Not every sub-genre of cinema needs to contain likable characters for films to be successful. A huge number of affecting films have been produced, for years, concentrating on antiheroes: unpleasant characters not featured for the sake of enjoyment. However, when filmmakers are working within the confines of a tight sub-genre like talk-heavy, NYC-based tales of flawed romance, which is essentially what Negin Farsad and Jeremy Redleaf‘s 3rd Street Blackout is, the characters must be relatively pleasant. That’s because rather than focusing on philosophy or atmosphere, the film chooses the route of a double character study and centers entirely on the mind state of the two protagonists, a seemingly happy couple named Mina and Rudy, played by the directors themselves.

Sometimes, when a director makes the decision to place themselves in the spotlight of their own film, they can become so wrapped up in their own vision that the story becomes overly personal and difficult for those who haven’t shared their life experiences. Here, the opposite is true; Farsad and Redleaf are so naturally able to realize the characters they’ve written for themselves that it’s difficult to remember that they’re the co-directors and not a silly New York couple with a set of eccentric friends.

3rd Street Blackout tells the story of a few days in the life of this couple, during which a blackout occurs across the entire city and they’re forced to actually communicate with one another rather than spending all of their time on their phones, as they usually do. This eventually leads Mina to reveal something to Rudy that she’s been bottling up for some time; said “something” is also revealed to the audience in flashback fragments throughout the majority of the film.

The non-linear style of editing that the film utilizes works to its advantage in raising the emotional stakes of the narrative, and simultaneously, creates a feeling of palpable suspense not common in most lo-fi romantic comedies. The film is indeed a comedy, but not in the pure sense at all because the audience is, for the most part, left in the dark regarding the portion of the story being flashed back to. It’s a sincerely funny film—you could draw comparisons between 3rd Street Blackout and shows like Broad City or High Maintenance with regard to its uniquely New York sense of humor—but its structural fragmentation also makes it an effectively frustrating and anxiety-inducing experience.

One of the main reasons why the film works so well is because of the talented supporting cast. Farsad and Redleaf are fantastic and believable as the leads, but the film wouldn’t have been nearly as strong had the slew of supporting characters not been so comically satisfying. The cast is stacked with recognizable faces such as Janeane Garofalo (Wet Hot American Summer), Devin Ratray (Home Alone), John Hodgeman (Bored to Death), Ed Weeks (The Mindy Project), Michael Cyril Creighton (Spotlight) and Phyllis Somerville (Little Children) who, in particular, gives an utterly delightful performance. Lesser known actors such as Katie Hartman and Becky Yamamoto show that they deserve recognition, the former taking on one of the chief supporting roles in the film and nailing every scene, and the latter having only one scene in the whole film, though it was possibly the film’s most hilarious moment.

Ultimately, 3rd Street Blackout is a simple movie focusing on complex characters. The way that the couple avoids addressing important issues through comedy is a realistic dynamic that’s easy for viewers to understand and even sympathize with. Much of the comedy in the film is admittedly crude, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Farsad and Redleaf pull off the crudeness, mostly because the audience can tell it’s not malicious and poorly intended; it feels harmless and reminds one of how important it is to be goofy every once in a while. Characters pop in and out of the film without much introduction, but it doesn’t matter. Actually, it works to the film’s advantage because every character is captivating, and that’s sort of exactly how it is in New York City anyway.

3rd Street Blackout isn’t just great because provides a good laugh; it’ll make you want to sit down and write some comedy of your own. It’s exciting to see a pair of independent directors with such an inspiring and authentic comedic voice.

What if men no longer served any purpose on Earth? That’s more or less the hook of the mockumentary No Men Beyond This Point, which presents an alternate universe where, in the 1950s, women suddenly gained the ability to reproduce asexually (it’s called parthenogenesis, as one of the talking heads explains). As the years went on, and the population of women kept increasing (since they’re reproducing asexually they only use the X chromosomes, meaning no more males being born), men eventually became of no use. No Men Beyond This Point starts in the present day, where the documentary crew follows 37-year-old Andrew Myers (Patrick Gilmore), now the youngest man in the world.

Writer/director/editor Mark Sawers uses a standard documentary approach to his absurd subject matter, employing talking head interviews, archival footage and black-and-white re-enactments, among plenty of other old tricks found in any average middlebrow doc made today. The familiar and banal approach works here because of its pairing with a fantasy/sci-fi concept, and the way Sawers focuses on some of the more nuanced changes that would come from the switch in dominant gender roles makes it easy to go along with his dystopian (or utopian, depending on how you look at it) vision.

Aside from playing out his big “What if?” scenario through social and political contexts, Sawers also focuses on Myers and his situation as the youngest man in the world. With the World Governing Council—a new body of government running the planet—sending men off to sanctuaries across the world to live out their remaining days, Myers manages to get a job as a servant for partners Terra (Tara Pratt) and Iris (Kristine Cofsky). Eventually, Andrew and Iris being showing an attraction for each other, and Sawers uses their flirtations to delve into the messier aspects of his universe.

It’s when No Men Beyond This Point starts exploring sex that the mockumentary begins to falter a bit. Especially giving a rather bland attempt at poking holes in the idea of how women would handle being in power. Earlier on, when Sawers highlights how the stubbornness of men in power ultimately led to their downfall, the idea works. But once women take charge and rule in a reactionary way towards men, essentially trying to speed up their extinction, Sawers portrays their rule as a conservative, sex-shaming authority, where women are not allowed to speak about their feelings of attraction whatsoever. It gives off an implication that women are inherently repressive when it comes to sexuality, a point that some people may take offense to. And with gender and sexuality turning into prominent issues recently, there’s something a little old hat about Sawers’ film operating within the same standards that are being constantly challenged today.

But still, anyone who tries to tackle gender is bound to get into a sticky situation of some sort, and for the most part No Men Beyond This Point is enjoyable despite its issues. It may be a little too deadpan for its own good, but even when the laughs aren’t there it’s fascinating to see just how much Sawers has thought out his idea of a world where women rule everything. I can’t say that No Men Beyond This Point lives up to the mockumentaries of the likes of Christopher Guest (and I’m sure some people will grow tired of Sawers’ premise pretty fast), but I can’t deny that I wasn’t entertained for the most part.

This review was originally published on September 14, 2015, as part of our coverage of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Gangly-armed or thick-necked with off-colored skin tones or noses—the harshly drawn inhabitants of Nerdland don’t have the benefit of beauty to mask their ugly insides. They’re off-putting even when appealing. Like many of the character designs on Adult Swim cartoon shows, the characters’ distinctive features are sharpened and exaggerated in ways that makes their appearances unsettling. It should be no surprise that Nerdland comes from Chris Prynoski (Metalocalypse, Motorcity), veteran of the late night Cartoon Network universe, where absurdist and divisive humor has thrived for the past couple decades.

In the heart of the entertainment industry, nearly 30-year-old roommates John (voiced by Paul Rudd) and Elliot (Patton Oswalt) feel their shot at world fame is dwindling. At first, both seem like familiar characters repurposed for Nerdland’s grimy, stoner sketchbook aesthetic. The pair live together in a rundown Hollywood apartment with old beer bottles and pizza boxes strewn across the floor. Elliot, a would-be screenwriter, who spends more time on the couch playing video games than writing (a depressing familiar conceit) ends up penning a script about a vengeful Rip Van Winkle waking from his slumber to shotgun blast open the skulls of strip club patrons. His roommate John—an aspiring actor—is the gentler, naïf, Lenny Small-type. When John tries to pass off Elliot’s script to a well-known movie star, John fumbles the pages and rips his pants in an effort to pick them up, exposing his puckered anus to the crowd.

The hand-drawn feature animation is the first feature from animation house Titmouse, Inc., a smooth transition to the big screen that borrows animated TV comedies’ fast-paced style. Quick cutaways pepper the dialog-heavy moments with visual gags. They reveal the protagonists’ dreams of red carpets lined with adoring fans or boob-filled, heavenly utopias, many of which feel ripped from an angsty teenage boy’s fantasies. But like a random episode of Family Guy, these jokes range in quality from shocking and fun to predictably cynical. Its misanthropic charms often redeem Nerdland, but John and Elliot’s aversion to productivity can become grating to watch for the duration (even if that length is only 83 minutes).

John and Elliot’s pursuit of fame at any twisted cost makes the pair progressively harder to like. Nerdland‘s mocking vision of LA is short on any redeeming personalities. Filled with silly caricatures of the fame-worshipping underclass, it’s clear that the director Prynoski as well as the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker hate just about every person in this world. And yes, that’s the same Andrew Kevin Walker who wrote Se7en and contributed an uncredited rewrite to Fight Club—a film with similar nihilistic social satire. With a considerably scattershot plot, one which has a somewhat episode design, Nerdland lacks some of the narrative momentum that comes from more cohesive stories.

While a majority of scenes revolve around the funny duo at the cartoon’s center, recognizable voices make cameos throughout. Comedians such as Molly Shannon, Paul Scheer, as well as Garfunkel & Oats’ Kate Micucci & Riki Lindhome make extended appearances. Among the funniest roles, Hannibal Burress’ discomforting slant on the standard, slovenly Comic Book Guy pairs well with his wry delivery. Like many of the notable comedians that lend their voice to Nerdland, Oswalt and Rudd don’t alter their voice for their roles—they’re each well-suited to the characters and make for an amusing, albeit unlikely pairing.

Victims of a media-driven culture, John and Elliot ultimately determine that their shortest path to recognition is through notoriety—though as a hapless pair of unskilled, intermittently unemployed slackers the duo’s ability to accomplish anything is questionable. Some of their antics are hilarious but as the film progresses, many of the bits drag on too long. Prynoski and Walker find some strange insights on their race to the moral bottom with John and Elliot—a commentary that often acts more searing and urgent than it is—but like a developing TV comedy, Nerdland is often best in small patches.

If you saw her recent hosting stint on Saturday Night Live, you know that it’s easy to imagine an alternate universe in which Melissa McCarthy is an SNL alum, using the late night show as a springboard in very much the same way Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have. McCarthy’s new comedic venture, The Boss, directed by her husband, Ben Falcone, feels like a movie based on one of her most popular characters from said alternate-universe SNL (in our reality, it’s a character she, Falcone and collaborator Steve Mallory created during their time with The Groundlings). It’s an unabashed star-vehicle that, while not as successful or funny as last year’s Spy, is still solid entertainment and even harbors some heartfelt moments that add some unexpected dimension to an otherwise straightforward story.

McCarthy plays Michelle Darnell, an enterprising billionaire/motivational speaker who wins at everything, stomps over everyone, and pushes away anyone who gets too close to her heart. Ethically impaired and insanely confident, Darnell is both a symbol of white privilege and female empowerment, giving McCarthy lots of room to flaunt her gift of gab and sling inventive vulgarities like only she can (the movie’s R rating is essential). One minute she’s asking her dutiful assistant Claire (Kristen Bell) to apply whitener to her teeth, a plastic contraption holding her mouth open so wide she looks like the Predator; the next, she’s demanding her helicopter pilot remove his shirt as they fly off into the night sky. Darnell is McCarthy’s critique on rich, greedy people and it’s really funny for the most part though some jokes (like a recurring one involving her bullying a young girl for not being effeminate enough) fall absolutely flat. Overall, it’s a sharp performance with some hit-or-miss material, which is common for movies of The Boss‘ ilk.

The story starts with a montage origin story, showing how Michelle grew up an orphan, suffering rejection after rejection as she struggled to find a home and a family. Eventually, she gives up and adopts a one-versus-all attitude, becoming a cutthroat, take-no-prisoners, turtleneck-wearing finance mogul. One of her victims on her rise to the top was ex-lover and fellow big-business bastard Renault (Peter Dinklage), who’s since dedicated his career to stealing and piggybacking on Michelle’s success (though he still has a burning passion for her “wonderful body”). Renault is presented with the perfect opportunity to strike Michelle down when she’s arrested for a white-collar crime that lands her in rich-person jail for a while (inmate tennis court and all) and results in the government seizing all of her assets and belongings.

The only person Michelle can turn to is Claire, who’s hesitant to take her former, tactless, self-obsessed boss in from off the street. Her apartment is cramped as it is, but Claire’s daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson, cute as a button and full of potential) convinces her to lend a helping hand. From there, a family drama develops, with Michelle building a Girl Scout-adjacent brownie-selling empire for Rachel and her friends; everything goes swimmingly until Claire and Rachel start to feel like a family, prompting Michelle to run away scared and sell the company to the slimy Renault. It’s as contrived a plot as any, but McCarthy makes it work with a tearful scene that sees Michelle admit to her deepest faults. In a movie full of absurdist, in-your-face humor (in an Anchorman-inspired fight scene, McCarthy clotheslines a little girl in slo-mo), this admission of guilt actually feels real, almost jarringly so. The rest of the chosen-family drama that plays out isn’t nearly as genuine, though, which is a big problem considering that the story essentially hinges on the relationship between the three leading women.

The crudeness of the comedy won’t be for everyone, but I took a fair measure of enjoyment in watching a Girl Scout gang war break out in a quiet, posh neighborhood. Screwball physical comedy is well within McCarthy’s wheelhouse, and she goes for it big-time, from getting pancaked by a faulty sofabed to selling the classic fall-down-the-stairs. Perhaps the film’s biggest feather in its cap is that it passes the Bechdel test with flying colors—this is a movie driven by women, with men existing only on the periphery, which is always refreshing in the male-dominated Hollywood landscape. McCarthy’s been better in other projects, but The Boss is nonetheless a crudely entertaining studio comedy and a solid showcase of the surging actor’s many talents.

During a time when most mainstream movies seem to run around thirty minutes too long, it’s refreshing to see features that can pack a full story into a brisk running time. Ted Fendt’s feature debut Short Stay clocks in at just over sixty minutes, and still manages to tell a complete—albeit somewhat lackadaisical—narrative about a generic guy living a generic life.

Similar to Kevin Smith’s famous debut Clerks, Short Stay is a slice-of-life character study about Mike (Mike MacCherone), a perpetually bored twentysomething whose job at a local pizzeria isn’t providing him with the excitement he desires out of life. When a friend of a friend offers him a job giving tours of Philadelphia, Mike reluctantly moves out of his Jersey apartment and takes the job, thus beginning a new chapter in his mundane life. Of course, the move doesn’t change the man’s outlook on life, and being a timid loser frequently results in Mike being walked all over by coworkers, roommates, and potential love interests. The feel-good movie of 2016 this certainly is not, but it’s still a film worth watching.

One of the more interesting plot points in the film revolves around Mike’s attraction to a girl who assures him that she’s in a relationship but values his friendship. It doesn’t take a sociologist to figure out exactly what’s going to happen next, and while the film doesn’t offer any significant swerves on that end, watching the whole uncomfortable disaster play out is quite entertaining. Mike’s troubles with the ladies are somewhat relatable, but mostly just sad. The scenes in which the poor bastard tries to overcome the problems in his love life evoke secondhand embarrassment in ways that very few films can.

It’s all photographed on grainy 35mm, mirroring the haziness of Mike’s life. Opting for a documentary-like aesthetic, Fendt and cinematographer Sage Einarsen seem determined to capture aspects of real life, and they frequently do so. Reminiscent of mumblecore films from the mid-2000s, Short Stay is comprised of long takes, what appears to be improvised dialogue, and consistent naturalism. There are no action-packed set pieces or larger than life plot points but the film still entertains in spite of this.

Some members of the supporting cast aren’t exactly convincing, delivering lines with little believability and the charisma of a wet sock. This is somewhat routine in these kinds of films, but it still detracts from the experience. Naturalism simply doesn’t work when those performing it don’t come across as natural. MacCherone, however, portrays the mousy protagonist in successful fashion. He’s a total loser, admittedly, but Mike is a generally easy guy to root for. It seems as though his entire goal in life is to not be a complete and utter failure, but he just doesn’t know how to succeed. In that regard, Fendt’s feature debut is thoroughly depressing, but the tone is actually comedic. There aren’t any “jokes,” per say, but the strange manner in which Mike handles all of his problems is laughable in the right way.

Films like Short Stay are an acquired taste, and can justifiably be viewed as both brilliant and lazy, depending on individual perspective. Evoking shades of the early works of Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg, and the Duplass Brothers, there should be little doubt as to what kind of cinematic experience Short Stay provides. The film does exactly what it sets out to do, and that’s always something to be appreciated.

Crass, crude, foul-mouthed comedies have been all the rage at the movies for some time now, with the trendiest comedians from any given year dropping F-bombs, and spouting off rapid-fire fraternity jokes in their (almost always nudity-obsessed) star vehicles. Wet Hot American Summer and The State co-creator Michael Showalter‘s latest offering, Hello, My Name Is Doris, is the perfect antidote to the unending strain of Apatow offshoots: It balances classy, screwball comedy, bone-deep drama, and old-fashioned romance with the finesse of an Olympic gymnast. For once, it’s a rom-com with aims of enchanting and disarming us rather than grossing us out of our minds.

The film’s greatest boon is its star, Sally Field, an actor of age who puts on a performance so range-y, powerful and tender that it all but wipes today’s young, sparkling starlets from memory. She plays Doris, a sixtysomething recluse who’s lived in her mother’s cluttered house in Staten Island her whole life. Doris falls into lonely despair when her mother passes away but thankfully has her job as a paper pusher to keep her busy during the day. She’s the only person over 40 at her company though her role as office outcast could be more attributed to her cat-lady eccentricities (cat-eye glasses, headscarves, wooly knits and all).

Hope of getting Doris unstuck from her rut arrives in the form of her company’s new art director, a strapping, decades-younger Los Angeles transplant amusingly named John Fremont (New Girl‘s Max Greenfield). On several occasions, we get lost with Doris in fantasy as she daydreams about John confessing his love for her in front of their colleagues and hooking up with him in the breakroom. Field is ungodly adorable as she fumbles and fawns, and Greenfield does a good job of keeping us in suspense as to whether or not Doris has got a shot at John’s heart.

With encouragement from her best (only) friend, Roz (Tyne Daly)—who takes her to a life-altering lecture by motivational speaker Willy Williams (Peter Gallagher)—Doris decides it’s time to make a change and begins fashioning herself to John’s interests (facilitated by Roz’s granddaughter, who schools her on the art of Facebook stalking), making a concerted, somewhat creepy effort to cougar her way into John’s arms. Suddenly, she’s clumsily throwing around millennial slang, rocking neon yellow outfits and going to indie electro-pop shows headlined by John’s favorite band, Baby Goya and the Nuclear Winters (where the two “coincidentally” bump into each other).

Just as a tight friendship starts to form between them and the thought of romance doesn’t seem so inconceivable, John meets another woman, bringing Doris’ dreams crashing down. In a drunken fit of desperation, she sabotages John’s new relationship (via a lovelorn timeline post from her fake Facebook account), a plan that naturally backfires and leads to even more heartbreak. Showalter and co-writer Laura Terruso—who directed the short the movie is based on as a student of Showalter’s at New York University—hit every romantic, comedic, and dramatic beat so well that the movie transcends genre. This makes for such an enjoyable experience because, instead of trying to predict where the story’s going, we’re allowed to let go of preconception and go wherever the emotions may take us. Every laugh, every heartbreak, every moment feels sincere, not hokey or contrived. Nothing’s cheap; everything’s earned. The movie’s liberating in that way.

Field is so talented it’s scary. It should go without saying—she’s a two-time Oscar winner, after all—but the sad reality is that female actors over 50 are typically relegated to secondary, tertiary, often motherly roles. Her career, tragically, supports that narrative. But that’s why Hello, My Name Is Doris is such a gift; in all her glory, we get to see Field showcase her unparalleled mastery of physical comedy (watching Doris quiver and drool as John pumps up her deflated gym-ball office chair is insanely funny) as well as her earth-shattering dramatic chops. In the movie’s most powerful, unsettling scene, Doris hops up onto her couch, screaming at her brother (Stephen Root) to leave her house as she tearfully refuses to clear out the piles of old magazines and expired food her mother left behind. It’s scenes like this that reveal the psychological complexity bubbling beneath Doris’ cartoonish exterior. Such a wonderfully weird, layered character is only safe in the hands of an actor of Field’s caliber.

After making films about social recluses (Curling), ex-convicts (Vic + Flo Saw a Bear) and venturing into documentaries on animals (Bestiaire) and factory workers (Joy of Man’s Desiring), French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté sets his sights on the upper class in Boris Without Béatrice. Its story, about a successful businessman confronting his own privilege after a surreal encounter, will undoubtedly rub people the wrong way given its sympathetic view towards an unsympathetic protagonist, but fans of Côté’s precise, arresting style will find plenty to enjoy, even if it’s in strictly formal terms.

James Hyndman plays Boris Malinovsky, a middle-aged man as arrogant as he is successful. Early scenes establish Boris’ rich lifestyle and hubris, like when he gets furious at the cashier of a high-class clothing store for asking him too many questions or crashes a town hall to lambast the mayor for not prioritizing an unpaved road near his house. But Boris’ obnoxious sense of pride and short temper might be influenced by added stress at home; his wife Béatrice (Simone-Élise Girard), a minister for the Canadian government, has come down with a severe depression that’s left her mute and bedridden. Boris, unable to deal with his wife’s ailment, hires Klara (Isolda Dychauk) to take care of her while he continues an affair with co-worker Helga (Dounia Sichov). It’s a typical case of someone using their wealth to fill the holes in their life with something else, rather than putting the work in to try and gain back what’s lost.

For a character so stuck in his own self-inflated world, it will take a lot to shake Boris from his foundation. Enter Denis Lavant as an unknown stranger, who leaves a message in Boris’ mailbox urging him to meet late at night in a nearby quarry. Their meeting, which feels like Côté’s version of the Cowboy scene in Mulholland Drive, has Lavant (who electrifies the film just by showing up in a kurta) explaining to Boris that he’s the cause for Béatrice’s condition, and in order to cure her, he needs to change his life. The encounter throws Boris into a crisis that makes him re-evaluate his life while diving further into his selfish comforts when he starts an affair with Klara.

