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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A well-meaning documentary that advocates for a broader societal acceptance of addiction as a chronic disease of the brain, The Anonymous People leads with its considerable heart, but can’t summon the sort of order and focus necessary to convert generalized sympathy into stronger lasting memory and impulse for action. Flitting to and fro, and alighting on a wide range of related but not always smoothly integrated topics — from the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and biased drug infraction prison sentencing to a series of testimonials from public figures and arguments for greater health care cost controls for addicts — the movie carries an important message, but too often feels like a free-association sermon for the choir. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Kino Lorber, unrated, 102 minutes)

Animated films are huge and often considerably less risky business, so of course Hollywood studios value a reliable property like the Ice Age franchise — with its worldwide box office haul of $2.8 billion, not even counting direct-to-home-video spin-offs — more than something like 2005’s Robots, which “only” grossed around $260 million on its $75 million budget.

The above point is worth underscoring since those films, produced by Blue Sky Studios and released by 20th Century Fox, are all directed or co-directed by Brazilian-born filmmaker Carlos Saldanha. Three years ago this very week, the family-friendly animated adventure Rio released, and became a $485 million surprise hit. Ergo, the impetus to carve out another comfortable gravy train hangs over and informs everything about the colorful, clamorous and entirely undemanding Rio 2. That means poop jokes in triplicate (hey, comedy comes in threes), as well as all other manner of easygoing song-and-dance, laughs and conflict resolution. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (20th Century Fox, G, 101 minutes)

If the first installment of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac blended the farcical and tragic in a manner that underscored the folly of thinking one could ever put biological appetites neatly away, in a little box on the bookshelf, Nymphomaniac: Volume II wanders further into the darkened forest of human desire and compulsion. Part wild stallion and part brutish gorilla, it’s a formidable and inherently contradictory cinematic disquisition — it agitates against over-analysis, even as itself it analyzes how unspoken yearnings bend and twist behavior to their will. Above all, while not without its faults, it’s a reminder that the world of film needs taskmaster provocateurs like von Trier, pushing back against tidiness and challenging audiences. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Magnolia, unrated, 123 minutes)

A certain tension between emotion and education again manifests in Bears, the fifth theatrical nature documentary release via a specialty arm of distributor Disney, who has carved out a nice niche pegged to annual Earth Day celebrations. Extraordinarily intimate and engaging throughout, African Cats co-directors Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey’s stirringly captured movie unlocks a sincere sense of awe and reverence within viewers’ hearts, even as it frustrates an audience looking for a bit more. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (DisneyNature, G, 78 minutes)

There may not be a better film this year about adult sibling jostling, rivalry and affection than Tom Berninger’s extraordinary Mistaken For Strangers. The fact that it’s also a meta-documentary about life on the road with the ascendant indie rock group The National, whose lead singer Matt Berninger is Tom’s older brother, is completely incidental. This is an engaging work of many colors, at once funny and heart-piercing, that taps into the rich and often conflicting veins of feeling that only loved ones can elicit.



The younger Berninger is a Cincinnati roustabout — a sensitive, wayward creative soul and aspiring indie horror director who comes off a bit like a cross between Feast director John Gulager and Mark Borchardt, the subject of Chris Smith’s American Movie. When The National — a quintet made up of two other sets of brothers, plus Matt Berninger — prepares to go out on tour, they hire Tom as a roadie, affording him his first chance at international travel. Tom brings along his cameras, filming the entire experience, and in the process often ignoring his official job duties. Tension, arguments, reflection and self-discovery ensues.

Mistaken For Strangers has a multitude of ideas, emotions and themes — enough for about a half dozen different films. In its own facile way, it’s a wry rock ‘n’ roll tour document, a peek behind the curtain of a brooding-cool critics’ darling whose hard work and doggedness have finally paid off with commercial punch-through, and the attendant dressing room catering riders that entails. Of course, it’s refracted chiefly through the prism of the 34-year-old Tom, whose awkward questions (“Does the motion of the tour bus cause weird dreams?” and “Do you have a wallet when you’re onstage?”) recall the late Chris Farley’s famous Saturday Night Live talk show sketch, where his nervousness around whatever celebrity guest habitually got the better of him.

The film is also about fraternity, obviously, but all the component elements of sibling relationships as well. There’s love, exasperation, shame, jealousy, pride and so much more. And it’s all captured in such a disarming, entertaining style that’s steadfast and true to the commingled nature of those feelings. (“Am I fired?” asks Tom at one point. “Technically, yes, but don’t put it through that filter,” replies Matt.) Finally, Mistaken For Strangers is about the ethereal nature of creativity and the weight of depression too, summoning up memories of The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which is both a good and bittersweet thing, for anyone who’s seen Jeff Feuerzeig’s superb 2006 documentary.

It’s a completely different film than Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, of course, but part of the miracle of Mistaken For Strangers lies in the amazingly instinctive editing by a party so tied up and personally invested in the knotty familial relationships on display, just as in that movie. The younger Berninger crafts a portrait of himself that is knowingly unflattering in some respects, but also enormously sympathetic. Taut and moving, Mistaken For Strangers does right by the complexity of all of its characters’ feelings, its knowing self-commentary (at one point Tom talks about filming himself crying before actually showing that footage) never dipping into conceited self-satisfaction. One needn’t know or care a whit about The National to enjoy this stirring film, indisputably one of the year’s best, nonfiction or otherwise. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, Mistaken For Strangers is also available on VOD platforms. For more information, click here to visit its website. (Starz Digital Media/Abramorama, unrated, 74 mintues)

Most apocalyptic thrillers exist in large measure for the sizzle, or are at least invested in paying off some fantastical doomsday conceit. But Goodbye World, in which a group of old college friends and lovers of the idealistic and liberal persuasion (including Adrien Grenier and Kerry Bishé, above) find shelter at a remote country cabin in the days and weeks after a crippling cyber-attack, is something quite different. An unusual hybrid of The Big Chill, The Trigger Effect and Into the Wild, director Denis Henry Hennelly’s film exists largely apart from the investigation of cause, arguments about culpability or even the trials of survival. It’s kind of an incidental apocalyptic drama. So even if the movie unravels in the end, there’s still enough that’s stirring and original here to capture and hold the interest of adventurous indie filmgoers.

A low-budget, distinctively character-rooted work that premiered at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, Goodbye World was never going to be confused with any of the raft of other apocalyptic movies that have hit the big screen over the past year-and-a-half. But while it doesn’t become completely overblown, suffice it to say that the manner in which the film resolves its exploration of a community riven by fear comes off as unrealistic, and halfhearted to boot. Certain bits feel designed to pay off and salve investor anxieties — to bend and twist Goodbye World into the shape of the very movies that it otherwise consciously avoids aping. And that’s a shame, really, because it’s the other, smaller stuff that sticks with you. Just as in life. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Samuel Goldwyn/Phase 4 Films, unrated, 101 minutes)