Its title a slur for Northerners who opposed the American Civil War, Copperhead marks the third film from director Ron Maxwell (Gettysburg, Gods and Generals) about the United States’ bloodiest armed conflict. In theory, movies like this produced outside of the Hollywood system have the potential of some measure of additional freedom, being unburdened by casting dictates and endless studio notes that often polish down history’s rough edges. Unfortunately, in reality, Maxwell’s film is a drawn-out, schematic melodrama rife with somnambulistic speechifying, and a work every bit as turgid and baldly sentimental as the centerpiece lecture at a convention of historical reenactors.

Based on a novel by Harold Frederic, Copperhead unfolds in upstate New York, telling the story of Abner Beech (Billy Campbell, who replaced Jason Patric three weeks into shooting), a stubborn and morally righteous farmer who defies his neighbors and government in the bloody, contentious autumn of 1862. Beech loathes slavery but is also against the war, on the grounds that he finds it unconstitutional. This puts him at odds with abolitionist Jee Hagadorn (Angus MacFadyen), who in turn turns many of the townspeople against Beech. Things are even more complicated by a love story involving their respective children, Esther (Lucy Boynton) and Jeff (Casey Thomas Brown).

With a score that even the most ardent PBS aficionado would find too flowery and precious, Copperhead unfolds as a series of moralistic theorems and poses filtered through characters defined chiefly by their at-odds natures. Author Bill Kaufman, delivering his first adapted screenplay, serves up an endless parade of soliloquies most often delivered in solemn, stately hushed tones, like the entire film was some dinner theater piece. Campbell finds a bit of fleshed-out sadness around the edges of Abner, but MacFadyen for some reason goes the bug-eyed route. Other younger actors, too, seem out of their element. Copperhead may have its head in the right place, but Maxwell’s movie is dry and inert — a historical drama that even hardcore history buffs will have a hard time convincing themselves is worthwhile. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Brainstorm Media/Swordspoint Productions, PG-13, 120 minutes)

Nice ribbons of naturalism and even poetical idyll root Beneath, a sort of lake-set Jaws homage, before an unconvincing turn toward Lord of the Flies territory and even more unconvincing acting conspire to sink this low-budget indie horror offering. Director Larry Fessenden’s nice use of limited resources and some early superlative, artful evocation of mood are in the end no match for a screenplay that mistakes and substitutes volume for well staked-out, compelling interpersonal disagreement. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements on July 16 and 17, Beneath is also available across a variety of VOD platforms. For more information, click here to visit its website. (Glass Eye Pix/Chiller Films, unrated, 90 minutes)

An engaging and rather scary nonfiction look at the death-by-papercut of online privacy, Terms and Conditions May Apply roots down into those small-print promises that companies extract from consumers via the Internet on a weekly if not daily basis. Directed by Cullen Hoback, the film makes a compelling case for if not outright societal revolt then at least much greater awareness, attention and oversight, lest a clear and settled-without-debate caste system of governmental spy privilege become the new normal.



Interviewees include Ray Kurzweil, musician Moby, Orson Scott Card, Margaret Atwood and Mark Zuckerberg (well, sort of — more on that later), but Terms and Conditions May Apply is less a star-oriented talking head affair than a pleasantly shambling curated tour through the brave new world of online rights management and manipulation, as bureaucratic systems grapple with technological advancements and try to integrate them into their vertical power structures in a way most advantageous to them, individual liberties be damned.

Hoback points out that such consumer agreements are a relatively new phenomenon (no terms and conditions, for instance, were necessary for land-line phones or television), and he also provides a nice overview of why and how Americans have no baseline online consumer privacy law (the events of September 11 certainly didn’t help, immediately killing off around a dozen bills that were bopping around). With companies discovering that there’s less money for them in anonymity, and the U.S. Government eager to exploit a third-party exemption/loophole to the Fourth Amendment, default privacy settings have over the five or six years in particular taken a beating.

That said, Hoback doesn’t always seem to have a clear bead on a consistent throughline, so Terms and Conditions May Apply at times feels choppy. The film’s listless, three-minute animated opening, along with other occasional interstitial inclusions, is a perfect example of this; it seems just an air-quote accessible idea nipped from other documentaries.

Still, many of the actual anecdotes the film cycles through prove quite interesting to ponder. There’s a Cold Case writer able to be identified through de-anonymized web searches from his computer for terms like “how to murder your wife”; a 7th grader posting a social media warning to President Obama about suicide bombers in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, and then receiving a visit at school from a Secret Service agent; and a New York comedian, frustrated by a bad customer service experience at an Apple store, quoting Fight Club on Facebook and having a SWAT team descend on his apartment a couple hours later.

Chief to the movie’s point is the fact that many people treat Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms not as companies, but rather as benign public utilities. Indeed, Hoback notes, the companies themselves encourage this reading, since it allows them greater leeway with all of the personal pieces of information and preferences they gather. (It also makes it much easier for police and other authorities to then have a de facto “time machine” that allows them to reconstruct behavior dating back many years.)