While Boris Without Béatrice may be Côté’s first time dealing with affluent characters, he’s far from the first filmmaker to explore the problems people can afford to have, and the thematic familiarity can make certain stretches feel a bit stale. But one of Côté’s strengths has always been his ability to build an enclosed yet well-realized universe within each of his films, so it comes as no surprise that his style fits nicely when operating within the bubble of someone’s privileged existence.

Teaming up with cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné, Côté extends the functional qualities of the narrative to the film’s visuals. Just as every action in the film leads to a direct reaction involving some other aspect of the story— Béatrice’s health improves or worsens depending on how Boris acts—Côté uses environments to make a direct commentary on each character’s current state, whether it’s obscuring Béatrice behind reflective surfaces or using the vertical lines throughout Boris’ sleek estate to make him appear separated from others within the same scene. Côté’s efficiency when it comes to establishing information through visuals is most effective when using flashbacks to show Boris reflecting on happier times with his wife. Shooting these (brief) moments in warm tones on what looks like 8mm film, the organic and textured look of the footage establishes that, despite his bad behavior, Boris’ love for Béatrice is real.

For any shortcomings Boris Without Béatrice might have storywise, Côté’s direction and his ensemble pick up the slack. It may lack the same unpredictability that made Vic + Flo Saw a Bear so strong, but Côté has firmly established himself as one of Canada’s strongest and most consistent directors working today.

2016 is the perfect time to make a sequel to the 2001 cult-ish classic, Zoolander. The vapid, narcissistic, pea-brained male models that populated that movie have now taken over the earth in the real world, in the form of the “selfie generation,” a bunch of real-life Derek Zoolanders, Mugatus and Hansels running around, staring at themselves like idiots in their little, digital mirrors as they dream of YouTube stardom and Kardashian-level success. I’m a big, fat, thirtysomething, generationally supplanted crank (make me young and beautiful again!) and I would love nothing more than to watch Ben Stiller and his middle-aged cohorts rip this new wave of self-obsessed monsters to shreds (too harsh?) via a new go-round with Mr. Magnum himself.

Zoolander 2 tries to do that and, and fails at all of it. Hard. Like, heartbreakingly hard. The movie opens with Justin Bieber being brutally shot to death and then taking a selfie before he peaces out. That and a selfie-stick car crash are really the only jokes we get about selfie culture, and they feel in bad taste, almost too real to laugh at (people applauded at the sight of Bieber getting shot to death in my theater, which I found to be more than a little sick). Zoolander is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, its male-model characters gifting us with the some of the most glorious displays of sheer stupidity put to screen. There was orange-mocha-frappuccino; the Mer-Man commercial; the iconic “Hansel. He’s so hot right now. Hansel.” That movie was a non-stop shit show of giant laughs that I enjoy to this day, so the fact that its sequel is so unfunny and off-base is a really tough pill to swallow.

The new story picks up with Derek (Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) estranged, both from each other and the outside world. Derek’s living as a “hermit crab” in a snowy cabin somewhere in “extreme northern New Jersey;” Hansel’s living in a desert hut, in a serious relationship with an orgy of lovers (which includes Keifer Sutherland, playing a straight-faced version of himself). They were driven apart by a freak accident at the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Who Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too that killed Derek’s wife and mother of his child, Matilda (Christine Taylor, who makes a couple of brief cameos) and scarred Hansel’s face irreparably. As a single parent, Derek fails again, losing his son, Derek Jr., to child services when he “can’t remember how mom made the spaghetti soft,” depriving his son of nourishment completely, apparently.

Derek and Hansel make up and reunite when they’re beckoned by the world’s latest, greatest designer, Don Atari (SNL’s Kyle Mooney, whose interpretation of passive-aggressive hipster youths is the movie’s highlight) to walk the runway in his ultra-hip garb. The joke’s on them when they’re shoved onto the runway in cheap shirts with the words “OLD” and “LAME” printed on them and they’re ridiculed by their glitzy, fresh-faced onlookers. The world’s passed them by (sob). There’s a larger, more pressing issue, however: There’s been a string of celebrity murders being investigated by the Fashion Police, led by Valentina (Penelope Cruz), who believes Derek has the key to finding the people responsible. Derek agrees, as long as she helps him reunite with his lost son.

The plot’s as uninteresting and flat as it sounds, a trashy send-up of the international spy thriller that chose to spoof that genre seemingly arbitrarily. But all that could be quickly forgiven with some good, solid comedy. Alas, Zoolander 2 isn’t funny, not one bit. The botch is in the approach: Stiller, who directed and co-wrote with Justin Theroux, Nicholas Stoller and John Hamburg, makes that godawful mistake most bad sequels make, attempting to emulate and bottle the magic of the first movie. This never works, and the fact that it’s now 15 years since Zoolander was released only makes things worse: Comedy has evolved many times over since 2001, and the same tricks don’t work anymore. A character being woefully uneducated and small-brained, for example, has been taken to new levels by, say, a show like It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (Charlie Kelly is the new king of dumb-funny). For this second installment to really work, it would have needed to reach new levels of stupid, in a sense. Instead, it reaches new depths of disappointing, leaning on nostalgia and old, worn-out tricks. Watching Derek go on a joy ride “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” was funny the first time, but not so much in 2016.

There’s a freaking ass-load of celebrity cameos in this thing, and not one of them is worth the dough it cost to get them on-screen. Sting pops up. Arianna Grande’s in there. Katy Perry. Benedict Cumberbatch. Billy Zane returns. Will Ferrell‘s back as walking bitch-fest Mugatu, and he’s even joined by Kristen Wiig, playing his vaguely European partner in crime, but even they seem off their game. None of these or the myriad other appearances are amusing and, in fact, they’re a bit uncomfortable to watch. Neil Degrasse Tyson shows up to say, directly at the camera, “I’m Neil Degrasse Tyson…BITCH!” Ooh! A respected educator and astrophysicist cursed! The moment’s clearly designed to make audiences explode in applause; instead, it only elicits groans and eye-rolls. We’re familiar with these cheap parlor tricks and we’re ready for something new, and all Stiller gives us is a regurgitated mess.

Filmmakers John Mitchell and Christina Zeidler are proud of their Canadian roots, wasting no opportunity to name drop neighborhoods to make it abundantly clear that Portrait of a Serial Monogamist takes place in Toronto. It’s something New Yorkers have been doing this for ages now with their city, so at least this film offers a perspective on a different area (though the proximity is fairly close). The film also presents a different take on the typical rom-com, as it features a middle-aged lesbian who’s a serial monogamist with a long history of broken hearts. Some of the gambles in the film don’t pan out, like needlessly breaking the fourth wall by speaking directly to the camera, but without risking failure, you’ll never attain success, a lesson that the central character soon learns the hard way.

Elsie (Diane Flacks) has been a serial monogamist since grade school. Now, as forty-something lesbian, she’s practically an expert at breaking up with existing girlfriends and starting new relationships. Yet when Elsie breaks up with her girlfriend Robyn (Carolyn Taylor) of five years, she uncharacteristically finds it difficult to move on. This is strange because Portrait of a Serial Monogamist opens with a monologue of Elsie confidently giving advice on how to properly break up with your partner, even ending her spiel with “after you’ve made your decision, never look back.”

Unable to take her own advice, Elsie seeks opinions from close friends on how to cope with being single again. Her first instinct is to listen to her friend who suggests she immediately start dating. In the best scene in the film, her friend Sarah (Sabrina Jalees) explains how the holy grail of the dating world is the dog park. Sarah insists that you can tell a lot about a potential partner by the breed of dog they own—she recommends staying away from owners of black labs and retrievers as they are loyalty breeds and stick to owners of more free-spirted breeds, like cocker spaniels and terriers. Due to Jalees’ comedic background, this scene plays out with a ton of laughs, but it’s also clever. In the same vein as the famous car door lock advice from A Bronx Tale, Sarah warns, “if anyone tells you their name before the dog’s name, run.”

But most of these shoddy suggestions just feed into her old ways of thinking. It becomes frustrating to watch her struggle between a younger new fling (who hardly seems promising) or her former long-standing lover Robyn. Several flashbacks throughout the film that indicate how much Elsie still thinks about Robyn, making it obvious to everyone except for Elsie that she should get back with her. Which leads to the biggest issue of the film—not getting a chance to properly value the relationship that the film is centered around. Because Portrait of a Serial Monogamist begins with Elsie immediately dumping Robyn, it’s difficult to feel the impact of why she was so important to Elsie.

Mitchell and Zeidler provide some valuable insight on how heartbreak and love go hand-in-hand, and how trying to avoid one will result in losing the other. But in the end, this light-hearted indie comedy suffers from stiff performances (aside from Jalees, who could have used some more screen time), and an abundance of subplots and clichés. At least Portrait of a Serial Monogamist follows the (eventual) advice of its characters by attempting to provide fresh ideas from a unique vantage point, even if it doesn’t completely succeed.

In traipsing Old-Hollywood comedy Hail, Caesar!, sibling duo Joel and Ethan Coen reflect on the cyclonic nature of showbiz, much like its spiritual predecessor, Barton Fink. That movie (which, my god, is now 25 years old) is nastier and more idiosyncratic, skewering the film industry with voracious (and incredibly funny) disdain. The Coens’ 2016 offering is more relaxed and lighthearted, but what it lacks in crackling energy and forward momentum it makes up for with finely tuned, detail-oriented jokes and an overabundance of charm.

The charm factor is in effect no more than during one of the film’s several movie-within-the-movie, genre-parody scenes, in which Channing Tatum (playing Burt Gurney, a Gene Kelly-like hoofer) performs a jaunty tap number in a sailor suit. (Few current screen actors can move like this man, and the Coens don’t squander the chance to let him tear up a song-and-dance routine.) The movie’s set in 1951, predominantly unfolding on the grounds of Capitol studios (the same fictional studio from Barton Fink), and Gurney’s ditty is one of the many movies being filmed on the sunny studio grounds, including a glittery synchronized-swimming production (starring an Esther Williams-channeling Scarlett Johansson) and “Hail, Caesar!,” a Ben Hur-style epic starring self-involved, strong-chinned leading man named Baird Whitlock (played by George Clooney in the vein of Charlton Heston).

While most of the characters we see are cleverly-packaged homages to the stars of Dream Factory heyday, one is taken straight from the Hollywood history books. Capitol is absolutely bustling with chaotic activity on a daily basis, and one man is responsible for holding the whole operation together: Eddie Mannix, a real-life, legendary studio exec who put out fires at MGM for years. He’s embodied by Josh Brolin, who leads the charge as the main focus and anchor of the otherwise scattered story. Mannix is a bulldozing man on a mission, zooming around the lot and around town making unblinking threats and using cool-headed negotiation tactics to keep all of his pictures running on schedule and in harmony. There’s no one better, and a lucrative job offer from Lockheed has him considering leaving the loopy microcosm of Capitol to make a bigger buck, albeit for dirtier work.

Much is made of Mannix’s soul searching; the film opens with him repenting in a confessional, a place we see him return to twice more as he considers the Lockheed offer and reflects on the more questionable facets of his moral make-up and career choices. Brolin and the Coens have always had a fruitful partnership, and while Mannix isn’t as monumental a creation as Llewelyn Moss, for instance, he’s still interesting enough to stand out amid the crowd of larger-than-life personalities running around the rest of the film.

One such personality (my favorite, in fact) is Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), a singing cowboy star who can perform eye-popping, impossible feats on horseback and has a gift for lasso acrobatics, but can’t read proper dialogue for squat. When he’s shoehorned into a production that calls for him to wear a tuxedo and walk into a room full of aristocrats speaking in Mid-Atlantic accents, it makes for one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in recent memory (watching the baby-faced buckaroo do his involuntary cowboy strut in a tuxedo nearly killed me). The comedy’s all in the details, like how the stuffy production is under the hilariously named “Laurence Laurentz Presents” banner. Hobie isn’t a mere caricature, though; later on, he plays a key role in the film’s plot that shows us that he’s a true hero (which explains why he’s so awkward on a proper movie set; he’s too genuine to fake anything).

The dilemma at the center of the story that keeps the movie from being a randomly arranged series of unrelated scenes involves the kidnapping of Baird Whitlock by a stable of scorned communist screenwriters. As Mannix tries his best to handle the situation, he’s bombarded by a litany of on-set issues: Johansson’s starlet is looking to avoid a pregnancy scandal; the great Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) refuses to tolerate Hobie’s atrocious line-reading skills. On top of that, he’s stalked by the film’s resident Hedda Hopper-esque columnists, persistent twin sisters played by a fantastic Tilda Swinton.

Mannix’s plate-spinning is involving enough, but I couldn’t help but yearn for more time with the rest of the cast. Johansson, Swinton and Tatum are super entertaining and part of me thinks it would have been nice to make Hail, Caesar a true ensemble piece, downsizing Mannix’s screen time a bit to give the others more room to do their thing. The Coens seem to be having a lot of fun stepping into the shoes of filmmakers from classical Hollywood and drinking in its grandiosity all while skewering the absurdity and silliness of its inherent artifice. They’ve become such assured storytellers and filmmakers that, even when they take it easy, we’re on the edge of our seats, grinning from ear to ear.

Fort Buchanan will screen in the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s series ‘Friends With Benefits: An Anthology of Four New American Filmmakers.’  To find out more about the series visit the ‘Friends With Benefits’ website.

While I’ve never served in the military (and thus have never been deployed), my family’s history has loads of this experience. While I often think about the grandparents and uncles and in-laws who have served, I rarely consider that while they were gone, they were forced to leave people behind—people who had to tackle childrearing as de facto single parents, as well as managing their own loneliness. In Fort Buchanan, writer/director Benjamin Crotty focuses on a group of military spouses and how they cope with childrearing and loneliness. However, the first-time filmmaker does so in the most peculiar of ways.

When his husband is deployed to Djibouti, Roger Sherwood (Andy Gillet) finds himself left alone to raise their 18-year-old adopted daughter Roxy (Iliana Zabeth). The two live on-base at Fort Buchanan, where they befriend a collection of other military wives whose husbands have also been deployed. As time passes, Roger finds himself increasingly distraught by loneliness, frustrated by his own weakness, and vexed by his blossoming daughter’s growing rebelliousness. That Roxy has become the object of desire of the lonely wives who are helping to raise her escapes Roger entirely, and efforts to address the emotional distance that comes with the geographic separation between Roger and his husband only make matters worse.

There’s something quite hypnotic about Fort Buchanan, a lean 65-minute feature that’s an expansion of Crotty’s 13-minute short film Fort Buchanan: Hiver. The film’s titular military base setting is quite perfect for the story, allowing for spouses to be believably absent while creating a space where Roger’s pangs of loneliness can coexist with the raging libido of a collective of horny housewives. That said, it’s really a base in name only; nothing about the setting says “military base” apart from the sign out front, and the setting feels more like a secluded resort deep in the Pocono woods, complete with something of a strapping and handsome farmhand/groundskeeper. It’s at this base/resort where the denizens spend their days lounging about without worry, discussing, among other things, the nicknames they have for their private parts.

This conversation actually happens, and it’s an emblem of the open sexuality that flows throughout the film. These wives, apart from their husbands for an unknown length of time, are allowed to go on “playdates” while their husbands are away. Once they clearly define their meaning of the word for Roger (he hears “playdate” and thinks back to when Roxy was a little girl), the playdates are revealed to be (mostly) of the sapphic variety. It’s here where a subplot begins about a friendly competition among the women to see who can bed the nubile, barely-legal Roxy first. This openness of sexuality, combined with cinematographer Michaël Capron’s lush 16mm lens and Ragnar Árni Ágústsson’s era-reminiscent score, gives this slice of the film’s narrative a very ’70s European cinema feel, invoking memories of films about sexual awakening like Just Jaekin’s Emmanuelle (1974).

All of this goes on right in front of Roger, whose physical and emotional detachment from his husband, coupled with his frustration at Roxy’s age-appropriate defiance, makes him mostly oblivious to it. In the film’s second act, Roger is determined to make some kind of connection with his husband, Frank (David Baiot), so he travels, unannounced, to Djibouti. Everyone else (Roxy and the wives) goes with him, as if on a vacation away from their vacation. They lounge in the heat of the African Republic’s climes (lending again to the idea that the military aspect of the film is for narrative convenience only) while Roger changes his appearance in an effort to mend his fractured marriage. While there, Roxy makes a heterosexual connection.

Not to be limited to tales of heartache and carnal pleasures, Crotty infuses a humor in Fort Buchanan that is something akin to slapstick. Moments of physical comedy occur when least expected, at times happening in the background while a more serious moment happens in the foreground. These tonal shifts might not do their specific scenes any particular favors, but they are genuinely funny, and make considering the film as a greater whole a slightly different exercise.

The third act falters with the introduction of a new character who appears to have been added so Crotty can take the film down a darker path. I like the idea in general, and the ending fits with the film’s subtle theme of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but with only a 65-minute runtime, the character would have been better served being introduced and developed earlier. Still, the third act is a stunner on its own.

Fort Buchanan is a terrific first feature and with it, Crotty proves he is fearless in the face of defying conventional filmmaking. The film, while not perfect, is in that sweet spot of being both enjoyable on its own and an indicator of the kind of talent Crotty has. Given time to hone his skills and focus his creative efforts, Benjamin Crotty could be around for a long time.

Inspired by true events (or so the opening title card claims), The Tail Job is a comedy that’s high on energy but low on laughs, getting by on its committed cast and a Hollywood-friendly narrative. After a violent and pointless opening, the film cuts to Nicholas (Blair Dwyer) taking a cab driven by Trevor (Craig Anderson) to spy on a woman with his camera. When Trevor asks Nicholas what he’s doing, he says the woman is his fiancée Mona, and he’s trying to find evidence that she’s having an affair. Several days earlier, Nicholas looked at Mona’s phone and saw her exchanging flirty messages with a man named Sio Bohan, and Nicholas wants to catch them together. Trevor takes sympathy on Nicholas, deciding to help him tail Mona for the night in order to find out who the mysterious Sio Bohan really is.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Nicholas misread the name of Mona’s girlfriend Siobhan as Sio Bohan; in fact, it only takes someone smarter than Nicholas or Trevor to make that discovery. It’s a cute misunderstanding that makes for a funny anecdote, but as the foundation for a feature-length film it runs out of steam almost immediately. Either way, the mistake causes Trevor and Nicholas to follow a bunch of false leads and red herrings until they get the attention of a dangerous gangster who actually happens to be named Sio Bohan, who sends out his goons to take care of them for some reason or another.

The Tail Job’s plot is deliberately silly, with co-directors/co-writers Bryan Moses and Daniel Millar using the standard formula for a Hollywood mystery/thriller and throwing in whatever absurdity they can. That approach can work, except the Siobhan/Sio Bohan mix-up is pretty much the height of what kind of comedy the film offers. Jokes constantly fall flat or go for the lowest common denominator, whether it’s a hacker insisting that only “full penetration” counts as cheating or a prostitute whose only purpose is to point out that she has a lot of sex. None of it works, and the poor treatment of the (very few) female characters only makes the comedy look worse.

But as problematic as The Tail Job’s script might be, it does inspire a few laughs when it skewers the kinds of familiar story beats and lines of dialogue we’re used to. Moses and Millar have a good understanding of how the genre they’re operating within works, along with a lot of ingenuity and technical skills that make good use of their small budget. That, combined with Dwyer and Anderson’s strong performances, gives The Tail Job a momentum that helps move things along, a quality that goes a long way when dealing with a comedy that just isn’t funny.

Following in the footsteps of Alex Ross Perry’s comedies and 2014 SXSW winner Fort Tilden (whose co-lead Clare McNulty shows up here in a small role), Robert Putka’s MAD deals almost exclusively with watching selfish, heinous people behave in selfish, heinous ways, with Putka setting his sights on a dysfunctional family and their bipolar mother. Mel (Maryann Plunkett) suffers a breakdown after her husband leaves her, winding up in the hospital when she’s found uncontrollably sobbing by her neighbours. Mel’s daughters Connie (Jennifer Lafleur), a successful corporate worker with a husband and two kids, and Casey (Eilis Cahill), unemployed and trying to figure out her life, convince her to commit herself to a psych ward in order to rehabilitate herself, a choice fueled more by selfishness than a sincere desire to help their mom.

Of course, being a family with its fair share of relationship issues, every interaction ends up devolving into a brutal war of words between mother and daughter(s). Putka, who also wrote the screenplay, knows how to write some great passive-aggressive barbs (when a dejected Mel tells Connie that her daughters hate her, Connie calmly responds with “Casey doesn’t hate you”), and his game cast do a great job making their arguments crackle until the acid-tongued screenplay gets the better of everyone. For the most part, Putka’s tonal balance between sweet and bitter works (largely because of Plunkett’s performance), but the constant repetition of Connie or other characters lashing out at one another takes its toll, eventually making scenes feel like Putka trying to constantly one-up his own insults. That makes MAD work against itself when it tries to humanize its three leads, resulting in a rocky ending when the film goes for an emotionally satisfying payoff. Fans of extremely caustic humour should get their fill with MAD, and while Putka’s attempt to find a middle ground between the sincere and cynical doesn’t entirely work (a hard task for anyone to accomplish, let alone a first feature), he shows enough wit to make MAD’s ambitions worthwhile.

My earliest recollection of watching a road movie dates back to my youth when a local TV station aired the series of Bob Hope/Bing Crosby/Dorothy Lamour Road to… comedy pictures. Since then, I’ve amassed a lot of cinematic road miles with everything from It Happened One Night to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and from Thelma & Louise to Nebraska. The latest offering of what is most definitely a road movie is set not in 20th century America, but rather 19th century Romania. It’s unlike any road movie I’ve seen before but in the most positive of ways.

