Familial dysfunction on the big screen is nothing new, of course, but it seems like a whole bumper crop of starry-eyed American indies — from Smart People to Jesus Henry Christ, and many more — have rushed to throw a light on fractured home life and assorted seriocomic neuroses in the wake of the Oscar-winning success of Little Miss Sunshine.

Into the breach enter yet another entry in that canon: Cold Turkey, written and directed by Will Slocombe. Previously titled Pasadena (for its upper-crust setting), this Thanksgiving-set ensemble black comedy about mixed siblings jockeying for attention and material bail-out from their dad will try to scare up some business rooted in knowing laughs in the weeks leading up to the real-life holiday, but its wound-up bickering is all show, devoid of any attachment to real characters, feelings or problems.



Cold Turkey centers on patriarch Poppy Turner (Peter Bogdanovich), an erstwhile Stanford professor who has two daughters from his first marriage and a son who is in law school, Jacob (Ashton Holmes), by his second wife, Deborah (Cheryl Hines, above left). In addition to Jacob and his girlfriend Missy (Amy Ferguson), Thanksgiving brings home oldest daughter Lindsay (Sonya Walger) and her husband TJ (Ross Partridge), plus their kids. For the first time in 15 years, meanwhile, youngest daughter Nina (Alicia Witt) also deigns to break bread with her hated stepmother, blowing into town late with her truck-driving boyfriend Hank (Wilson Bethel) in tow.

Immediately, and predictably, the wheels on this gathering come off. Free spirit Nina is a bundle of passive-aggressive fury excused away under the sobriquet of “straight talk.” This rankles Jacob and Lindsay, but neither seems able to directly or effectively call shenanigans on their sibling. One by one, then, Poppy’s children come to him seeking money. Jacob’s debt, at over $220,000, is the most serious, but each kid has what they feel is an urgent and compelling reason for favor. Unbeknownst to them, however, their father may not be in a position to financially support them any longer.

Small bits of Slocombe’s dialogue here and there have a pinch of engaging snap (“I’m the one that gets to be on the receiving end of all your shitty, failed trying, so I get to use whatever analogy I want,” rages Nina to her dad at one point), but it comes in the service of characterizations that across the board feel flat and colorless. Mostly, though, Cold Turkey just spins its wheels, uncertain of where to focus. A good start would be the jettisoning of all of the “significant other” characters, freeing up time and space to more believably root down into the fragile dynamics between the children and Deborah — whom the movie posits as some sort of lightning rod without ever really showing a convincing reason that is true.

There’s also some nonsense involving an outed affair with a neighbor, obliging Victoria Tennant to pop in for the movie’s anticipated, dinner-gone-wrong centerpiece scene. The layered arguments in this sequence (wherein magically one character knows the business of all of the others, presumably from eavesdropping) are numbingly stupid, as if Slocombe thinks overlapping dialogue in and of itself indicates dramatic tension. But the film really jumps the shark or nukes the fridge or swallows the lead pill of stupidity — however you want to say it — with a scene-capping act of mock-outrageous violence that serves as a cathartic response to… a years-old act of disrespect never seen, or previously mentioned.

It’s at that point that Cold Turkey stops being just shrug-inducingly “meh,” and in fact outright irritating, and the type of movie you want to punch in the balls. In an effort to underscore the movie’s “Suburban Tension” while still keeping things kind of light, Slocombe uses twinkly, ironic music that in reality serves to only further call attention to his film’s dramatic inadequacies. Flexing her musical chops over the end credits in a tune with Ben Folds entitled “You Can Go Home Again,” Witt delivers an airy song that the previous 80-plus minutes have served to contradict. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, Cold Turkey is also available across VOD platforms. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (FilmBuff/Midway Films, unrated, 83 minutes)

A well-meaning documentary of environmental compassion, Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey details the joint trek across hundreds of miles of the Himalayas by a group of several hundred people endeavoring to spread a message of social commitment as it relates to recycling and other measures to combat climate change. While definitely not without a good number of moments of breathtaking natural beauty, this film — less call to action than bleeding-heart eco-postcard — otherwise suffers from too scattershot a focus and too stodgy a tone to sustain interest over even its concise running time.

The debut feature of director Wendy J.N. Lee, Pad Yatra opens in Ladakh, India (also known as “Little Tibet”), in the aftermath of a cloudburst which deposited more than two inches of rain in just 60 seconds, decimating the area with flash floods and mudslides. Loosely taking Buddhist spiritual leader Gyalwang Drukpa as its central figure, the movie focuses on a 450-mile walk from village to village by his monk-and-nun followers, as well as a number of foreign tag-alongs, collecting trash (including some 800 pounds of plastic) and culminating in the planting of 50,000 trees. Their mission is to save the planet’s so-called “third pole,” a glacial region already experiencing damaging effects of climate change.

Lee unfortunately evinces no great or native editorial instincts for blending her interview material with footage from the trek itself, and neither does she provide enough contextual information to root one’s understanding of the Drukpa lineage or tradition. Pad Yatra evokes awe in relation to the undertaken journey at its core, certainly, but, as yawningly narrated by Daryl Hannah, it doesn’t cohere in a meaningful way. Lee can’t see the forest for the trees, and with such an ineffective guide a viewer’s interest founders. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills. For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Jelly Bean Films, unrated, 72 minutes)

American fiction feature filmmaking, even of the independent variety, by and large trades on story — on events small and large, and how they impact the lives and attitudes of their characters. The Motel Life, starring Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff as a pair of deeply bonded, down-and-out brothers, has both a tragic accident at its core, as well as the sort of cover-up that usually augurs more disaster and heartbreak. But, intriguingly, this bruised, purple plum of a drama mostly connects just as a mood piece about the muddy rut of low self-esteem, and the belief that life offers no better circumstances and opportunities beyond just day-to-day subsistence.



