Oranges and Sunshine is re-affirming evidence that not every remarkable true story a remarkable film makes. Based on the book Empty Cradles by British social worker Margaret Humphreys, the movie tells the story of its crusading subject, who worked to uncover one of the most shocking government-sanctioned scandals of modern times — the forced deportation of many thousands of children from the United Kingdom to Australia.

Both overall and scene-to-scene, though, the film exudes a just-fine feeling of dutiful emotional string-pulling, and nothing more. It commits no great and cringe-worthy offenses, but neither does it ever really get its hooks into an audience, and make them in a lasting way truly feel either the shock or heartbroken compassion its story should elicit. Mostly, though, Oranges and Sunshine is a “message movie” told in staid, blocky fashion, as if already edited down, content-wise, for a Hallmark-style TV presentation, and the lowest-common-denominator audience that medium occasionally implies. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 105 minutes)

A documentary snapshot of the blurry, ever-evolving intersection of the relationship between technology and human bonds and grander societal development, Connected is wonderfully emblematic of the ways that intelligent artists can use the medium of film to explore issues and ask questions in a manner that encourages and bolsters a pleasantly unsettled life of exploration and outreach in the minds and hearts of viewers. Self-touted as “an autobiography about love, death and technology,” Tiffany Shlain‘s film is a deeply felt personal travelogue in the vein of Tom Shadyac’s similarly questioning I Am, in which the director set out (broadly speaking) to make sense of his feelings of emptiness in a material world. Part treatise, part psalm, part uncertain investigation, it elucidates and illuminates, imparting facts but never once a sense of holier-than-thou snootiness. Plain and simple, Connected connects, on multiple levels.



The founder of the Webby Awards, Shlain initially embarked upon the film as a more direct exploration of the effects of technology on our daily lives. Just as production was underway, however, she discovered both that she was pregnant with her second child, and that her father and would-be collaborator, surgeon and author Leonard Shlain, was diagnosed with brain cancer, and given only nine months to live. Undeterred, Shlain soldiered on, and incorporated elements of these unfolding events into her narrative, which, among other things, posits that both the advent of the alphabet during humankind’s development and increased literacy over-stimulated the left (more methodical, and traditionally male-associated) hemisphere of the human brain, and that the Internet has a tremendous capacity to synthesize the two hemispheres.

Connected benefits tremendously from Stefan Nadelman’s animation, which gives the film a spry liveliness, as well as the fact that Shlain (along with her credited co-writers) obviously took tremendous care in crafting the movie’s narration, which gives some credit to Peter Coyote but mostly leans on Shlain herself. In stitching together archival images from all sorts of eras and cultures with open-hearted monologues of a more personally-inflected nature, Connected deftly illustrates macro concepts in living, breathing and specifically private ways, and therefore the dependent nature of humankind — on both one another, and the world we inhabit.

Sometimes it alights upon a topic without quite enough set-up (the plight of the honeybees, for instance, already the subject of two other documentaries this year), and other times it misses chances to seemingly better highlight and underscore the often damaging manner in which societal and political problems are dealt with in isolation of one another. The film’s overriding aesthetic is one of hopefulness, though, and while so many other movies or books or speakers portend doom as it relates to technological advance and connection, Shlain’s film makes a fairly convincing case for the net positive effect of a world’s activated central nervous system. It sounds ridiculously simplistic to say, or perhaps faint praise, but at its core Connected is a very human film. It has a soul, and bristles with a hunger and intellectual vigor lacking in all but a small percentage of modern American films. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the movie itself visit the film’s official website, as well as its same-named Facebook page, where there are ongoing discussions about the many issues and ideas raised in the movie. For an interview with Shlain, meanwhile, click here. (Paladin/Moxie Institute, PG, 82 minutes)