Radu Jude’s Aferim!, set in Wallachia (Romania) in 1835, tells the tale of Costandin (Teodor Corban), a law enforcement official who, with his son Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu), embarks on a manhunt. The man they are hunting is Carfin (Toma Cuzin), a gypsy who was caught having an affair with the wife of Iordache (Alexandru Dabija), a boyar (high-ranking aristocrat) now fixed on revenge. Costandin and Ionita trek on horseback across various terrains, searching from village to village to find their man.

If that sounds like a Golden Age Hollywood western, believe me when I say it feels like one, too. This is just one of the great joys of Aferim!—how Jude, who co-wrote the screenplay with Florin Lazarescu, structures the film in a way that harkens back to a film like Howard Hawks’ great western Red River. In that film, John Wayne and Montgomery Clift play a father/(adopted) son leading a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail, but it isn’t getting from Point A to Point B that’s important; it’s what happens during the drive that is key. The same approach is taken here. The pursuit of Carfin is little more than an excuse to allow circumstances to unfold with and between the father/son duo during the trip. In both cases, the journey is more important than the destination.

More homage paid to the American western—or rather, more specifically, paid to director John Ford, a master of the genre—is Jude’s use of B&W film and his compilation of stunning long shots of the Romanian countryside. Helping Jude achieve his vision is cinematographer Marius Panduru, who dulls the contrast between the darks and lights to achieve something more visually fitting to humanity’s geo-centric bleakness of the time period.

Aferim! does not hesitate to depict the cruel history of slavery, racism, misogyny, and lawless corruption that existed in that region and at that time. The abuse of gypsy slaves, both verbal and physical, ranges from unsettling to harrowing (particularly in one instance of justice meted vigilante-style). Women are, by law, inferior to men, and the attitude towards other ethnicities, especially in one chunk of dialogue spewed by a clergyman (!), is shocking. Given the abundance of gypsy slaves in that part of the world during that era, the reminders of how cruel a people they were is constant. Being juxtaposed against such a beautifully lensed backdrop makes it that much more unforgettable.

Jude adds one additional dimension to his film that doesn’t soften the blow of dealing with Romania’s dark history head-on, but it sure does provide the occasional respite: humor. And not just any humor, but bawdy, raucous humor that uses foul language so liberally it’s like the script was seasoned by a salt shaker full of hand grenades. The frankness of language is initially disarming given the visual aesthetic, the need for subtitles, and the blunt delivery, but it quickly becomes a natural part of the film’s dialogue, mostly delivered by Costandin as if he were a character created by Judd Apatow.

As for Costandin, he’s a bullish, boorish old man whose verbal arsenal is never short on hilarious stories, couplets, quotes, or homespun wisdom, all of which he imparts on his son. (My favorite line: “Even a fallen tree rests.” Whatever that means.) Teodor Corban, who is in nearly every scene and has more than the most dialogue of any player, performs marvelously in this role. He’s a natural, delivering his lines with great bombast but never to the point of caricature.

Rounding out this excellent production are Dana Paparuz’s costumes and Trei Parale’s Romanian folk-infused score. Both add a high degree of authenticity to the film that helps transport the viewer to that point in time.

The triple-threat of imagery, history, and comedy, salted with language and made even better by a terrific lead performance, all combine to make Aferim! a road picture like no other. This is my first Radu Jude film, and it’s one that has me eager to find his previous two.

Charlie Kaufman’s inventive, solipsistic narratives have consistently left cinephiles spellbound since he collaborated with Spike Jonze to reify Being John Malkovich in 1999. Through his screenplays for both Jonze and French filmmaker Michel Gondry, Kaufman earned a reputation few screenwriters attain. His distinct voice leapt off the page and manifested itself as a palpable entity onscreen. It has been seven years since Kaufman tried his hand at directing with Synecdoche, New York, and now he has discovered yet another fresh method through which to present his meditations on the intricacies and significance of human interaction.

Anomalisa is a claustrophobic stop-motion adventure that echoes much of the text present in Synecdoche, but funnels it through a decidedly less convoluted portal of expression. The great majority of the film takes place in a hotel, cleverly and relevantly titled “The Fregoli,” in which businessman Michael Stone (exceptionally voiced by David Thewlis) spends the night before giving a speech about the customer service industry. Like all of Kaufman’s protagonists, he is insatiably dissatisfied with his life, which he feels is despairingly mundane. The city of Cincinnati, in which the imaginary hotel is located, reverberates with blandness. Everyone Michael encounters seems to be repeating the same tired taglines. They insist he try the famous chili and proclaim he absolutely must see the zoo. Unsurprisingly, Michael has zero interest in either suggestion.

In terms of design, Kaufman, in collaboration with Duke Johnson, has cultivated an ability to frame his material so it’s both creative and digestible. With Anomalisa, Kaufman finds inspiration on a smaller scale, but manages to maintain an active imagination within the boundaries of his aesthetic. He and Johnson meticulously craft the architecture of The Fregoli to sculpt the oppressive impression of isolation in the mind of their audience. One paranoid dream sequence in the film’s second half is particularly impressive. Like past projects, his recent venture into animation once again ruminates on how banal and unfulfilling our lives are. Anomalisa, perhaps even more so than Synecdoche, is obsessed with the idea that nothing in life is truly concrete outside of one’s intrinsic awareness of the self. Nothing occurring within our lives is obtainable outside of the fact that we are able to think and perceive. Labeling Kaufman as a nihilist would be inaccurate. He affirms that life can be meaningful, but only in fleeting moments. If anything, he’s a miserablist, creatively trapped in his bleak interpretation of human existence.

Many viewers will relate to his desolate conclusion and find solace in his art, but the thesis that long-term happiness is essentially unachievable registers as unforgiving as opposed to illuminating. The brief moment of joy shared between Michael and a woman he encounters at the hotel, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is undermined by a final lament that deconstructs the daunting image of its true value. These fleeting moments Kaufman illustrates become memories, and they, in navigating a dark and inhospitable world, are what we must cling to. Our survival is ensured not by genuine satisfaction, but by an image of it. After all, isn’t a memory just an image of a prior experience? According to Anomalisa, the experiences that form these memories are few and far between, and the majority of days we walk the earth, we will inevitably fail to encounter such happiness. In a world where aging couples can maintain a romance that began a half-century earlier, and where parents can lovingly watch their children develop into young men and women, the ideas underneath Michael’s existential crisis register as possessing little truth in the grand scheme of things. It’s not times of happiness that are ephemeral, but times of sorrow. Kaufman does sporadically use dry wit to assuage the misery of his conceit, and the intricacies of his aesthetic exhibit remarkable craftsmanship. But anyone with a generally positive disposition toward life will find very little insight in Anomalisa’s pervasive cloud of existential darkness.

Originally published on November 17th, 2015 as part of our AFI Festival coverage.

David O. Russell continues establishing himself as a top name in mainstream prestige fare with Joy, albeit in a different direction compared to his last three features. The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle showed off Russell’s strengths when it came to working with ensembles, whereas Joy prefers to keep its focus on one character. That means a more streamlined narrative compared to, say, American Hustle, although Russell’s own formula since his career’s resurgence is still here, even if it doesn’t cast as wide of a net. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Joy is a rather simple and entertaining film, a biopic of sorts that works best when seen as a strange, unique and slightly true success story.

In a clear case of not fixing what isn’t broken, Russell works with Jennifer Lawrence yet again in her biggest role for him to date. Inspired by the true story of Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop and other successful household items, the film starts with Joy (Lawrence) bearing the burden of her needy family. Joy’s mother Terry (Virginia Madsen) stays in bed all day watching soap operas, and her ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez) lives in the basement. Joy’s grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd) takes care of Joy and Tony’s two children while she works whatever jobs she can to pay the bills, including helping out the business run by her father Rudy (Robert De Niro) and half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm). On top of all this, Joy can’t shake her own disappointment in not pursuing her dreams of inventing.

It’s only when Rudy starts dating the wealthy Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) that Joy seizes on the opportunity to see her idea of the Miracle Mop through. It’s in this early section of the film that Russell leans on the familial elements that made The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook so successful. Joy’s family oscillates between being a support and a weight for her, with their individual idiosyncrasies either providing a funny narrative detour or an obstacle to Joy achieving her goals. Russell sometimes likes to start a new scene with only Joy before bringing in her family to overpower the proceedings (at one point Russell frames a meeting between Joy and Trudy as a one-on-one before revealing her friends and family surrounding them in the same room). Russell never goes so far as to paint Joy’s immediate family as villains in the story, understanding the complexities of blood relations. For instance: when Joy complains about needing a good sleep, her family’s response is to feed her a bottle of children’s cough syrup while she lays down on the stairs. They’re not malicious people so much as their best intentions do more harm than good.

The specificity of Joy’s family and experiences goes a long way to helping Russell establish that Joy should not be taken as some sort of symbol for the American dream in action. At first blush, Mangano’s tale does come across as an ideal example of working hard to make one’s own success, but in this film’s reality (Russell embellishes a lot of facts, and not enough is publicly known about Mangano to know just how accurate some of the film’s events are) it’s too bizarre and specific to be taken that way. It’s only when Joy winds up at QVC that a station executive (Bradley Cooper, acting like Russell called him in as a favour to take advantage of his and Lawrence’s on-screen chemistry) starts hammering home the virtues of America as a land of opportunity. The fact that these themes get delivered around artificial sets within giant, empty spaces is probably not a coincidence.

If anything, Russell’s film is more of a celebration of individual resolve. Joy faces constant rejection over her ideas, but she never doubts her own instincts about her mop having the potential to be successful. Russell’s script vindicates Joy through a simple and clever move: the narrative always advances because of a decision Joy makes on her own. Her decision to use Trudy as an investor gets the mop made, her decision to go on TV to sell the Miracle Mop herself gets people to buy it in record numbers, and in the film’s anticlimactic final act—an attempt at a climactic confrontation that fizzles out as quickly as it’s introduced—Joy’s acting entirely on her own. Still, watching Lawrence (who turns in another great performance, although her youth gets the best of her in a clunky flash forward) seize control of her dreams from the hands of those trying to pilfer off of them is fun to watch, and Russell’s unwavering commitment to highlighting her self-earned achievements make it all the more effective.

Everyone’s got at least a few friends who aren’t the least bit excited by the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens this weekend. If they’re going to see a movie this weekend, it’ll probably be Sisters, and they’ll probably be left underwhelmed and bored to tears as they try to ignore the dispiriting sounds of laughter, cheers, and lightsabers clashing in the theater next door.

This endlessly dull house-party comedy stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as Kate and Maura (get it?), respectively, siblings who return to their childhood home when they’re informed that their parents have sold it to a snooty young couple. As a loving sendoff for the house, they throw a gigantic party, inviting all of their high school friends and dancing their adult cares away to cheesy ’80s and ’90s radio jams. Predictably, the party gets out of hand, laying bare the sisters’ deepest insecurities and frustrations with each other. Laughs, laughs, laughs, dramatic climax, sweet reconciliation, laughs. We’re all familiar with this studio-comedy formula by now, and I for one am beyond sick of it.

Poehler and Fey have a schtick, and it’s a good one. They’ve set several live television shows on fire together over the years. They’re a phenomenal package. It’s only logical that you’d give them a movie platform to do what they do best, but as a star vehicle, Sisters is a jalopy. The story’s barely there (it’s about their characters learning to let go of their childish ways or something), so all the pressure’s on the dynamic duo to be funny all the time and keep things entertaining. There are a handful of solid laughs here and there, but in a movie with literally hundreds of one-liners and slapstick gags being thrown at us in rapid succession, a handful ain’t gonna cut it.

The problem is that there’s no discipline to the storytelling, so the movie plays out like an improv fest where the jokes feel too standalone and random to support the story or the characters. Maura’s a divorced nurse who’s always trying to fix everyone else’s problems and Kate is a mom who needs to grow up herself if she ever expects her teenage daughter (Madison Davenport) to respect her. Clichéd as they are, these characters could have worked, but once the actors start flying off the cuff and doing their typical “crazy girl” thing, the notion of Maura and Kate quickly melts away and we’re left with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey and their run-of-the-mill Saturday Night Live yucks. Things get so scattered and feel so unscripted that it almost feels irrelevant to mention the movie’s director, Jason Moore—this is the Amy and Tina show, through and through.

Speaking of SNL, the only highlight of the film is current cast member Bobby Moynihan, who plays a wannabe life-of-the-party guy who incessantly spouts bad jokes and goes ape-shit when he accidentally snorts a pile of cocaine. Perhaps the movie’s biggest surprise is that Mya Rudolph, who’s almost always excellent and hilarious, is woefully unremarkable in her role as party-pooping mean girl. Rachel Dratch is here too, doing a watered-down, unfunny version of Debbie Downer. I expect more out of all of these people, and the fact that the youngest, least experienced SNL player of the bunch is the only one to register real laughs is frankly unbelievable.

The real bummer here is that we’ve all seen Poehler and Fey be great elsewhere. Hell, even their previous movie team-up, 2008’s Baby Mama, was pretty fun. But Sisters just feels like they jumped in front of a camera without a plan and rehashed that terrible brand of humor where they rely on the shock value of four-letter words and general crudeness instead of crafting real, clever punch lines. I weep for those who forego The Force Awakens for this forgettable failure.

Body kicks off with one of the strangest, most darkly comedic opening sequences in recent memory. A visibly deceased man, hanging by a noose from a tree, is cut down by crime scene investigators. As they discuss details of the apparent suicide, the man stands up and quietly begins to walk away. Thus begins Malgorzata Szumowska’s bizarre tale of grief and mental illness, which maintains the same level of absurdity throughout.

The tale of a middle-aged attorney (Janusz Gajos), his anorexic daughter (Justyna Suwala), and their grieving psychiatrist (Maja Ostaszewska), Body is an unusually crafted piece of cinema. Its humor is so dry that it’s almost nonexistent, but it often feels like the more intense, serious moments are played for laughs. It’s never completely apparent what Szumowska is going for. The psychiatrist’s unconventional relationship with her massive dog provides some hilarious insight into the woman’s life, and the interactions between the attorney and his daughter are uncomfortable to say the least. Body borders on surrealism at times, as the characters are almost too strange to exist in reality.

It’s not a particularly enjoyable film, but it’s certainly not a boring one. In the same year that saw the release of the late Marcin Wrona’s Demon, Body is yet another example of the daring cinema that’s currently coming out of Poland. It’s not for everyone, but it’s an interesting piece of art regardless.

It’s been an outstanding 2015 for Pixar. Coming just months after the studio’s conceptually elaborate and ingeniously inventive Inside Out is the more traditional, poetic and pure The Good Dinosaur. The former is a dazzling exploration of the human mind, the latter an agrarian ballad of the soul. Directed by Pete Sohn, The Good Dinosaur flips the classic boy-and-his-pet tale on its head with an odd role reversal: the towering beast is the talkative one, his human sidekick a non-speaking, mangy, doglike traveling partner. Still, the story’s mostly rooted in convention, fueled by good-natured, broad comedy and familiar life lessons to any and all Disney fanatics. It doesn’t break new ground in the same ways Inside Out does, but in the realm of visual artistry and craftsmanship, The Good Dinosaur is king.

Before any of the characters say a word, we get a demonstration of just how insane(ly talented) the digital artists at Pixar really are. Lush landscapes are blanketed by golden sunshine, shadows cast by the plants and animals living in tranquil harmony. It’s unmistakably our world (it’s breathtakingly convincing, really), but with a twist. As the movie opens we see earth 65 million years ago, around the time of the dinosaurs’ extinction. Rather than colliding with big blue, it whiffs and zooms onward into the cosmos, birthing an alternate timeline in which dinosaurs rule the planet for millions of years to come.

With knobby knees and an endearing lack of coordination, our leaf green apatosaur hero, Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), is welcomed into the world by Momma (Frances McDormand) and Poppa (Jeffrey Wright), hard-working farmers who hope he and his siblings, Libby and Buck, will help them tend to the family’s land for generations to come. This first portion of the story feels the most familiar, with the kids learning responsibility by plowing the fields and feeding the chickens at the foot of a toothy mountain range, the teeming landscape looking a lot like the American Northwest.

Arlo’s a bit of a runt and has an issue with fear, an undesirable trait Poppa’s determined to stomp out by taking him on a hunting mission, their target a young human “critter” who keeps stealing from the family’s corn harvest. A dark storm builds during their riverside pursuit, and Poppa tragically gets swept away by a flash flood, Mufasa-style. The family mourns, and just a short time later, Arlo sees the critter swiping corn yet again. He pursues with vengeance on his mind but, like his father, he gets swept away by the river’s current, leaving him stranded miles from home. His unlikely companion on his journey home is the critter, Spot (Jack Bright), a homo sapien who scrambles around on all fours and barks and snarls at anything of interest (Looney Toon the Tasmanian Devil comes to mind). Together, the once-enemies learn to trust one another as they search for home, meeting colorful allies and baddies along the way.

Mother nature is unquestionably the star of the show, arguably taking precedence over Arlo and Spot. There’s a strong sense that nature is the be-all-end-all, this enormous, beautiful, unfathomably powerful thing that the characters are at the mercy of at any given moment. Many movies cast our planet as a pretty backdrop, nothing more. But the folks at Pixar are more thoughtful than that, invoking the almost religious reverence of the great outdoors of classic great plains westerns and the films of Werner Herzog. Dinosaur feels most like a western when Arlo and Spot meet a family of t-rex buffalo herders, led by a grizzly, slow-talkin’ patriarch, played by the most popular cowboy thesp of the moment, Sam Elliott (the designers cleverly fashion the characters’ top teeth to resemble the actor’s signature snowy ‘stache).

The movie’s got a lot on its mind, touching on themes of family, loss, fear, and even the timeless battle between herbivores and carnivores: early on, Spot scavenges for animals and grubs for Arlo to eat, all of which repulse the long-necked plant eater. Eventually, they bond over their shared love of fresh berries and even share a moment where they wordlessly consider the value of fresh fruit. What’s problematic is that the film only touches on these ideas and doesn’t follow through in a fulfilling way, save for the main theme regarding Arlo finding courage in compassion. The story also seems to be leaning towards a message of chosen family, but that all gets undone in the end when Arlo and Spot make a heartbreaking decision that, while emotionally wrenching, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

These issues are easier to swallow when you consider how touchingly the characters’ friendship is developed. The movie’s most tender moment involves Arlo and Spot using sticks and lines drawn in the dirt to express to each other the hurt they feel for their lost loved ones. It’s nice to have a movie come along every once in a while that lets its characters shut up for a minute and appreciate their surroundings. The Good Dinosaur is more humble than Pixar’s typical fare, choosing to refine and riff on familiar ideas and themes rather than build new ones from the ground up and live on the cutting edge. It doesn’t feel hip and new, but timeless and classical, like movies from Disney Animation’s ’90s glory days.

Once a director gets classified as a provocateur, it’s a label that can be hard to shake off. Rick Alverson earned that title three years ago with The Comedy, his extremely uncomfortable (and funny) takedown of ironic detachment. In that film, Tim Heidecker played someone who thrived on being repulsive and confrontational, and it was easy to treat his character as a symbol for a specific, rotting part of today’s culture. Entertainment, Alverson’s follow-up, is another piece of provocation that will naturally get compared and contrasted with The Comedy; Heidecker returns to co-write the screenplay (and show up in a cameo), and Alverson continues showing off his knack for creating interactions that can have people crawling in agony towards the exits. But Entertainment provokes in a more insidious manner than The Comedy. If Alverson’s previous film focused on attacking character, stretching a protagonist’s “likability” to the breaking point and beyond (think of Heidecker’s character as less of an anti-hero and more of an asshole), then his latest work sets its sights on dismantling structure and narrative. That makes Entertainment feel more specific and less like a commentary or something symbolic, so it can be harder to glean what Alverson’s real intent might be with his increasingly surreal story. The results are murkier, for better and worse.

So it makes sense to cast someone like Gregg Turkington in the central role, a person whose career involves blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Turkington is known best as Neil Hamburger, a comedian who specializes in antihumour, taking familiar aspects of stand-up comedy and performance and aggressively going against expectations. But in recent years he’s also played “Gregg Turkington,” a version of himself that co-hosts the web series On Cinema, along with being involved in its spinoff Decker. In Entertainment, Turkington plays “The Comedian,” a stand-up travelling across the Mojave Desert with his act (an exact version of Turkington’s Neil Hamburger character). A young clown (Tye Sheridan) appears from time to time as an opener with his own baffling act, but The Comedian travels alone, making pit stops in between his performances to indifferent crowds. Alverson expectedly basks in every millisecond of painful silence that comes after Turkington/Hamburger barks out another one of his offensive jokes. Enjoying these scenes, and enjoying Entertainment as a whole, is largely a make or break affair; either you like Turkington’s brand of comedy or you don’t.

The majority of Entertainment plays out as a portrait of one man’s loneliness, with Turkington usually framed in a way that makes him look swallowed up by the desert landscapes (Lorenzo Hagerman’s cinematography is one of, if not the best parts of the film). His interactions with people are usually brief, except for a sequence where he visits a cousin (John C. Reilly) who’s too business-minded to comprehend what The Comedian’s purpose really is. A series of voicemails The Comedian makes to his daughter (who’s never seen or heard) throughout also provides a little bit of characterization, even if it feels like it’s there to make the character look like more of a desperate sad sack. It’s only until a meeting with a chromotherapist (Lotte Verbeek), followed by a brutal encounter with a drunk heckler (Amy Seimetz) that Alverson starts letting go of his formal grip on the film, providing one surreal encounter after another that escorts The Comedian from the purgatory of his desert tour to some sort of deranged, Lynchian hell. Levels of discomfort get ratcheted up considerably as The Comedian’s disdain of others, along with accepting his own pitiful existence, reach a fever pitch when he makes it to the final stop on his trip. Entertainment ends with the image of The Comedian laughing hysterically, which is both the character’s most expressive moment in the film and the point where Alverson lets go of the film’s connection to any form of reality. The Comedian’s eventual acceptance of his own existence as a punchline doesn’t land as strongly as it should, a result of Alverson’s tendency to create compelling scenes that stand on their own yet link together in an aimless fashion, but there’s something powerful in Entertainment’s ability to push down into the darkest depths without any hesitation. Alverson, whose singular style makes him one of US indie’s most important voices right now, confirms what The Comedy established three years ago: he’s a filmmaker brimming with potential, but for the time being someone to watch rather than behold.