Frank (Hirsch) and Jerry Lee Flannigan (Dorff), the latter of whom as a kid lost the lower half of one of his legs in a train accident, have been inseparable ever since their single mother died when they were teenagers. Together, they live on the margins in Reno, Nevada, working odd jobs for money that fuels their boozy, flop-house lifestyle. When Jerry Lee, driving home during a snowstorm, accidentally clips and kills a teenage boy, he’s overcome with grief and guilt. The brothers at first flee the state, but after a drunken Jerry Lee shoots himself in the leg in a measure of self-punishment, Frank sneaks him out of the hospital and the pair wind their way back to Nevada.

Adapted by Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue from a 2006 debut novel by Willy Vlautin, author and lead singer of the Portland-based band Richmond Fontaine, The Motel Life surfs along on the wounded grace of its two lead performances. He’s not tall (only 5’7″), but Dorff here seems enormously pitiable, and even more shrunken than usual; there’s an authoritative brokenness to the physicality of his performance. Hirsch, meanwhile, conveys the warping effects of worried, wary protectiveness, having long ago had to “become” the older brother, the more responsible party. There’s a quiet but strong rapport between the two actors.

Directed by brothers Alan and Gabriel Polsky, the movie meanders to and fro, but in a way that is far more pleasing and interesting than ever confounding. The Motel Life is narratively a different animal and gives off a different vibe, but it also tracks somewhat along the same lines of bruised sad-sackery as Wayne Kramer’s The Cooler. Perhaps most notably, it never really succumbs to the movie you think it’s going to be.

Some strands — like the Flannigans’ friend Tommy (Joshua Leonard) convincing Frank to lay out money for a bet on the infamous Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas heavyweight title fight (yes, the film is set in 1990) — have a pinch of plebian metaphorical elegance that just rings right and true. More tenuous, however, is Frank’s unsettled relationship with his ex-girlfriend Annie (Dakota Fanning), who’s caught up in her own unpleasant circumstances.

The Motel Life is at its best when it’s not over-thinking things, and trying to connect story points A to B to C (which, thankfully, it is not most interested in). The Polskys fold animated bits into their film, to complement the fanciful stories Frank tells Jerry Lee, who is himself a not-untalented artist. It’s unique and striking moments like these — as well as advice from Frank’s boss (Kris Kristofferson), the closest thing that passes to a man in the Flannigans’ lives — that give The Motel Life such an engaging, silver thread of clemency and hope amidst its griminess and grubbiness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, The Motel Life is also available via FilmBuff across VOD platforms, including iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play and more. (FilmBuff/Polsky Films, R, 85 minutes)

A measured but emotionally effective gut-punch lament for the death rattle of small town America as told through the prism of a hapless high school basketball team, coming-of-age documentary Medora examines what it means to struggle, fail and look disappointment in the eye. In the process, while not without its broken spirits, the movie casts a light on the sort of resolve and perseverance that have long been part of the American story. Like Nick Brandestini’s Darwin: No Services Ahead, co-directors Davy Rothbart and Andrew Cohn’s film establishes an affecting, deeply personal connection via a variety of memorably wounded and sympathetic characters — in this case, teenagers struggling to find a way forward in life in an economically crippled rural community whose best days seem in the rearview mirror.



Medora unfolds in the town of the same name in the basketball-crazy state of Indiana. With businesses shuttered and drug use rampant, the burgh’s once-thriving middle class has dried up, leaving a population of around 500. Most of Indiana’s public high schools have consolidated, but Medora has not, leaving its once-proud boys hoops team to battle much bigger schools. Coming off of an 0-22 season, first-year coach Justin Gilbert — also a police officer — tries to whip his young charges into shape, and secure a victory that might have grander relevance.

A premiere at this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, Medora connects in large measure because of the guileless nature of both its characters and construction. Amongst the young players, there’s center Rusty Rogers, whose alcoholic mother is in rehab, forcing him to live with a friend; lanky power forward Logan Farmer, considering a future with the military; Dylan McSorley, who receives a Facebook friend request from the father he’s never met; and beefy Robby Armstrong, whose parents tell a technical school recruiter that he’s “not college material.”

One’s heart goes out to these kids and others at various points, yet the film isn’t showy or plaintive with its emotions. It doesn’t come across as an entreaty. It merely shows these kids’ lives, and lends a microphone to their natural voices, presenting their doubts and struggles in compressed chronological fashion. Any viewer with a still-beating heart can relate to those feelings, and the memories it elicits. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Beachside Films/Olive Productions, unrated, 82 minutes)

A terrifically affecting documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, USA) Running From Crazy details the long and frequently cold shadow of depression and other mental health issues, as filtered through the unique perspective of author and actress Mariel Hemingway. Receiving a theatrical release in advance of its debut on the Oprah Winfrey Network at a date to be determined early next year, this delicate, ruminative, openhearted work throws open the shutters and casts a light on a famously troubled family, making a powerful statement about some of the more forthcoming conversations we as a society should be having if we want to stem the most devastating effects of dark nights of the soul. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its ongoing and forthcoming theatrical engagements in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and San Rafael, Running From Crazy opens this week in Los Angeles at the Sundance Sunset Cinema and the Laemmle Pasadena. To watch the movie’s trailer, click here. (OWN/Cabin Creek Films, unrated, 100 minutes)

An adaptation of American literary icon Jack Kerouac’s 1962 autobiographical novel of the same name, Big Sur is amongst the latest big screen stabs at capturing some of the lilting, freewheeling qualities that defined the groundbreaking Beat Generation. Written and directed by Michael Polish, however, this frustrating, somnambulant, dramatically stillborn slog instead serves as an arty vehicle for little more than a rolling delivery service of smugness, hedonism, pretentiousness and self-destruction.



A premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Big Sur takes place after the huge commercial success of its central figure, an author, when he’s driven mad by the resultant fame and psychological clutter it brings. Unlike the novel, which uses pseudonyms for all its characters, Polish’s take directly embraces Kerouac’s identity (and all else upon whom characters are based, save one), giving the film, in theory at least, some measure of post-On the Road heft.

Gratefully taking up fellow Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Anthony Edwards) on his offer to use his Bixby Canyon cabin as a place of respite, an emotionally fraught Kerouac (Jean-Marc Barr) at first uses the opportunity to reconnect with nearby old pal Neal Cassady (Josh Lucas, above left) and his wife Carolyn (Radha Mitchell), among others. Crippled by alcoholism and put off by America’s narcotic slide into suburbanism, Kerouac slips into a relationship with Neal’s mistress, Billie (Kate Bosworth), but in short order finds himself unable to provide for her and her son, in any substantive shape or form.

Polish (Jackpot, The Astronaut Farmer) and cinematographer David Mullen capture the natural beauty of their on-location surroundings, and Big Sur, in brief snatches, fitfully evokes both pockets of woozy melancholy and more broadly an era gone by. But rather than actually dramatize events in the lives of its characters, Polish and his editors more frequently opt for little snatched ribbons of scenes. The tack is clearly meant to give the movie the slipstream feeling of a stream-of-consciousness connection, but it only drives a wedge between viewers and the material.

Naturally, since this is a Beat work, eloquently expressed moroseness looms large. And oh, do a torrent of words tumble forth. But when not offering up tense-mangling summations of things that could more artfully be expressed in a silent glance or two (“I could see in Neal’s eyes that he can see in my own eyes the regret we both feel that recently we haven’t had chances to talk like we used to do, driving across America”), Polish’s over-reliance on the inner turmoil of Kerouac’s text just as often comes across as generally intrusive.

The gnawing ambivalence and self-destructive swan dives of hard-drinking creative types need not automatically require a telling that seems to have its head up its own ass (Bent Hamer’s Factotum, studded with dark delights, comes to mind). But with first the tedious On the Road and now Big Sur — which offers up faux-deep ruminations about the character of a man based on how he chops wood, and knee-jerk melancholy triggered by a dead otter and mouse — Kerouac seems to be Kryptonite for filmmakers laboriously searching for a little profundity. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Ketchup Entertainment, R, 81 minutes)

For a while he was “that kid from the Jeepers Creepers movies.” Over the years, however, Justin Long has crafted a winning slate of comedic characters, swooping in and sprinkling a just-left-of-center charm into the sorts of roles for which you get the sense Paul Rudd was deemed a little bit too old, a little bit too expensive, or both. And while he’s no bankable star, mostly finding solace in ensembles and animated voice work, Long can still reliably anchor a movie as a leading man, as he did in 2006’s underrated, pleasantly anarchic alt-college comedy Accepted. All of which laid the groundwork for a certain level of expectation with regard to Long’s screenwriting debut, A Case of You. Sadly, it’s more a case of disappointments. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (IFC Films, unrated, 92 minutes)

The Twilight franchise may have drained its last vein, but vampires of all sorts still remain fairly popular. Indie horror flick The Impaler tries to put a Romanian spin on things, then, taking it all back to the origin story of Vlad the Impaler by dropping a bunch of visiting Los Angeles teens into his old castle, and having the blood flow through an obligatory summoning-gone-wrong.

Some of its budget fixes work okay — at one point director Derek Hockenbrough inventively sidesteps the messy practical requirements of an on-screen stabbing by cutting to just after the moment of violence within a scene — but The Impaler overall doesn’t really have the resources to convincingly pull off its period piece flashbacks with the “real” Vlad, or even sustain tension for long stretches. A plot strand connecting one of the kids to the legacy is both sketchy and familiar, and the actors are all a bit old to be playing high schoolers (it would have been much better to age them up, without any real consequence to the story).

Still, the script — a collaboration by Hockenbrough, Diana Busuioc, Daniel Anghelcev and cinematographer Steve Snyder — at least gets the sense of circle-of-friends joshing and bickering right, as with a mock-argument about the difference between pumps and stilettos. There’s also an interesting idea that the filmmakers basically nip from Seven, about the sins or moral weaknesses of the American interlopers playing into their respective fates. One wishes this had been introduced earlier and interwoven with a bit more devilish flair, as it’s certainly a distinguishing element. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. The Impaler opens exclusively in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo7. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Full Moon Films, unrated, 86 minutes)

For a week-and-a-half last year, writer-director James Toback and Alec Baldwin glad-handed their way through the Cannes Film Festival, trying to secure financing for a proposed film — a Middle Eastern-set political/erotic thriller they envisioned as a type of spiritual cousin of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. Seduced and Abandoned, then, is their travelogue-cum-pitch-video, wherein they talk high-minded cinema with fellow creatives while facing the cold realities of film financing while trying to shake down billionaires for funding.



An entirely odd but nonetheless endearing sort of valentine to the madness of movies in general and the dizzying swirl of Cannes much more specifically, Seduced and Abandoned may be niche product for cinephiles, but it captures the tug-of-war between art and commerce in a unique and engaging fashion. Baldwin, on the precipice of cycling out of 30 Rock at the time of filming, is candid about his impending return to the film world, and the re-awakened creative fire it seems to have lit in him. He and Toback share a particular fascination with Last Tango in Paris, and so their chat with Bertolucci (who reveals that Marlon Brando didn’t speak to him for five years after making the movie, possibly because he pulled “so much personal truth” out of him, the filmmaker opines) has an agreeable quality that would be at home on a Criterion DVD or Blu-ray release.