A heartfelt and well acted tale of sports underdog uplift, and a marginal recommendation for those interested in its subject matter, The Mighty Macs tells the true story of a driven women’s basketball coach who in the early 1970s turned tiny Immaculata College into a three-time national champion. Achingly familiar in its plotting, and evincing little ambition to stretch beyond its comfortably prescribed parameters of feel-good fortification, the film mainly serves as a nice showcase for Carla Gugino, as well as a piece of Title IX boosterism to remind viewers that sports aren’t some exclusive, birthright domain of just men. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Freestyle Releasing, G, 99 minutes)

Michael Shannon is a talented guy, and has smartly leveraged his Revolutionary Road Oscar nomination into the sort of paycheck-villain roles (battling Superman in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, for instance) that will enable to him to keep making interesting indie projects, so it’s hard to get too bent out of shape over something like the Ohio-set psychological drama Take Shelter, a mannered, interesting failure about a father who might be losing his mind.

Sand-mining crew chief Curtis LaForche and his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain, making a push for 2011 ubiquitous “It Girl” status) have a modest but good life, even though their six-year-old daughter Hannah needs a cochlear implant. Plagued by violent dreams and visions which presage a coming storm, Curtis becomes convinced he must overhaul and restore the family’s underground shelter, casting into further doubt their already tenuous financial situation. To reveal more unnecessarily undercuts the movie’s slow-burn style, but it suffices to say that domestic arguments ensue and Curtis himself struggles with his actions, unsure whether or not he’s losing his grip on sanity.

Shannon and writer-director Jeff Nichols previously collaborated on 2008’s Shotgun Stories, and obviously have a rapport and mutual affection for one another which results in a film that never feels uncertain about its intentions, however coy and soft-peddled it is. The better, if manifestly less restrained, film in which to watch Shannon lose his mind, though, is 2007’s Bug, co-starring Ashley Judd. Despite Shannon’s Herculean efforts, Take Shelter is, put bluntly, not a movie that earns its two-hour running time.

Caught between trading in symbolism and narrative revelation, Nichols never finds a way to lift Hannah to the status of anything other than a dramatic marker, a pawn in Curtis’ plight. More problematically, though, about an hour in Nichols abandons the eerie manifestations of storms both real and imagined, which robs Take Shelter of the chance of accumulating a more pronounced sense of doom. When the last, proudly ambiguous note is struck, one leaves convinced only that there exists a greater exploitation of this same concept yet to be made, one with sharper contrasts and more starkly defined stakes. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 120 minutes)

If one could entirely banish certain ideas for scenes from the minds of all screenwriters, then surely on the top 10 list for such cinematic excommunication would be press conference confessionals, which at some point must have seemed really bold and original but by now almost without fail come across as lazy and pat — an entirely synthetic way to give an audience the feeling of a character-awakening conclusion without any of the heavy lifting that accompanies honest reflection. Such is the dispiriting end point for Father of Invention, a weird and fitfully fresh comedy with a name-heavy cast that almost methodically fumbles away a viewer’s engagement, leaving them instead with thoughts of what could have been.

Robert Axle (Kevin Spacey) is an ego-driven infomercial guru who made his fortune fabricating mash-up inventions that maximized “the atomic and molecular potential” of purchasers (think a pepper spray-camera hybrid, so that one could snap photos of their attacker). A class action lawsuit related to one of his products landed him in jail, though, and when he gets out eight years later his wife Lorraine (Virginia Madsen) is remarried to Jerry (Craig Robinson). Robert lands a retail job working at a wholesale discount store under the high-strung Troy Coangelo (Johnny Knoxville) and his semi-estranged daughter Claire (Camilla Belle), now 22, grants him a place to live, but Robert almost immediately butts heads with one of her roommates, lesbian gym teacher Phoebe (Heather Graham). Robert’s big dream is get back into business, however, so he starts hitting the pavement and trying to come up with partners and financial backers for a new idea. Will a return to some of his old habits, however, land him back in trouble?