Terms and Conditions May Apply ends with Hoback making a surprise appearance at Zuckerberg’s home, and trying to secure an answer about Facebook’s default privacy settings. The film draws an interesting (and I’m not certain correct) conclusion from this interaction, but it certainly points toward one of the most important public debates in this still-young century — one with far-reaching consequences. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information, click here to visit the film’s website, or check out (yes, ironically) its Facebook page. (Variance Films, unrated, 79 minutes)

David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin provided a superlative look at the messy founding of one of the new digital age’s true pillars with the Oscar-winning The Social Network. Before Facebook, though, there was of course Napster — the decentralized music file-sharing service that represented the original web-era socioeconomic disrupter, and brought the recording industry to its knees before itself flaming out in a bevy of lawsuits. Directed by Alex Winter, the documentary Downloaded provides a robustly engaging overview of its renegade birth and premature death rattle.



Wanting to be able to trade and share electronic music files, Shawn Fanning (above left) and co-creator Sean Parker (who would later go on to dip his toe in Facebook) conceived of Napster as a connecting service for music fans around the world. The fact that they didn’t own copyrights on millions of songs and albums was mitigated, in their belief, by a specific provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the technicality that Napster was merely serving as a conduit for the (free) sharing of files ripped from CDs and other sources. It was certainly popular (especially on college campuses); in a matter of five months Napster went from under 30,000 registered users to more than 20 million. It seemed to be a case of an audience or fan-base beating industry to technology.

Naturally, the record labels weren’t too happy about this huge and sudden evaporation of profits — an embarrassment that likely colored their unwillingness to enter into good-faith negotiations to “legalize” Napster, or bring it inline with practices and standards that would deservingly compensate not only artists (the line flogged so mercilessly in public) but also, in some fashion, their bloated, vertical corporate structure. So… lawsuits followed. Napster would limp out of several legal bear traps, but essentially find it impossible to come up with a business model to placate the moneyed powers-that-be.

Winter gets much right with Downloaded, and with good reason; he initially approached Fanning almost a decade earlier, and for some time worked on a narrative feature adaptation of the Napster story before deciding to go the documentary route. So he grasps the entrepreneurial spirit that powered this leap of faith. Deftly interweaving interviews with Fanning, Parker and various industry insiders, Winter also nicely sketches out the contrast and inherent standoffish tension between the “ruling class” and these young, T-shirt-wearing interlopers, who had no contacts in the music business (or any other business, for that matter) and barely seemed to understand the industry they were revolutionizing before they started out.

The mystery meat left on the bone, though, seems to be a particularly contentious periods of months in the fall of 1999, just before the Recording Industry of America Association’s ton-of-bricks lawsuit. While reality is probably a deep shade of grey, Winter doesn’t really get down in the weeds and press for hard answers from his various subjects. As such, Downloaded can’t fully tease out the truth regarding either Napster’s aims and intent, or the record labels’ willingness to change and compromise.

It’s a shame, too, that bigger Napster litigants and some of the most vocal critics, like Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and Dr. Dre, don’t sit for fresh, reflective chats about what might have been had Napster been given the room to change and grow. The aforementioned are all glimpsed in prior interviews and news footage (and the grandstanding Ulrich provides an inescapably big thread), but some of the arguments being had about the consumer-friendly changes that Napster helped bring about in music seem downright antiquated. Maybe that’s oddly appropriate, though. Napster remains such an interesting case study as much for its ultimate failures as its many successes in assaulting the status quo. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, Downloaded is available across VOD platforms. For more information, click here to visit its website. (VH1 RockDocs, unrated, 105 minutes)

At some point, someone in a position of authority will tell Adam Sandler no, or at least ask to read a screenplay. Until then, there will exist a good chance of further unchecked hyper-indulgences like the punishingly unfunny Grown Ups 2, which opens with a sequence in which a deer urinates all over the face of his character (a stand-in for viewers, perhaps?) and goes only downhill from there.

A thick, indolent haze of self-satisfaction hung over 2010’s Grown Ups, a fratty comedy of arrested development, but all the worst qualities of that movie are multiplied and amplified in this phoned-in abomination, which asks audiences to pay for and identify with a ceaseless stream of self-involved mugging. To paraphrase a previous, much funnier Sandler film: “What you’ve just given us is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever seen. At no point in your rambling, incoherent efforts were you even close to anything that could be considered genuine comedy. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having watched it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your souls.” For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Sony, PG-13, 101 minutes)

South African-born filmmaker Wayne Kramer has to have had one of the most interesting career arcs of any director of note over the past decade. After his debut movie, The Cooler, starring William H. Macy and Maria Bello, achieved a certain level of buzz-heavy breakout at the Sundance Film Festival in 2003, he parlayed that success into a demented crime thriller, 2006’s Running Scared, starring Paul Walker. Featuring warped fairytale leitmotifs (sidebar: for fun, pair the movie in a double feature with Joe Wright’s Hanna) and child-molesting serial killers inessential to the main plot, the film was clearly a tough/misunderstood sell, even for edgier distributor New Line. Given a halfhearted theatrical release, it pulled in under $7 million, and garnered the dubious distinction of being the lowest-grossing earner of Walker’s post-The Fast and the Furious career.

Then Kramer adapted Crossing Over from his own short film of the same name, and inked a high-profile cast that included Harrison Ford, Sean Penn, Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd. A sprawling drama about various illegal immigrants living lives on the fringe in Los Angeles and working to achieve legal status, it was supposed to be to immigration what Stephen Gaghan and Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic was to the drug war — an issue-based statement drama with awards potential. Various editing battles over the film’s length dragged on, Penn demanded his scenes be excised, and the Weinstein Company sat on it for a year-and-a-half before finally releasing it in a small number of theaters in 2009.



