A nicely captured if fairly straightforward coming-of-age film about transcending adolescent summer camp bullying, the family-friendly Standing Up represents a rather curious filmography entry for director DJ Caruso, whose other movies (among them Disturbia, Eagle Eye and I Am Number Four) have almost all all showed a penchant for slick, pop-minded entertainment. Vacuumed free of darkened peril or any of the idiosyncratic pop of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, which charts a somewhat broadly similar story of two pre-teens on the lam, this slight but well intentioned effort seems a better fit for small screen viewing. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Arc Entertainment, PG, 93 minutes)

Winner of the director’s prize in the U.S. documentary competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer is an engaging, playful and ultimately uplifting study of art and painting as refracted through the decades-long marriage of Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, Japanese-born artists living in New York City. In spotlighting the sweet-natured give-and-take of this relationship, the movie sidesteps doctrinaire concepts of nonfiction art films and expands its core audience, imparting glancing lessons about the uncertainty of love and the almost necessary dance of responsibility and care-taking involved. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the film, meanwhile, click here to visit its website. (Radius/TWC, unrated, 82 minutes)

If the background extras staring on in worshipful awe and/or cowed silence didn’t clue one in on Steve Jobs‘ anointed brilliance in director Joshua Michael Stern’s film about the influential Apple founder, then cinematographer Russell Carpenter’s reverential framing or, especially, John Debney’s cloying, heavy-handed score surely achieve the same effect. A biopic whose overly literal and demonstrative telling is at frequent odds with a slightly more rangy, full-bodied screenplay, Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher, doesn’t attain the same dizzying, high-drama heights as Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s The Social Network, but instead trades readily on the tremendous native interest that attaches itself to and drives this story, given the significant role Apple products play in so many modern lives. It’s a serviceable little amuse-bouche, but doesn’t feel like a definitive rendering of its subject’s life.



A headstrong, adopted kid from a working-class Northern California suburb, Jobs drops out of college, dabbles in hallucinogens and travels to India searching for enlightenment with friend Daniel Kottke (Lukas Haas) before taking employment with videogame maker Atari in 1976. Frustrated with not only the daily grind of an office gig (and the accompanying social necessity of showers) but also what he views as the limited imaginations of lesser intellects, Jobs coaxes childhood pal Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) out of a similarly stable job to start a company manufacturing and marketing the latter’s computer board invention, at a time when a home market for computers didn’t even exist. They hire a couple friends to meet the order of 100 units from a local electronics store owner, set up shop in the garage of Jobs’ parents, and christen their corporation Apple Computers.

An early investor, Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney), helps provide the framework for the company, and Jobs’ restless, relentless ambition does much of the rest, launching Apple into the stratosphere and leaving much bigger tech companies struggling to play catch-up. Eventually, though, Jobs’ thirst for innovation and his in-the-bones contempt for the status quo — as manifested by his insistence on pouring massive amounts of company resources into research and development — alienate Apple’s board members, leading to encroachments on his power and an eventual ouster from the company he co-founded.

Jobs has a good bit going for it. If his instincts for dialogue and interpersonal conflict are often woefully on the nose, debut screenwriter Matt Whiteley does a good job (pun more embraced than intended) of covering lots of ground in Jobs’ story. He doesn’t whitewash or pull punches about his protagonist’s legendary obstinacy, detachment and dickishness — even spotlighting (if rather awkwardly) scenes where Jobs informs his pregnant girlfriend (Ahna O’Reilly) that her condition isn’t his problem, and then later disavows paternity of said child. Focusing on a period of roughly two decades, from 1971 into the early ’90s, Jobs is also smartly structured, insofar as the movie builds to a natural, mid-level-type climax that occurs before Apple’s greatest tech age heights, when the rest of Jobs’ story, absent his cancer, arguably becomes just more of a string of successes.

Director Stern (Swing Vote, Neverwas) keeps the action moving at an appropriately brisk pace that ably showcases the tension and fissures in friendship — or, perhaps more accurately, professional alliance — that almost predictably develop once Apple becomes beholden to stockholders. He doesn’t always have the courage to linger on the roughest patches, though; there’s a low, ever-present hum of hero-worship that runs through Jobs, which is a bit disheartening. The film needn’t be dark, but the manner in which it dutifully cycles through and shruggingly resolves some of its more pronounced conflicts puts bows on disputes and contradiction not meant to be easily resolved.