Spacey is custom-built for a guy like Axle — half heart, and half ambitious huckster — and he anchors Father of Invention with aplomb. The other performances don’t always feel like they’re from the same movie, though, even though decent joke-writing gives the actors piecemeal opportunities to shine. Director Trent Cooper cycles through lots of set-ups (somewhat refreshingly, the movie isn’t afraid to haul in a new character or setting for a joke), but after a while the narrative just seems manic and unfocused. There are so many elements to serve — from father/daughter reconciliation and Jerry and Lorraine’s pending bankruptcy to an eventual thawing and flirtation between Robert and Phoebe and even the parental divorce of Claire’s other roommate — that Father of Invention takes on the quality of a high school term paper thrown together at the last minute, all unconnected facts and half-baked assertions.

Does the movie desire to be a wacky ensemble comedy? Does it want to be a comedic-leaning tale of familial redemption? Or is it more expressly about Robert’s professional journey? The filmmakers can’t decide, ultimately, so a viewer mostly stops caring. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Anchor Bay, PG-13, 93 minutes)

The art of reflexive cinematic disquisition — in which an area of putative inquiry and the very arc of the filmmaker’s own artistic quest are commingled, and presented alongside one another — is a tricky feat. It can make for heady entertainment when the pretzel makers are whipsmart (witness Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze’s Adaptation, for instance), and even give extra layers of sociological heft and insight to nonfiction films, as in works like Capturing the Friedmans and Catfish. For Pamela Yates’ Granito: How To Nail a Dictator, however, which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, it just doesn’t work, alas. Instead, it serves as a leaden weight on the well-meaning material, dragging it down into the depths of an inelegant bore. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (International Film Circuit, unrated, 103 minutes)

A surprisingly well known cast (fronted by Nicholas D’Agosto, of the underrated Fired Up!) headlines Mardi Gras: Spring Break, a dispiriting slice of purported comedy that provides little more than a thinly stitched together parade of nudity, and denigrates the current trend of Hollywood capital infusion into the city of New Orleans. Nothing about this loud, unsubtle and roundly unfunny stinker merits much attention or discussion; it’s the sort of film that no cast member would bring up freely of their own volition in any interview. Hell, I believe even Carmen Electra (who cameos as herself), a woman for whom the sentiment is mostly foreign, probably feels some shame about her participation in this. Nevertheless, for the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Samuel Goldwyn, R, 88 minutes)

One assumes that handsome paydays for all and possibly some sort of foreign tax shelter were the reasons for the birthing of Trespass, a massively retarded home invasion thriller directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman that otherwise exhibits no particular reason for existing.



Cage plays Kyle Miller, an unfashionably bespectacled diamond dealer whose wall-safe password is “diamond.” He lives in a well-appointed home in a gated community, with his wife Sarah (Kidman) and teenage daughter, Avery (Liana Liberato). On the surface everything is good, but there are ripples of marital and familial discord. These mere pebbles in the pond are put in perspective, however, when a group of thugs (Ben Mendelsohn, Cam Gigandet, Jordana Spiro and Dash Mihok) gain entry to his house posing as cops. They demand that he give them diamonds and cash. He refuses, but when Avery — who has snuck out to a party — returns home, Kyle loses the upper hand, and finds he and his family locked in a struggle of wills with these brutish interlopers. As their focus and allegiance to one another begins to crack, can Kyle exploit these problems to save his family?

Writer Karl Gajdusek, whose screen credits include The Mechanic and Unknown, also has many playwriting credits to his name, which is rather baffling given the many narrative set-ups that come to no greater fruition within Trespass. There are a couple smart physical details (the would-be burglars have tape affixed to the pads of their fingers), but the film cycles through so many ridiculous stories and motivations pegged to the criminals’ intent as to court outright boredom. And the dialogue that Gajdusek gives them invariably sounds pedantic or awkward coming out of their mouths (“Every minute we stay past the first 20 minutes ups our risk of being caught by 10 percent!”), as if cobbled together from a bunch of different newspaper articles about similar domestic robberies.