That’s only part of Seduced and Abandoned, however. Toback and Baldwin are quite serious about their project, even if the notion of a mid-50s Baldwin as the focal point of a torrid love triangle speaks to occupational metaphors of reclaimed virility that neither the star nor filmmaker seems to want to discuss. They envision the film set in Tikrit, at the height of the Iraq War’s bumblefuckery, and set out to procure a budget of $20-25 million. This eventually gets whittled down, to $15-20 million, but a variety of bundlers each tell the pair that about $5 million is the realistic ceiling for a movie of this sort with Baldwin attached.

Toback (Harvard Man, Black and White, Tyson) is both an iconoclast and a man of not insignificant ego and appetites, and so Seduced and Abandoned flirts heartily with pretension almost from the get-go. What helps most hold that judgment at bay — in addition to some savvy, subtle editing work by Toback, who overlays ruminative banter between he and Baldwin with the interstitial footage that bridges their various interviews and meetings — is the fact that the movie just honestly delivers great anecdotes, from a diverse roster of interviewees that includes Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ryan Gosling, Jessica Chastain, Diablo Cody, James Caan, Roman Polanski and more.

Coppola, a somewhat surprising but quite reasonable critic of Cannes, trips into recounting throwing away all his Oscars while discussing not really having an ending for his latest film, Twixt. Talking shop, Gosling gripes good-naturedly about close-ups, wide shots and the like before giving Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance props. Critic Todd McCarthy, meanwhile, coughs up a story about Robert Altman loudly haranguing Pauline Kael as a cunt, after Shelley Duvall was awarded Best Actress for 3 Women at the 1977 festival, but Altman awarded no individual citation.

As a movie itself, Seduced and Abandoned has a scattershot focus, as well as no small bit of ego-stoking. (Toback makes sure to include several scenes of Scorsese complimenting him.) But it works, in its own jumbled way, because in celebrating Cannes and the creative drive, writ large (“Making movies brings structure to the chaos of my life,” says Toback), behind all the attendant wheeling and dealing and compromise-weighing, it reminds viewers that actors, writers and directors have hopes and desires just like everyone else. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (HBO Films/Hanway Films, unrated, 99 minutes)

Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Kevin Kline and Morgan Freeman star as four lifelong friends who convene in Sin City to relive their glory days in advance of the nuptials of one of them in Last Vegas, a funny, sweet and poignant crowd-pleaser that doesn’t insult its audience’s intelligence. Far more than just the unmoored, geriatric version of The Hangover that its premise suggests, this seriocomedy roots down into its characters in a manner that throws a spotlight not merely on jocular fraternity, but also the duties of friendship, and the hard truths that sometimes only the best and closest of pals can offer up.

Director Jon Turteltaub provides a steady hand on the tiller, but much credit belongs to screenwriter Dan Fogelman, for fleshing out his original treatment in a manner that allows for the inclusion of substantive discord. Fogelman has penned a lot of animated films (including Bolt and Tangled), but Last Vegas most conjures up the same sort of bittersweet mix of first loves, lost loves and the swollen hope of new romantic possibility that also marked his Crazy Stupid Love. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (CBS Films, PG-13, 105 minutes)

After the Academy Award-winning success of The Silence of the Lambs, it would have been very easy for director Jonathan Demme to become beholden to Hollywood, and the increasingly narcoleptic rhythms of an ever-diminishing slate of genre fare for which he would have been richly compensated. Instead, Demme chose the road less traveled, mixing studio fare (Philadelphia, a remake of The Manchurian Candidate) and the occasional indie (Rachel Getting Married) with nonfiction works that indulged some of his other intellectual interests — including a trio of documentaries on Neil Young. With his latest film, Enzo Avitabile Music Life, Demme again mines his love of music, offering up a look at the renowned Neopolitan saxophonist and singer-songwriter of the title, recognized amongst musicians for both his passion and endless experimentation. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more on the movie, meanwhile, click here to visit its website. (Shadow Distribution, unrated, 82 minutes)

Stepping into the blood-soaked prom dress made famous by Sissy Spacek in the 1976 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name, Chloë Grace Moretz toplines director Kimberly Peirce‘s Carrie, about a shy outcast who ends up unleashing telekinetic terror on her classmates. Passable only as a piece of recast entertainment for those who’ve never heard of the original, much less seen it, Carrie doesn’t plumb the depths of adolescent isolation its premise obliges. There doesn’t seem to be a pronounced rationale, beyond commercial reward, for this relatively undistinguished remake.

At the core of Carrie‘s emotional disconnection, unfortunately, is Moretz’s performance. Spacek’s Oscar-nominated turn in the 1976 film casts a long enough shadow that any young actress would have some trouble escaping it; Spacek tapped into the title character’s pitiable qualities with such a consuming focus that it was at times painful to watch. Moretz, still just 16 years old (almost a decade younger than Spacek was at the time of filming), is a talented young actress, but lacks, at least here, the ability to convey an emotional hopelessness resulting from years of ground down self-esteem. Her Carrie is all over-articulated social shyness and body shame. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Sony/Screen Gems, R, 99 minutes)

With its allegorical connection to both race relations and the Vietnam War, Night of the Living Dead changed horror movies forever. Other filmmakers made, and continue to make, memorable entries in niche offshoots of the genre — be they of the vampire, werewolf, slasher or other monster persuasion. George Romero‘s shoestring-budgeted 1968 independent film, however, fundamentally redefined the modern zombie movie, altering the very DNA of such films. Rob Kuhns’ new documentary Birth of the Living Dead, then, has plenty to chronicle, and engagingly merits its existence — both from the legitimate perspective of academic-leaning film historians as well as more casual horror fans. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (First Run Features/Glass Eye Pix, unrated, 76 minutes)

