touches on a championship three-peat, documentary Losing LeBron chronicles the gut-punch impact of native son LeBron James’ decision to depart the Cleveland Cavaliers via free agency in 2010. Clocking in at just under 60 minutes, this cinematic apéritif is a moderately engaging if also somewhat incomplete emotional survey of a city’s psychological health.

Provocatively but not without correlation, the film links how coming to expect the worst in sports trickles down to a baseline expectation of failure in relationships and work. But it does so in half-measures. Losing LeBron begs a bit more hard-edged social inquiry than this meandering soft-focus offering, which primes the pump of sports narrative obsessives, but leaves discerning viewers wanting a bit more. For the full review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, which is available on iTunes, Amazon, Google/YouTube, PlayStation, Vudu and Xbox on May 20, click here to visit its eponymous Facebook page. (Cinedigm/Devolver Digital/Coasting Films, unrated, 59 minutes)

A low-fi indie drama of sisterly reconnection that feels a bit like a cinematic cousin of early Miranda July, vacuumed free of any irony and collagist sensibilities, writer-director Nikki Braendlin’s As High As the Sky deserves credit for maximizing its resources and evoking a certain mood of hedged-in, wallflower protectionism — of tapping into the feeling of someone who’s withdrawn from life. In the end, though, it can’t overcome a general lack of gradation and the unconvincingly established deadpan affect of one of its central characters. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, which is presently available on DVD and will be available on Hulu, Amazon Instant and Cinema Libre on Demand beginning on June 6, click here to visit its website. (Aunt Kiki Productions, unrated, 93 minutes)

Hitching its wagon in hopeful fashion to any residual goodwill and interest from last spring’s $490-plus million surprise hit Oz the Great and Powerful, animated family musical Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return spins off a story that loosely picks up after the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. Waves of indifference emanate from this meagerly imagined yarn, adapted from a non-canonical book by Roger Stanton Baum, the great-grandson of originating author L. Frank Baum. Wasting a voice cast populated with recognizable names, this attempt to cash in on nostalgia for its source material evokes more bewilderment and boredom than excitement or wistful reminiscence. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Clarius Entertainment, PG, 92 minutes)

In last fall’s Nebraska, it was Bruce Dern who set out on foot, against the wishes of his son; in the Oregon-set Redwood Highway, it’s Shirley Knight who does the same, delivering an estimable turn in what amounts to a marginal showcase for fans of the twice Oscar-nominated actress. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Town Center 5, click here to visit its website. (Monterey Media, PG-13, 90 minutes)

A classily mounted period piece that oscillates between interestingly plotted societal drama and somewhat stuffy and predictable Jane Austen-style handwringing, director Amma Asante’s Belle leans heavily on the unique intrigue that results from a protagonist caught up between different worlds — black and white, rich and disfavored. Never quite content to cast its lot with a grittier and more ambitious tone, this polished and engaging but emotionally gauzy and at times downright frustrating film slugs its way through a lot of dutifully passionate speechifying en route to a conclusion of scrupulously manufactured uplift. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Fox Searchlight, PG, 105 minutes)

An amiable documentary that takes a stab at bridging the divide between food growers and American consumers, Farmland alights upon myriad issues relating to modern agriculture, providing a freshmen-level survey class deeply connected to entrepreneurial endeavor, and the dignity and work ethic of the farmers and families it spotlights. If director James Moll’s film fails to achieve much in the way of cohesive big-picture lift, it’s still steeped in feeling, and intriguing enough to easily win over urban arthouse viewers wanting to see and know a little bit more about how food makes its way to their plates.

Farmland never seems disingenuous, but neither does Moll — an Academy Award winner for 1998’s The Last Days — seem to exercise a great deal of editorial discipline in crafting deep narrative through-lines. Some of the facts seem fancifully sourced, and without verification or pushback; one interviewee claims that consumers get 90 percent of their food from family farms, which contradicts both common sense as well as movies like Food, Inc., and would have to be dependent on a fairly generous definition of the word “family.” At its core, Farmland lacks a thesis statement. Discussions of hot button issues like the organic certification process and GMOs enter the proceedings late, more than 35 minutes in, and seem clipped and perfunctory.