Still, the film’s general story and performances are involving enough. Kutcher’s lead turn is one of solid investment. Some may quibble, but his physical similarity to Jobs — the reedy body type and thin face — help go a long way toward establishing an audience rapport, and the actor additionally makes a mostly admirable pass at his trademark ungainly gait and terse, clipped speech patterns. Gad, meanwhile, delivers a centered, sympathetic turn as “Woz,” the closest thing to a reliable or lasting friend in this snapshot of Jobs’ world.

In the end, it may not be the authoritative cinematic telling of one of the undeniable luminaries of our new-tech age — the aforementioned Sorkin is working on an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography — but Jobs is a credible resume entry for almost everyone involved. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Open Road Films, PG-13, 127 minutes)

For years, in movies like Over Her Dead Body and No Strings Attached, Lake Bell has played the best friend or colorful third lead, exhibiting a nice instinct for comic timing. With her superb directorial debut, Bell has finally blossomed, creating her own showcase for her true voice.



And what a voice it is, too. Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, In a World… is a sharply sketched, wonderfully cast ensemble set against the intriguing backdrop of the cutthroat movie-trailer voiceover world. (The title is a tip of the hat to the late Don LaFontaine, and the baritone phrase he used to kick off many trailers.) Funny, fresh and populated with engaging and relatable characters that behave in recognizably human ways, it’s a true indie treat — easily one of the year’s best comedies.

Chocolate velour track suit-clad Sam Sotto (Fred Melamed) is nearing the end of a long and successful career as a voiceover artist. That doesn’t mean he’s any less egotistical, however. When he casts his underachieving, emotionally wayward adult daughter, Carol Solomon (Bell), out of his house to make room for his 30-year-old fiancée, Jamie (Alexandra Holden), Sam paints it as just another gesture of his largesse (“I’m helping her by not helping her”).

Carol is a part-time vocal coach looking to stamp out the spreading virus of affected “sexy baby” voices in women, but she also needs a place to live. While crashing for a bit with her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins) and brother-in-law Moe (Rob Corddry), Carol books her first voiceover gig with the assistance of an awkward but charming sound engineer, Louis Parker (Demetri Martin). Soon, she has the inside track on her father’s mentee and the industry’s rising star, Gustav Warner (Ken Marino), to do the voiceover for the adaptation of the hot Amazon Games franchise, the next big young-adult novel property. Sam, however, may not be ready to go quietly into the night.

In a World… does something few films do, let alone few directorial debuts — it takes a completely unique setting and story, and then executes on that winning plot without really ringing a false note. Plot-wise, the film is actually kind of overstuffed, with bisecting love triangles and churned-up family issues and comedic misunderstandings that would play in an old vaudevillian routine. But it all rather works, because each ingredient is fresh and the casserole is so well tended to.

Bell takes notions of arrested development and breathes them into various characters, but in a manner that makes sense specifically for them. She also doesn’t sandbag or sell short her characters. It’s not surprising that Carol is well-written, since Bell is playing the lead. But even a supporting character like Jamie is given a great, honest character arc; she’s no mere empty-headed trophy wife, despite appearances. Bell proves equally as at home writing character-based comedy — there’s a sisterly discussion of “just the tip,” awkward posturing by Moe when a neighbor has to use his shower, and plenty moments of quirky workplace recording humor — as she is tossing out The Great Gatsby and Cranberries references, or one-liners about Life Savers.

Most of all, Bell is abetted by a great cast. Melamed is fantastic, as is Martin. Bell and Watkins have a wonderful rapport, and there’s even a surprising tenderness and emotional connection to a romantic rekindling Dani and Moe share. In a World… may be a bit roughhewn for some tastes, but it’s so alive, identifiably clumsy and deliciously complicated — so of the real world — as to put a smile on viewers’ faces. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Roadside Attractions, R, 93 minutes)

As both a writer and performer, Larry David has long mined anxiety, irritation, social faux pas and self-flagellating neuroses for all sorts of uncomfortable laughs. It seems no empty pose, though, this persona; it feels hard-wired to his soul. Without the angst, and its slip-sleeve of puffed-up, mock-selfishness he got to slip on for HBO’s Emmy Award-winning Curb Your Enthusiasm, would there actually be a Larry David?

Well, Clear History provides no answer to that question, for those wondering. Debuting this week on HBO, the movie finds David re-teaming, in multi-hyphenate fashion, with three of his Seinfeld and Curb collaborators (writers Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer), for another comic tale of put-upon exasperation. The result starts strong but fades in the end, like a sprinter out of the blocks in a mid-distance race with which he or she is unaccustomed. Gags and joke writing are given favor over deeper characterizations, a tack which works for a while but eventually undercuts what is a quite promising set-up.