Movies are sometimes easiest to explain in terms of personality. You have your strong, silent types. Your deep and profound types. Your clever and witty types. And of course, unfortunately, the excruciatingly socially awkward types. If Funny Bunny were a person they’d be that guy you avoid desperately at parties. They’d be the person you’d be incredibly tempted to be pulled into an argument with, but know that it’s a fruitless endeavor. Funny Bunny is that person who prides themselves on being as idiosyncratic as possible while simultaneously believing they stand for deep and moral issues. Funny Bunny thinks it’s both complex and interesting. Spoiler alert: it’s neither.

Alison Bagnall now has three films under her directorial belt with Funny Bunny, and having written all three herself—not to mention a fourth, her screenwriting debut Buffalo ’66—it’s easy to decipher her preferred storytelling technique. Which is to create the most unusual people possible, throw them together, add a dash of drama and see what happens. It may boil down to how much weird you can personally handle, or finding bits and pieces of these strange characters to identify with, but, at least in the case of Funny Bunny, it all forms a rather frustrating, incomplete, and just plain gawky viewing experience.

The film begins with quirky character #1, Gene (Kentucker Audley), a divorcee and door-to-door activist raising awareness of the childhood obesity epidemic. During his daily crusading he comes to the house/mini-mansion of quirky character #2, Titty (Olly Alexander), who invites Gene in, runs away giggling and then awkwardly invites him to a sleepover. Gene has enough sense to find that strange, but when his ex-wife and her new man kick Gene out of their house for good, Gene decides to take Titty up on that sleepover offer. Titty is happy to take him in with nary a word about being complete strangers to one another. Titty shows Gene his computer where a girl in a wig, holding a bunny, cries into the camera that she doesn’t have the funds to cover medical expenses for her poor rabbit. Titty eagerly pulls out his credit card and types in the numbers. The girl perks up, thanking him over and over.

Turns out Titty is a trust fund kid who sued his parents and now lives alone, emotionally stunted and harboring some blatant mommy-issues. The girl on the computer screen is quirky character #3, Ginger (Joslyn Jensen), an animal rights activist who spends quite a bit of time in front of her online audience. Titty has developed quite the crush on Ginger and when he tells Gene about his feelings they decide the only logical thing to do is go see her. The two of them jump into Gene’s beat up old van the next day, buy Ginger a new bike, and show up at her back door bright-eyed and eager to make friends. She threatens them with a knife, declaring how creepy their actions are. It’s probably the most true-to-life reaction of the entire film.

Soon enough she comes around and invites the two of them to camp out in her backyard. She introduces them to the animal rights activist she follows and Gene and Titty are privy to a plan to set pigs free from a local farm in protest—though before that a member of the activist group did oddly offer to murder a toddler in the name of the cause. Afterward, Titty, Gene, and Ginger get drunk together and Ginger dances for them in what is a painfully long and puzzling scene.

From here out the script tries to develop some sort of love triangle between Titty, Gene, and Ginger. Each guy gets some alone time with Ginger, and each time she portrays intense signs of trauma and possible former physical abuse when she rejects their physical advances. The film seems as though it may pick up speed when the pig-freeing caper goes wrong for one of the group, but it figures itself out easily enough and the film ends almost without notice.

Bagnall makes some interesting artistic decisions with Funny Bunny, choosing to linger quite long on her subjects. She seems to pride herself on what most would consider painfully extensive scenes of emotional reactions. With so little backstory and such eccentric characteristics defining these characters, it’s almost impossible to understand the depth of these emotional reactions and feel any sympathy. Combined with the in-and-out of focus panning of the camera lens, dark lighting, and lack of music the film is mostly baffling with hardly much to commend it. Jensen is put on the line most, acting Ginger’s passionate and troubled outbursts for extended periods and maintaining the most credibility of these three excessively strange characters.

It isn’t necessarily Bagnall’s attraction to outliers and weirdos in her stories that ultimately hinders Funny Bunny, it’s the alienation that occurs when viewers are asked to empathize and care about the emotional bursts of these strange people simply because they are dramatic. The people of this film may be outlandish, but its plot is so thin that the overall effect is distinctly dull. Somehow, I think even animal rights activists, rich teenagers, and childhood obesity advocates would balk at the proceedings of Funny Bunny, which makes one wonder who out there is this film intended for?

Milly (Toni Collette) and Jess (Drew Barrymore) have been done everything together since they were kids, but their friendship threatens to splinter when Jess is blessed with a new life while Milly’s is cut tragically short. Miss You Already is a powerful, sincere cancer drama that explores beautifully the anguish and frustration of dealing with a terminal disease. Milly and Jess run through myriad coping mechanisms in the final chapter of their lifelong friendship though one of them—humor—becomes the film’s greatest weakness.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke and written by Morwenna Banks, the movie is full of levity—as is the case with most best friends, much of Milly and Jess’ friendship is defined by laughter. None of the comedy works, however, which is sad considering the film’s dramatic beats are so excellently handled. Nevertheless, in this case, the positives outweigh the negatives. Platonic love stories are a rare commodity at the movies these days, and Miss You Already is one that will leave a lasting impression.

The movie quickly lays out the friends’ history in storybook fashion: a young Jess moves to England from Americ and meets Milly, who’s quick to protect her from bullies and share her favorite British curse words. From then on, all of their formative life experiences are shared: they kiss boys for the first time together, they go to a concert where Milly loses her virginity to a rock god backstage, and Jess offers bedside emotional support during the births of Milly’s two children. Now deep into adulthood, Milly’s a successful publicist and has a family with her husband, Kit (Dominic Cooper), while Jess works for a non-profit and lives on a houseboat with her husband, Jago (Paddy Considine).

When Milly is diagnosed with terminal cancer, the friendship is dealt a heavy blow. Milly nosedives, falling back into bad habits (drinking, lies, infidelity) as Jess tries her best to be the best cheerleader she can. She and Jago have been trying to have a baby for a long time, but when she receives the wonderful news that they’re finally pregnant, she can’t bring herself to tell Milly as she vomits and her hair falls out from the chemo. Milly’s always been self-centered and needy, a characteristic her condition only amplifies, and when Jess catches her in a hurtful lie it’s the last straw. She’s not the only one driven away by Milly’s sour attitude, as Kit finds himself struggling to continue loving her when all her best qualities have faded away. He throws her a surprise birthday party; she throws food at her friends and storms out. He tries to help her with the kids; she gives him the cold shoulder.

These moments of friction are acted and written so incredibly well and are so powerful that it becomes a herculean task to hold back tears as you watch. It’s melodramatic through and through, but the honesty of the acting breaks down any notion that there’s artifice involved. You couldn’t ask for a better performance from Collette, who’s a thunderstorm of rage and venom and passion in every scene. It’s intense stuff she delivers, but Barrymore balances out the act with calmness and wordless compassion that warms the soul. Her best moments involve Jess saying nothing at all and just opening her eyes and ears, thinking deeply about how exactly she’s going to help her best friend. Cooper and Considine know exactly how to make an impression without forgetting that the show belongs to their female counterparts. They do get a nice little scene together, though, in which the two husbands joke that they should perhaps run off together and start life anew as a bromantic couple.

It can be irritating being around two friends who communicate almost entirely in inside jokes, and that’s what Miss You Already feels like a lot of the time. The story swells and reaches great heights when it deals with personal drama, but all of that emotion dries up every time Jess and Milly exchange jokey banter. Inside jokes are fine, but as an audience member you’d hope you wouldn’t be left on the outside. Barrymore and Collette often seem like they’re fighting with the tacky material, but it’s a fight they ultimately win; however many times you roll your eyes at Jess and Milly, you can’t help but get caught up in their tearjerker of a story.

Catherine Hardwicke‘s new film, Miss You Already, follows Jess (Drew Barrymore) and Milly (Toni Collette), two childhood friends whose relationship becomes unexpectedly difficult when Milly is diagnosed with cancer. When Jess receives news that she and her husband (Paddy Considine) are pregnant, she can’t bring herself to tell Milly, who’s fallen back into bad habits and is struggling with chemo side effects. If you’re in the mood for a tearjerker at the movies this weekend, look no further than this poignant, beautifully acted platonic love story.

During her visit to San Francisco last month I spoke to Hardwicke about the film, which is out in select cities now.

Your movie surprised me.
How did it surprise you?

It was a lot more emotionally raw than I was expecting. I know it’s heavy subject matter, but Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore take it to another level. Really great performances.
We wanted to do this movie because everybody’s been touched by cancer in one way or another, whether it’s through a friend, a relative or whatever. There are some raw moments you go through. There are some intense moments, personal, intimate moments, highs and lows. It’s that experience of real life but with larger-than-life characters, in a way. They’re cool and they’re funny. Milly is a crazy, hot mess. That friend where you know if you go anywhere with them you’re going to get in trouble somehow, but it makes it kind of fun to be friends with them. Drew Barrymore is the balancing act—she’s a little more grounded and doesn’t take any shit from Milly. I love the idea of watching these two friends go through the fun stuff and the tough stuff in life. That was the essence of this: How do you keep laughing, keep living, keep surviving no matter what hits you.

I’ve had a life-threating experience before and I know it puts you in a different place, mentally. It’s confusing, it’s disorienting.
Anger, frustration, humiliation. Your image of yourself changes. It’s a difficult subject to tackle and it was kind of scary for me as a director, a big challenge. But I like challenges. I just dove in. My dad had cancer and he was cracking crazy jokes all the time. We’d go to hang out with him and he’d make us laugh! I love that Morwena kept the zingers coming and kept that lightness. Both Drew and Toni are funny in person and they’re very creative. Crazy stuff pops out of their mouths all the time. Some of the most fun stuff in the movie was improvised. They’d be finishing each others’ sentences, almost like a comedy routine. Even when they’d be experiencing a heavy moment, they’d find a way to make it funny.

The film has a sort of storybook tone to it, especially in the beginning.
Yeah, I think you’re right. Who wouldn’t want Drew Barrymore to be their best friend? She’s so solid and funny and creative and warm. I think we’d all love to have a best friend like that.

I love seeing friendship love stories. They’re too few and far between these days. I also like that the movie never turns into a bitter rivalry between Jess and Milly. Their adversary is the disease. It’s external.
There aren’t that many friendship movies. Drew said to me, “My favorite movies are about platonic love.” It’s so cool. It’s a lasting love that, no matter what happens, if you find your platonic soul mate, you can get through anything. I thought that was great. As we know, there have been a lot of funny buddy movies, but [they mostly center on] guys. They’re infantile and they never grow up and sleep in bunk beds. They’re funny, and they’re talking about that essence of friendship and bonding, but in a very broad-comedy way. True friendship movies are few and far between, you’re absolutely right.

Bridesmaids was about a platonic friendship between women, but I found that movie to be pretty mean-spirited. I feel like your isn’t, though Toni’s character is pretty mean-spirited herself.
She’s got a few issues. [laughs] She admits it. She goes, “I’m selfish. I’m narcissistic.” Bridesmaids is also going for broad laughs, and I loved it, but it wasn’t as grounded. It was fun to try to find that chemistry between the two actors, which they found during rehearsal week and became like best friends. I personally like the guys in the movie. They’re pretty cool. You see a lot of movies where the men, if their daughter gets kidnapped, they get to kill. We get it—men love to shoot guns. Or you have the childish, silly guys who never grow up. But these guys are like real guys you could know and be like and they’re stand-up guys too.

How did you like working with the male actors?
Dominic Cooper—I saw him in movies like The History Boys and The Devil’s Double. That guy can just play anything. He was just very creative and fun to work with. It’s very different from his other roles because he’s really a supportive guy in the movie and he’s a dad. He’s super decent. You think he might go off the rails and be a bad boy, but he’s a good, solid person in this movie. Paddy Considine is an actor, director, writer, musician—he’s multi-talented.

He’s a charmer, too.
He’s adorable! He and Drew were a fun match. Our other guy, Tyson Ritter, who has the affair [with Milly]—he’s so hot! He wrote the song that’s in one of his scenes.

I recognized that.
He had writer’s block for two years. He came out and filmed the movie, and after the first day he went home and wrote that song. The movie [relieved] his writer’s block. He gives me the song and goes, “I think this should be in that sex scene we did.” I played it and it felt really good in that scene! He has great instinct. So, he’s singing in his own sex scene. That’s a rock star’s dream, right? Toni’s husband wrote a song, and the other sex scene that Toni and Tyson have together, she’s singing her own song in her sex scene! That’s pretty hot!

Doesn’t get better than that! What else could you want? [laughs] Could you ever see yourself living on a boat?
After that experience, I’d like to.

Me too.
Didn’t it look fun?

I went to my wife and said, “Would you ever consider living on a boat?” I would do it.
What did your wife say?

“No.” [laughs]
That’s not very open-minded!

I’ve got to take her to the movie.
She’s gonna get charmed into it.

We have to talk about Toni’s acting. She has so many emotions going on within her all at once in almost every scene.
I’ve seen her in many beautiful projects, and when she said she really wanted to play Milly I was kind of envisioning, “Okay, she has to go through everything in this movie.” It starts out sexy and hot, and we don’t often get to see Toni like that. I thought it’d be fun to see her super hot and on top of the world and how her journey continues. How does she handle each step of this major journey she’s on? Toni never did the on-the-nose idea. In the wig scene, she plays it in a way you don’t expect. She’s tough, funny, vulnerable. She’s cocky, she’s lovable, but you want to kill her sometimes! [laughs] We didn’t want to show that someone who gets sick suddenly becomes a saint or a hero. Toni can do anything as an actress, I think. She was brave—she had her head shaved right there on camera.

I love that Jess accuses her of being a cancer bully. Not only is she not a saint, but she’s exploiting this card she’s been dealt. I like that it goes there.
I’ve notice that a few people have really picked up on the cancer bully thing. You don’t expect that, and she just gives it to her! [laughs]

You said that Toni approaches scenes in unexpected ways, and I think she brings that out in Drew as well.
I think this is the best I’ve seen Drew. She’s so real, but she’s very funny too. You just feel her heart. We’ve all loved Drew since E.T.. She’s America’s sweetheart! All of the crazy experiences she’s had over the years kind of come together and you feel her soulfulness, her love, and her spirit. Every minute of Drew on screen—it’s like she’s giving you a hug.

I think some of her best moments are when she’s not saying anything.
You feel her love and her presence and wisdom, too. She’s an amazing person. She manages to do everything with grace and love and dignity.

Charles Schulz‘s Peanuts gets re-packaged for a new generation in The Peanuts Movie, a snazzily animated update that understands completely what made the original comic strip and popular holiday TV specials so, well, special. Lifelong fans of Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Snoopy and the gang will have their worst fears quelled when the sweet reality dawns on them that, despite a significant visual face-lift, the new film looks, sounds, moves and feels like it’s sprung straight from the fingertips of the late Mr. Schulz himself.

What’s kind of extraordinary about this film is that it operates in entirely the same pre-Internet world the original cartoons did. Lucy doesn’t run a psychiatric help website; she still offers her “doctor’s” advice out of the same makeshift sidewalk stand she always has (her fee also stands unchanged at a nickel despite the coin’s virtual uselessness in 2015). Snoopy types on a typewriter, not a laptop; Linus plays a piano, not a light-up beat machine. When there’s a snow day, the kids play hockey on the lake. Charlie Brown’s favorite hobby is still flying his kite.

This commitment by director Steve Martino, the writers, and the folks at animation studio Blue Sky to keep the timelessness of the original cartoons gloriously intact is exactly what makes the new version feel so warm and fuzzy. Instead of evicting the characters from their world and plopping them into ours (á la that abominable Smurfs reboot) the filmmakers have decided, mercifully, to leave them be. The characters are at home, and so we feel at home, too.

The script, by Brian Schulz, Craig Schulz and Cornelius Uliano, is classic kid movie fare revolving around Charlie’s quest to win the heart of the new girl in town/class, who’s only ever referred to as “The Little Red-Haired Girl” (we almost never saw her in the strips or on the TV show, but she shows her face here). Life’s a steep uphill battle for poor Charlie, who’s perpetually down on his luck. There’s always been a surprising measure of pathos to his character, and the film isn’t afraid to beat him up a bit for our amusement. At one point, Lucy holds up a mirror to Charlie’s face and says, snidely, “This is the face of failure.” Ouch.

But Charlie’s failures are, of course, the at the heart of all Peanuts stories, and that tradition is maintained. Failure after failure, Charlie’s confidence is put through the ringer; he’s constantly embarrassed, petrified, scapegoated and mocked when all he wants to do is make others happy. He can never seem to catch a break, but somehow he endures his tragic existence with the help of Snoopy and his friends. It’s an inner struggle that even today’s kids can relate to. Everyone feels like a complete, insecure loser at some point in early life. The Peanuts Movie is cruel to Charlie most of the time, but unlike the incredibly melancholy TV specials, he does find a few bittersweet successes by story’s end.

The movie intermittently dives into the mind of Snoopy, who’s writing a novel about rescuing an unattainable love from his arch-nemesis “The Red Baron,” a pilotless fighter plane. Too much time is spent on these fantasies, and most of the mid-air battles feel like an excuse to make the most out of the 3-D glasses audiences are forced to shove onto their faces. Aside from these unremarkable flight sequences, however, the movie’s visual presentation is phenomenal. The original character designs remain essentially untouched though they’ve made the jump to three dimensions with more complex coloring, shading and depth. Their facial features still look hand-drawn, however, and use all of the same quirky lines and shapes we’re familiar with to express a range of emotions. The most significant change of all is the fact that the camera now has complete freedom of movement compared to the TV specials’ mostly static shots.

Noah Schnapp leads the cast of young voice actors as Charlie Brown, and the best compliment I can give he and his peers is that I honestly never gave a second thought to the fact that these were all-new voices. The cast does a bang-up job, especially Hadley Bell Miller (Lucy) and Alexander Garfin (Linus), who each share some surprisingly poignant exchanges with Schnapp. Kristin Chenoweth plays Snoopy’s made-up love interest, which will be cool to anyone who got a kick out of George Clooney’s “cameo” on South Park.

Sticking out like a sore thumb is a bouncy Meghan Trainor song that rears its ugly head a couple of times throughout the movie. It’s jarring and awful and is the only cheap play the movie makes to pander to young audiences. The rest of the songs are Peanuts staples like “Christmas Time Is Here” and the pocket masterpiece “Linus and Lucy” by Vince Guaraldi, which brought a tear to my eye. Failure and disappointment have always been at the core of Peanuts, but The Peanuts Movie is anything but a failure. It’s a giant victory, not just as a movie, but as an example that Hollywood reboots don’t always have to be obsessed with what’s hip and new; they can be old-fashioned and unpretentious and still be as entertaining as anything else at the theater.

In a dystopian Tokyo, 23 “tribes” (read: gangs) rule different sections of the city. These tribes range from the GiraGira Girls, a group of women including a whip-cracking dominatrix, to the Musashino Saru, a gang all about promoting peace and love. But it’s the Bukuro Wu-Ronz running everything, and their leader Big Buppa (Takeuchi Riki) is not to be messed with. Mera, one of Bukuro Wu-Ronz’s top members, starts a feud with Musashino Saru heads Tera (Ryuta Sato) and Kai (Young Dais), and the battle soon spins out of control, involving every other tribe in an epic battle to become the most powerful in the city. And did I mention it’s a hip-hop musical? Welcome to the insane world of Sion Sono and Tokyo Tribe.

But that’s not all! There’s also the presence of Sunmi (Nana Seino), a mysterious girl dragged into the gang conflict with some serious fighting skills. In fact, a lot of the cast can fight really well. This also happens to be a highly kinetic action film, with numerous fight scenes placed in between the rap songs sung by the massive cast. Sometani Shota provides help for viewers as the film’s MC, walking around scenes rapping exposition about different tribes and their feuds with other gangs. Just don’t bother actually trying to understand what the hell is going on, though. Tokyo Tribe is so dense and convoluted there are already 50 other things occurring the minute after a scene ends.

The density and hyperactivity of Sono’s style prove his film’s biggest strength and weakness. Sono, working with what looks like his biggest budget to date, packs as much as he possibly can into each frame. His shots are more ambitious, letting things play out in long, elaborate single takes, the camera moving all over the place. The set design is on a whole other level compared to Sono’s previous films as well, with so many elaborately designed locations for each tribe. And Sono never takes a moment to breathe, whipping back and forth between places, stuffing each one with as many extras and activity as possible, all while putting the camera right in the middle of it. It’s exhilarating, but at the same time incredibly exhausting

Trying to watch Tokyo Tribe for its story, nothing more than a standard gangster epic with a message about community, won’t maximize the amount of shock and joy Sono throws around on-screen. It’s the quirks and little moments that work best. Like Big Buppa’s son having a room where people act as his furniture. Or a massive karate fighter wishing someone a happy birthday as they punch them 50 feet in the air (one of the fighter’s only lines: “Take me! To! A sauna!”). Or an army tank driving around Tokyo blowing shit up. Tokyo Tribe is full of these kinds of insane, world-building moments, most of them hilariously original and bonkers beyond belief.

And even though Sono’s restlessness can get tiring at times, it doesn’t take away from the utter brilliance of Tokyo Tribe. No one injects more insanity and ideas into their films on a moment-by-moment basis the way Sono does. It was hard to imagine how Sono could outdo his previous film Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, but with Tokyo Tribe he’s outdone himself completely, and by successfully taking on musicals he feels unstoppable. With a propulsive, catchy score, Tokyo Tribe doesn’t have to try to be energetic. It breathes vivaciousness. Tokyo Tribe will leave viewers dazed, assaulted, and mortified, but by the end they’ll be begging for more.