A nonfiction look at Afghanistan‘s first independent news channel, TOLO TV, The Network charts the difficulties inherent in trying to establish and grow a business, inform a disparate and under-educated populace, and achieve just a basic level of regained cultural stability in the face of almost constant mortal uncertainty. In her directorial debut, Eva Orner exhibits a deep and sincere passion for her surrogate subjects and what she clearly believes to be the balm of this unique “edu-tainment,” a fact which helps offset a somewhat jumbled editorial vision. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, The Network is also available on VOD. For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (FilmBuff, unrated, 97 minutes)

One of the buzziest titles at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Escape From Tomorrow comes to its reputation for dropping jaws sincerely, by way of its guerilla-style production technique. Shot in the monochromatic setting of the Canon 5D Mark II digital camera, debut director Randy Moore’s strange meditation on the inherent phoniness of family mores — part black-and-white student thesis film, part subversive attack on corporate-peddled American fantasy — unfolds in unauthorized fashion at Orlando’s Disneyworld theme park, with a pinch of green-screen assistance here and there. At times legitimately hypnotically alluring, Escape From Tomorrow runs out of gas and reaches a point of diminishing return halfway through, give or take, lending weight to the conclusion that this undersketched expression of paranoia and anxiety would have worked better as a short form offering.



Jim White (Roy Abramsohn, above right) and his wife Emily (Elena Schuber, above center) have brought their two young kids to Disneyworld for a family vacation. What his wife doesn’t know is that, as the film opens, Jim’s been fired from his job by phone. Together they plunge forth into the day. Soon, however, Jim starts noticing all sorts of strange things. When his son skins his knee, a nurse advises that the “cat flu” is going around. As if on cue, Jim starts not feeling well. All this coincides with two giggling, pre-teen French girls (Danielle Safady and Annet Mahendru) who catch Jim’s eye at various park attractions. Soon, this would-be idyllic family vacation unravels completely into a Kafka-esque nightmare.

Escape From Tomorrow casts a spell, certainly. Until it doesn’t. The film is meant to be an indictment of the mythology of artificial perfection — the magical orderedness of Walt Disney’s kingdom, where everyone is friendly and happy. And the movie’s juxtaposition of private stimuli — of libidinal impulses, shame and disorientation — with public spaces (and an iconic one at that) is heady stuff early on. But the more fantastic and out there Moore’s story becomes, the less interesting and appealing its mode of expression is.

Technically, Escape From Tomorrow rates almost two different scores. The bold ingenuity of the basic idea, as well as the level of planning involved in, say, charting the position of the sun in order to be able to shoot outdoors without lights, rate highly. It’s a shame, though, that some of the execution isn’t better. The use of classic Hollywood instrumentation — both by way of composer Abel Korzeniowski’s musical contributions and selected extant cues — gives Escape From Tomorrow the feeling of an overly ripe, pungent family drama, making some of its plot twists and turns (better left unrevealed) all the more bizarre. Cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham, too, captures some of the discombobulating visual assault that theme parks offer. But patchwork fixes and set-shot material distract from the storytelling, suggesting a less acute sense of continuity than one might initially suspect, even grading on a curve.

An ambitious, hook-laden work of both considerable anger and pain (“And there’s nothing wrong with me/This is how I’m supposed to be/In a land of make believe/That don’t believe in me”), punk outfit Green Day’s seventh studio album, rock opera American Idiot, arrived with a boom in the fall of 2004 — a survey of social anxiousness and a scathing rebuke to the Bush Administration’s frittering away of post-9/11 international goodwill. A critically embraced masterwork, it was also a commercial smash, going on to sell more than 15 million copies worldwide, and six million-plus in the United States alone. Still, despite both its success and its roots in the tradition of The Who’s Tommy, even the album’s most ardent fans would likely have been hard pressed to predict a triumphant translation to the Great White Way.



Documentary Broadway Idiot chronicles just that journey, though, and in doing so throws a warming, stirring light on the special catharsis of the collaborative creative process. A film about both challenges and choices, it works for fans of Green Day as well as those inherently more interested in the ins and outs of the theater world.

Full of rehearsal footage bolstered by interviews with frontman Billie Joe Armstrong (above) and other key players, Broadway Idiot does a good job of tapping into the source material’s thick veins of feeling. Armstrong estimates 90 percent of the album was autobiographical, and talks about “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” widely construed as a song about 9/11, being rooted in the death of his father. But the film also isn’t skewed unreasonably toward celebrity. Tony Award-winning director Michael Mayer, musical supervisor Tom Kitt and choreographer Steven Hoggett — the three main architects of the stage adaptation — get equal time here, and relate both their nervousness in getting the material “right,” and devising tweaks appropriate to a live staging.

Director Doug Hamilton’s touch is straightforward and unobtrusive — almost to a fault, at times. Adhering to a painstakingly reconstructed chronological tack, he takes viewers through the inception of the stage adaptation and its rehearsals on to a Berkley, California, premiere, Green Day’s Grammy performance of “21 Guns” with the cast, the show’s Broadway bow and, eventually, Armstrong’s acting debut in the supporting role of St. Jimmy. There’s a more adventurous edit somewhere here, but Hamilton doesn’t expand much effort trying to track it down. This is strictly meat-and-potatoes filmmaking.

Thankfully, between odd couple Armstrong and Mayer — great interviewees, each — Broadway Idiot has enough else going on to keep a viewer’s attention. Armstrong proves particularly thoughtful as to the nature of some of the skepticism he initially had in a stage adaptation of American Idiot, wondering about striking a balance between challenging viewers, many visiting from out of town, and playing to their desire to “see a fairytale.” (He also questions, in appropriately blue language, what Donald Trump is doing at the show’s Broadway opening night.)