Clear History opens in 2003, with a nearly unrecognizable David starring as Nathan Flomm, the marketing expert at an upstart California electric car company headed up by Will Haney (Jon Hamm). When Nathan balks at Haney naming the set-to-debut vehicle after his son Howard (who is in turn named after Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead), he impulsively gives up his 10 percent stake in the company and resigns. Naturally, this movie existing in David’s world, the car becomes a $10-billion, zeitgeist-defining hit.

Needing to pretty much drop off the face of the Earth, Nathan assumes the name of Rolly DaVore and moves to Martha’s Vineyard. Nobody there knows his secret, not even best friend Frank (Danny McBride). Ten years later, though, Nathan-as-Rolly is happy and an integrated part of this community, even if his preoccupations — like his concern over the fact that his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Amy Ryan), may have performed oral sex on (multiple?) members of the band Chicago when last they toured in the area — are stuck in arrested development.

When a retiring Haney and his new wife Rhonda (Kate Hudson) move into the neighborhood, however, Nathan sees his well-ordered world crumbling down around him. He considers fleeing, but then has a better idea: he’ll blow up Haney’s mansion, which construction crews are in the process of putting the finishing touches on. Through Frank, Nathan connects with a couple of idiot quarry workers, Joe and Rags (Micheal Keaton and Bill Hader, respectively), and even a shady Chechnyan black market dealer named Tibor (Liev Schreiber). Antics ensue.

The rhythms of much of the movie’s patter are familiar, and as funneled through David’s angsty kvetching a lot of this material connects with no small amusement. Rants about the placement of electrical outlets, placing silverware on napkins instead of directly on a table, the sincerity of apologies and why Nathan doesn’t reply to birthday emails (“There are so many it turns into a job, which kind of defeats the purpose”) are funny, and definitely bring a smile to the face. Director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), too, keeps things moving at a generally good clip.

But if Clear History has energy to spare, for sure, it also lacks the verve and intellectually compacted punch of the best of Curb Your Enthusiasm. At several points, the script plots a seemingly wild change of course only to abandon its outrageousness in midstream. As its story winds its way into the second and third acts, ideas are engaged in the most fitful fashion, while certain potentially rich details (Haney’s seemingly incongruous predilection for Ayn Rand, for instance) are abandoned completely. Characters become servants to the writers’ joke-writing instincts, rather than the other way around. There’s enough here to still merit a curious click. But Clear History may not be what hardcore David acolytes most crave. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Clear History plays throughout the month of August on HBO and its affiliated channels; check local listings for showtimes. (HBO Films, unrated, 100 minutes)

A grand-scale survey of Jewish humor from the middle portion of the 20th century, shambling documentary When Comedy Went to School represents an amiable, openhearted attempt to shine a spotlight on the ethnic lineage of observational stand-up, and its roots in the vaudevillian era. Ostensibly a look at the so-called greatest generation of comedians — a generation that includes the likes of Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Jerry Stiller, Jackie Mason and Mort Sahl, all interviewed here — and the manner in which they got their pre-television training in the resorts of the Catskill Mountains, the film is unfortunately too scattered and bereft of focus to connect with viewers outside of the most sympathetic and devoted habitués of old-school comedy.

Lacking any clean or clear throughlines, co-directors Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya’s film unfurls as a jumbled mass of half-baked historical footnotes, recollections, asides and unconnected details. Good intentions abound, but this Comedy is almost all cluttered, talky set-up, in other words. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, meanwhile, click here to visit its website. In addition to its other theatrical engagements, the movie opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall and Town Center 5, with additional weekends shows in Pasadena and Claremont. (International Film Circuit, unrated, 76 minutes)

A buzzy American premiere at this summer’s Los Angeles Film Festival, director Sebastian Cordero’s low-boil, sci-fi thriller Europa Report has racked up rapturous reviews in large part because of the stark contrast in which it stands to most like-minded genre efforts. Undeniably, it is elegant, understated and wonderfully designed. Unfortunately, it’s also frustratingly hackneyed — a solidly cast, interesting budget concept absolutely wrecked by cross-cutting and needless voiceover.