A version of this review was originally published as part of our coverage of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

The greatest aspect of decidedly punk movies is their unabashed honesty. Even those that don’t deal with the music genre can take on a punk vibe merely through the tone and attitude. These films’ ability to approach every facet of life realistically instead of cinematically often makes for a visceral experience that even those who don’t engage in the particular lifestyle can appreciate. Homemakers, the feature debut of writer-director Colin Healey, delivers a more comedic take on the punk rock lifestyle while simultaneously keeping things genuine.

As an eccentric front-woman for an experimental punk band, Irene (Rachel McKeon) has never had many adult responsibilities. All of that changes, though, when she inherits her late grandfather’s rotting home. Desperately wanting to sell the house, Irene is forced to renovate—and finally grow up in the process. The arrival of her long-lost cousin (Jack Culbertson) adds its own set of challenges that bring to light a series of deeply buried familial issues.

Homemakers provides a fascinating ride for the first act, filled with humor and grimness as Irene sloppily trashes what’s left of the house. It’s not until Irene’s rich, corporate family enters the picture that the previously obnoxious character begins to become oddly sympathetic. Her pervasive disdain to fit in with society prevents Irene from being the most relatable person out there, but her inability to relate to her family members, and struggle to find her place in the world still manages to hit close to home in a truly believable way. A strong and humorously bold performance from McKeon carries the film, and makes even the more mundane sequences appear at least somewhat fascinating. Seamlessly bridging the gap between comical and cinematic, and realistic and natural, McKeon has a unique and effective screen presence. Similarly, most of the actors in the cast of unknowns are quite good, contributing to Healey’s occasionally documentary-like approach.

The real heart of Homemakers can be found in a handful of peculiar scenes that find Irene singing in front of vastly differing audiences—with and without a backing band. Despite being relatively lost in the world, the young woman always seems to be herself when she has a microphone and an audience. While the music may not be what one might expect from a “punk” movie—there certainly isn’t anyone stage-diving to Irene’s music—it’s still against-the-grain, underground noisiness that quickly establishes Irene and her acquaintances as non-mainstream musicians. They won’t be winning any Grammys any time soon, and that’s what makes the band so fun to watch.

Moments of overt sexual perversion are an unexpectedly graphic addition to the film, despite the fact that there isn’t anything particularly erotic about Homemakers. Most of the sexual sequences seem to be played for laughs, which only adds to the general awkwardness of the film as a whole. Perhaps the strangest scene in the film occurs later on as a completely unlikable character removes his genitals and presents them to Irene as a sort of sexual taunt. Her reaction is equally satisfying and hilarious, and cements the film as being a bizarre slice-of-life indie.

A co-release from FilmBuff and Factory 25, filmgoers who are familiar with either of those distributors will probably know just what to expect here. Character-driven, conversation-heavy, and just weird enough to appear believable. Longtime fans of these types of films will undoubtedly be able to appreciate what the filmmakers are going for. With Homemakers, Healey has created a fascinating piece of cinema that, despite clearly not being for everyone, has a lead character that’s so engaging that it simply must be seen.

Homemakers is now available to stream on Fandor

The second day of MVFF38 saw the arrival of Sarah Silverman to promote I Smile Back, the actress’ first dramatic lead. I had the pleasure of meeting Silverman during a private cocktail party set up for the San Francisco Film Critics Circle (of which I am inexplicably a member) and she was sweet as can be. Despite the film’s dark subject matter and the fact that she’s been receiving some serious praise from critics and moviegoers for her impassioned performance, she was all laughs and accepted the adulation with humility and self-deprecation.

Enter the Void

After watching I Smile Back, I came away with two main thoughts. a) Sarah Silverman is a real-deal actor who should do more dramatic work and b) I Smile Back is one of the cruelest, bleakest, most upsetting, unappetizing movies I’ve seen all year. Silverman plays a stay-at-home mom whose bout with chronic depression dismantles everything in her life and pushes her husband (Josh Charles) and two kids far, far away. Directed by Adam Salky, the movie is primarily concerned with exploring in upsetting detail the different effects and stages of depression, but the story feels like a bridge to nowhere. Chronic depression is serious business, but the material doesn’t have enough depth to warrant how borderline sadistic it is. Silverman’s character gets beat up, humiliated, abandoned, and everything in between, and while the actress fully embraces the role and all the challenges that come with it, the film provides little insight, making it feel more like a depression simulator than a work of art.

Built to Last

Nordic humor, in all its dry, dark, offbeat glory, makes me laugh harder than just about anything these days, and director Gunnar Vikene’s Here Is Harold is one of the funniest Nordic comedies you’ll find, period. It’s my favorite thing I’ve seen at the festival so far, and considering how much I loved Spotlight, that’s saying a lot. Bjørn Sundquist plays Harold, a furniture shop owner who gets driven out of business by the new IKEA across the street. Having lost everything, he hatches a half-baked plan to kidnap IKEA’s founder (Björn Granath) and force him to apologize to the world for selling them shoddy furniture. The snags, follies, and friends Harold meets on his journey are best left a surprise, but I will say that the story is surprisingly moving and soulful, with touching moments that blindside you in between the laughs. Nordic humor has an obsession with death and misfortune that allows it to couple beautifully with even the darkest material; look no further than Here Is Harold for proof.

The slasher film is one of the few types of movies with the honour of having its own deconstruction be just as stale as its own genre. Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson more or less opened and closed the book on self-aware slashers with Scream back in 1996, a film that’s almost two decades old (yes, Scream is now older than today’s average college freshman, but don’t think about it that way). But it wasn’t too long ago that Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard showed that the meta approach still had some life in it with The Cabin in the Woods, although it targeted the horror genre as a whole rather than one specific subgenre. Now, director Todd Strauss-Schulson and writers M.A. Fortin & Joshua John Miller try their hand at lovingly taking down slasher tropes with The Final Girls, a glossy horror/comedy that’s severely lacking in both horror and comedy.

Max (Taissa Farmiga) still hasn’t gotten over the death of her mother Amanda (Malin Akerman), an actress who got her break playing a piece of cannon fodder in the cheesy ‘80s slasher Camp Bloodbath. A tragic car accident took Amanda’s life several years ago, and for Max the film, and her mother’s death scene in it, is more traumatizing than entertaining. But her personal issues don’t matter to Duncan (Thomas Middleditch), the stepbrother of her best friend Gertie (Alia Shawkat). Duncan bribes Max to attend an anniversary screening of Camp Bloodbath and she accepts his offer, taking Gertie and her classmate/romantic interest Max (Alexander Ludwig) along. A freak accident at the screening causes a fire to break out, and Max, Gertie, Duncan, Chris and Chris’ ex-girlfriend Vicki (Nina Dobrev) find themselves literally transported into Camp Bloodbath as they try to escape the theatre. With no idea how to get out of the movie, they decide the best way for them to get back into the real world is to play along, hoping to survive by the time the credits roll.

It’s hard to get a sense of what exactly The Final Girls wants to be. Is it a slasher with meta elements? A deconstruction? A satire? No matter what it is, the fact that it’s aware of its own tropes, formulas and clichés means it has to bring something to the table that’s smarter or better than the old familiars it’s lampooning. But The Final Girls really doesn’t have any ideas, preferring to just plop modern-day characters in a sleazy 1980s slasher and make sitcom-esque jokes about their cultural differences (just wait until you see how these camp counsellors react to an iPhone!). A lot of The Final Girl’s jokes feel lazy, as if the mere mention of a trope will generate laughs because of viewers’ familiarity with it. It’s tame at best, and reminiscent of the way a show like Family Guy will make an obscure pop culture reference both the set-up and punchline to a joke.

That laziness runs throughout The Final Girls, which never bothers to set up any consistency or logic once it enters Camp Bloodbath. The movie within the movie, which looks like your standard piece of ‘80s schlock (based on the fake trailer that opens The Final Girls), becomes a colourful fantasy land once Max and her crew enter it, and their decision to “play along” and let the movie play out doesn’t make much sense. Neither does the ‘80s setting itself, with Camp Bloodbath characters like the dumb, horny “jock” (Adam Devine) playing like a deleted scene from a Judd Apatow movie. And Strauss-Schulson’s style, with the camera whirling and moving all over the place, doesn’t mesh with the visually bland looks of the film(s) he’s taking inspiration from. The camera’s eccentricity is reminiscent of Sam Raimi and The Evil Dead, but its pointless purpose and showiness puts it more in line with Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and American Horror Story.

So it comes as a surprise that The Final Girls’ biggest success is how well it establishes a strong emotional core. For Max, entering Camp Bloodbath gives her another chance to meet her mother, or more accurately her mother’s character Nancy. Max and Nancy’s relationship turns out to be the most captivating part of the film, largely due to the talents of Farmiga and Akerman (especially Akerman, a terrific comedic actress who uses her equally strong dramatic skills effectively here). And the rest of the cast give it their all too, and despite having little material to work with they make The Final Girls watchable. But a game cast can only take things so far, and the tired inconsistency of Strauss-Schulson’s film makes all of its attempts to wink, nod and nudge at the audience ring hollow. The Final Girls isn’t the first film to simultaneously indulge in and upend the rules of horror films, so it’s disappointing to watch it coast along on its own concept rather than try, well, anything remotely interesting or subversive. Films designed to call out its own genre’s traditions shouldn’t feel this safe.

Charles Manson is probably the last person you’d expect a Duplass Brothers Production to feature a story around. While the title suggests that the famous cult leader (or his “family”) may be the main focal point, writer and director J. Davis simply uses him as the glue that holds together the misadventures of two out of touch brothers. And turns out this vacation is a lot more fun and less scary than it sounds.

This sibling story has a familiar setup, one that’s not far off from the Duplass brothers film Jeff, Who Lives At Home; Nick (Jay Duplass) is an uptight successful lawyer with a wife and kid, while his brother Conrad (Linas Phillips) is a long-haired, easygoing slacker. They haven’t spoken with each other since Nick’s wedding day and because Conrad has always been the black sheep of the family, he didn’t even attend their father’s funeral. Which makes it all the more surprising when Conrad decides to show up unexpectedly at Nick’s doorstep.

Nick and his wife don’t bat an eye when Conrad informs them he just quit his job and sold off of his possesses to start working for a non-profit environmental organization. It sounds exactly like what the free-spirited brother would do. Nick is more concerned that his brother has decided to give up on his dreams of becoming an artist, not that it’s much of a surprise, but it was the only thing Conrad ever stuck with until now.

While in town for just a few days, Conrad reveals his latest obsession, Charles Manson. This new craze baffles Nick, who didn’t notice his brother wearing a Manson t-shirt or carrying around a copy of “Helter Skelter.” Or that Conrad looks eerily similar to Manson with his long parted hair and full beard. Yet despite these realizations, Conrad still manages to convince his brother (with a disturbing amount of giddiness) to tour around to a bunch of Mason Family sites.

What starts as a sneaky journey into the former home of the LaBianca’s, ends in a wild goose chase from various “clues” uncovered along the way. The film works best when the two brothers are busy working on a mission. But when the action subsides between chases and the characters are forced to mingle, the dialog can feel a bit dry and unnatural.

Throughout Manson Family Vacation, Davis uses clips of old interview footage of Charles Manson for transitions between scenes. At first these seem to be shown to tie Manson into the story and to give quick background information for anyone unfamiliar with the cult leader. But as the film progresses you begin to realize just how relevant the clips are to what’s happening onscreen. For example, when Manson blames lack of parenting for how he acts, you can’t help but wonder if the same holds true for Conrad.

There are times when this feels like an early Duplass brothers film, especially considering the sibling dynamic story. After all, they are masters of the subject with films like The Puffy Chair (my personal favorite), The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, Jeff…, and more recently with their HBO show Togetherness. The film even has a Duplass look to it, filled with constant camera movements (though there are no quick zooms). However, a key missing quality is an improvised script. Manson Family Vacation may have benefited from having a loosened structure and organic dialog.

Up until the end, Manson Family Vacation plays out like a lot of other estranged brothers stories we’ve seen many times in other indie films. But Davis adds a slight twist (don’t think too hard, it’s not that difficult to predict) to make the whole thing feel fresh and entertaining. Phillips is the perfect choice for the role, especially with his unkempt look and easy to forgive personality, you find yourself rooting from him even during his sketchiest of moments. It’s nice to see the other Duplass brother spend more time in front of the camera, even if Jay doesn’t quite have the effortless quality of his brother Mark. There may be a few missteps along the way, but the fast pace of Manson Family Vacation keeps everything moving towards its satisfying conclusion.

Manson Family Vacation will be available on iTunes & Digital VOD on October 6th, 2015 and arriving to Netflix on October 27th, 2015.

I’m always quick to mention how great it was being a film buff while growing up in the ’80s—that Golden Age when both cable and home video exploded to offer all the classics one could consume (with or without cheese). But it has also been great living in the Information Age, where the portal to all data and the lifeline for all communication can now fit into a back pocket. It wasn’t always that easy, of course, and just as it’s quaint to stumble across a VHS tape with a “Be Kind, Rewind” sticker on it, so too is it nostalgic to be reminded of that time when we didn’t realize just how cumbersome “high tech” was. Parallax, a dramedy set in the Decade of Decadence, not only highlights how cumbersome technology was back then, but unfortunately does so in a cumbersome way.

In the film’s prologue, the year is 1983 and Abbott (Michael Kelberg) is a married college professor in pursuit of something greater: the creation of “Zeteo Vision,” a revolutionary communication tool. (Zeteo Vision, aka Z-TV, is a device best described as the fictional precursor to YouTube.) Coming out of the prologue and into present-day 1987, Abbott is still in pursuit of that vision, only his obsession has since cost him his job and his marriage. As he slowly moves closer to realizing his dream, he encounters obstacles expected (technical and financial) and unexpected (the addictive nature of his creation).

Making his feature debut with Parallax, writer/director Graham Nolte attempts to execute something rather interesting. He tries to tell a cautionary tale about obsession with social-based technology and the pitfalls that accompany that obsession—pitfalls that are as relevant today as they ever have been—but he does so by setting the story in technology’s early years, a time when many might not consider this problem to be as pervasive as it is today.

The obsession can be found in different forms and in most of the main characters. Abbott is obsessed with the creation of the tech to the expense of his marriage and career. Abbott’s former student, Mannix (Robb Stech), already burnt out on tech, loses himself in the ability to upload commercials to Z-TV. Villini (Jim Ludovici), from whom Abbott acquires server space, decides time-shifting (my phrase, not the film’s) his soap operas would be a better experience than watching them live as he had before Z-TV. And even the one “positive” use of the tech is still obsession-fueled: Abbott’s friend, Finbar (Phillipe Simon), finds a love interest as a result of using Z-TV.

It’s an interesting conceit, placing this modern issue in perhaps the most appropriate period setting, and doing so avoids any sense of preaching by instead creating something of a “the more things change, the more they stay the same” message. The problem is the execution is so terribly dull.

The core of the story concentrates on Abbott’s efforts and obstacles to make Z-TV a reality. This requires endless conversations about things like network access, technical capabilities, practical applications, impractical applications, government grants, etc., none of which are the least bit interesting. The lines feel as if they’ve been lifted from a Z-TV training video, and they are delivered by the cast with about the same level of enthusiasm. It’s hard to fault the cast though, given what they have to work with. As a singular presentation, the scenes don’t flow so much as they coexist.

Compounding this problem is Nolte’s apparent awareness that the conflict his plot presents is dry, but rather than work to make it more interesting holistically, he instead injects fleeting, unfunny moments into scenes. On one Z-TV delivery, a dog pees on the device; in another scene, during Abbott’s pitch for grant money, his device is struck by a vehicle and destroyed. Moments like these are incredibly contrived and only serve to highlight the script’s deficiencies.

Also missing is any real notion of consequence. Abbott has already lost his job and his wife, and his present path is strewn with obstacles, but there is no the sense of what will happen if he fails to launch Z-TV. Because the story is about being successful, there needs to be a result of failure lurking over Abbott’s shoulder to get the viewer invested, and it simply isn’t there. Also missing is any development of what is hinted at as the chance for reconciliation between Abbott and his ex, Lucia (Mary Sarah Agliotta). That she is now engaged to the man who holds Abbott’s grant fate in his hands only seems creatively opportunistic, not the result of an idea fully vetted.

The film is not without its bright spots. Sprinkled throughout are the commercials Mannix is addicted to, as well as scenes from the soaps Villini loves. Most of these moments are genuinely funny. The soap scenes are intentionally overwrought for laughs, and the faux commercials are reminiscent of actual ads shown in the ’80s (think Wacky Packages). From a technical perspective, there are several scenes where the POV actually comes from within a television screen, simultaneously framing the individual watching it while offering an opaque projection of what is on the screen. It’s deft technical presentation that lifts every scene that employs it. From the cast, Simon is the standout.

With Parallax, Graham Nolte goes back to the past to offer a reflection on the present. Technology is wildly more advanced today than it was 30 years ago, but the problems it presents are no different from back then. Had Nolte focused more on the intricacies of the dilemmas technology presents instead of the granularity of the technology itself, the finished product may have been more compelling. Instead, it’s more of a corporate video than a tech drama.

What we see on-screen, for the most part, in Ridley Scott‘s The Martian (based on Andy Weir’s popular sci-fi novel) is Matt Damon playing an astronaut, stranded on Mars, who must be resourceful on a resource-less planet in order to return to earth. From that simple premise spawns more entertainment than we’ve seen from Scott in years as we follow the Martian misadventures of Damon’s Mark Watney as he “sciences the shit” out of his dire situation with the (remote) help of his earth-bound astronautic team and the bright minds at NASA.

The movie’s trailers would have you expecting a white-knuckle, isolation-horror story along the lines of Gravity. I was pleasantly surprised, however (as someone who hasn’t read the book), to find a movie that’s optimistic, warm, very funny, and very much un-scary. This is much lighter material than the marketing would have you believe, and that’s a good thing.

The tone is set from the beginning with Mark and his team surveying the martian surface for, uh, science reasons. Mark rattles off smartass quips rapid-fire, and judging from his crew-mates’ joking, amused reactions, it’s clear they’re a tight-knit group. Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) leads the team, who refer to each other on a last-name basis. Martinez (Michael Peña), Johanssen (Kate Mara), Beck (Sebastian Stan), and Vogel (Aksel Hennie) find outer-space comfort in clowning on their good buddy Watney. Suddenly, a violent rock storm barrels through the work site and a piece of equipment slams into Mark, hurtling him into the darkness. Believing their friend dead, the team leaves the planet surface before the storm tears their ship to pieces.

Despite being left to his own devices, Mark finds a way to keep yapping: returning to the Mars base, he starts keeping a video log for whoever or whatever. It mostly keeps him sane as he MacGuyvers his way through the litany of problems that comes with being stranded on an inhospitable planet. The most pressing issue initially is Mark’s limited food supply; should he eventually find a way to contact earth or his crewmates, his current stock of NASA microwaveable meals wouldn’t keep him alive long enough for a rescue team to reach him. Thankfully, Mark’s a botanist, and he figures out a way to make his own water and grow an indoor garden, which bears enough potatoes to keep him going for the foreseeable future.

Much like in Robinson Crusoe and Robert Zemeckis’ Castaway, it’s a delight to watch our hero use his brainpower and willpower to gradually build a little life for himself in a hopeless place. It also doesn’t hurt that Damon finds his groove with the smart and savvy material, adapted by Drew Goddard from the book. Some of the jokes are pretty corny, but Goddard’s always had a knack for making even the cornball-iest comedy sing. Mark’s bright-side attitude is charming: when he runs out of ketchup for his potatoes, he dips them in crushed-up Adderall and jokes bout it; when it dawns on him that, because he’s grown potatoes on Martian soil, he’s technically colonized the planet, he sticks his chin up in the air like a proud child. The movie’s nearly two-and-a-half hours long, but Damon’s so entertaining that it’s a swift, streamlined watch.

The story hops back to earth regularly, where a crowded cast of mostly insignificant NASA officials debate how to tell the grieving public that Mark Watney is not deceased, as they originally reported, as well as figure out a way to bring him back home before his food runs out or a random equipment malfunction kills him. Jeff Daniels and Chiwetel Ejiofor have the most prominent roles as the two highest ranking NASA brains, with the rest of the home planet cast filled out by the likes of Donald Glover, Sean Bean, Mackenzie Davis, Benedict Wong, and Kristen Wiig, who’s in such a nothing role it’s sad. Chastain and the rest of the crew rejoin the story later, after NASA decides how to break the news to them that their friend is still alive.

The visual effects are as spectacular as they need to be, but the movie isn’t enamored with them like too many sci-fi dramas are. Mars looks totally convincing and serene, but the focus is always on what and how Mark’s doing. In essence, Weir’s story is about the wonder and power of science and how the human spirit can unlock its true beauty. None of the action scenes rival anything you’ll see in Interstellar or Gravity, but the that’s not what this movie’s about, after all, which is refreshing. The Martian won’t please those expecting a dark, terrorizing thrill ride where the heroes are in constant peril, but it’ll make the rest of us laugh and cheer, which is something sci-fi blockbusters don’t do enough these days.

When it comes to Jafar Panahi, every new film of his is an event, and with every review of one of his latest works comes an explanation for why his new film(s) are so necessary. In 2010, Panahi was imprisoned and charged with several ridiculous crimes for publicly supporting Iran’s Green Movement. He was sentenced to six years in prison and received a 20-year ban on filmmaking, and since then Panahi has made three films: This is Not a Film, Closed Curtain and now Jafar Panahi’s Taxi. The first two films dealt with seclusion and fear; This is Not a Film took place largely in Panahi’s apartment (he was on house arrest), and Closed Curtain took place at a vacation home where he had to cover up the windows so no one could see him filming. But now, with Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, he’s doing his boldest move yet by going out into the streets of Tehran. It’s a surprisingly playful turn for Panahi, although it never distracts or dampens from the reality of his situation.