All of which brings us to Pawn Shop Chronicles, Kramer’s fourth completed film behind the camera, and yet another zonked-out entry in his strange, sexually barbed canon. A meandering yet in some ways oddly memorable anthology of sweat-soaked lunacy that in its home stretch attempts to pull off a full-circle statement of dubious clarity, the movie shares a lot of the same crazed DNA as Running Scared, but lacks that film’s… dare I say it, cracked cogency and coherence.

Scripted by Adam Minarovich and set in small Southern town, Pawn Shop Chronicles aims to evoke Pulp Fiction but more recalls something like Burning Palms. The title tips off the movie’s fulcrum setting — a grungy swap store operated by Anton (Vincent D’Onofrio, quite good) — but it’s easier, more efficient and makes just as much sense to merely list a bunch of things that are in the movie: a sad-sack Elvis impersonator (Brendan Fraser, doing his impression of Nathan Fillion doing an Elvis impression) trying to scrape by; a bunch of idiot meth addicts planning (and botching) a robbery; a newly married man, Richard (Matt Dillon), lighting out on a quest of bloody vengeance to try to find his old wife (Pell James); townspeople lining up behind feuding barbers like rabid sports team devotees; and a parade of nude girls who, to the tune of “Amazing Grace,” are ceremonially wrapped in American flags.

As an ensemble piece, Pawn Shop Chronicles allows for all sorts of colorful, off-the-beaten path work; Elijah Wood plays a particularly skeevy fellow, and Walker (also a producer on the project) co-stars as Raw Dog, a white supremacist meth-head who’s confused as to why he should hate Jews, since he owns three Adam Sandler DVDs. These performances give the movie crackle and pop; it’s certainly not a boring thing.

Minarovich’s screenplay has a few funny touches (“At least Jesus didn’t write Battlefield Earth” reads a truck’s bumper sticker) and delights in rhetorical flourish. But it also feels very much like a collection of characters arbitrarily tossed together. Kramer’s first work that he didn’t also script, Pawn Shop Chronicles lurches to and fro, lacking a dynamic narrative throughline. Its point (if there is one) evaporates early on, never to return, and Kramer struggles to summon and maintain a tone that makes sense and feels emotionally balanced. The film often looks gorgeous, but the result is definitely far less than the sum of its parts. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, Pawn Shop Chronicles is also available across VOD platforms; for more information, visit the film’s eponymous Facebook page. (Anchor Bay, R, 112 minutes)

An animated family film centering around a snail magically gifted with super-speed, Turbo is marked by a rather bewildering chasm between its area of chosen focus and other, more exciting possibilities its conceit suggests. Imagine a superhero movie where Peter Parker just took up high school sports, Superman the Olympic shot-put, or Hal Jordan metalworking and fabrication. In a nutshell that’s Turbo, an inoffensively affable but unmemorable offering that showcases a bit of wily imagination but quickly ducks back into its shell, opting for a safe, all-too-familiar athletic story of underdog triumph.

With The Croods ($578 million worldwide) and Epic ($236 million worldwide), distributor 20th Century Fox already has two animated hits this year that have rung up $100 million apiece in domestic receipts, and Turbo seems a sure bet to make it a third. The movie’s catchy, simple marketing campaign (“He’s fast, they’re furious”) sells its concept in canny fashion and attaches itself to another popular franchise to boot, further boosting its overseas commercial prospects. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG, 95 minutes)

A candid but ultimately frustrating documentary look at the modern-day experience of escorts in the United States, American Courtesans both benefits and, later, suffers mightily from its informal, conversational style, centered as it is around the digressive recollections and asides of executive producer/interviewer Kristen DiAngelo, herself a former prostitute still active in the sex industry. Heartbreak and contented curiosity abound in this subcultural curio, but with no sense of flow that might lend it a honest recommendation.

American Courtesans takes as its interview subjects a spectrum of sex workers, some of whom are previously personally known to DiAngelo and some of whom are not. There’s an escort who also shoots adult movies; a former real estate agent who now offers up the “girlfriend experience” (plus some bondage, if needed); a woman who talks about her past as a sex caregiver (think The Sessions); and a variety of prostitutes whose experiences range from streetwalking and brothels to more discreet bookings. The stories are often shocking (one woman was working in a whorehouse as a 14-year-old) and sometimes bizarre in their illuminations of wounded logic (a mother turning to prostitution instead of going on welfare, to provide for her son).

Unfortunately, American Courtesans doesn’t have a grounded point-of-view or sense of streamlined purpose; it lurches to and fro, alighting on anecdotes and settling for garish shock when a more poignant knockout punch is easily within its reach. The chief culprit is director James Johnson, who oversees an extraordinarily muddled and misguided technical package; the film is arbitrarily edited, in a fashion that repeatedly undercuts otherwise significantly emotional reminiscences. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Centex Enterprises, unrated, 86 minutes)

A Transporter-type programmer of moderate if ever-diminishing intrigue, Guido tells the tale of an Iraqi immigrant limousine driver and “fixer” who gets mixed up in an illicit deal gone wrong, and then has to drive both a corpse and his terminally ill landlady across the country. Scripted by and starring Alki David, the film benefits from an above-average supporting cast of recognizable faces, but ultimately offers up no fresh or compelling spin on a fairly standard package of wayward hitman/lowlife clichés.