The interesting thing is that, for all his enormous success as a rock singer, the reception of American Idiot on stage helped validate Armstrong as a songwriter in ways he didn’t know he was missing. In candidly describing himself as blindsided by the depth of relationships forged with the cast and crew of the show, Armstrong reminds artists and audience members alike about the powerful nature of shared bonds, writ large. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Broadway Idiot opens this week in New York City and across VOD platforms, and expands theatrically to other cities beginning next week. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (FilmBuff, unrated, 81 minutes)

No mere hagiography, director Evan Jackson Leong’s engaging new nonfiction film Linsanity charts not only the amazing success story of its subject, NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin, but also emerges as a multidimensional portrait of his character, work ethic and religious faith. Commingling hearty seams of tabloid frenzy, familial roots, underdog uplift, racial identity and nose-to-the-grindstone occupational doggedness, Linsanity is a movie with a lot on its mind, but a solid vision as to the essential, interwoven elements of Lin’s astounding tale.



For non-sports fans, Jeremy Lin’s story is the closest thing in real life to the meteoric rise of Willie Beamen, as depicted in Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday. In that 1999 film, an anonymous third-string quarterback becomes a rich, adored multimedia sensation over the course of several games and a few short weeks. Despite there being a lot to like about the movie, at the time I tore into it a bit, particularly this baseless and seemingly unreasonable element of elevation to fame. Errr… whoops?

In February 2012, Lin — after having been waived twice within two weeks, by the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets — got a shot with the New York Knicks. With time running out on a temporary, two-week contract, and the Knicks beset with injuries, Lin was thrust into the starting line-up at point guard, with the thinking being that he would be cut after one or two games. Scoring more points over his first five games than any player in NBA history, however, Lin totally ignited his team, knocking down dramatic game-winners and sparking the Knicks’ longest win streak in over a year. For several weeks, he absolutely owned ESPN, and there was plenty of mainstream, non-sports coverage of his out-of-nowhere ascent too. “Linsanity,” it was dubbed.

Leong’s movie has the good sense to make this hook-y rocket ride its narrative spine, which helps for the sports-nut viewer who wants to relive it in burnished detail. And it’s aided greatly by loads of video footage and easygoing interviews with Lin during that actual time, from inside the bubble. But the filmmaker also has access to Lin and his family — including dad Geiming and mom Shirley, both 5′ 6″, as well as older brother Joshua and younger brother Joe — which helps sketch out a compelling parallel tale to stand alongside Lin’s New York minute. (He’s now signed a long-term contract with one of the old teams that cut him, the Rockets.)

Part of the media swirl in 2012 had to do with Lin’s race, of course, and the fact that as the only Asian-American player in the NBA, his success was shattering stereotypes about what an elite hoops point guard looked like. Linsanity, though, cannily reveals the deeper roots of this issue, digging back into Lin’s adolescence and charting his high stellar school career, his four years at Harvard University after having received no NCAA Division I athletic scholarships of note, and ping-ponging back and forth between the NBA and its developmental league. All along the way, Lin struggled with perceptions of what the ceiling of his talents might really be. Linsanity gathers thoughts about these impediments, both outwardly manifested and internalized, and casts them in interesting relief.

Most of all, though, Linsanity is just fun. There are plenty of amusing anecdotes herein (Lin talking about asking then-Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni about whether he should ship out his car to New York, or continue to take taxis everywhere), and candid personal bits that most newly famous personalities would blanch at sharing. (In reminiscing about his favorite childhood blankets, Lin ranks Lion King just ahead of Garfield, with a deep sincerity). Linsanity reveals a lot about not only its subject’s journey but his inner life, which makes one happy for Lin’s success even more. In an era of carefully scrubbed, homogenous sports personalities, here’s a guy not afraid to open up about his self-doubt, and the twin pillars of faith and family that helped him persevere. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more about the film, click here to visit its website. (Ketchup Entertainment, unrated, 88 minutes)

With Nobel Son and Bottle Shock, filmmaker Randall Miller has provided a couple nice, meaty, showcase roles for Alan Rickman, giving the British-born thespian a chance to act snobby and standoffish and self-destructive. The pair’s trilogy of movies on the precipice of something greater — films with engaging protagonists and an interesting backdrop or pitch, but little sense of psychological depth — continues with CBGB, a celebration of the man behind the seminal New York City punk rock and avant garde club of the same name.



Despite an amusing opening that introduces its main character as a precocious little hell-raiser, the bulk of CBGB unfolds in the early 1970s. After two bankruptcies and an acrimonious divorce, sad-sack Hilly Kristal (Rickman, deliciously disheveled and droll) borrows some money from his mother to buy a dive bar in a grungy, rundown area of the Lower East Side. With his hardhat-wearing friend Merv (Donal Logue) and his semi-estranged, job-needing daughter Lisa (Ashley Greene) by his side, Hilly christens it CBGB, for the type of live music he wants to showcase — country, bluegrass and blues. Initially it only attracts drug addicts, bikers and other hangers-on, people with names like Idaho and Taxi.

Smooth-talking Terry Ork (Johnny Galecki), though, is looking for a place to book a band he manages, called Television. Hilly takes a flyer on them, even though their style is not of a piece with his initial vision. Soon other musical groups — arty, loud and/or otherwise of the misfit variety — are knocking at his door. And the more damaged and dysfunctional, the better; ever the champion of the underdog, Hilly takes arguably the worst of these bands, a quintet of rabble-rousing Cleveland junkies known as the Dead Boys, and agrees to be their manager. CBGB, meanwhile, becomes ground central for a raw, sociopolitically-charged, often nihilistic wave of counter-culture music.

Co-written by Miller and his wife, Jody Savin, CBGB chronicles all this swirling madness with a tone that might be best described as nimble bemusement. In films like especially Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing and Charm School and the aforementioned Bottle Shock, Miller has shown a penchant for surface subcultural exploration, and CBGB is no different. The time and place of its setting are the big hook here, and Miller uses interstitial comic book panels — complete with active exclamations like “Ptooey!” — to frame this entire tale as larger-than-life. It works for a long while, but eventually runs up against shallow characterizations.