Penned by Philip Gelatt, the film centers on a mission to Jupiter’s titular icy moon, to investigate the possibility of alien life within our solar system. Six astronauts from all over the globe (Sharlto Copley, Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Christian Camargo, Karolina Wydra and Anamaria Marinca) are selected for the mission, and after a forced correction on their landing leaves them 100-plus yards from their designed spot for settling, they soon experience a loss of communication with their Earth-bound handler (Embeth Davidtz), plus a shocking discovery more profound than they could have imagined.

Europa Report is anchored by its visuals; cinematographer Enrique Chediak helped design an innovative eight-camera system, wherein lenses are given fixed positions throughout the spaceship, which was created in concert with Oscar-winning production designer Eugenio Caballero. This makes for a unique low-budget experience — one that conveys both the wonderment and claustrophobia of outer space travel.

Director Cordero’s framing and editing choices are terrible, however — full of woeful miscalculations from almost the outset, where mixed direct-address monologues create more of a sense of confusion than audience identification. The story, a bit of speculative/alternative history a la Apollo 18 or Transformers: Dark of the Moon, is in and of itself fine, but the manner in which Europa Report ping-pongs back and forth between different time periods, settings and modes — pre-launch interviews from Earth, omniscient camera footage from the craft, Real World-style confessionals from the craft, press conferences from Earth, etcetera — becomes at first wearying and then just ire-provoking.

There are moments of wonder here — Bear McCreary’s pulsing music, and the austere artfulness of a character drifting off to death in the void of outer space — but Europa Report is a movie that is less than the sum of its parts. For low-fidelity science-fiction, try Moon instead. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnet Releasing, PG-13, 90 minutes)

Deeper meaning rises sneakily to the surface in the offbeat, austere Prince Avalanche, writer-director David Gordon Green’s re-imagined, loose adaptation of a 2011 Icelandic film, Either Way. A posed man-child statement of surprisingly substantive feeling, the film connects easily and most readily as a quaint little comic bauble — an odd-couple tale with slow-peddled seriocomic detail — largely because of its two affable stars, Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch, and the uniqueness of its desolate setting. In savvy fashion, though, this meditative film makes an unexpected statement.



The movie unfolds in rural Texas in 1988, in the aftermath of what a simple insert card tells viewers was a devastating wildfire that destroyed more than 1,600 homes. Alvin (Rudd) and Lance (Hirsch) work by themselves as road-stripers, painting traffic lines on lonely stretches of highway that run through this burnt-out wasteland. Apart from occasional interactions with a gruff trucker (Lance LeGault) who passes through the area, they are virtually alone. Alvin is the foreman, a head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone kind of guy (“I have a lot of prescription medications… but I try not to use them”) and the younger Lance, the brother of his girlfriend, is a characteristically shortsighted loafer who just lives for the weekend, when he heads to the city and tries to get laid.

Beautifully shot by frequent Green collaborator Tim Orr, Prince Avalanche doesn’t do much more than chart this duo’s bickering and uneasy détente, and yet it achieves a sort of mesmerizing hold, for the manner in which it assays notions of place versus home, and loneliness versus being alone. There’s an abstruse yet meaningful and even semi-poetic quality to the dialogue in many of Green’s indie efforts, like All the Real Girls, Undertow and especially his debut, George Washington. That quality is again quite on display in Prince Avalanche, married to evocative music by Explosions in the Sky and David Wingo.

Rudd and especially Hirsch are great. Their characters (especially Lance) are air-quote dumb or foolish as a kind of distillation of the essence of oft-unarticulated male feeling and neediness, and the actors capture this with a piercing grace and honesty. Nowhere is this more evident than in an extended monologue of sexual frustration Lance delivers late in the film, relating his weekend to Alvin. It’s quietly hilarious in both its detail and pure haplessness, but it’s when the story is later revealed to have been at least partially misplaced in its emotion that Prince Avalanche really blooms. Everybody hurts — even men who may not yet be in the position or emotive state to fully realize it. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, R, 94 minutes)

Breaking Bad fans, foreign film cineastes and gangster flick aficionados should all find something worthwhile in Johnnie To’s taut, impeccably staged Drug War, an involving, atmospheric cops-and-criminals import. For years, To’s films struggled to find Stateside distribution, while lesser action filmmakers burnished their reputations ripping off his style. That changed by degrees with a stretch of films from 2005 to 2007, including Triad Election, Exiled and Triangle, which did mostly boutique box office in the United States but solid home video business for distributor Tartan.