Bad things always seem to happen at the New Jersey docks, and the first act of Guido evidences no exception. After he’s tasked by his boss (Gary Busey) with overseeing the illegally curated arrival of what turns out to be a container full of sex slaves, the gun-toting title character (David, above right) is attacked and lays waste to a bunch of the offending participants (including Ron Jeremy).

The now-dead Albanian mafioso with whom he arrived, however, swallowed an important cell phone memory chip, which means various scumbags (including Billy Zane) and federal agents (including Armand Assante) are on Guido’s tail as he drives west to Los Angeles, to deliver the body to some other thugs. Also along for the ride is Maria (the late Lupe Ontiveros), Guido’s sickly but moralizing Mexican-American landlady.

David, who acted with Jason Statham in The Bank Job, appropriates some of his erstwhile costar’s sullen, tough-guy mannerisms. Apart from a wan explanation for his name, however, David doesn’t delve into Guido’s immigrant backstory with any measurable depth, leaving an enormous reservoir of character-deepening intrigue untapped. This doesn’t matter as much early on, when Guido is coasting along on the strength of its somewhat off-center and contrasting characters. As it moves into its second and third acts, though, the film’s innate lack of ideas comes to the surface. Fisticuffs and car chases ensue, along with yawns.

Cinematographer Ted Caloroso and composer Jim Lang deliver solid budget work, but director Colin Campbell does little to distinguish himself by way of action framing. It doesn’t help much that some of the conceits he’s handed are outlandish; say, Guido giving chase after his stolen limo on bicycle, then roof-surfing and punching his way back inside, all while Maria still sleeps in the backseat. This puts Guido in the awkward position of being too over-the-top to be convincing and yet not wild and eccentric enough to qualify as a testosteronized action romp. (FilmOn.com/O’Connell’s Limo Service LLC, R, 90 minutes)

Summoning up unnerving visions of an inevitable American remake starring Josh Duhamel or some similar Haircut, lukewarm French comedic trifle The Stroller Strategy, which is about a guy who bumbles his way into temporary guardianship of a baby and uses it to try to reconnect with his ex-girlfriend, indulges in hoary gender clichés in lieu of interesting characterizations. Directed by Clément Michel, the Paris-set film tracks along the same lines as Life As We Know It, What To Expect When You’re Expecting or the French source material for what in America later would become Three Men and a Baby (minus two guys, of course), but in a manner that hopelessly conflates amiability and ambiguity, making for a shrug-inducing experience. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Rialto Premieres, unrated, 90 minutes)

A snappy, expressive visual style and superlative lead performances power 23-year-old writer-director Xavier Dolan’s audacious, melodramatic French-Canadian import Laurence Anyways, about a man in a committed relationship who decides to undergo transgender reassignment. Executive produced by Gus Van Sant, the film unfolds on an expansive canvas that will immeasurably deepen its emotional richness for those with whom it most strongly resonates, but only to serve to highlight the problem of its obsessive self-regard for those who view it as blissed-out and gorgeously designed yet at its core indulgent arthouse wankery.

The title character of Laurence Anyways (Melvil Poupaud), a 35-year-old author, poet and teacher, has an intense, us-versus-the-world-type relationship with his fiancée Frédérique (Suzanne Clément, quite good), or Fred for short. But he has a secret, too: he’s always felt trapped and phony in his masculine form. He decides, then, to become a woman, and goes about breaking the news separately to Fred and his mom Julienne (Nathalie Baye). At first Fred’s instinct is to break things off with Laurence, but then she decides she loves him enough to stick it out, telling Laurence, “The moment I met you, I knew I was in for something extraordinary.” The film then charts their on-and-off relationship over the course of the ensuing, pop song-annotated decade, from the 1980s into the 1990s.

With its moments of intense subjectivity, and music frequently at odds with the characteristically heavy and dour nature of its subject matter, flashes of Laurence Anyways evocatively capture the fitful and woozy feelings of both deep inner turmoil and contentment, which much surely encompass feelings of gender identity disorder as well. Counterbalanced by some touching, quiet ruminative moments, scenes like these feel different and special, and hint at a work that can more readily surmount its proudly worn precociousness.

But its interview framing device feels arbitrary, and weighs the movie down. Other bits, like Laurence’s knee-jerk instinct to initially fib to Fred about wearing women’s clothes after just coming clean about his disorder, come across as false. The broader problem, however, is that there’s not any editorial rigor applied to the underdeveloped plotting — which is bloated, no matter the years Laurence Anyways ticks off.

Wunderkind Dolan (I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats), who helped design many of the costumes for both Laurence and Fred, has a nice eye for florid composition, and indulges a few moments of cathartic outburst and break. But while Poupaud and Clément evince a great chemistry, sometimes the movie’s self-consciously intense, handheld camerawork skirts dangerously close to parody. Mostly, though, it just evidences a hoarder’s bond to moments of extravagantly photographed feeling — no matter that it’s often the same feelings being communicated, over and over. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Laurence Anyways opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall and Downtown Independent. (Breaking Glass Pictures, unrated, 161 minutes)

Themes of cultural identity and disunity figure prominently into the work of director Rachid Bouchareb, including 2006’s Days of Glory and 2011’s Outside the Law, both of which were nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Academy Awards. Bouchareb’s English language debut, Just Like a Woman, however, is a phony female fantasy — a minor chord variation on Thelma & Louise with none of that film’s panache, verve or insight. Instead tone-deaf and at times downright insufferable, this road trip flick in which bellydancing holds the key to feminine enlightenment most notably begs the question of just how long into its 90-minute running time it can go before someone inevitably says, “Just feel the music and let your body decide — it’s all about sensuality.”