The idea of madly inept and/or fucked up intruders could be plumbed to delicious, ironic and/or subversive effect, but Trespass is played bewilderingly straight, even with Cage’s tinny, warbled accent flickering in and out. The performances seem to exist on different emotional planes, giving the film an uneven feeling, but the most damning thing about the movie is the fact that it so consistently introduces little plot twists and turns that portend intriguing wrinkles which never arrive. The result engenders a cyclical response through the stages of grief — first confusion, then denial, and finally anger. Trespass is fascinating, all right, but for none of the wrong reasons. (Millennium Entertainment, R, 90 minutes)

Nell this ain’t, that’s for sure. Adapted by director Lucky McKee
from a novel he co-wrote with Jack Ketchum, The Woman tells the
story of an antisocial, outright feral female who’s lived in the wild as
an animal, and what happens when she’s captured and held by a rural
family, in a perverted attempt to foist “civilized” behavior upon her.
Walkouts supposedly overwhelmed the movie’s Sundance Film Festival
premiere presentation earlier this year, and it’s easy to understand
why, given the pattycake niceness of so many indie narratives,
especially in that venue. The Woman is at once grim and kind
of outlandish, but also extraordinarily well crafted — more than
enough to queasily pull an audience along, even somewhat against their
will.

Real estate lawyer Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) lives a very traditional and seemingly simple life with his wife Belle (Angela Bettis) and family, which also includes teenage daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), pubescent son Brian (Zach Rand) and youngest daughter Darlin’ (Shyla Molhusen). One day he stumbles across a filthy, hunched over woman (Pollyanna McIntosh, above) bathing in a nearby creek; he later returns and captures her. Shackling her up in the family’s cellar, he presents her cultivation and betterment as a “family project.” Neither the woman (who communicates only in icy glares and pre-verbal grunts) chomping off a portion of Chris’ finger and certainly not the growing unease of his wife can dissuade him from this seemingly bizarre focus; no one else gets a vote in this very patriarchal hierarchy. Of course, bad things eventually happen.

In films like the striking May and Red, McKee has shown an unusual flair for summoning dread and horror from curious places and angles, and part of the sly genius of The Woman is that it is the exact opposite of gleefully deranged. Its concept may be peculiar and out-there, but McKee imbues it with a deep and disarming ordinariness, allowing depravity to kind of bleed into the picture on its own slow terms. This seems crazy, of course, but its snarling central subject aside, everyone else in The Woman is essentially acting as if they are in a family drama — which of course they are. Chris seems a punitive figure, but the full measure of his psychosis comes into focus slowly, like a Polaroid picture.

If there’s a strike against The Woman, it’s that its finale feels like a manifestation of Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song).” Things unravel at such a quick, woolly clip, and its descent into gory comeuppance feels like something of a sop to genre audiences — more of a payoff for the investment of their time rather than something invested in character. Perhaps in the source material there is a deeper explication of the elicited themes that McKee and Ketchum are aiming to shine a spotlight on in twisted fashion, but these don’t convincingly pay off here, and are a huge disappointment relative to the rest of the movie. Still, this Woman is undeniably unforgettable, and in a world of measured entertainment that so often banks on an evocation of familiar feelings, that’s certainly saying something. For more information, visit www.TheWomanMovie.com. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, meanwhile, click here. (Bloody Disgusting Films, R, 103 minutes)

An energetic and curiously faithful remake of the 1984 film of the same name starring Kevin Bacon, writer-director Craig Brewer’s Footloose is a virtual cinematic poison pill to anyone irrevocably divorced from any trace memories of adolescent feeling, and further proof that in life but especially art feeling is stronger than thought. Transparently but for the most part effectively rousing, this modestly pitched movie breaks no new ground, but also evinces no ambition to do so. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Paramount, PG-13, 113 minutes)

A forced, unconvincingly zany dramedy about a solitary adult orphan (Jackson Hurst), a woman (Rachel Nichols) in grossly idealized romantic pursuit, and the talking parrot that helps bring them together, would-be screwball dramedy A Bird of the Air serves as an ample reminder that originality isn’t necessarily synonymous with quality or engagement. It also represents an unexpected boon to the judgment of Matthew McConaughey. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Paladin, PG-13, 98 minutes)