The set-up is simple, probably out of necessity. Panahi plays a taxi driver going around Tehran encountering a variety of people, all of whom address some sort of political and/or moral issue through whatever conversation or experience they have in the cab. Panahi uses stationary cameras in the taxi to capture all the action, mainly relying on a dashboard camera which he frequently pivots to whatever needs to be seen. The opening scene has him picking up a man and woman separately, with the man confusing the camera for a security system. He says thieves should be hanged in Iran, and that triggers off a debate with the woman over the death penalty and punishment. It’s a captivating discussion with a funny punchline; the man turns out to be a thief himself, but specifies that he only steals from people who deserve it, like people who steal from the poor.

But before there’s time to unpack the debate, Panahi starts piling on self-reflexive elements (fans of Panahi should come to expect this). His next passenger, a man who sells bootlegged films around town, immediately recognizes Panahi for who he is, and then claims the man and woman in the opening were actors (his evidence being that one of them repeated a line used in an earlier film by Panahi). There’s no distinction between reality and fiction in the film because Panahi doesn’t provide any explanations. It could be possible that some of his passengers are real, while others might be fake. It doesn’t really matter since every exchange feels natural, even when it goes broad (like when two old, superstitious women treat a trip to a fountain as a life or death situation).

One of Panahi’s greatest skills as a filmmaker is how he can weave such dense and thematically strong material into a film that can feel light on its feet. The questions of crime and punishment brought up at the beginning echoes throughout, like when a man didn’t report people who stole from him because he knew they were poor and acting out of desperation. It’s easy to interpret these conversations as pointed criticisms of Iran’s different institutions, but sometimes it’s easier to take them as just highly entertaining and funny scenes. Case in point: Panahi’s niece after he picks her up from school, who explains her school assignment where she has to make a film that follows Iran’s censorship rules. Her sassy, no bullshit attitude when it comes to talking with her uncle makes her immediately likable, and one of the film’s true highlights. Panahi must have realized the best way to go after his country’s censorship laws was to let a young child take them down for him.

And even though Jafar Panahi’s Taxi has plenty to enjoy and laugh at, it’s in the later sections of the film that Panahi reminds viewers of the risks he’s taking. He may be able to freely drive around the city, but the unsettling final scene puts the emphasis back on how dangerous Panahi’s harmless act of moviemaking is within his country (there are also no credits for the cast or crew aside from Panahi in order to keep them safe). Yet Jafar Panahi’s Taxi is an optimistic film in some ways. Much like the two films before it, it’s a sign of how even the biggest restrictions can’t pin down creativity. And if this is how creative Panahi can get when held prisoner, we can only imagine what he’ll be capable of once he gets his freedom. Hopefully that freedom will come sooner rather than later.

The whimsy nature of Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind) meets the adolescent exploration of the coming-of-age genre in Microbe & Gasoline. Following two young friends that build a house on wheels in order to take a road trip across France, Gondry surprisingly downplays the potentially fantastical elements of this premise. Sure, the filmmaker indulges in a backward dream sequence and a homemade house on wheels, but even the execution of those components is decidedly restrained in comparison to Gondry’s previous effort, his arts and craftsterpiece Mood Indigo. His latest film is an enchanting, youthful romp with a truly laissez-faire attitude towards growing up.

Daniel (Ange Dargent in his feature debut), nicknamed “Microbe” by his classmates for his diminutive size (though he points out he’s not the shortest kid in school), is a social outcast frustrated by being overlooked or mistaken for a girl. He avoids the other boys in school, preferring to sketch portraits of a girl he speaks to but won’t pursue. Daniel finds kinship with the arrival of Théo (Théophile Baquet), a new boy whose souped-up bicycle and engine-repair hobby earns him the name “Gasoline” (as well as snide comments about his diesel smell). When the pair grows tired of their school and their moms, Microbe & Gasoline hatch a plan to build a portable shelter to transport themselves around the countryside for the summer. Should it be a car? Should it have a shack? Why not both?

Microbe & Gasoline is less concerned with the consequences of the boys’ actions than it is with their routes to self-discovery. As the young teens leave behind their families, the film does as well. The policemen whom Daniel and Théo worry will disapprove of their unlicensed vehicle instead want a selfie with their jalopy RV. They undertake this journey with only minor complications. Rather than condescend to its protagonists, the story embodies the boys’ budding desire for independence and treats each moment with the level of significance it has to the film’s characters. Gondry demonstrates real affection for his naively inquisitive pair, and their funny, genuine but juvenile heart-to-hearts.

Despite its eccentricities, Microbe & Gasoline can’t help but feel overly familiar at times. Like too many of these unconfident adolescent stories, Daniel’s insecurities are largely alleviated by a slight makeover and a pep talk about a girl. His mopiness isn’t as engaging as Théo’s defiant goofiness. Among somewhat recent young male-skewing escapist semi-fantasy, 2013’s The Kings of Summer more effectively conveys the annoyance of being caught between childhood and maturity. What allows both of these movies to succeed is the specificity in the characterization of its leads. In Microbe & Gasoline, Daniel and Théo are distinct, charming young men that behave like actual teenagers.

Gondry’s work can feel devoid of cynicism. The only cynical characters in his latest movie are the stifling adults who aim to get in Daniel and Théo’s way. This might be too precious for some audiences, but their exuberant adventure is often fun enough to merit the idealism. The very French Microbe & Gasoline entertainingly captures the adolescent yearning for independence from an adult regimented world.

Real-life stories don’t get much more improbable, inspirational, and death-defying than that of French high-wire artist Philppe Petit, who on August 7, 1974 strung a cable (illegally, with the help of accomplices) between the two towers of the then-unfinished World Trade Center and danced for 45 minutes among the clouds for onlookers over 100 stories below. James Marsh’s 2008 documentary Man On Wire beautifully recounts the feat, which took an inordinate amount of preparation (training, trespassing, reconnaissance, recruiting) to pull off. Petit and his team’s accomplishment is the stuff of legend, and Marsh’s film is one of my very favorites.

A narrative version of the tale was inevitable, and it now arrives in the form of Robert Zemeckis‘ The Walk, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the uncontrollably charismatic Petit. The movie has its merits: the final 30 minutes, in which we see Gordon-Levitt’s Petit preen and twirl in the sky as aggravated police officers try to snatch him from either end of the cable, is an exhilarating piece of filmmaking that you won’t find in Marsh’s documentary and must be watched in a theater, in 3-D. It’s a high note to end on, but the road to get there is so unremarkable and stale that it makes it difficult to exalt the movie as a whole.

The most wonderful thing about Man On Wire was Petit, who told his own story not just with his words, but with his whole body. Zemeckis and co-writer Christopher Browne chose to grab for that same magic by having Gordon-Levitt narrate the film, addressing the audience directly, from atop the Statue of Liberty. They find mixed success: the symbolism of the fantastical New York City image has a nice poetry to it (the statue’s history isn’t insignificant here), but Gordon-Levitt doesn’t come close enough to capturing the vigor and wild ambition of the real-life Petit. To be fair, I’m not sure any actor could.

Most of Gordon-Levitt’s work has been good-to-excellent, but this is one role he just doesn’t seem to fit into completely. His attempt at a French accent is valiant but shoddy, and while he’s certainly energetic and wide-eyed, he doesn’t exude the same raw passion of his real-life counterpart. It’s a good performance and serves the story well, but he’s capable of much, much more.

In flashbacks inspired by the greatest hits of the French New Wave, we find Petit wowing small crowds as a Parisienne street performer. A magic trick involving a sizeable jawbreaker sends him to the dentist’s office, where his life work begins: he sees a picture of the under-construction World Trade Center and in an instant devotes his life to them. He’s got a lover, Annie (Charlotte Le Bon), and some friends who are willing to help him on his quest, but he seeks additional guidance from a master wire-walker, played by Ben Kingsley.

The movie’s most unbelievable elements—the eponymous walk, the heist-like operation of infiltrating the buildings, Petit’s zany personality—are all true to life. The story is that extraordinary. But Zemeckis’ approach, while inspired, actually dulls the spectacle of the lead-up to the final act. Visually, he views the world through Petit’s child-like eyes, depicting France in a heightened, nostalgic state. Once he gets to New York City, the impossibility of Petit’s dream dawns on him and the movie goes gray in a hurry. It’s a poetic device, but there are flaws in execution. In France, everything feels too Hollywood-y and fluffy, and in New York City, things get a little too drab and depressing. The balance in tone feels off, and a few tweaks in calibration may have evened things out and made for a smoother transition.

If you buy your movie ticket for The Walk, make sure you shell out the extra dough for those infernal 3-D glasses. In this case, they make the movie. The grand finale is absolutely terrifying, especially with the added depth of the 3-D effect. When Gordon-Levitt takes his first step onto that cable hung thousands of feet in the air and the camera points straight down at the tiny streets and buildings below, it’s an incredible feeling. It’s not as touching a moment as you’ll find in Man On Wire or Petit’s written account of the stunt, To Reach the Clouds, but you can’t deny the view.

Ashby starts off like most schoolyard coming-of-age story’s as our main character Ed Wallis (Nat Wolff) arrives at a new town and attempts to fit in at school. When called upon by his teacher on the first day, Ed reveals his extensive knowledge of Ernest Hemingway—instantly earning him nerd status among his classmates. It’s an exaggerated classroom setting for sure, one where chants from the football team can happen at any moment and homosexual slurs are said aloud in front of the teacher. But it does get across the stereotypical slacker personalities of the upcoming Generation Z. In an effort to encourage students to take a break from narcissism, the teacher assigns the class to interview an “old person” and write a 2,000-word report on them. And just so happens that Ed moved in right next door to an older gentleman.

This is when Tony McNamara’s script begins to sound a lot like the plot of last year’s St. Vincent starring Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy. It turns out that Ed is neighbors with a dry-witted crackpot named Ashby (Mickey Rourke) who enjoys drinking and smoking by himself. Ashby is reluctant to answer any of Ed’s questions at first, but maybe because he sees a little of himself in the young kid, the crotchety old man slowly opens up. Ed soon discovers Ashby is a retired CIA assassin with nearly a 100 kills credited to his name, and by driving him around to various locations, he unknowingly gets caught up in the middle of Ashby’s assassin life.

The biggest nuisance of Ashby is that it tries to combine two very different narratives into one cohesive storyline. In one corner is a dark story about a man attempting to absolve his sins and overcome his wrongdoings. And in the other corner is a story of a teenager trying to build enough courage to stand up for himself by trying out for the football team. But there’s no graceful transition between them. So a scene featuring a silly pep talk from the high school football coach is followed by a bloody shootout between Ashby and his next target.

Ashby could’ve been better had it focused on just one of its storylines. While both threads contain a story worth exploring, the attempt to blend the two ends up being a jarring mismatch of tones. This makes it difficult to figure out which audience the film is targetting. Half the time it seems like the film caters to high schoolers, while other times the aim is more towards adults.

Furthermore, by not narrowing the scope of the story, McNamara leaves some interesting subplots unresolved. The most notable example is the abandoned subplot of Eloise (played by a nerdy looking Emma Roberts). For most of the film, she’s determined to study how football players’ brains are impacted by hard hits on the field. But the results of this experiment are left unanswered and completely vanishes from the storyline. In the end, her character merely serves as a love interest of Ed and a much too convenient tie-in with the football theme.

On a positive note, Ashby contains great performances from its cast. Rourke is excellent in portraying a lonely misanthrope who can somehow be redeeming in certain moments. Wolff continues his trend of playing a relatable, yet average high schooler as he has now in recent films like Paper Towns and The Fault In Our Stars. The standout of the film might have been Sarah Silverman had she been given a larger role than the recently divorced sexually active mother. Roberts is excellent too, but also underdeveloped.

Ultimately, if any part of Ashby sounds remotely interesting, you’d be better off watching St. Vincent instead. Not only does it contain a very similar story as Ashby, but the film better in just about every way.

Leave it to the Danes to take what looks like a big ole quirk-fest and turn it into something much more disturbing. At the start, Anders Thomas Jensen’s film has all the makings for a light, quirky comedy about brotherhood. Brothers Gabriel (David Dencik) and Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) have a strained relationship but have to reunite once their father dies. Upon his death, the two watch a video left to them where their father reveals they were adopted and only half-brothers, sharing the same father but not the same mother (both mothers died during childbirth). With only the name of their biological father to go by, Gabriel eventually finds out that he lives on a tiny island with a population of just over 40 people. Gabriel and Elias head off and discover a series of dark, twisted and morbidly funny revelations about their family’s past.

The film’s introduction to its two main characters, with Gabriel missing his father’s death due to a gag reflex and Elias taking a break during a date to jerk off in a public washroom, implies that Men & Chicken will play out as a bland and juvenile comedy of eccentricities. Thankfully Jensen doesn’t go down a predictable route, instead changing the film’s location to the secluded island and making things get a lot weirder with the introduction of three other half-brothers (Nicolas Bro, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Soren Malling) that have basically been raised as animals. Quirks and peculiarities soon give way to slapstick hijinks once the five siblings begin operating on the same abnormal wavelength, and Jensen introduces more sadistic pieces of information until, by the end, Men & Chicken is like a Cronenberg film crossed with your average Sundance family drama. Jensen and his game cast (especially Mikkelsen, who’s hard to recognize at points) make it work too, and turn Men & Chicken into a film that’s just as strange as it is entertaining.

It’s a short-but-sweet episode this week as Bernard chats with filmmaker Anthony Lucero about his indie crowd-pleaser, East Side Sushi. Plus, listen in to find out why Bernard had to cut this week’s episode short and record under the influence of some yummy, mind-numbing drugs.

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Now on his 17^th feature, Hong Sang-soo has created yet another story about film directors, the women they pine over, and lots of soju. Hong’s films tend to play out in a similar fashion, to the point where it wouldn’t be unreasonable to claim he’s been remaking the same film for most of his career. But it would be unfair to dismiss Hong’s work as one-note, due to his tendency of experimenting with form. Stories can repeat themselves, the laws of time and space break in two, and stories can reflect and refract within themselves. This playing with form can suddenly turn what appears to be a flighty effort into something more substantial; it makes Hong’s common themes of love and regret more resonant as a result. Right Now, Wrong Then sees Hong continuing to do what he knows best, although the results are lacking compared to some of his more recent fare.

Those familiar with Hong’s work shouldn’t be surprised by the plot. Director Ham Chunsu (Jung Jae-young) comes to the city of Suwon to present one of his films at a local festival, but he arrives a day early due to a miscommunication. With nothing to do, he wanders the city, eventually bumping into Yoon Heejung (Kim Min-hee), a young woman Chunsu quickly falls for. Chunsu quickly sweet talks Heejung into joining him for a coffee, and the two wind up spending the entire day together. Chunsu comes across as a bit of an egotistical person (it doesn’t help that almost everyone in the film heaps praise on him and his work), and after drinking too much as a sushi bar, he starts being a lot more explicit to Heejung about his feelings for her. Things eventually go sour, though, once Heejung takes Chunsu to her friend’s, and they expose Chunsu’s womanizing ways. Heejung, devasted to learn that her new friend is actually married, abruptly leaves, and Chunsu winds up flipping out the next day at his screening’s Q&A.

At that point, Right Now, Wrong Then literally resets itself. Now with a proper title card (the film’s first half opened with the title Right Then, Wrong Now), the day starts over, and Chunsu’s meet up with Heejung plays out with a few slight differences that increase exponentially as the day goes on. By making the second half of the film a slight variation on the first, the focus on the film changes significantly; with the general frame and story already known, attention goes to the smaller details to find changes between each part. By contextualizing every interaction, camera movement, and line of dialogue down to a micro level, Hong emphasizes the importance of how these seemingly small elements can shape the way people behave and interact. Pay enough attention to Right Then, Wrong Now and Right Now, Wrong Then, and there will be small rewards, whether it’s events or statements that can suddenly change the meaning of an action or line portrayed before.

But does Hong’s film really work at what it’s going for? In this case, not really. Unlike the three-part narrative of In Another Country, the Groundhog Day-esque repetition of The Day He Arrives, or the jumbled narrative of Hill of Freedom, the repeated halves simply don’t have much to delve into, and with the film’s two-hour runtime, things drag significantly once Hong’s point establishes itself. Hong’s low-key humour and dry comedy also feel sorely missed here (or, perhaps, it was too subdued for me to find it effective), with a lot of the film amounting to watching characters have rather dull conversations. It’s all disappointingly stale for Hong, especially after his highly entertaining Hill of Freedom last year. By now, Hong has shown that his variations on the same story can lead to some truly funny and thought-provoking material; Right Now, Wrong Then feels more like a slight misstep than anything else for Hong. There’s no sign that he’s lost his touch, but in this case, his experiment is less successful than his previous ones.

Graphic novelist Emma (the always excellent Alison Pill) works in a sex doll factory by day while drawing a new story at night. The story she’s drawing is about Edward (Gael Garcia Bernal), a famous action movie director trying to make a serious art film. The film he’s making is about Michelle (Mariana Ximenes), a model and aspiring novelist who drops everything to fly to Brazil so she can finish her novel about a graphic novelist named Emma who works in a sex doll factory. Brazilian director Pedro Morelli takes this closed loop of a narrative and throws in as many stylistic quirks and format changes as he can, turning Zoom into a frantic piece of metafiction that feels like nothing more than a collection of half-baked ideas.

At least screenwriter Matt Hansen tries to do something interesting, and for a time Morelli’s slick direction and the strong cast keep things interesting. But the film’s attempts to comment on the creative process get drowned out by Morelli making sure everything stays busy, and gimmicks like making Edward’s story entirely animated (remember, he’s in a graphic novel) look neat but feel superfluous. Bernal’s charm makes Edward’s rather bland story about wounded masculinity passable but Ximenes winds up with the short straw here, as her story winds up being a little too accurate in its attempt to be a bad art film. Morelli’s energy and the strength of Pill’s storyline (by far the best of the three) help make the film go by quickly, although it never winds up breaking past its shiny surface. The finale, where the closed loop transforms into an ouroboros, is neat to watch unfold, but the film might have served itself better if that zaniness came sooner rather than later.

There’s a yummy little narrative twist near the close of The Visit. The fact that it isn’t an earth-shattering or movie-defining cinematic surprise by any stretch is the surest sign of many that filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has finally gotten his shit together (at least for one movie) after over a decade of sub-par offerings that made him the poster boy for squandered potential. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable (both modern classics in my book) left audiences reeling with their mind-blowing late revelations, but with his subsequent films his craftsmanship dipped as he scrambled to wow us with his trademark twists (in addition to making two of the most egregiously bad big-budget movies of the last decade, After Earth and The Last Airbender). He hasn’t captured his former glory with his latest small-scale scare machine, but for the first time in a long time, he’s made a movie that simply works.

The story is a modern take on Hansel and Gretel, following teenager Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her wannabe-rapper pre-teen brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) visiting their maternal grandparents, who they’ve never met, for the first time. Their single mom (the versatile Kathryn Hahn) has been estranged from Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) for years following an ugly incident she doesn’t have the guts to share with the kids yet. Nana and Pop Pop seem a little strange at first, but at the kids’ age, aren’t all elderly people a little weird?

Nothing alarming happens over the first couple of days. Nana’s constantly baking them goodies and Pop Pop keeps himself busy with chores. Becca and Tyler soon discover, however, that Nana isn’t quite herself when the sun goes down. Pop Pop advises them to stay in their bedroom past their 9:30 curfew (bedtime!), but the mischievous Tyler (whose self-dubbed emcee name is “T-Diamond Stylus”) can’t resist peeking out the door when they hear mysterious, violent sounds echoing just beyond it. Seems Nana loses her mind and has a tendency to scurry about the house naked, vomiting and screeching like Gollum tripping on mushrooms.

The glue that holds the movie steady is a simple device; Becca’s an aspiring filmmaker, and she’s making a documentary about the trip and their family history. She’s brought along two DSLRs (manned by she and Tyler), and all the footage we see is ripped straight from the cameras’ memory cards. It’s one of the better found-footage horror movies to come out in recent years because the scenario makes perfect sense and the cameras are oh-so-much better than the grainy camcorders we’re used to characters swinging around. Because Becca’s a film geek, she’s constantly thinking of composition and “cinematic tension,” which basically gives Syamalan an excuse to make the movie look slick while adopting the handheld aesthetic when needed. A smart setup indeed.

Shyamalan wastes no time doling out creepy jump scares. Early on, the kids take the cameras under the porch (a maze of dark, blind corners) to play hide-and-seek. Soon enough, Nana joins the fun. What makes the sequence so scary is the first-person perspective the two cameras; with no establishing shots of any kind, we’re as lost and panicked as the kids are when we notice Nana skittering around on her hands and knees. My favorite scare sees Tyler setting up one of the cameras in the living room secretly. We see the room empty, and then we see Nana across the way, slamming the basement door over and over (in a nice touch, Shyamalan cuts to Becca’s camera in the bedroom as we hear the slamming echo through the house). Back to the living room and Nana slowly walks out of frame. Again, empty room. Then…boom! I saw the scare coming a mile away, and I still all but wet my pants.

Equally balanced with the scares are moments of real humor. This is the funniest movie Shyamalan’s ever made (besides The Happening, I guess), and most of the comedy stems from Oxenbould, who’s a veritable show-stealer. His white-boy rap routine is hilarious (freestyles abound) and he always seems to know how to make a scene funnier. The entire cast is pretty great, and the only thing that threw me a little was Dunagan’s casting. She’s actually quite ravishing at times, which I’m almost positive is unintentional, but nonetheless occasionally distracts from the fact that she’s supposed to be revolting (her flowing silver hair is glorious!). See? I’m distracted just writing about it. In all seriousness, the cast members each strike the perfect chord, and with Shyamalan holding up his end, it makes for a mostly rock-solid horror experience. Mostly.