Recently axed Chicago secretary Marilyn (Sienna Miller) has a loutish, philandering husband (Tim Guinee) straight out of Central Casting, so it takes but a slight nudge to get her to follow the advice of her evening bellydancing class instructor and light out for Santa Fe, where, you know, there are those open auditions coming up for that great traveling bellydancing company. Egyptian-American Mona (Golshifteh Farahani, above left), meanwhile, lives with her shopkeeper husband Mourad (Roschdy Zem) and bitch mother-in-law (Chafia Boudraa). Marilyn and Mona are initially little more than casual acquaintances (the former stops in occasionally for soda and cigarettes), but after a domestic accident leaves Mona questioning her future with Mourad, the two women escape their unhappy marriages and hit the open the road. There they, like, learn about friendship and stuff — by way of racists at RV parks and creepy club owners who book same-night, traveling freelance bellydancers.

Thrice-nominated for Oscars, Bouchareb conceived of the story for Just Like a Woman himself, but pulled in Joëlle Touma and Marion Doussot to collaborate on the screenplay, presumably in an effort to give it some sort of estrogenized bona fides. The tack does not work, alas. Bellydancing specifics aside, the lame, wearingly familiar plotting feels like it was assembled from the aforementioned Thelma & Louise, pamphlets from a women’s shelter and a very stupid and condescending episode of Law & Order, centering around an ethnic minority community. Most damningly of all, though, the film doesn’t allow for a meaningful exploration of a deepening, substantive female friendship. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Cohen Media Group, R, 90 minutes)

The buddy-cop genre has been spun a dozen different ways from sundown (there’s even an afterlife version with Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds, in the form of this summer’s forthcoming R.I.P.D.), but the paired-female version has, for a variety of reasons, never been given much of a serious Hollywood treatment, either dramatically or comedically, on the big screen (sorry, Cagney & Lacey). That changes with The Heat, a fresh, funny and indefatigably paced offering starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. Helmed by Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, and powered by great comedy of contrasts, the movie channels the same anarchic spirit as last year’s 21 Jump Street, delivering a wild and enjoyable ride of nicely balanced verbal sparring and physical comedy.



Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) is a hard-charging, by-the-books FBI agent with her eye on a promotion. Sent by her boss (Demian Bechir) from New York up to Boston to try to untangle a lead on a drug dealer, the difficult Ashburn immediately locks horns with Shannon Mullins (McCarthy), an uncouth local police officer whose lack of adherence to rules would seemingly mark Lorenzo Lamas or Steven Seagal as her heroes. Begrudgingly thrown together and powered by their shared fierce desire to bring down a mysterious criminal kingpin, they begin to suspect there might be a mole in the Boston Police Department or another government agency.

Screenwriter Katie Dippold (Parks & Recreation) leans readily on recognizable character types and the reliable tension between McCarthy’s boundless, foul-mouthed energy and Bullock’s initial condescension and deadpan, slow-burn persona, but she uses an audience’s familiarity with and acceptance of these tropes in smart, amusing ways. There’s definitely a bit of the same buttoned-up spirit Bullock brought to the Miss Congeniality films, but with less doted on personality flaws. Likewise, all the sputtering, go-it-alone rage of McCarthy’s character comes from a sincere place; having locked up her druggie brother Jason (Michael Rapaport) in order to protect him from both himself and others, Mullins is a pariah to her own stereotypically dysfuntional Irish family (a group that includes Jane Curtin, Bill Burr, Nate Corddry and, yes, ex-NKOTB-er Joey McIntyre — all very funny, and of an agitated piece).

Ergo, these characterizations feel more fully rounded, and the film as a whole has a savvy touch; while in some respects it’s a pin-prick satire of the puffed-up, masculinized clichés of the genre, it invests wholeheartedly in the feeling behind the behavior. Feig showcases great instincts for where and how to end scenes (the film is smartly edited, if a pinch overlong), and as with Bridesmaids, there’s also a distinctive array of worthy supporting characters — all honestly motivated, and not sacrificed at the altar of cheap, take-what-you-can, scene-to-scene laughs.

Bullock and McCarthy’s superb chemistry is The Heat‘s chief draw, however. It starts out as voluble, but as Ashburn and Mullins recognize and appreciate the occupational passion in one another, and pass through first a détente and then into friendship, it gives the movie a bit of welcome and surprising heart to match its bawdiness. (20th Century Fox, R, 117 minutes)

A return to the median for master of disaster Roland Emmerich after 2011’s period drama Anonymous, White House Down finds Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, a mere three months after the similarly plotted Olympus Has Fallen, battling for their lives and the lives of their countrymen while bearing witness to the destruction of the seat of government and living quarters of the President of the United States. Falling more on the side of entertaining than good — there’s a basic miscalculation to a movie that explicitly puts a gun to a child’s head and also has the commander-in-chief peddling quips about his sneakers — Emmerich’s adrenalized, well orchestrated pop fantasy is the type of exercise in audiovisual excess that heartily welcomes viewer reactions of “ridiculous” as compliments, whether intended or not. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here.