When its lead character speaks of “a jumbled mass of conflicting impulses,” she easily could be talking about writer-director Kenneth Lonergan’s sophomore effort, a lurching drama in which various coming-of-age incidents and more conventional familial friction get pressed up against an ethical dilemma that spawns an unusual wrongful death civil suit. More than a bit manic, Margaret is a film with as much distinct, wide-eyed personality as it has little focus. Not built for traditional catharsis or even really emotional engagement, it plays out as a string of thematically related acting scene exercises, and as such is a movie likely to be misunderstood by the few that don’t dismiss it outright. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Fox Searchlight, R, 149 minutes)

One needn’t be a fan of Mike Leigh to know that secrets and lies offer up rich narrative possibilities for filmmakers. So, too, do the allure of nonfiction tales. But not all true stories are created equal, as Berlin ’36 amply demonstrates. A German period piece embellishing of the nonfiction story of a transsexual Olympic athlete who stood the chance of greatly embarrassing the Nazi regime during the country’s hosting of the quadrennial games, the movie unfolds with such a singular lack of dramatic heft as to almost defy logic. For the full review, from ShockYa, click here. (Corinth Films, unrated, 100 minutes)

I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive, which played at the 2010 City of Lights City of Angels Festival, is a stirring familial drama of simmering resentment, anchored by a searing performance from young Vincent Rottiers, whose piercing blue eyes and quiet intensity are enough to make one ruminate about a possible fraternal collaboration with Daniel Craig. The American version of these sorts of damaged-kid stories typically cedes all ambiguity in favor of pat cathartic redemption, but this gripping French import keeps an edge of violence and uncertainty about it, making for an engaging and unnerving treat for arthouse audiences. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Strand, unrated, 91 minutes)

Another nationalist, feuding-warlord Chinese martial arts import, historic epic Shaolin delivers moderately on the expectations its core demographic might likely have, but otherwise does little else to distinguish itself for a broader audience. Ambitiously staged set pieces fall victim to portentous technique, creating an ultimately irreconcilable chasm between how much one wants to like this movie and how much they actually do. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Variance, unrated, 131 minutes)

Apparently chiefly inspired by the loads of money generated by robots smashing into one another in the Transformers films, executive producer Steven Spielberg helps orchestrate more metallic mayhem in Real Steel, in which a tremendous technical polish is brought to bear upon what is frequently a rather awkward grafting of family drama and overblown, futuristic boxing tale. The nature of its conceit all but obliges Real Steel end with estranged father holding son aloft in his arms, but it’s of course how viewers are taken to that point that matters. And while its stabs at emotionalism are sincere, director Shawn Levy’s movie never once shakes free of the feeling that it owes its entire existence to external market forces. Still, if one can shrug off the story flaws, the film’s undeniable gloss and special effects proficiency are what help keep it bobbing and weaving, allowing it to intermittently connect. The interplay between humans and robots is extraordinarily believable; scale is consistent, and never betrayed. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG-13, 127 minutes)

An inoffensive but hardly essential piece of occupational boosterism, American Teacher provides a look at the public education crisis in the United States through the eyes of those often lambasted or pilloried as somehow being a bigger part of the problem than of the solution. Helmed by Academy Award-winning director Vanessa Roth, the documentary spotlights the extraordinary personal sacrifices that a lot of instructors make by choosing to teach — as well as how qualified and otherwise passionate people are sometimes driven from the field by the rocky shoals of hard-knock financial reality. Many of the subjects here are inspiring, but, sadly, American Teacher comes off as more of a staid, herky-jerky stump speech than a fiery and clarifying call to action. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, meanwhile, click here. (First Run, unrated, 80 minutes)

It’s hard to fathom today, but at the height of his career, chess master Bobby Fischer was by certain accounts better known than any other living person in the world — athlete, entertainer, politician or otherwise. His 1972 World Championship match against Russian Boris Spassky, with the allegorical heft of its East-versus-West implications, helped spark a worldwide surge in the interest in chess, while his hermetic personality rendered him a compelling if inscrutable public figure far outside the realm of his area of expertise. Bobby Fischer Against the World, a new documentary which frames itself against the backdrop of the aforementioned high-stakes match but also tackles the iconoclastic nature of its subject both personally and professionally, makes a persuasive, emotionally involving case for the dark, troubled flipside of genius.