What gives Farmland its punch and connection is the forthrightness and decency of its subjects, the candor with which they share their lives and the even-handedness with which they weigh questions integral to the future of farming in the United States. Meanwhile, Harris Done’s cinematography communicates volumes in its simple beauty, and a closing sequence set to a cover version of “This Land Is Your Land” by Everclear and Liz Phair will spark a swollen-hearted feeling of idealistic connection to the dedication and livelihoods of these hale, hearty, ever-optimistic folks. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For the movie’s trailer and more information regarding its theatrical exhibition, click here to visit its website. (Allentown Productions, unrated, 77 minutes)

Decoding Annie Parker boasts a deep roster of recognizable faces, including Rashida Jones, Alice Eve, Helen Hunt and Aaron Paul, in addition to star Samantha Morton. This speaks to the enormous potential of its material, which is rooted in the true story of a three-time cancer survivor and the scientific discovery of the hereditary breast cancer gene. In the hands of a first-time feature director with no overarching idea of how to wrangle disparate narrative strands into the shape of anything consequential, however, this well-meaning but hopelessly disjointed period drama comes to resemble nothing so much as a Lifetime movie run amok and off the tracks, unfolding in maddening fits and starts under a series of problematic wigs and skullcaps. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (E One Entertainment/Ozymandias Productions, R, 99 minutes)

The bug-eyed social rantings of two-time Grammy Award-winning stand-up comedian Lewis Black get a healthy workout in Lewis Black: Old Yeller – Live at the Borgata, his ninth comedy special, recorded last year in Atlantic City. Apoplectically cycling through irritants great and small, the 65-year-old multi-hyphenate provides an amusing, highly personalized look at the state of modern American life, and its shared intersections with both technology and government.

Black’s sardonic personality — for anyone familiar with him through his “Back in Black” segments on The Daily Show, or anywhere else, to be honest — is the engine that drives a lot of his comedy, which is of the observational variety. After honoring his in-the-audience parents at the top of Old Yeller (some of the artwork of his father, who took up painting after retirement, makes up the backdrop for his show), Black dives headlong into disappointment. He shares that despite the disapproving glances and statements of married people, the greatest disappointment in his life is not his singledom and lack of children, but the 21st century as a whole. Using that as a leaping-off point, he assails his peer group as “the greatest generation at hanging out,” and doing nothing.

Old Yeller leans heavily on the twin pillars of personal agitation and neuroses, but it largely works. When Black is tackling bigger, societal issues through smaller, more relatable comedy (as he does linking Social Security solvency and the mysteries of long division), he’s on fire. Digressions into national health care and the environment (“Earth Day was created when I was in school, and we were doing a lot of drugs”) don’t connect as robustly, but when Black trains his rage on Facebook in an extended rant, there’s a luminousness to his prose and performance, with a couple well-placed epithets used to punctuate his anger.

Running just under one hour, Old Yeller evinces the feeling of a couple missed opportunities; when Black says that, after 25 years of professional travel, he knows some states shouldn’t actually be states, you wish he’d quick-riffed on the best (read: worst) absurdity he’d encountered. Still, when Black circles back late in the show to politics, and how when he was growing up drinking (often to excess) helped Congress actually achieve both equanimity and actual legislative accomplishment, there’s plenty of warped yet keen insight on display. There’s also a hard edge to a lot of this concluding material, and the fact that a viewer can feel a bit of unease gathering in the audience only deepens one’s appreciation for the harsh, borderline profane truth-slinging in which Black trades. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its premiere on EPIX, Lewis Black: Old Yeller – Live at the Borgata also hits DVD on May 6, in a slightly longer version, with attendant chapter stops and the like. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase via Half, click here. (Image Entertainment/EPIX, unrated, 57 minutes)

War is a terrible thing, full of horrors big and small. And yet in the swirling darkness, amidst all the depravity and moral compromise, slivers of light often emerge, offering compelling case studies in human character and resilience. That truism is again borne out in Walking With the Enemy, an unfussy but robust World War II drama inspired by the factual story of a small-town Hungarian rabbi’s son who used wile, guile and occasionally brute force to disrupt Nazi occupation and save countless Jewish friends and family. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Liberty Studios, PG-13, 126 minutes)

The tension between a bittersweet character comedy of discovered infidelity and the more commercial-minded, studio-dictated instincts of raucous, empowerment-stamped sisterhood is ever-present in The Other Woman. Connecting slightly more often than not, this film works best as a showcase for the talents of Leslie Mann, who can wring rueful laughter of identification out of humiliation and angst unlike few actresses working today. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 109 minutes)