World War Z is busy presently chewing up the box office, but there’s another zombie tale out there in theaters as well — one likely shot, quite literally, for the catering budget on Brad Pitt‘s film. Putting a Shaun of the Dead-like spin on one of filmmaker John Hughes’ beloved teen classics, Detention of the Dead centers on an oddball (and at-odds) collection of high school students who find themselves trapped in detention while all their classmates and teachers outside have turned into zombies. If its budget and cramped settings sometimes let it down, director Alex Craig Mann, in his feature debut, shows a nice ability to juggle character-rooted comedy and horror, in a manner that would surely make a young Sam Raimi proud.

It sounds damning with faint praise (and I suppose it somewhat is), but the easiest and most honest line on Detention of the Dead is that it’s better than it has any reasonable right or need to be, given its aims. A calling card for its maker and young cast, the movie isn’t seeking to reinvent the wheel or radically reinvent formula, and yet the extra thought and care put into it on various levels of production is evident throughout. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Detention of the Dead opens today in select cities, and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo7. Additionally, it’s already available across VOD platforms. For more information, click here to visit its website. (Gala Films, R, 87 minutes)

In the vein of Searching for Sugar Man and Anvil! The Story of Anvil, earnest and engaging nonfiction feature A Band Called Death again helps prove that all the best nonfiction music stories aren’t tied up in Behind the Music-type bitterness and acrimony, and certainly aren’t related to any level of achieved fame. A warm if slightly overlong tale that sketches an arc of both what sadly might have been and what surprisingly now is bubbling to the surface, the movie chronicles the rather incredible story of three African-American Detroit brothers who, in the 1970s shadow of Motown, formed a punk rock group that predated Bad Brains, the Sex Pistols and even the Ramones.

A Band Called Death opens with a barrage of familiar faces — Henry Rollins, Elijah Wood, Kid Rock, the Roots’ ?estlove, Alice Cooper and more — designed to give the brothers Hackney credence. Three of four sons (the oldest was not a band member) of Motor City working-class parents, Bobby, Dannis and David grew up in a household that valued the eclecticism of music as much as the rhythm; the Beatles and the Who were as welcome as Earth, Wind and Fire, and the younger three Hackney’s in quick order turned to rock ‘n’ roll. The tragic death of their father, who was killed by a drunk driver, marked a turning point for their musical experimentation, however. Older brother David christened them Death, and they channeled their grief and abiding spirituality into a litany of thrashing tracks.

David, however, was caught up in the notion that the band’s somewhat off-putting (or at least confusing) name was integral to its “concept” — so much so that he convinced his brothers to turn down a record deal from Clive Davis. Their master recordings were returned to them, but nothing ever came of those innovative “Death sessions.” A heavy drinker and smoker, David would drift apart from his brothers — who made a living with a reggae band — and eventually succumb to lung cancer. Years later, however, Death’s tunes would find their way into the hands of collectors, leading to a proper “reissue” via Drag City Records, 35 years after the material’s recording, and sparking an appreciation of their heretofore unrecognized trailblazing status.

Co-directors Mark Covino and Jeff Howlett have an obvious affection for the Hackneys, and their closeness to the family, and the mutual trust they obviously have, makes for a warm, openhearted film. They do a generally great job, too, of mixing in archival photos, performance footage and other audio snippets with a cross-section of modern-day interviews, creating a dynamic and sincere sense of the Hackney family’s love and joy — for both music and one another.

Somewhat paradoxically, the film’s energy wanes a bit once it gets into the details of Death’s rediscovery. Just when it should be really catching flight as a story of unlikely redemption, the movie becomes bogged down by a roster of obsessive collectors.　Covino and Howlett seem to feel the need to track the full story, in exacting hand-to-hand detail, of how a particular seven-inch came to be passed along to some ears that mattered. Little matter, however. A Band Called Death still delivers an uplifting tale of resilience and deep family bonds. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; to view its trailer, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, A Band Called Death is also available on iTunes and across VOD platforms. (Drafthouse, unrated, 96 minutes)

Before reality television became a genre unto itself, before dubiously achieved demi-celebrity became an actual career goal for many, and before blowhard media personalities took as their pet lemmings a significant portion of the American electorate, there was Morton Downey, Jr., a foul-mouthed talk show host who, as the anti-Phil Donahue, blew cigarette smoke in guests’ faces and generally ranted and raved in a manner that now seems both like some overblown caricature of populist agitation and the cornerstone for a cable news empire of ever more emphatically delivered deceitful scare-mongering. In the late 1980s, his meteoric rise keyed a heated debate over raunchiness and civility in public discourse. The new documentary Evocateur: The Morton Downey, Jr. Movie, then, chronicles that clamorous time, in an engaging and entertaining fashion that also rather purposefully induces a certain queasiness.



The brainchild of MTV co-founder Bob Pittman, The Morton Downey, Jr. Show, which debuted on New Jersey-based WWOR in the fall of 1987 and went national the following year, was originally envisioned as an updated version of the same sort of confrontational style of television talk peddled in the 1960s by Joe Pyne. The late Downey, though, who grew up with divorced parents and in the shadow of his famed Irish tenor namesake father, would seem to channel his obsession for fame into playing a character whose vices and hubris would first define and then consume him in real life. Downey wasn’t merely an angry populist; his rhetoric was shot through with envy and rage. He would constantly decry the United States’ “low ebb of morality” while often indulging in a bilious, unfocused rage that made him a hip, wild man hero to disaffected teens and un(der)educated and/or bigoted suburban white males.