Fischer has been the subject of numerous books and a couple nonfiction films, and remains an intriguing subject both because of the headstrong way he tackled his sport, upsetting many defenders of the status quo, and also the manner in which he sort of disappeared, “retiring” in his early 30s after refusing in 1975 to defend his title. Directed by Emmy Award winner Liz Garbus, Bobby Fischer Against the World is appropriately titled, on several levels. It first sketches out the many structural advantages granted Russian players — where chess was embraced as a means by which to prove the intellectual superiority of Communist orthodoxy — whereas the self-taught Fischer, on the other hand, was the lone son of a working poor single mother who threw himself into the study of chess with an obsession that proved effective yet also alienating, even to those few close to him. The movie’s title also serves to underscore the manner in which Fischer’s rise to prominence within the chess world took on the qualities of a strange surrogate battle in the Cold War; when Fischer balked at some of the conditions surrounding his best-of-24-match showdown with reigning champion Spassky, and seemed ready not to show up, none other than Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beseeched him in a phone call.

Garbus captures the full breadth and scope of this drama without ever sacrificing its human qualities. Interview subjects include not only chess masters who provide personal and professional insights, but also Fischer’s brother-in-law, public figures like Kissinger and talk show host Dick Cavett, and more. The use of news clips show the prominent placement afforded Fischer’s showdown with Spassky in relation to Watergate and other important national news, and Garbus’ smart, occasional deployment of slick, groove-laden contemporary tunes like T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong,” Gary Glitter’s “Rock & Roll, Parts 1 and 2” and the theme from Shaft give the movie an additional pop currency.

The big 1972 chess match itself, the film’s centerpiece, is plenty fascinating. It’s incredible to think that this was broadcast nationally on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, complete with commentary from chess experts and even a sketch artist assigned to track Fischer from his hotel and sit in the gallery during matches. From Fischer’s amateur-level mistake in the first game and various no-shows by the participants over the course of its weeks-long schedule to increasingly far-fetched and paranoid claims of radiation or electrical disturbances implanted in lights and chairs, there’s a great and engaging tension to be found in the intellectual and psychological grappling.

Every bit as remarkable, though, is the film’s portrait of Fischer, the boy and the man. This material — of an almost otherworldly focused Fischer — provides a revealing counterpoint to his later withdrawal from society. Swallowed by fear (perhaps to live up to his oft-stated goal of retaining the world championship for a couple decades) and beset by depression, Fischer gave up competitive chess, and grew to increasingly entertain various paranoid delusions of both individual persecution and vast, anti-Semitic conspiracy.

It’s been said, many times and ways, that the line between genius and madness is a thin one. Bobby Fischer Against the World shows the truth in that statement, without ever casting unduly harsh judgment upon its subject. That which would trouble and haunt Fischer for so much of his life is also what made him perhaps the greatest chess player of all time. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (HBO Films/Moxie Firecracker, unrated, 93 minutes)

The glut of studies — seemingly released almost weekly — showing the slippage and relatively poor international ranking of American high school students in core academic subjects like math, science and history is troubling, certainly, and indicative of a need to redouble efforts in those areas. But as anyone who still has a honest connection to their adolescence will admit, the role of extracurriculars and artistic electives is often integral to a teenager’s sense of engagement and self-worth, and certainly the type of well-roundedness that helps produce open-minded individuals who can work well with others. Not everyone has the aptitude to be a professional musician, artist or athlete, after all, but studying and taking part in these disciplines, and working within the confines of a team or group, helps teach leadership and life lessons that are broadly applicable, and also gives one a healthy lens through which to view the world.