The 58-year-old, Hong Kong-born To (whose name rhymes with “row”) often delivers films that touch upon themes of fate, exploiting his knack for keen, offhand social observation while never sacrificing a highly stylized visual aesthetic. His first mainland production leans more toward an exercise in style than some of his previous fare, but Drug War still serves up a gripping if familiar police-sting narrative along with the filmmaker’s characteristically brawny, well-edited action theatrics. Doom hangs over the movie like a low-lying cloud, and there is certainly metaphor in the air if one looks for it. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Variance Films, unrated, 105 minutes)

A huge portion of the buzz surrounding 2006’s The Break-Up had to do with costars Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston taking their offscreen relationship public, and the chattering class dissecting how sincere that was or was not. It became its own little tabloid thing — a more demure, B-story callback to the alleged production hook-up of Angelina Jolie with Aniston’s ex, Brad Pitt, on Mr. & Mrs. Smith — and subsequently drowned out what should have been the more interesting story: namely, of Vaughn’s debut as a writer-producer, developing the idea of a comedy rooted in the dissolution of a relationship that was never meant to last forever.



I Give It a Year takes the kernel of that same premise and, with a bit less bite, spins it off into a fun, amusing, will-they-or-won’t-they confection — a love rhombus wherein a hastily married couple grapples with mutually wandering eyes. Written and directed by Dan Mazer (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan), and superbly cast, the London-set movie sells an utter fantasy, sure (romantic fissure absent any real churned-up emotional turmoil), but it does so in so good and entertaining a manner — in compact, funny strokes and a breezy, winning tone — as to sidestep all but the most piddling of complaints.

When novelist Josh Moss (Rafe Spall) and ambitious advertising executive Nat Redfern (Rose Byrne) cap their whirlwind seven-month courtship by getting married, none of their friends — a group that includes Dan (Stephen Merchant) and the married, bickering Naomi (Minnie Driver) and Hugh (Jason Flemyng) — much expect it to last. Nine months later, Josh and Nat are stuck feeling the same thing. With the bloom of romance having worn off, their incompatibilities are cast in a starker light. Joint romantic temptation, then, arrives in the form of Chloe (Anna Faris), Josh’s ex-girlfriend, and Guy (Simon Baker), a smooth new American client of Nat’s. As they attend counseling, things at first don’t seem to be getting much better, but they decide to stick with it and push onward, toward their one-year anniversary.

It’s true that Mazer sketches the strife of Josh and Nat in the broadest strokes possible, and doesn’t much root down into hot-flash acrimony in the way that The Break-Up rather admirably did. But if one excepts and accepts that element of I Give It a Year as a sort of general placeholder for the initial flush of a romantic relationship, when every action of the other party (like misunderstood song lyrics, for instance) takes on an enchanted quality that will eventually not only lose its luster but become downright annoying, then the movie works fine.

This mostly owes to some funny yet unforced set pieces and Mazer’s deft touch with quips, which run the gamut from pointed observational humor to more barbed putdowns (“Oh, look at you — somebody swallowed a copy of Eat Pray Love!”). I Give It a Year is a film that very much connects on the strength of its joke-writing and delivery.

Mazer has a great cast, too, but this isn’t merely some slice of wind-up cinema, with actors set loose and left to their own devices. He directs them quite well, giving the film’s ensemble scenes real liveliness and pop. Driver and Flemyng give delightful supporting performances, and Olivia Colman is equally enjoyable as Nat and Josh’s snappish therapist. Other players are cast in a bit of a new light. Byrne, so good on Damages, has almost always given off something of a cool vibe, but here she’s relaxed and loose — completely at home and in touch with the material. Faris, meanwhile, has always rather specialized in characters that exist in their own special mental orbit, but Mazer elicits one of the most subdued, focused and performances of her career. She plays Chloe mostly “normal” and straight — flustered and confused by her ever-present connection to Josh despite his marriage — and is no less engaging for the choice. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, I Give It a Year is also presently available across various VOD platforms. (Magnolia, R, 97 minutes)

Mid-level animation meets a slapdash, achingly familiar story in the lackluster animated adventure tale Planes, billed as a spinoff to Disney’s successful Cars franchise. Absent much in the way of any special Pixar pixie dust, however, Planes shifts into autopilot early on, and rushes through a checklist of underdog self-actualization in a manner more dutiful than inspired. All but the youngest viewers may leave feeling they’ve overpaid for this flight. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Disney, PG, 92 minutes)

Acute moments of heartbreak punctuate the new documentary Off Label, a collage-type snapshot of runaway pharma-culture which otherwise struggles to find a topic sentence or cultivate a cogent point-of-view. A nonfiction competition title at the Tribeca Film Festival, directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s movie is an example of well-intentioned cinematic social advocacy undone by haphazard, point-and-shoot construction.