The show rose like a rocket, notching all the requisite national magazine covers. Presaging the breathlessly obsessive cable news network over-coverage of various sensational trials that would spread out over the next couple decades, Downey turned the lurid Tawana Bradley case — in which an African-American women alleged kidnapping and rape against a number of white attackers, including police officers — into an ongoing soap opera. Then something strange happened, something almost unthinkable in today’s Internet age; Downey’s fame imploded. After a scuffle during a taping at the Apollo Theater, and some other bad publicity (including a weird putative attack on Downey by white skinheads in an airport bathroom), The Morton Downey, Jr. Show was canceled by the summer of 1989.

The brilliance of something like The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s fascinating, from-the-ground-up reconstruction of a similarly divisive public figure, disgraced The 700 Club co-host and religious theme park peddler Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, lies in its laying waste to motivations and views falsely ascribed to its subject. Evocateur lacks this sort of wallop. It readily identifies the daddy issues, but chooses to more or less ignore Downey’s humbled post-syndication career, framing the third act of his life by way of his protracted lung cancer battle and contrition over being such a public face for smoking. Still, if it suffers from the absence of some key figures in Downey’s life (none of his four wives appear, and only one of his four children), the movie is lithe and entertaining, as well as uncanny in summoning up a gassy, unnerving portrait of a man who birthed so much decibeled anger for money. Among the many interview subjects, a group of Downey’s old producers mention his embrace of emotional rather than any intellectual arguments, and also note the ferocity with which he would attack guests. (Even a friend says, “He could’ve been a serial killer.”)

Co-directors Seth Kramer, Daniel Miller and Jeremy Newberger use animated segments, a la The Kid Stays in the Picture, but here to showcase more literally the snarling monstrousness of Downey’s increasingly unhinged behavior. They also include — in what proves one of the film’s more inspired touches — interviews with a cross-section of hardcore fans (mostly teenagers at the time) who vied for live-taping tickets and came to love their roles as what was known as “The Beast.”

These present-day reflections cast a light on the nature of Downey’s vaguely xenophobic appeal, and speak silent volumes about those who pedal such grotesqueries today. “People want what they’re getting, or they’d be getting something else,” says Pat Buchanan at one point, with a touch of amazed admiration. He’s speaking in regards to Downey’s deft touch at playing upon the worst of human instinct and feeling, but Evocateur makes clear that although this particular three-ring circus enjoyed but a brief run, the bigtop hasn’t vacated the country. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, Evocateur is also available across VOD platforms; for more information, click here to visit its website. (Magnolia, R, 90 minutes)

Filmmakers arrive at a life behind the camera in all sorts of manners these days. But perhaps one of the best things about the rapid decline in the cost of production is that it allows relative neophytes who are perhaps experts in other fields the opportunity to shine an interesting and important light on causes and subjects in a manner that even the most dedicated and intellectually curious nonfiction filmmakers might not be able to achieve. Such is the case with Ryan McGarry, a doctor at Los Angeles County Hospital who took his camera to work during the four years of his residency. The resultant cinematic portrait of that time, Code Black — a world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival, where it picked up the Documentary Grand Prize — paints a dire picture of an American health care system on the precipice of outright collapse.

Turning up the knob on cinematic advocacy to 11, Code Black (the title refers to a waiting room full or beyond capacity, which is its state most of the time) is disquieting and affecting in equal measure and, owing to the roots of its production, comes more or less inoculated against spurious claims of a politicized agenda. This isn’t a film made by someone to advance a predetermined point-of-view, it’s made by (and with) the people who actually toil on the health care frontlines, and deal with a shortage of resources that impacts patient care on a daily basis.

Unfolding as it does from 2008 to 2012, McGarry’s film takes a wholly different tack than Peter Nicks’ verité-style The Waiting Room, which basically was constructed to track as a single 24-hour period at an Oakland hospital that served as the primary care facility for over 250,000 citizens. Its net gut-punch effectiveness, though, is the same. McGarry doesn’t shy away from the sometimes gruesome and/or graphic nature of the injuries that he and his colleagues face in the emergency room, and in the face of public hospital patient overflow and county budget cuts, their little victories often seem nominal and/or short-lived — a case of one step forward, one step back. Still, Code Black is a special film laced with both heartbreak and hope. It deserves a wider audience, and open ears. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (C-Booth LLC, unrated, 80 minutes)

Evincing a mood and rooted sense of place more than a dynamic plot, writer-director Aaron Douglas Johnston’s My Sister’s Quinceañera digs into its creator’s familiarity with his hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, in telling a coming-of-age story of hazy ambition against the backdrop of a a young Latino girl’s 15th birthday. A North American premiere and Narrative Competition selection at the Los Angeles Film Festival comprised of a cast of non-professional actors, this lovingly constructed, work-shopped piece of cinema offers up a refracted glimpse of the fits and starts of rural dream-fires.

Dreams of busting out of two-star towns — and the familial and/or romantic friction such aspirations produce — are of course rich cinematic terrain, but My Sister’s Quinceañera largely eschews outwardly manifested conflict and instead focuses a lot of that energy inward. To this end, it helps that Johnston has an eye for detail that conveys multitudes around the story’s edges. That quality gives this poetic film much of its delicate charm. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Double Life Productions, unrated, 72 minutes)

A movie of considerable if to-scale surprises, micro-budgeted indie From the Head invites a certain amount of snickering and lowered expectation going in, touted as it is, in punny fashion, as the directorial debut of a “veteran strip club bathroom attendant,” and set to boot in the very same arena of his experience. Yet as far as movies located almost entirely inside a bathroom go, this one is light years better than Hunter Richards’ insipid London, starring Jessica Biel, Chris Evans and Jason Statham. Written, directed by and starring George Griffith, From the Head is an intriguing pop-psychology character study — a movie of minor revelations but shrewd behavioral observations.