Ahh, what might have been for Dougray Scott. In the late 1990s, he was originally cast as adamantium-clawed X-Men mauler Wolverine, but then forced to drop out of the film when overruns and delays dragged out the production schedule of Mission: Impossible II. Stripped of that franchise touchstone, he’s never quite reached the same buzzy occupational heights. Now, while Hugh Jackman has gone on to all sorts of riches and rewards, the Scottish-born Scott is left to anchor British-produced rip-offs of Speed, as with Last Passenger, a runaway-train action thriller that coasts along serviceably for a bit before entering Boredom Station. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Last Passenger opens in the Los Angeles area at the Regal Long Beach Stadium Theatre. (Cohen Media Group/Pinewood Films, R, 97 minutes)

Small Time is an appropriate title for writer-director Joel Surnow’s period piece dramedy, the type of movie whose meandering, loose-limbed structure and comparative lack of stakes inform a savvy viewer of the fact that it’s “inspired by true events” even without benefit of the opening credits title card. A father-son bonding story squashed awkwardly up against a lightly humorous workplace tale, this amiable passion project commits no great offenses, but lacks the necessary tension and elicited emotional investment to pull in and sustain an audience much outside of the core fan base of the talent involved. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Anchor Bay/Asylum Entertainment, R, 95 minutes)

It turns out that helping a Hollywood studio make a couple billion dollars opens some occupational doors. Ergo Wally Pfister, Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning cinematographer on Inception and the Batman films, jumps into the director’s chair for the first time with Transcendence, a techno-thriller that over the course of two hours systematically squanders an interesting concept, in deflating fashion. If science-fiction can, intellectually and production-scope wise, either go big or go home, Transcendence is the latter version masquerading as the former: an over-plotted movie, glossy and expansive but about two inches deep, of contrasting wingnut philosophies and flat-line emotional affect. Overstuffed but underdeveloped, it mistakes serial incident for dramatic connection. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 119 minutes)

For many directors, the independent film realm, and its more constrictive parameters of budget storytelling, are a thing to leave behind — to graduate from, as part of a move up into the “big leagues.” David Gordon Green, though, even as he has crafted Hollywood studio comedies like Pineapple Express, Your Highness and The Sitter, has kept one foot planted in the indie arena, and more plaintive portraiture. Joe, his latest effort, is a tender, lyrical slice of underclass drama, anchored by a magnetic performance from Nicolas Cage, that also exercises a certain kind of metaphorical connection to the low-lying fog of economic desperation that presently holds so many in its grip.

An adaptation of the late Larry Brown’s 1991 novel of the same name, Green’s film centers on Gary (Tye Sheridan), a 15-year-old Texas kid whose father, Wade Jones (Gary Poulter), is a shiftless, alcoholic lout. Near-homeless and hungry, both figuratively and literally, Gary hooks a job with Joe Ransom (Cage), who runs a crew of guys hired in back-channel fashion by a logging company to chemically kill off trees, in order that they may harvest the land. Joe is a strong-willed ex-convict who has issues with authority proper as well as a scummy nemesis, Willy (Ronnie Gene Blevins), with whom he’s apparently been feuding for years. In short, Joe isn’t really a role model. And yet, to Gary he is. And so, by degrees, Joe begins to assume that mantle.

Joe is a weathered work, emotionally and visually, where almost everything is of a piece. Abetting the simple, spare production design, cinematographer Tim Orr delivers a palette that finds beauty and meaning in its many outdoor locations. There are a few moments of slip-up where issues of budget or attention to detail poke through, but Green rounds out his cast with non-actors — a gambit that works much more than it doesn’t. Poulter (who tragically passed away after filming) and others, selected for their grizzled faces as much as anything else, lend the movie a grungy authenticity, as do sequences of hearty rural life (Joe gutting a deer) and long-take domestic arguments. Cage and Sheridan, meanwhile, have a great rapport, and the veteran actor in particular delivers a dialed-in performance, his most layered of the last several years.

Not entirely unlike Prince Avalanche, Green’s previous film, Joe is, broadly speaking, a movie about men finding their way in the world. Here, there’s the specter of alcoholism, and all the rotten fruit it has born, and there’s the contrast of Gary’s burgeoning relationship with Joe, who starts off as a gruff mentor but becomes a proactive surrogate. What makes the film work, though, as much as its winding, leisurely plot strands, hot flashes of violence and the general quality of its lead performances, is the tension in this pairing. Joe isn’t the totemic opposite of Gary’s knockabout father; he drinks quite a bit as well, and has a temper, too. He’s a man struggling with his own rage and demons, trying to hold them at bay in that most time-honored of male traditions — by stuffing them deep down inside. In Gary, Joe sees a kid in need, and he has protective impulses awakened. But we’re not quite sure where that’s going to take either Joe or Gary, and the dangers and temptations the former also faces, while much more of his own creation, give the film a nice parallel resonance.