Off Label ostensibly centers around seven subjects (or family members of same) who have served, either wittingly or unwittingly, as test subjects for drug manufacturers or doctors nominally in their employ. And certain of its narrative strands are undeniably hugely compelling. Iraq War veteran Andrew Duffy, a one-time medic stricken with post-traumatic stress disorder, talks about being directed to use 14-gauge needles on Abu Ghraib prisoners for their IVs, as part of effort to psychologically break them. A montage of gruesome photographs, meanwhile, shows some of the other horrors of war to which he was subjected.

Equally affecting are the reminiscences of Mary Weiss, the mother of a mentally ill young man who committed suicide during a 2004 University of Minnesota clinical trial of the drug Seroquel. There’s an eerie tranquility to many of her musings, but the chilling, graphic recounting of the specifics of her son’s death (“This is what the drugs do — if Dan simply wanted to kill himself, he wouldn’t have done that”) provides Off Label with an unnerving moment of piercing, wretched sadness destined to be rarely surpassed on the screen this year.

The problem is that directors Palmieri and Mosher evidence little instinct for corralling their story into something manageable and salient. Their efforts to select a broad cross-section of people whose lives are impacted by Big Pharma is commendable, but they get caught up in secondary details or character traits (the marriage of a bohemian couple who have lived largely off of income as compensated test subjects; the gambling habits of another such young man) without first establishing many of the specifics of their respective stories.

Off Label can’t see the forest through the trees; its makers get lost as to exactly what sort of story they’re telling. Is it about the immorality of forced drug trials from the 1960s on prison inmates whose consent was at best coerced? Is it about psychiatrists dealing with poly-pharmacy generated by primary care physicians prescribing medications about which they have little expertise? Is it about the continued lack of substantive national dialogue on mental illness as it relates to health care? Passionate and jumbled, Off Label is a conversation-starter, but as much for its shortcomings as for what it says about the state of drugs in America. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; to visit the movie’s website, click here. Off Label opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal; it expands in weeks following to a limited national release. In addition to its theatrical engagements, though, the movie is also presently available across VOD platforms. (Oscilloscope, unrated, 80 minutes)

A rising tide of dread and desperation marks Jug Face, a low-budget, independent slice of Southern Gothic characterized by a solid technical package. The freshman feature effort of writer-director Chad Crawford Kinkle, this psychologically rooted horror film recalls the movies of Lucky McKee — and with good reason, since the May and Sick Girl director serves as an executive producer here.

The story unfolds in a rural, backwoods community, where moonshine seems to be the only connection to the outside world. Teenager Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter) is set to be married off to Bodey (Mathieu Whitman) by her father Sustin (Larry Fessenden) and mother Loriss (Sean Young). What they don’t know, however, is that Ada’s walks in the woods with her brother Jessaby (Daniel Manche) are more than innocent strolls — and that she’s pregnant.

All this would be a simpler tragedy if not for the fact that the community indulges in occasional human sacrifice to a mysterious pit. The pit supposedly heals wounds and sickness, but also requires fealty in the form of a corporal offering when potter Dawai (Sean Bridgers) goes into a trance and carves the visage of someone onto a ceremonial jug. When Ada discovers she’s been tabbed as the next sacrifice, it sets off a scramble for survival — with far-reaching consequences for her entire burgh.

There’s a simple, streamlined narrative quality, and corresponding restraint, to Jug Face. It feels properly scaled. Though it does get bloody, the film eschews much in the way of gore in favor of steeped atmosphere and tension. It mostly works, even if Ava and Jessaby’s sibling bond could use a deeper and more sincere exploration, and Kinkle doesn’t quite figure out the most compelling bridge between the movie’s second act and its ending.

What gives Jug Face its punch is Kinkle’s instincts for construction; they’re superb, and extend to composer Sean Spillane, who offers up a great, memorable and evocative leitmotif as part of his score. Chris Heinrich’s cinematography is also quite nice, fitting the naturalistic aesthetic of the movie. For genre fans there’s more of moody interest than not here in Jug Face — a film of modest intentions, but solid execution. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Jug Face opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall, and in addition to its theatrical engagements it’s also available across VOD platforms. (Modern Distributors/Modernciné, unrated, 81 minutes)