This moral is on rich display in Thunder Soul, a new documentary about the music director at a predominantly African-American high school who, beginning in the late 1960s, transformed a mediocre jazz band into a dynamic, full-fledged funk powerhouse, empowering a generation-plus of kids along the way. When Conrad Johnson, widely known as “Prof” to his students, took over Houston’s Kashmere High, band was an often awkward clash of old musical standards and lax devotion. Instilling a sense of take-no-mess discipline while also encouraging his students to embrace their own inimitable style, Johnson grew an admirable technical proficiency through demanding practices, and then indulged and cultivated his students’ exuberance and burgeoning sense of showmanship.

The result was something special. Johnson’s talents as a composer — he wrote more than 50 original compositions, ladling funk on top of a jazz base — led to his students recording a series of hit records under the moniker The Kashmere Stage Band, with tunes like “Thunder Soul” and “Head Wiggle” blowing away the competition at heretofore staid stage band contests. Importantly, the band’s success (and the community’s pride in it) also worked as a sort of positive viral infection; Kashmere’s ROTC, hoops, football and debate teams all fielded winning squads, and the school was awarded more student college scholarships than any other Houston high school.

Executive-produced by Jamie Foxx, Thunder Soul is built around a 2008 reunion which finds more than 30 former stage band members spanning all sorts of different graduating classes — now all in their 50s, and many not having touched their instruments in decades — reuniting to play a special tribute concert for their beloved former teacher and mentor. An easygoing and heartwarming tale of emotional uplift, the movie is a bonafide crowd-pleaser, as evidenced by its Audience Award victories at the South By Southwest and Los Angeles Film Festivals, as well as a special “Crystal Heart Award” at the Heartland Film Festival and numerous other festival circuit plaudits.

Ninety-two years of age at the time of filming, Johnson is not necessarily in the condition to provide entirely accurate reminiscences, but director Mark Landsman does a good job of blending interview material that pays respect to his subject as both a unique musical talent and a man and teacher who knew how to get the most out of his students. If there’s a failing, it’s that while Thunder Soul is undeniably involving, Landsman also misses some key opportunities to tie in the Kashmere alumni to the school’s present day students, which could have proven quite interesting and added a whole other emotional level to the movie. That said, the film is still a compelling snapshot of how and why good teachers matter, as well as a case for the value of the continued study of the arts in high school curricula. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the movie, meanwhile, click here. (Roadside Attractions/Snootdocs, PG, 88 minutes)

At 72 years old, Clarence Reid could be your cranky neighbor or arthritic uncle — until, that is, he slips on a homemade superhero costume and starts spitting out raunchy rhymes that would make 2 Live Crew proud. At once a sort of niche canonization along the lines of The Devil and Daniel Johnston and a more generalized travelogue documentary about the third-tier touring life for marginal and nostalgia musical acts, The Weird World of Blowfly, so named for Reid’s funky alter ego, is a nonfiction curio that gets by on the personality of its subject, and little more.

By day, Reid was a hit producer in the Miami soul scene of the 1960s and ’70s, co-writing Gwen McRae’s “Rockin’ Chair” and Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman” (the latter of which was ironically later sampled by Ghetto Boy Willie D in his take on the song, “Clean Up Man”), among many other tunes. By night, however, and on into the ’70s, he was a rapper — maybe even the first rapper — who was as at home and skilled at dropping refashioned, dirty lyrics over existent songs as he was coming up with his own naughty, tongue-in-cheek tunes of sexual prowess and destruction. To that end, the film deploys, in not always convincing scatter-shot fashion, a litany of industry and genre talking heads like Ice-T, Chuck D, author Jamie Lowe and others, to give props to Reid and his largely under-touted, overlooked legacy.

In general, The Weird World of Blowfly charts Reid through a couple tours and performances — one Stateside, comprised of about 10 dates in smaller clubs, and the other opening in front of festival and arena crowds as big as 13,000, for a German nu-metal group who were perhaps somewhat unlikely fans of his in their youth. The thing that the movie most has going for it is Reid himself, who remains this rather inscrutable but still magnetic and watchable figure. In that regard, the movie is not unlike an otherwise mediocre sports team being willed to the playoffs, and perhaps beyond, by the anchoring presence of one lone superstar.