CBGB more or less conveys a convincing sense of place; the malodorous production design practically gives off its own rotten stench (hat tip to Craig Stearns). But cinematographer Michael J. Ozier is handcuffed, either by schedule, resources, Miller’s staid vision or some combination thereof; the movie’s many musical segments don’t achieve liftoff like they should, and CBGB overall feels boxy and cramped.

Again, that would matter less if the script really got into the heads and hearts of its characters, but they remain mostly a mixture of ciphers and types. In addition to Television and the Dead Boys, Blondie, the Talking Heads, Patti Smith, the Ramones and Iggy Pop all cycle through the narrative. CBGB plays like a collection of beats, though. Hilly is a terrible businessman (he comps most folks’ drinks, stores cash in his fridge and doesn’t pay his rent), but Miller’s movie doesn’t root down into the pathology of this casually self-destructive behavior.

When the end credits roll with footage of David Byrne and the Talking Heads, at their real-life induction to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, summoning Hilly up on to the stage with them, it confirms the latter’s stature in music lore. It also reinforces how little one comes away really knowing about the man at the center of CBGB. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (XLRator Media, R, 101 minutes)

Once again proving that being original isn’t necessarily synonymous with being good, Cassadaga flirts with conventions of both paranormal horror films and more traditional serial killer thrillers. The independent production, a debut at Screamfest two years ago, aims to be a more character-rooted chiller, but it mainly ends up just being a boring slog.

Ostensibly named for a real-life small Florida community of mediums and spiritualists, Cassadaga centers around Lily Morel (Kelen Coleman), a post-lingually deaf artist and teacher who, following the untimely death of her beloved younger sister, is trying to pick up the pieces of her life and move on. When she meets Mike (Kevin Alejandro) the handsome father of one of her students, Haley (Rachel DuRose), things seem to be looking up. After Lily participates in a séance and ends up making contact with the vengeful ghost of a woman murdered long ago, however, things take a turn for the worse, leading to a killer who likes to turn his victims into human marionette dolls.

Writer-producers Bruce Wood and Scott Poiley succeed in keeping some of the more tawdry, base-level instincts of genre filmmaking at bay, and for a while that makes Cassadaga seem classy and intriguing. But despite its potentially intriguing backdrop, their script also seems desultory, marked by listless characters and indistinct dialogue. From the moment welcoming landlady Claire (Louise Fletcher) says to Lily, “That’s my grandson Thomas — he keeps to himself on the first floor…”, Cassadaga springs a slow leak. The rest of the movie is one big, long deflating, marked by a few moments of menacing violence.

With his mannered, non-exploitative take on the material, director Anthony DiBlasi succeeds in delivering a film that stands in distinct opposition to the clamorous, boo-scares editing of a lot of horror product. And yet despite this, Cassadaga still somehow manages to build to a scene of Lily running through the woods in a negligee, plus… sigh… a car chase.

Coleman is an attractive and sympathetic enough presence, but can’t hold viewers’ attention through long fallow patches. There’s simply not enough meat on this film’s bones, narratively speaking, to merit broader, general audience interest. Opening this week in top regional markets, including in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall, Cassadaga is also available across VOD platforms. (Arch Distribution, R, 111 minutes)

An admirable if wearyingly muddled attempt to throw a spotlight on one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, documentary Men at Lunch loses sight of its lede and fumbles away viewer interest.



“Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” was first published on October 2, 1932, during the throes of the Great Depression. Its photographer was unknown, as were its 11 subjects — anonymous figures against a misty Manhattan skyline, inclusive of Central Park, stretching out behind them. The picture was taken during the construction of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 57 stories up in the air.

To this day the photo, which could only have been taken during this era, remains striking for a variety of reasons: the composition itself, the view from 850 feet up in the air, and of course the casual indifference of laborers for whom this habitat, and its inherent dangers, is second nature. The picture seems to capture and deeply embody something unique about the American spirit and work ethic, about steadfast, punch-the-clock commitment and reliability even during times of considerable hardship.

Director Sean O Cualain’s film coughs up a few definitive nuggets of information — debunking rumors of the photo being a fraud, but confirming it was very much a posed shot — and then chronicles in fitful fashion a 2003 New York Post contest and other some subsequent efforts to identify the subjects. Men at Lunch tries to thread a needle in too fine a fashion, being both an investigation and a homage to the ethnic immigrant class who would fundamentally change the face of New York City and the nation over the first three decades of the 20th century.

Some of the information about iron welding and construction at the time (developers would factor in a loss rate of one worker per every 10 floors) is interesting. But it’s not very well developed, and O Cualain and editor Daithi Connaughton have little sense of how to smoothly interweave their parallel narrative tracks, simply tossing out investigatory dead ends as random facts here and there, rather than involving viewers in the process. Men at Lunch would be better served solely pursuing one function, no matter its lack of conclusivity. As is, it feels like a mystery that its makers got halfway into examining, found out some other folks had done work, and ceased or modified their own efforts. It’s not a movie worthy of “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper.” The picture itself says more than Men at Lunch. (First Run, unrated, 66 minutes)

Science fiction, as a genre, has for a generation-plus been largely laboring in the long, cold shadows cast by 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and Blade Runner. There have of course been other films that swung for the fences, mixing entertainment with grand metaphorical statement, but the most interesting of those efforts were often low-budget gems that seemed to stand in opposition to the narrative preferences and demands of the Hollywood studio system. The default big-budget position has, for many years, been to figure out a way to introduce aliens and/or other mass-scale disaster — to inject enough action mayhem to hedge bets on the science fiction elements.



Filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is a game-changer, both for the genre itself and Hollywood filmmaking on the whole. Starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as a pair of astronauts whose mission suffers a catastrophic disaster, the movie is a state-of-the-arts showcase for some amazing special effects work, but first and foremost just a minimalist stunner and a master class in cinematic tension — pulling viewers into the infinite and unforgiving realm of deep space in a manner never before captured on the big screen.

Clooney plays rakish veteran mission commander Matthew Kowalsky, while Bullock is specialist Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission. Their spacewalk, and Stone’s installation of a special software upgrade, are interrupted by a belt of debris from a destroyed Russian spy satellite, which obliterates the shuttle and sends them spiraling out into blackness, tethered to nothing but one another. With no radio contact to Earth, the pair try to come up with a patchwork plan to make their way to a safe harbor.

Co-written by Cuarón (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Children of Men) and his son Jonas, Gravity eschews any Earthbound set-up or backstory, throwing its audience directly into the vast expanse of outer space. The resultant story is lean and sinewy, but notable as much for what it’s not as for what it is. While Gravity‘s disaster sequences are as gripping as any you’ll see all year, the film is chiefly gratifying as an exploration of the intense feelings attached to such incidents. As with J.C. Chandor’s forthcoming All Is Lost, Gravity is shot through with concomitant awe and despair over ultimate human insignificance in the face of nature and the universe.

Making deft use of unnerving silences as well as a gripping score by Steven Price, Cuarón and his behind-the-scenes team (including cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, a frequent collaborator) craft the rare Hollywood movie that earns the distinction of its 3-D and IMAX presentations. In most films, there’s the occasional instinct to pull off one’s 3-D glasses, to see how images look around the edges, without augmentation; there’s never a moment that sort of thought passes through one’s mind during Gravity. This is an immersive masterwork. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 90 minutes)

Documentaries rarely spawn sequels. And yet five years after Herb & Dorothy, a fascinating look at an elderly New York couple who over several decades amassed a massive, world-class collection of minimalist and conceptual art despite their modest means, here’s a follow-up to director Megumi Sasaki’s nonfiction film about both the place of art in modern life and its broader relationship to the proletariat. It’s too cruel to call the pleasant, milquetoast Herb & Dorothy 50×50 pointless or boring, but in truth it does feel defined more by its inessential nature than any of the updates it provides.

For years, married Brooklynites Herb and Dorothy Vogel lived in a single-bedroom apartment on the latter’s salary as a librarian, while using the former’s earnings as a postal employee to collect thousands of pieces of art. In 1992, though their collected works were now worth millions of dollars, they donated their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C. Sixteen years later, a national gift project called the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States was conceived. The simple idea, since their collection was too large to ever exhibit at one location, was to bequeath works to museums and art galleries across the nation. Having lived as public servants, the Vogels wanted to share their love of art with citizens across the entire country.

Herb & Dorothy had the advantage of surprise, certainly, serving as an introductory snapshot of the Vogels, two characters fascinating in their ordinariness. And yet that movie also had an important hook, forcefully promulgating the theory that art was meant to be lived with, and essential to a meaningful, well-rounded and intellectually stimulating life. Herb & Dorothy 50×50 would seem ready to plumb that same terrain (after all, what is the very idea of “50×50” but an extrapolation of that philosophy), but while the film does feature some interviews with patrons of the museums that receive the Vogels’ art, Sasaki doesn’t pursue that concept aggressively enough.

Instead, the movie just kind of wanders to and fro, spending time with the Vogels as they travel to various museum installations (Herb, increasingly silent and in poor health, would pass away last summer), querying grateful artists about the Vogels’ status as benefactors, and chatting up equally appreciate museum directors who talk about how they frequently wouldn’t otherwise be able to bring such notable works to their galleries. It lacks a cogent spine, as well as a lot of emotional punch. There are ways a more visually oriented filmmaker could have endeavored to bring the Vogels’ collection to life, but Sasaki eschews the hunt for any inner fire, and the result is a minor chord cinematic riff that lives and dies, moment to moment, by a viewer’s predetermined level of interest in and familiarity with the source material. (Fine Line Media, unrated, 86 minutes)

An indefatigable, forward-leaning concoction, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 breathlessly mimics the adolescent playtime, anything-goes sensibility of its predecessor, but can’t recapture the essential magic of 2009’s inventive children’s book adaptation, one of the more purely enjoyable animated films of the past five years. Directors Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn take over for originating helmers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who each take executive producer and story credits, and while Cloudy 2 is undeniably the product of massive collaboration (it’s even billed as “another film by a lot of people” in a pre-title card), Lord and Miller’s unifying touch and oversight are sorely missed. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Sony, PG, 95 minutes)

A lot of nonfiction films of the social activist strain peddle scattershot panic or unfocused, call-to-arms rhetoric in lieu of taking the time to properly root down into a particular issue, present compelling characters or craft throughlines of a deeper and more sincere engagement. However well intentioned they might be, they fan the flames of discord, attacking those promulgating different opinions as backwards, uninformed or worse.

GMO OMG, which explores the loss of seed diversity and the rise in the genetic manipulation of food, is thankfully not one of those films. Directed by Jeremy Seifert, this bighearted, family-centric effort has no small amount of skepticism about the dubious efforts of companies like Monsanto and others to patent the building blocks of life (and sue out of existence the farmers that would deign to oppose them) but it’s powered by an honest curiosity rather than a completely predetermined agenda. Recognizing that minds are changed as much through the heart as a litany of facts, GMO OMG manages to provoke important self-reflection in viewers. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. GMO OMG opens in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema before expanding to various Laemmle theaters; for more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Submarine Deluxe/Natures Path/Compeller Pictures/Heartworn Pictures, unrated, 91 minutes)