If there’s a strike against the movie, it’s that Joe remains a very patriarchal work. Yes, it’s overwhelmingly focused on these three men, but it doesn’t delve into Gary’s relationship with his mother (who’s barely glimpsed) or his sister, whose muteness is explained with a casualness that most will find befuddling and some will read as oblivious commentary on the movie’s gender politics and divide. Green could also stand to turn up the boil just a bit; more bubbling menace would root the film’s third act action, and deepen its catharses. Still, even if it’s a work of mood and color more than wily plot, the engaging Joe elicits considerable empathy, and leaves one glad and grateful that Green hasn’t abandoned his more esoteric and independent-minded roots. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions, R, 117 minutes)

To fully analyze the unnerving nature of the smart, dark, pleasantly warped Proxy, which further confirms Zack Parker as a filmmaker to watch, is to ruin some of its surprises. Suffice it to say, though, that while a lot of Hollywood movies (and certainly no small number of even independent productions) conflate narrative ambition with only special effects and the grand expression of visual style, Proxy is a film powered by a bold idea — and the sort of movie that reveals in slow, peeled-onion fashion the true nature of its narrative aims, the actual story at its core. For most of its running time, however, it’s absorbing because one doesn’t know quite what the hell it wants from its viewers. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (IFC Midnight/Along the Tracks, R, 107 minutes)

Sometimes, through no particular creative fault of their own, and for reasons attached more to dubious financiers, labyrinthine contracts and the bizarre grudges of people in suits whose names you’ll never know, movies sit on the shelf long after completion, gathering dust and the reputation of being a stinker. Such is the case with Halle Berry‘s Frankie & Alice, admittedly a generously apportioned slice of awards-bait pie, but a well-rendered and engaging psychological drama nonetheless.

After a premiere at Cannes in 2010, the film received a head-feint awards push in December of that year; it opened in exactly one theater, and in advance of what was supposed to be a nationwide release in February 2011, screeners were mailed to various critics’ organizations. It even netted Berry a Golden Globe nomination. Then… nothing. The reasons for the film’s distributor-assisted suicide depend on whom you believe, but now, almost three-and-a-half years later, it’s seeing the light of day in a theatrical re-release. And the truth is that it’s not that bad. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Lionsgate, R, 102 minutes)

If, as in the phrase popularized by Mark Twain, there are three kinds of lies — lies, damned lies and statistics — then there are also at least three different kinds of true stories, which, when adapted for the big screen, are most assuredly not wielded with equal strokes of grace and credibility. Rich evidence of this exists in the form of Perfect Sisters, a surprisingly tension-free drama starring Abigail Breslin and Georgie Henley as siblings who start to entertain thoughts of matricide.

Neither touching the rich, charged atmosphere of Heavenly Creatures, nor aiming for something more darkly comedic or rooted in social commentary, director Stan Brooks’ film instead exists in a soupy, unpersuasive middle ground. Simply being based on a true-crime case from around a dozen years ago is inherently interesting enough to sustain an entire narrative framework, its filmmakers seem to think. That instinct proves wrong. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Gravitas Ventures, unrated, 101 minutes)

A documentary on one of the more enchanting and tragic figures of the world of ballet, Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil le Clercq affirms the talent of its subject but assumes a fawning interest in her. Failing to establish enough of a cleanly delineated backdrop or emotional throughline to connect to a general audience, the frustrating result is a hopelessly insular work that leaves those who aren’t dance history majors on the outside of this at times beautiful but otherwise entirely tedious bauble, their faces pressed against the glass. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Kino Lorber, unrated, 91 minutes)

The career of every filmmaker and actor, if they sustain any longevity, is peppered with various levels of success and failure. And while he’s had greater successes in other films and genres, among the films for which Kevin Costner is most warmly remembered are a quartet of sports movies — Bull Durham, For Love of the Game, Tin Cup and of course the iconic Field of Dreams, celebrating its 25th anniversary later this very month.

Affectionate reminiscences of that filmography inform director Ivan Reitman’s new dramedy, Draft Day. But the more recent and germane comparison may be Moneyball, another smart, nuanced and confident sports film that didn’t chase the drama of on-field action, but instead used its sport as a backdrop for a complicated, adult tale of striving and innovation. Draft Day isn’t nearly in the same class, and its aims are a notch or two lower — it’s less a disquisition on beta-masculinity than an engaging extension of the National Football League brand. But it works far more than it doesn’t, connecting with pleasure and heart. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Lionsgate/Summit, PG-13, 110 minutes)