The list of things wrong with the movie is significant. Well… not wrong, exactly. Just curious and incomplete is more like it. Jonathan Furmanski, a director of photography making his directorial debut, evinces no great sense of style, nor inquisitiveness; in fact, at times he seems more scared of his subject rather than in awe. It’s around the 75-minute mark that the audience first meets Reid’s mother, which would seem an interesting place to start given his stories of how he began singing dirty, made-up lyrics to popular tunes in an effort to antagonize the white, land-owning bosses at the family farm of his youth.

Also unexplained is the impetus behind Blowfly’s lucha libre-style costume, or why he keeps the fingernails on only one of his hands grown out several inches. Then there’s the matter of how Reid himself views his lifestyle, and various familial estrangements. By not getting Reid’s own take on his divorce and (seemingly) continued lack of a presence in the lives of his (now adult) children, Furmanski just kind of throws up his hands, and indicates none of this is worth exploring, which is of course malarkey. Instead, the film frames itself as a sort of unlikely “bromance” between Reid and Tom Bowker, a journalist turned drummer, and Reid’s manager and chief salesman to the outside world. Overall, The Weird World of Blowfly receives the slimmest of recommendations — for at least music fans, and those who enjoyed 2009’s similarly themed Anvil: The Story of Anvil — just because Reid is an interesting figure. For general audiences, though, the lapses in filmmaking judgment render this World more tragically unexplored than weird. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Variance Films, unrated, 89 minutes)

Taylor Lautner makes a bid for junior action hero status with Abduction, a wildly implausible money-grab for teen film-going dollars that seems outright allergic to exploring the most interesting thing about its concept, and instead beholden to lame notions of air-quote thrills. A highly recognizable adult supporting cast (including Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver, Maria Bello and Jason Isaacs) indicates the behind-the-scenes mechanisms being deployed to try to ensure Lautner’s viability as a 21st century leading man, but this dreary, unexciting misfire shouldn’t be the vehicle to do it. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, PG-13, 106 minutes)

Filmmaker Gus Van Sant, even at 59 years old, looks like the sort of guy who should be wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a hoodie. In face, body language and spirit, he retains a certain boyishness — perhaps in some small way infused, throughout the years, by his thematic preoccupation with unconventional romance and coming-of-age stories, and the idea of surrogate family. Restless, his latest effort behind the camera, and the first since Sean Penn scored a Best Actor Oscar for Milk, treads this same familiar ground, but to mostly pleasurable if still rather fleeting effect. A tenderly stylistic evocation of young love wrapped inside a New Wave-esque bundle of wistfulness and nervous, under-the-surface energy, it’s a movie whose graceful direction doesn’t merely trump its plotting, but instead helps elevate it. A kind of arthouse mash-up of Sweet November, One Day and Love and Other Drugs, Restless is a well constructed little diorama, but one whose elicited feelings do not, alas, linger. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sony Pictures Classics/Imagine Entertainment, PG-13, 95 minutes)

If one were to ruminate on the equivalent of a Mother Teresa-type figure for the advocacy of natural animal research and wildlife conservation, it would likely be Dr. Jane Goodall, a world-famous icon known for her groundbreaking scientific field work accrued while living amongst chimpanzees in Africa. Directed by Lorenz Knauer, the documentary Jane’s Journey offers up a biographical snapshot of both the personal and professional Goodall. Inclusive of some compelling piecemeal details, it’s a film that’s hard to assail with much enthusiasm or gusto, but the truth is that it’s an awkward and generally unfocused mash-up of mixed perspectives and mission statements. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Note: in addition to regular theatrical engagements this week and next, on September 27, Goodall will appear live on hundreds of movie screens across the country for a rare event that will include a screening of the film, interaction with theater audiences and in-studio celebrity guests. For theater and ticket information regarding that event, click here. (First Run, unrated, 105 minutes)