Unfolding over the course of one evening in 1995 New York City (though the year seemingly makes no discernible difference, except for the lack of cell phones), the movie stars Griffith as Shoes, a bathroom attendant at a fairly respectable strip club. Between handing out paper towels and having folks bringing him shots, Shoes doesn’t much have time for his yo-yo and well-worn Samuel Beckett book but there they are with him, tucked away in the corner. His chief aim and concern, of course, is prying tips out of the (frequently tipsy) patrons who wander in to take a leak. While sharing jokes, advice and a smoke with the dozens of these customers (including Matthew Lillard and Jon Polito) who cycle in and out, Shoes also pleads with the matriarch of the strippers, Ruby (Samantha Lemole, above), to stop sharing that this particular night represents his third anniversary of employment.

There are more than a few moments of armchair philosophizing herein (“Everybody hits the ‘What-am-I-doing-here?’ monologue if they stay here long enough,” Shoes tells one guy), but From the Head is basically a giant grab-bag of accumulated details and occurrences — of conversational riffs and small moments of pique, compassion or practical advice, like counseling a married guy not to try a new cologne. In many respects, the movie most impresses in its steadfast avoidance of ante-upping dramatic gambits (hey, it’s even 65 minutes before anyone barfs). Things happen, and there are telling character moments, but there isn’t any dynamic plot, per se. In general, Shoes is overwhelmingly subdued, and thus something of an interesting Rorschach for viewers, who may find different interpretations in his demeanor.

The film’s staging — its flow of customers, and general rhythm — is handled quite well. And Griffith has a great presence. His tight smile and socially appropriate, slightly askance gaze — combined with the litany of patter, tailored in smart, quick ways to how he sizes up incoming visitors — reveals that, clearly, he knows of what he writes, both anecdotally and in feeling. But there’s also a centeredness to him that would seem to translate well to other roles. Griffith doesn’t feel the need to trade in cheap demonstrativeness; his Shoes is well-worn, but honestly so. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; to visit the movie’s website, click here. In addition to VOD offerings, From the Head is available on DVD on July 9. (Breaking Glass Pictures, unrated, 93 minutes)

The Industry Choice Award winner at the recent Dances With Films Festival, Home eschews pitiable characterizations of the mentally ill in favor of more full-bodied representations. A smart, engaging work from debut writer-director Jono Oliver, Home is a superbly acted indie drama that knows and shows its title can be not just a physical place but a state of settled mind. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Mountaintop Productions, unrated, 112 minutes)

Amateurishly staged and unevenly acted, microbudget indie L.A. Superheroes is an indulgent, mishmashed immigrant/fringe-dweller‘s drama in which a couple artistically inclined Los Angelenos struggle to stay afloat (and in the country). Co-directed by multi-hyphenates Yelena Popovic and Alexandros Potter, from what they claim to be a collection of true-life stories witnessed firsthand, this dramatically impotent film serves as ample further evidence that, absent a unifying aesthetic and an artistic hand on the tiller, a camera simply turned back upon “real life” does not a compelling movie make.

Helena (Popovic) is a thirtysomething model who, after her work visa expired, apparently never got around to getting her paperwork in order. She has a wildly terrible manager, Angie (Catherine Carlen), who in addition to borrowing money from her client to make her car payment, also advises her to get a forged passport so she can go to Paris and do this big gig that’ll magically solve all her problems. Helena’s acting class friend, Auto (Alexander Zisiades), is a struggling musician who gets by delivering pizzas, though that doesn’t much seem to quell the rage he has toward the Los Angeles dating scene. After Helena secures a phony birth certificate through a contact of another friend, Sunny (T.J. Castronovo), things go sideways, and she becomes convinced she’s in danger for her life.

Weirdly titled, L.A. Superheroes unfolds in a series of languorously staged vignettes surrounding the fallout of this passport dilemma, but Short Cuts this isn’t. It aims for what is ostensibly a seriocomic tone (Auto’s advice to Helena before entering a potentially dangerous situation is to take a rock and not get shot in the face), but apart from a scene in which a woman feigns an injury in Runyon Canyon to catch the eye of a potential suitor, there’s nothing particularly amusing, clever or insightful about its eye and ear for random detail, and there’s additionally no compelling forward momentum, plot-wise. Helena’s husband gets quickly shunted off to the side, robbing the movie of at least the potential for some greater interpersonal dramatic friction.

Though it does feature a bit of decent music, L.A. Superheroes is shot through with nonsense — full of other tangents that never go anywhere. In theory Helena is also a would-be actress (hence the acting class), but the script attaches no particular aspiration or energy to her plight; indeed, there’s an extended sequence where an old New York friend shows up, invites her to dinner and then harangues her, reminding her that she in fact knows the director of “the year’s biggest movie,” Scumbag Club. Oh yeah, Helena realizes with a shrug… there’s that. Then it’s never really addressed again, leaving a viewer only their own glorious imagination in daydreaming up that fictitious hit. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Simeon Productions, unrated, 78 minutes)