The scares and laughs work without a hitch, but the dramatic piece of the puzzle doesn’t fit quite right. There are themes of familial anger, regret, and resentment (parental abandonment is a bitch) that leave little to no emotional impression. Throughout, Becca tries to convince Nana and Pop Pop to participate in sit-down interviews for the documentary, but each attempt falls apart when she brings up her mom, a touchy subject that clearly still strikes a chord. The movie stops dead when Tyler tells a long-winded story about a little league football game he lost for his team, a mistake he believes led to their father leaving the family. Every time the movie veered into family-drama territory, I had an immediate itch to get back to the bump-in-the-night stuff punctuated by unexpected laughs.

I mentioned a twist; don’t think about it too much. It comes, and it’s great, but the best stuff is in the lead-up and aftermath. Shyamalan’s working on a smaller scale here than he has in a long, long time, and it seems to be just what the doctor ordered. Unpretentious, scary, and wickedly entertaining, The Visit will, with hope, signal a new, not-shitty period in a fallen filmmaker’s career.

When describing a film, words like “schmaltz” or “cliché” are typically reserved for derision, used to chastise a film for lazily indulging in stale familiarities instead of achieving something more natural or truthful. But sometimes schmaltzy clichés aren’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s paradoxical in some ways that a film’s use of clichés can make it feel artificial when clichés exist precisely because of their natural familiarity (in reality, it’s more about how they’re employed—rather than if they’re used at all). Last Cab to Darwin, Jeremy Sims’ latest feature, has all the markings of “been there, done that.” It’s a tale about a curmudgeonly old man who, through trying out new experiences, learns to appreciate his life and the people willing to have him in theirs. And for all the borderline cringeworthy moments of manufactured sentimentality peppered throughout Last Cab to Darwin, there are also plenty of warm, funny and entertaining examples of earning the right to indulge in the maudlin.

In the town of Broken Hill, cab driver Rex (Michael Caton) lives out a meager existence, his only true companion being his dog named Dog (“Rex was taken,” he says dryly when someone asks him about the name). He has a social life, but it’s kept at arm’s length, giving him the ability to retreat into solitude if he feels like it. He goes for drinks at the local bar with his friends from time to time and hides the occasionally romantic relationship he has with Aboriginal neighbour Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf). The opening goes a long way in establishing their diverting and charming chemistry: Rex comes outside in the morning to find Polly cursing him out at the top of her lungs for dumping his garbage in her bin, then brings over some tea for them to drink together while she cuddles up to Rex on his porch. Rex obviously has the potential for a great life, except he refuses to allow himself to have it.

Then the bad news hits: a trip to the doctor’s about Rex’s trouble keeping food down turns into a diagnosis of an aggressive form of stomach cancer, giving Rex 3 months to live. He stubbornly shuts down the possibility for treating his disease, insisting that he’ll continue driving his taxi until he can’t anymore. Then a form of hope arrives for the cynically-minded Rex: he learns that the Northern Territories of Australia recently legalized euthanasia, he sees a chance to die on his own terms. After contacting a doctor (Jacki Weaver) he sees in the newspaper to set up an appointment to die, she tells him that he would have to travel up north to Darwin in order to go through with the procedure. Rex decides to get in his cab and drive the entire 3,000 kilometre trip on his own, abandoning everyone in Broken Hill and leaving Polly his house, belongings, and Dog.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that, once Rex hits the road, Last Cab to Darwin transforms itself into a generic road movie. He drives along to various montages set to upbeat music, encounters ghost towns, meets eccentric locals, and hits different obstacles along the way (the usual hallmarks of a cross-country car ride). These sequences flow nicely within the film’s pacing, mainly thanks to the terrific cinematography by Steve Arnold (although, by this point, I’m thinking it’s difficult for anyone to film the Outback and make it not look spectacular) and Caton’s performance, who barely hides Rex’s vulnerability underneath his hard exterior. Caton transforms his character from an archetype to someone much more relatable and human as the film continues on and Rex begins opening up to those around him.

The same goes for Lawford-Wolf, who turns out to be the heart of the film as Polly. She’s a tough woman from the first moment we see her screaming at the top of her lungs, though Lawford-Wolf combats the harshness with a great amount of sensitivity once she lets down her guard. The screenplay, written by Sims and Reg Cribb (adapted from Cribb’s successful stage play), also goes out of its way to establish the still-rampant racism surrounding Polly, showing her hard-edged persona as something she does more out of survival than anything. The few moments when Rex calls Polly during his trip are by far the most heartbreaking and emotional moments, largely because of Lawford-Wolf’s fantastic performance. It’s the film’s saving grace from falling into a sappy mess.

But just as Last Cab to Darwin starts becoming one of the better feel-good tearjerkers in recent years, bad choices and preposterous developments come and sour the good vibes. As Rex makes his way up north to Darwin, he winds up taking on two passengers. The first is Tilly (Mark Coles Smith), a young Aboriginal man whose penchant for drinking and partying ruins his chances of becoming a professional footballer. Smith has plenty of charisma to make Tilly a likable guy despite his screwups (including neglecting his wife and kids), but he’s written as a broad caricature, the kind of wise slacker who likes to begin sentences with phrases like “Don’t you worry about me”, in the tone of a person who actually has it all figured out. And it’s not even a question about whether Tilly can actually play football. He claims he’s great—and he winds up being just that—but it takes Rex to eventually put him on the right path and shed his alcoholism before he lives up to his full potential. It’s a subplot that winds up feeling disappointingly slight, considering the amount of time spent with Tilly throughout.

Even more hilariously preposterous is a sequence where Rex and Tilly meet the bartender Julie (Emma Hamilton), a British girl who vaguely answers any questions about how she wound up in Australia. Later that night at the bar, Rex falls severely ill. While Julie tries to save him, her boss tells her to call an ambulance and get back to work. It’s at this moment that Julie reveals she’s actually a former nurse, an oh-so-convenient coincidence that winds up making her tag along for the ride as Rex’s caretaker. Other moments like this happen throughout: when Rex calls a radio show to talk about his illness earlier on in Broken Hill, the camera cuts to all of Rex’s friends across town who all happen to be listening in at the same time. These scenes serve as little reminders that, no matter pleasant the film may be, there’s a limit to the amount of BS one can pile on an audience.

The last act, where Rex arrives and Weaver’s character takes on a more prominent role, is a bit of a fumble, especially when the story turns to highlighting how Rex has changed those around him for the better. But a touching scene between Rex and Polly and a surprisingly low-key ending things on a note that’s more bittersweet than melancholy help turn things around a bit. There’s no denying that audiences will enjoy Sims’ film, laughing and crying at the exact moments it wants them to (there were plenty of tears and sniffling at my screening), but Sims having his heart in the right place can’t entirely mask the mawkish and cheesy nature of the story. Last Cab to Darwin, therefore, operates as a guide on how to do schmaltz right and wrong. It’s a ratio that tips over a little more on the wrong side, but the terrific performances and touching relationship at the centre of it all make this film a lot easier to swallow.

A.D. Calvo’s The Missing Girl is the unique kind of mystery film that gradually reveals itself to have no real mystery at all. That may sound like a disappointment, but in the hands of A.D. Calvo it’s quite the opposite. And while there is, in fact, a missing girl in the film (there are actually two), Calvo cleverly uses the old, familiar hook of a detective story to lure people into a character-based drama about letting go of the past and moving forward. The emphasis on character is there from frame one, but as time goes on Calvo deliberately downplays and removes his narrative strands established at the beginning to make the film’s major discovery more of an internal one for its central character. It’s the kind of low-key, diverting indie that uses its great cast to avoid falling into the clichés of a late coming-of-age tale, and it’s all elevated by an incredible lead performance.

The person at the centre of The Missing Girl is actually Mort (Robert Longstreet), a middle-aged owner of a comic book store in New London, Connecticut. He’s recently hired Ellen (Alexia Rasmussen), an aspiring graphic novelist hoping to get her work published. Mort’s attracted to the younger Ellen, but he’s too nervous to make a move. It’s soon revealed that part of Mort’s attraction to Ellen has to do with a dark memory from his past; she looks similar to his high school crush who mysteriously vanished years ago, with only her clothes and a lot of blood found underneath a bridge in a seedy-looking part of town. The unsolved mystery still bothers Mort for reasons beyond his attraction to the girl; his late father was a detective on the case and never solved it.

And then Mort’s reignited fascination with the case only gets stronger once the missing girl’s high school boyfriend Skippy (Eric Ladin) strolls into town for a few days to clean up his parents’ place after putting his dad in a nursing home. Skippy, now a rich businessman living in New York, shows he hasn’t really changed since his days in high school, coming into Mort’s shop and humiliating him in front of Ellen for his childish interests. Not too long after Ellen suddenly stops showing up for work, and when Mort goes by her place the TV’s on but nobody’s home. Suspecting that Ellen has fallen victim to a similar fate as Skippy’s former girlfriend, Mort starts investigating to find out what happened to her.

Calvo swiftly sets the pieces of his story in place, only to casually ignore the puzzle he’s laid out. Rather than add suspense by withholding the whereabouts of Ellen, Calvo leaves everything out in the open regarding her fate. It immediately deflates the sense of mystery, and by doing so allows Calvo to delve further into Mort’s life, whether it’s staying in contact with his mother (Shirley Knight), relying on his brother Stan (Thomas Jay Ryan) to help him out with his store’s finances, or getting help from his friend and local cop Fran (Sonja Sohn). Anyone familiar with these names should be aware by now that Calvo has assembled a terrific group of character actors for his film, and everyone brings their own unique presence to their roles. Even Kevin Corrigan—who’s been having a great year with roles in films like Results and Wild Canaries—shows up at one point, in what amounts to a glorified cameo.

But this is primarily a showcase for Robert Longstreet, and to say his performance makes The Missing Girl is an understatement. Longstreet, who’s been playing supporting roles over the years in films like Take Shelter, This is Martin Bonner and more recently in Josephine Decker’s Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, finally gets a chance to show off his incredible talent in a lead role. Longstreet played a terrifying, intimidating force in Decker’s film, and here, he goes in the opposite direction, portraying Mort as a meek, shy man whose obsession with comics and toys feels like a result of his inability to get over his father’s death. But Longstreet also taps into his more intense side, showing Mort as short-tempered with an ability to fly into a rage if he hears the wrong thing. It’s seriously impressive how much Longstreet transforms Mort from the standard image of a man in arrested development to a fascinating and complex person.

Behind the camera, Calvo and cinematographer Ava Berkofsky give the film a rare quality seen in recent indies that takes advantage of the film’s New London setting (or maybe it’s just refreshing to see something not in Brooklyn or Los Angeles). Michael Taylor’s editing is where The Missing Girl shows off some originality by using split screens and match cuts to make the screen reflect comic book panels, but its implementation is hit and miss (the first time it’s used might be the best part since the effect is somewhat disorienting). Similarly, Calvo’s brief glimpses into Mort’s brain through fantasy sequences also don’t land too well, adding a crudeness to the film that doesn’t match up well with everything else. But Calvo’s film is primarily a character study, and on that end it succeeds thanks to Longstreet. It’s a mystery movie with no real resolution, and in this case, there’s nothing wrong with that.

For a story that feels directly inspired from the director’s personal life, Mia Madre feels surprisingly bland. Nanni Moretti’s latest film focuses on Margherita (Margherita Buy), a director working on the troubled production of her latest film. Her on-set troubles come in the form of Barry Huggins (John Turturro), an American actor with a bloated ego; off set, Margherita and her brother (Nanni Moretti) have to deal with their mother’s (Giulia Lazzarini) failing health. Both children know that, with their mother, getting better isn’t an option; it’s only a matter of when she’ll pass on, and the impending death soon takes its toll on Margherita’s health and well-being.

Moretti faced a similar issue several years ago; his mother passed away while he was working on his 2011 film We Have a Pope, so it feels a bit strange watching Mia Madre unfold in such a bland and detached manner. Moretti throws in one clue after another about Margherita’s psychological condition, and his weaving in of dreams and fantasy sequences (all shot in the same way, making it hard to discern what’s real and fake at certain moments) does a fine job of establishing his protagonist’s fraught mental state. But none of it really coalesces into anything definitive about Margherita. It all feels fragmented, making certain sequences—like one where Margherita purposely smashes her mom’s car after catching her driving—feel baffling or out of place. Moretti makes it impossible to find anything about Margherita worth latching on to, and as a result, the central drama over her mother’s passing falls flat.

At least Mia Madre benefits from its cast. Moretti and Lazzarini feel somewhat wasted (Margherita’s mother barely registers as a character, which also contributes to why there’s almost no emotion in the film), but Buy and Turturro keep the film from being entirely forgettable. The shoddy script makes Buy’s characterization weak, but she does a terrific job expressing the strain of keeping herself together professionally while her personal life goes to hell (in other words, her behaviour may not be relatable but her emotions are). And Turturro turns out to be the lifeblood of Mia Madre, making Barry a frequently funny and bombastic presence who’s seemingly dedicated to pushing Margherita even closer to the edge. But the talent of these two performances might only be magnified here when compared to the very miniscule drama going on elsewhere in the film. The only thing Moretti achieves with Mia Madre is something that was most likely unintended: he managed to make a film about the death of a parent that inspired nothing but complete indifference.

Five years after being banned from filmmaking for 20 years, Jafar Panahi returns with his third film since his sentencing with Jafar Panahi’s Taxi. With his first post-sentencing film This is Not a Film taking place within the confines of his apartment, and his follow-up Closed Curtain taking place in a vacation home, Taxi sees Panahi making his most audacious protest yet by heading out into the streets of Tehran. Panahi plays a taxi driver, and to get around “directing” he lets the film play out through small cameras mounted in the car on the dashboard and back seat. Over the course of a day, Panahi picks up a variety of eccentric passengers who double as conduits to bring up issues of morality, religion, crime, censorship, and a whole host of other important issues. For those familiar with Panahi’s films none of this should come as a surprise; for those who aren’t as familiar, Taxi should act as a terrific entry point for people new to Panahi’s incredible acts of defiance.

Right from the opening, where two passengers argue over what the punishment for thieves should be (he says the death penalty, she says not the death penalty), it’s easy to get hooked in by Panahi’s ability to approach such an important theme through a conversation that flows so naturally. But it turns out that’s just a warm-up, because Panahi brings in more characters and stories that keep Taxi going at a fast, entertaining pace: a man selling bootleg videos who recognizes Panahi for who he really is, two superstitious old women trying to stay alive, and a motorcycle accident that winds up dealing with women’s rights are just a few situations Panahi finds himself in. But the best part of the film has to be Panahi’s niece (Note: due to the film being made illegally, no one in the film gets credited except for Panahi), whose no-nonsense attitude and attempts to make a short film that fits the government’s guidelines for an acceptable film (for example: films must not contain “sordid realism”) make her easily walk away with the entire film. Beyond just being yet another astounding act of protest from Panahi, and an example of how creative one can be when restricted, Taxi is just a fun, thought-provoking movie from the beginning to its (unsettling) end.

You won’t catch me complaining about rom-coms or decrying the genre as lifeless, well-worn, or ready for bed. One cannot blame a film genre for the laziness of writers, directors, and narrow-minded studios. The same trends we see in consumer products apply to filmmaking. If it works, mass produce it until the market oversaturates and the people demand something new. Leslye Headland is demanding something different. Demanding, and making. Her sophomore film—a follow up to 2012’s Bachelorette—Sleeping With Other People is rom-com 2.0. Or 10.0, who knows which iteration we’re really on, all I know is we are ready for it. Headland must have decided unrealistic banter, comedy based on error and miscommunication, and men being the only ones allowed to misuse sex was getting old. All of which I tend to agree with.

In Sleeping With Other People, Headland, who also wrote the film, presents the “just friends” scenario and frees it up to be honest and self-aware, making for that rare and highly sought after rom-com combo: emotionally fulfilling AND hilarious.  If there is such thing as “organic” comedy, this is it. No one is genetically modifying the laughs in this film, they are all entirely deserved. Does that mean she goes light on the raunch or wickedness? Not for a second.

Starring Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis, much of the film’s success falls on their mutual magnetism. Brie plays Lainey (but don’t worry she’s nothing like Laney Boggs from She’s All That), a kindergarten teacher with a longtime addiction to her always-unavailable college crush Matthew (Adam Scott). Lainey runs into the guy she lost her virginity to in college, Jake (Sudeikis), at a sex addicts meeting. Since their one-night tryst in college he’s become your typical serial polygamist, successful in his career—he’s just sold his startup to a large corporation led by a sexy CEO (Amanda Peet) he’s determined to nail—and totally absorbed in his sexual amusements. Jake and Lainey attempt a date but decide their mutual attraction will only feed into each other’s bad habit of abusing sex, deciding instead to remain friends.

What ensues is a modern update on When Harry Met Sally’s cynical approach to male-female friendships. Lainey and Jake keep the lines of communication between each other wide open, and similar to Meg Ryan’s famously enlightening lesson on the fake orgasms of woman, this film’s most talked about scene is likely to be when Jake goes into an in-depth (and visually illustrated) lesson on female masturbation. The two are so communicative as to inform each other when they are feeling attracted to the other, developing a safe-word: “mousetrap.”

The real heart of the film lies in their growing friendship and their increased dependence on one another. It’s a modern comedy that allows its characters to fall in love naturally, without the pressure of sex, while also providing plenty of sex throughout the film (with other people). The comedy of the film comes entirely from its honesty and openness, proving that mishaps, mistakes, and misperceptions aren’t the only way for romantic films to utilize comedy.

The dialog pushes Headland’s film far out of the realm of the usual rom-com as well. Not because it’s not bantery, but because the banter is surprising and realistically clever—with all the speed of Sorkin and the referential easter eggs of Gilmore Girls drained of un-believability. Contemporary audiences will appreciate the Millennial-style straight-forwardness and Lainey and Jake’s no-holds-barred conversation style. Throw in some irreverence—like taking drugs at a kid’s birthday party or Lainey’s adulterous weaknesses or Jake’s hesitancy in describing sex with a black woman—and it all adds up to a perfectly balanced amount of laughter and well-built romance.

Brie’s usual sweetness, most evidenced in her role in TV show Community, is balanced with some of the spirit we see her exhibit in AMC’s Mad Men as Trudy Campbell. She’s not a sucker, although she often returns to her hopeless romance with a married man, instead she’s a woman whose sexual desires have only been met by one man and she’s never known what it is to have emotional and sexual fulfillment in the same place. She’s not a victim, she never needs saving, she just needs a friend.

Sudeikis is also impressive, reigning in any lingering SNL silliness and playing as believably sexy and flawed, but not despicable. He could easily have made Jake appear creepy,—taking advantage of Lainey’s friendship—or pitiful—falling for a girl he may never get—but he stays equal parts damaged and dashing at all times.

They are surrounded by a great supporting cast including Jason Mantzoukas in my favorite role of his yet, and Natasha Lyonne playing both the mandatory best friend and mandatory gay best friend all at once, even if she’s not wholly believable as Lainey’s best friend. Adam Scott also plays against type as a nerdy scumbag, and Adam Brody goes big in his one early scene with Brie to hilarious effect.

The possibilities in romantic scenarios will never cease (though most romantic comedies tend to navigate to the same three or four), and Headland turns to one we’ve seen plenty of times before—the friendship-turned-romantic situation—but her approach is outgoing and unrestrained, not only with her humor but in the total transparency between her lead characters. These characters may be more clever than most people we know, more attractive, and more successful, but their friendship feels relatable and their flaws are actual which makes for heartier laughs and an aphrodisiacal love story.

A version of this review first ran as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage. 

The true definition of love is something beyond appearance, an abstract noun that is at once magical and mysterious. Debut feature director Jong-Yeol Baik’s The Beauty Inside uses this notion to make a concoction that attempts to meet Shallow Hal in laughs and add plenty of slushy romance too. Baik’s film is based on the foundation of appearance, which has become most valued in contemporary society. Kim Woo-jin (played by 123 different actors and actresses) wakes up every morning to a different face and body; he is entirely transformed regardless of age, gender, or even nationality. It is a remarkably high-concept pitch that inevitably bears a few holes if one prods hard enough, but Baik takes this story and develops it beyond comedy and into a far more layered romance with a few thoughtful insights.

Woo-jin is, by no surprise considering his condition, a solitary person who spends his time designing bespoke furniture from his drawing desk and MacBook pro. His one friend, Sang-beck (Lee Dong-hwi) is his manager, who has a zeal for eccentric socializing. Woo-jin is a gentle and sincere character, although he clearly carries the burden of his condition, with remnants of tears often etched around his eyelids. It is a truly extraordinary feat that his persona is able to drift between a mighty ensemble of actors, most notably the more attractive of faces in Yoo Yeon-seok, Lee Dong-wook and Seo Kang-jun, to name a few. Others include Japanese actresses (Ko Ah-sung, Juri Ueno) and just about anyone else from a fading old lady to an active young boy. If this sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is, so give up now if the idea sounds insufferable. That said, it is an idea that grows as perspective is steadily shifted to a more reliable comprehension.

Although the film doesn’t directly deal with such momentous problems as the harsh reality of what it might be like to change appearance every day (for example, there are no journalists, doctors or even lifestyle problems apparent), it does reassure the audience that this isn’t intended to be a flat out fantasy by the introduction of Yi-Soo (a winning performance by Hyo-ju Han), the girl who will become the love of Woo-jin’s life. Once the relationship develops, the film begins to explore the agony of something that cannot be, namely a loving homogenous relationship. Yi-Soo is undoubtedly promiscuous in falling for this transformative man, but Han pulls it off with a curious and thoroughly admirable sentiment. She truly believes in this situation, and so it makes her journey (and ours) more agreeable.

Occasionally, it feels as if Baik is too hooked with the universal theme of love; lines like “They say love is the answer to every problem, but it also ruins everything,” can feel a bit trite. However, the likelihood is that without a growing pot of sentiment, any further interest in what can only be a fleeting concept (without a fantastical world to supplement it) is unlikely to prevail. In this sense, the story is trapped from the start. The first question to ask will always be: how could he/she ever find love? The love game might be considered a safe one to play, but then anything thematically serious would surely be rendered absurd or deceptive within a high-concept framework like this. The Beauty Inside can’t really be described as anything other than fun, warm and silly. It’s polished to technical perfection, of course, and littered with musical accompaniments, but ultimately the best word for it would be “watchable.”

While TIFF is known for its prestige and glamour, it’s also a really, really big festival (nearly 400 features and shorts are playing this year), and thankfully that means there’s room for a lot of fun, insane films. That’s where the Midnight Madness programme comes in. One movie screens every night of the festival at midnight in a packed, 1200+ seat theatre for the most rabid fans of genre films.

The man responsible for all the fun is Colin Geddes, who’s been running Midnight Madness since 1998. But in the last several years, Geddes has expanded his reach to the Vanguard programme, which describes itself as “provocative, sexy…possibly dangerous.” A few examples of films Geddes has helped unveil to the world through these two programmes should give you an idea of his influence and impeccable taste: Cabin Fever, Ong-Bak, Insidious, The Duke of Burgundy, The Raid: Redemption and many, many more.

As someone who got their start at TIFF through Midnight Madness—the first film I ever bought a ticket for was Martyrs, a choice Geddes tells me is like “baptism by fire”—I was more than excited to chat with him about some of the films playing in both programmes this year. Needless to say, any fans of genre films (or anyone looking to seriously expand their horizons) should try to check these films out. You can look at the line-ups for Midnight Madness and Vanguard HERE, along with everything else playing at TIFF this year.

Read on for my interview with Colin Geddes, where he details a handful of films from each programme, gives a glimpse into the behind the scenes of the festival, and tells me what he thinks will be the most talked about film at Midnight Madness this year.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10th to 20th in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and you can buy individual tickets for films at the festival starting September 6th. To learn more, visit the festival’s website HERE.

I know some people who want to check out Midnight Madness but are afraid of essentially picking a really extreme film. What would be a good film for people to kind of dip their toes into the water this year with Midnight Madness?

What we celebrate with Midnight Madness is that it’s just a wild, crazy, fun ride. The criteria for picking the films is very different from the other programmers because I’m looking for a kind of tone and content. This is the last film people are seeing during the day, so it’s my mission to wake them up. It’s not necessarily always about horror films. It’s about action, thriller, comedy…

I would say that the one that kind of represents the Midnight Madness experience the most might be Takashi Miike’s Yakuza Apocalypse, because it is just a gonzo brain-melter. Something different and crazy happens pretty much every five minutes. It’s a whole bunch of half-baked ideas happening in the film, but that’s kind of the fun of it. Takashi Miike is, in many respects, the godfather of the Midnight Madness programme. No other director has had as many films selected for Midnight Madness, and it looks like we’re actually going to have him here, something he hasn’t done since I think 2000. It’s gonna be nice to have him back.

Yakuza Apocalypse

And what would be a good film for someone who wants to get thrown in the deep end?

On the other end of the spectrum in Midnight Madness, if you want the baptism by fire, go hard or go home, there are two films. The first would be Baskin, which is a descent into hell from Turkey. I’m pretty proud that we have our first entry from Turkey in Midnight Madness this year. This one’s gonna have just as much of an effect on people as Martyrs potentially did. But the other one, which is also really intense but in a fun way, is Hardcore. It’s a Russian-American co-production, and it’s the first POV action film. I can safely say that it’s like the Blair Witch of action films.

Can you talk about the opening and closing films Green Room and The Final Girls? What made you choose them as bookends for the programme this year?

What I strive to do with Midnight Madness is to get underdog films as much as I can. I actually veer away from big studio films. They can be fun and all, but I’d rather showcase a film from Japan or Turkey, somewhere you’re probably not going to see [the film] with that much energy. But then, at the same time, in order to properly champion those films, the programme always benefits by a couple of what you call tentpole films. So, if a newspaper article writes about Patrick Stewart in Green Room, then they’re also going to write about Baskin or Southbound or one of the smaller films. It’s important to have those in the mix, but I’m very selective on what I do. I just felt Green Room was a really sharp, fun thriller.

And with Final Girls, when I do a closing film, it’s a little more tricky just because of the kind of pedigree of premiere status. And it’s harder sometimes to have a world premiere at the end of the festival because that’s when the bulk of the media and the industry have probably left, so it’s hard for me to do a premiere at the end. But when I saw Final Girls the premiere status had already been broken, and I realized “You know what? Closing night!” Thematically, Final Girls is an excellent fit for the final night, and it’s also nice to end the programme on a humourous high.

Green Room

Midnight Madness has established a lot of new filmmakers to audiences over the years. Do you have a particularly fond memory of a filmmaker you helped introduce through Midnight Madness?

I really take pride in being able to introduce audiences to Ong-Bak. Thai Cinema has had a rich history, but it’s a rich history which hasn’t really been known outside of its own country. And literally overnight we were able to introduce the world to the first Thai film star who became internationally recognized. Who knew from when we first screened Ong-Bak that, years later, Tony Jaa would be in a Fast & Furious film? And then repeating the same thing with The Raid: Redemption. I like to take pride that we probably brought the biggest audience anywhere in North America for an Indonesian film.

What can you tell me about Southbound? When you announced it, very little was known about the film.

Southbound is an anthology film, but as opposed to something like V/H/S which had an interlinking episode, in this film, the stories all interlock with one another. It’s kind of seamless, where one story ends and it moves into the beginning of the next story. It does have some of the directors who have done films for V/H/S including the collective Radio Silence and David Bruckner. It also has a female director, Roxanne Benjamin, who’s made a really fun segment. And a female director in Midnight Madness…Even within the guys of the anthology, I’m really proud to be able to do that. There aren’t a lot of female directors working in genre at the moment, but that’s slowly starting to change. To be able to help usher in a new voice into genre is really exciting.

I could ask about every film in the programme, but I’ll ask about one more: I’m really interested in the short film The Chickening, which I guess is the real opening film since it will play before Green Room.

[Laughs] The Chickening came to me from…I got a link from a good friend, but I didn’t take the link seriously. The e-mail sat in my inbox for a couple of weeks before I watched [it]. It’s kind of similar to if you have friends in bands. You’re kind of like “Ugh, here’s their new album, is it gonna be good or bad?” It’s the same with films. When I put The Chickening on my jaw dropped. It is one of the craziest, freakiest, fun things I’ve seen, and in many respects the less said about The Chickening the better. The Chickening is, I think, going to be one of the most talked about films in Midnight Madness, and it’s only 5 minutes long.

The Chickening

Moving on from Midnight Madness to Vanguard now, I feel like Vanguard is a really vital programme in a lot of ways. Aside from genre festivals, I don’t really see many major festivals around the world profiling the kind of in-between genre films that Vanguard shows off.

Yeah, that’s exactly it. In many ways, I can single you out as a poster child of how the TIFF experience goes. Midnight Madness is the gateway drug for people. That’s how it was for me. I stood in line for the first year of Midnight Madness, and after that, I started seeing more films within the festival. People can get kind of intimidated or scared off by art films or foreign films, but everyone can accept a horror film or an action film. But as the audience grows and matures, so do their tastes. And so I really feel that Vanguard is almost the older, cooler sister of Midnight Madness. These are where we can find films that intersect within genre and arthouse. It’s a fun programme to see the people who are taking it to heart. I used to be a Midnight Madness fan, and now I’m a Vanguard fan.

I did want to talk about what might be the most hyped up titles in Vanguard this year, which I’m referring to as TIFF’s power couple: Gaspar Noe’s Love and Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Evolution.

Oh, I’m so glad you caught on to that! I mean Gaspar and Lucile are in many ways cinematic opposites. Whereas Gaspar deals with the extremities, Lucile deals with the intimacies. It’s quite fascinating. I mean Love, there’s not much to be said about Love: It’s a 3D porn film. Or, more appropriately, it’s a love story, and those sequences of physical love are in 3D.

But Evolution is a little bit more of a hard nut to crack because it’s a sublime, body horror, fairy tale mystery. There are no easy answers in this one, but it is beautiful, lush and so engaging. Come and get ready to dive into that film. The imagery is just going to wash over you and slowly get under your skin. When people come out of Evolution they’re going to be talking about it.

Evolution

There are some interesting U.S. indies in Vanguard this year like Missing Girl, which stars Robert Longstreet and Kevin Corrigan, and Oz Perkins’ February.

It’s great because Longstreet is the lead, and it’s so nice to finally see a film that he’s carrying. Missing Girl is a fun, quirky indie. Quirky also works within Vanguard. This is almost a Ghost World-esque thriller in a minor key. It’s got some great performances, and it’s got this likable character who you’re concerned about. It’s a really nice, small, controlled universe. 

And February is a kind of beautiful, sublime horror film. When I sat down and watched the film I wasn’t really sure where it was going, and then there’s a certain point where everything just clicked for me and I was along for the ride. It’s just kind of an awkward coming of age story that takes some very demonic twists.

When you’re programming films, does that moment you’re talking about where everything falls in place kind of entice you? Is that something you seek for when you’re watching things.

Yeah. Personally, for me, I like films where I don’t know where they’re going. I like going down a path that kind of twists and turns. Another example is Demon from Poland. That’s a film that I didn’t know much about. I tracked it down based on the name alone. And it was so rich and rewarding to see a film where I couldn’t predict what the outcome was. It’s also refreshing to see a tale from another part of the world. I’m at the whims of whatever the market gives me, but I try to do as many non-American films as I can. So to be able to discover and put a film from Poland in Vanguard makes me really happy.

Demon

Alex de la Iglesia was last seen in Midnight Madness with Witching and Bitching, and this year he’s in Vanguard with My Great Night. It looks a lot different from Witching and Bitching, but it still looks pretty wild.

It’s totally wild, yeah. This is a film that could have fit in Midnight Madness. There’s a definite madcap energy to it. It’s just about the filming of a New Year’s special in Spain and all the crazy people in the televised special. It’s like a long, drunk, crazy party. It’s as funny as Alex de la Iglesia’s other films. Diana Sanchez—the programmer who selected it—and I had a big talk about it. She was worried that the audience might not recognize some of the cultural references. I was like “No, this is totally going to work.” This is classic Alex, and anyone who’s in for this is totally in for this ride.

I think Midnight Madness and Vanguard have a unique quality compared to other programmes in the fest where you’re kind of the face of these programmes. Throughout the year, when you do this selection process for the programmes, how much of it is you and how much is more of a collaborative process with other people behind the scenes?

Midnight Madness is pretty much carte blanche for me, it’s all of my picks. But Vanguard is a collaborative process with the other programmers. I’ll see something, or they’ll see something, and we’ll meet or discuss whether or not we feel it might fit into Vanguard. A good example of this is Collective Invention from South Korea. I had watched it, and my selections were already full, so I immediately sent it over to our Asian programmer Giovanna Fulvi and said, “You have to see this.” It has the same kind of mad spark of genius we saw with some films at the beginning of the new wave of Korean cinema, like Save the Green Planet or The Foul King. It’s a perfect Vanguard film. She saw it and embraced it, and that’s how it ended up in Vanguard.

Finally, outside of the films in Midnight Madness and Vanguard, what is a film that you personally want to see badly?

High-Rise, Ben Wheatley’s film. I haven’t had a chance to see it. It’s in the Platform section. I’ve read the book, and when Wheatley was here for A Field in England he was telling me what he was going to be doing with the film. I’m so excited to see that one. Hopefully I’ll check it out before the festival. Otherwise I’m just gonna have to skip my duties and run and catch a screening while it’s on.

As actors, Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley have bottomless resources. They’re two of the best working today, and Learning to Drive is simply a vehicle for them to pilot smoothly toward the finish line. It’s really nothing more than that; the lead performances are extraordinary, but the script, the imagery, the sound—every other element—is decidedly ordinary. Director Isabel Coixet and screenwriter Sarah Kernochan paint New York City from an ignorant tourist’s point of view as it weaves a rudimentary tale of a vehophobic book critic named Wendy (Clarkson), who’s just been dumped by her husband, and her noble Sikh driving instructor, Darwan (Kingsley), who’s determined to teach her how to grab life by the wheel. It’s thin, copacetic material (the source material, a short story by Katha Pollitt, has more edge), but it lays enough of a foundation to allow Clarkson and Kingsley to work.

At the outset, Wendy’s left alone in her Manhattan home by her asshole of a husband of 21 years (Jake Weber). They had a huge fight in the back of a cab the night before, and in the morning, the driver, Darwan, shows up on Wendy’s doorstep to return a package she left on the seat. She notices from the big-lettered advertisement on his cab that he doubles as a driving instructor, and she asks him to be her vehicular Jedi master of sorts.

A teacher-student friendship blossoms at a steady rate, with Wendy and Darwan using each other as a rock to cling to as the rapids of life threaten to wash them downstream. Wendy wants desperately to visit her daughter (Grace Gummer) in Vermont (especially with her impending divorce looming), but can’t clear her head of her husband’s memory, an obsession that inhibits her abilities behind the wheel (her mind drifts frequently as she daydreams about he and his new girlfriend). Darwan has a seemingly tighter grip on reality though he lives with complications of his own. A political refugee, he and his illegal-immigrant roommates are under constant threat of deportation. Making things more knotty is the fact that his sister has arranged for him to marry a complete stranger to gain her access into the U.S.; Darwan finds he has more affection for Wendy than his new wife.

The script isn’t flawed in any major way, but it’s resoundingly underwhelming. Its views of New Yorkers (Wendy) and immigrants (Darwan) are as one-dimensional as can be without being offensive though Clarkson and Kingsley do a lot of heavy lifting to give their characters more depth. There are actually several moments of delight in which the acting between them is so good and dynamic you almost forget about the artifice that is the movie around them. In fact, it sometimes feels like the actors abandon the cross-cultural themes completely as they get lost in playing off of one another. In these moments, it becomes woefully apparent that the heavy-handed driving metaphor Kernochan drives home so incessantly is nothing but a pestering distraction from the real work being done by Clarkson and Kingsley.

Learning to Drive has some sweetness to it, most of which comes from the compassion in Kingsley’s eyes. The thought of someone in a scrambled mental state such as Wendy’s getting behind the wheel of a car is terrifying for its dangerous implications. If only Coixet and Kernochan would flirt with danger a little more in their filmmaking, we could have had a more memorable film on our hands.

It takes less than a minute for Addicted to Fresno to state its intentions. This is a story about sisters, but it’s not one about sisterly love. Instead, it’s a story about how sisters “sink each other,” and the image of one of the main characters in a prisoner’s outfit means things aren’t going to go well for at least one of these women. Yet Addicted to Fresno, Jamie Babbit’s (But I’m a Cheerleader) latest dark comedy, isn’t about a sisterly relationship falling apart. It’s more about the impact a poisonous family relationship can have, and how sibling support can harm and help both parties. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. Addicted to Fresno is, first and foremost, a very silly and sometimes mean-spirited comedy that can get a little too goofy for its own good.

After the brief tease at its beginning, the film flashes back to two years earlier when Shannon (Judy Greer) starts her life over after getting out of sex rehab. Her sister Martha (Natasha Lyonne, whose reunion with Babbit will hopefully continue from here on out), a hotel maid, gets Shannon a job so they can work together. Ever since their parents died Martha feels obligated to take care of Shannon, and it’s implied that this isn’t the first time she’s bailed her sister out of a bad situation. Shannon meanwhile is an obnoxiously sardonic type, complaining about how terrible life in Fresno is and taking no responsibility for her faults. Martha’s in the midst of a sort-of-breakup with a girl at her gym, and Shannon is covering up that she was in fact kicked out of sex rehab for sleeping with her therapist (Ron Livingston).

It takes almost no time for Shannon and Martha to fall into a routine of arguing with one other, but this time Shannon screws up significantly. Martha catches her sleeping with a disgusting hotel guest (Jon Daly, a sleazy highlight for his brief time on-screen), and in the ensuing scuffle he winds up dead. In an attempt to appease her sister, Shannon claims she was being raped but insists they don’t call the cops since as a sex addict they aren’t likely to believe her. Martha agrees to help dispose of the body, leading to a failed attempt to convince a couple pet cemetery owners (Fred Armisen & Allison Tolman) that they want to cremate a really big dog. The owners, desperate for cash, blackmail Shannon & Martha into giving them $25,000 in three days or else they go to the police.

Babbit attempts to make a sort of madcap, screwball comedy out of the entire situation, with Shannon and Martha carting their corpse around the city in a bin while resorting to desperate measures for cash. The whole thing feels frantic; within a short span of time the film wildly veers from a botched heist to a cheap “kickass” montage to a dramatic fight, and the constant changes in tone are jarring. It also doesn’t help that Karey Dornetto’s screenplay seems inclined to pick up and throw away character or story beats without any sense of purpose or resolution. A second heist attempt is thrown in and then tapers off, while the revolving door of supporting characters (including Molly Shannon, Jessica St. Clair, and Aubrey Plaza to name a few) provide light laughs, but make little to no impact. A teen’s attempt to launch his hip-hop career at his bar mitzvah is among the basest of the jokes presented.

But Addicted to Fresno is a funny film, for the most part, largely due to its game cast. Lyonne and Greer are both brilliantly cast against type here, with Lyonne taking the role of the cheery optimist and Greer diving into the chance to play a morose, bitchy character. Their performances wind up becoming the saving grace of the film since their wide range and great chemistry together sells the more sincere and dramatic moments in the final act. The ensemble does most of the film’s heavy lifting, since the unevenness of the script impacts Babbit’s direction as well (it’s surprising to see how lackluster her direction can be at times, considering her excellent work on television over the years). The sisterly bond at the center winds up resonating the most, but it seems problematic when the most memorable parts of a comedy are the unfunny parts.

Addicted to Fresno is available via VOD platforms September 1 and in theaters October 2, 2015.

Jason Schwartzman has perfected the alchemy of the self-centered but likable asshole, a petty narcissist out looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places who, despite his hardened outer shell, really does have his heart in the right place. We’ve seen it before, born and arguably perfected during his work with his pal Wes Anderson, the character might have reached its peak in last year’s acerbic Listen Up, Philip. And the truth is, there are few other actors working today who could have made Listen Up, Philip watchable, let alone made audiences root for such a vain prick. But Schwartzman did all that and more. And now, with Bob Byington’s (Somebody Up There Likes Me) 7 Chinese Brothers, Schwartzman is working his magic again, while managing to salvage some of the film around him.

The beats of 7 Chinese Brothers are rather simple. Schwartzman plays Larry, a hard-drinking, hardly working schlub, who spends his days motor mouthing through one-sided conversations with his so-ugly-he’s-cute bulldog, Arrow. Larry’s life is going nowhere, and he seems happy with that. But things take a turn when he’s fired from his serving job for stealing booze and drinking on the job. Judging from Larry’s response, it’s easy to see he’s been here before. In fact, not much in his life changes at first. That same night Larry hits the clubs with his buddy Major Norwood (Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio), pops some pills, and wakes up on his couch the next day. The one thing Larry does right in his life is visit his foul-mouthed grandma (Olympia Dukakis) in her assisted living home. Even as she continues to rebuff his pleas for money, he keeps visiting.

It seems only by chance that Larry winds up working at Quick Lube, vacuuming cars and stealing change. Soon, though, Larry realizes that he likes both this new job and his new boss (Eleanore Pienta) — a feeling that’s complicated by Norwood’s mysterious skills with women.

What’s clear from start to finish is that Larry doesn’t have much of a filter. Time and again he speaks out of line, uttering every humorous and asinine thing that pops into his head. Not only that, but he doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks either. It’s this unfiltered Schwartzman that keeps 7 Chinese Brothers up and running for as long as it does (and the film is brisk, clocking in at 76 minutes).

The narrative, on paper, makes sense and offers Larry some room to grow, but the film seems uninterested in any sort of progression, meandering often. Granted there are films and filmmakers who make this work, building their films to embody the marooned and stagnant characters they have set out to study. But here the story beats that Byington does choose to hit and follow, often do little to help us understand Larry or help him understand himself (with one particular subplot about his boss’ ex-husband and his petty theft being the worst of all).

Films like 7 Chinese Brothers are inherently challenging to make. Most movies are built upon one of two things: the movement of plot or the growth of character. Which is not to say that films about directionless people aren’t valuable or enjoyable (many of Schwartzman’s characters are in fact rather directionless or otherwise inhibited). But rather that the challenge is particularly great to find a way to invest an audience in someone going nowhere and wanting nothing (Larry claims to want a lot but does very little to get any of it). And, arguably, the only reason we invest in Larry at all is Arrow, Schwartzman’s real-life pet and reaction shot master. Not only does Arrow feel like the emotional core of the film, but he also steals damn near every scene he’s in.

On the technical end, the score by Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio is energetic and subdued all at once, bringing a nice forward push that might have otherwise been absent from the proceedings. At times, though, the music seems to take on a life of it’s own, diverging from the scene to become an independent and less resonant song.

Finally, while the film is clearly flawed, the most obvious misstep seems to have been born in the editing room. Pieced together by Robert Greene and Leah Marino, 7 Chinese Brothers doesn’t ever feel clunky or haphazard, but it does feel lost rather often, like chunks of time have been excised or forgotten. While not quite fatal, it is hard not to feel muddled or confounded when you can’t even figure out where the scene is taking place or what sort of odd architecture a building has.

For all the mess that is the film’s final third, 7 Chinese Brothers remains a light-on-its-feet comedy shouldered along by a solid performance from Schwartzman, by turns hilarious, caustic, and ultimately mournful. And while many might find themselves wondering what the point is, it’s hard to flaw a film that, unlike so many, refuses to judge its characters, and refuses to tell them how they ought to be living.