OCTOBER COUNTRY (USA) Photographer/musician/writer Donal Mosher considers himself “the one who escaped” from his small-town family; with the help of co-director Michael Palmieri, he shows us exactly why. Dad’s an emotionally closed Vietnam veteran whose sister is a practicing witch who wished for him to be killed. Mom’s an abuse victim whose oldest daughter seems doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Throw into the mix a precocious preteen and a juvenile-delinquent, kleptomaniac foster kid. One year in their life, appropriately spanning the gap between two Halloweens, is at once more bizarre and more relatable than most scripted dramas. The Moshers are weird but in ways you’ll totally recognize. (Landmark, Fri., June 19, 7:30 p.m. & Thurs., June 25, 9:45 p.m.) (LYT)
GO PAPER HEART (USA) Director Nicholas Jasenovec’s hydra-headed narrative/nonfiction hybrid follows the diminutive Asian-American comedienne Charlyne Yi (Knocked Up) as she sets out on a cross-country journey to discover whether true love is a reality or merely an illusion. For a while, as Yi decamps in Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma, posing her disarming questions to an assortment of ministers, science professors and barroom gurus, Paper Heart is a delight, as are the construction-paper-and-fishing-wire animated interludes Yi uses to dramatize key events from the lives of several longtime-married couples she interviews along the way. Of markedly less interest is the contrived “B” story line (which eventually becomes the “A” story line), in which Yi’s budding romance with Superbad and Juno star Michael Cera (who appears as himself) wreaks havoc with the documentary’s progress. (Mann Festival, Wed., June 24, 7 p.m.; Landmark, Fri., June 25, 5 p.m.) (SF)
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GO PASSENGER SIDE (Canada) Writer-director Matthew Bissonnette’s Passenger Side is a family drama wrapped inside a comedic road movie, draped in pop culture’s reigning faux-boho/slacker-turned-hipster/self-consciously-angst-ridden-SWM aesthetics. It’s a thinking man’s Judd Apatow flick. When ex-junkie Tobey (Joel Bissonnette) enlists his brother, struggling writer Michael (Adam Scott, wonderful), to chauffeur him for undisclosed reasons across L.A. and beyond — Silver Lake, the Valley, San Diego — they predictably meet an assortment of eccentric characters, and uptight Michael is slowly loosened by Tobey’s brotherly barbs. It’s a measure of Bissonnette’s talent that this one-day, cross-city road trip both embodies and subverts formula; it’s literate, amusing and unexpectedly moving. (Regent, Fri., June 19, 10 p.m.; Landmark, Thurs., June 25, 4:30 p.m.) (EH)
GO REHJE (Mexico) Miles of parched, dusty landscape roll by outside a car window as a Mazahua woman returns home to her native village from a life of toil in Mexico City. While confronted with the harsh present-day reality of dry riverbeds and sick relatives, she wanders through the fields, recalling childhood memories and reflecting upon changes in the community. Enhanced by strong visuals and haunting music, this meditative documentary from the team of Anaïs Huerta and Raul Costa focuses on the contrast between the urban and the agrarian and comes to the conclusion that, either way, life is hard. (Landmark, Tues., June 23, 7.30p.m.; Regent, Thurs., June 25, 2.30 p.m.) (JT)
GO SACRED PLACES (France/Cameroon) Focusing on a DIY cine-club in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, this sporadically fascinating documentary supplies so many worthwhile tangents that it’s easy to forgive how tenuously they hold together. Locals are interviewed (including one fellow claiming African filmmakers are the continent’s new griots), while director Jean-Marie Téno name-drops the Dardennes and struggles to put to rest rumors of the death of cinema. There’s not much hard evidence on display, however — and although it’s no surprise that even in Ouagadougou, an African masterpiece like director Idrissa Ouedraogo’s Yaaba can’t compete with Jackie Chan, that crucial piece of information goes largely unexamined. (Landmark, Sun., June 21, 4:30 p.m. & Tues., June 23, 9:45 p.m.) (LG)
CRITIC’S PICK STILL WALKING (Japan) Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Maborosi, After Life) is a passionate student of memory, of how it snares and divides people against one another — and themselves. In his newest film, Still Walking, a family gathers for a weekend visit: That’s the plot. The subtle, nearly unspoken warfare between the eldest son (Hiroshi Abe) and his demanding, now elderly father (Yoshio Harada) is so intense as to amount to silent violence. There is a palpable “ghost” haunting this family: another son who died as a child, three decades ago, and whom the surviving son cannot hope to compete with in his father’s heart. The half-dozen other family members at this minireunion are just as richly drawn: the upright, ironical, outspoken younger sister; the mother who lives in a dreamy bubble of emotional disconnectedness and devotion to cooking; the sane, willfully serene young widow whom the son has married; and her 10-year-old son, a delightfully honest reactor to the adult provocations towering around him. The visual compositions rhyme each other subtly, from cut to cut — by my count, Kore-eda only moves the camera twice, a bit of discretion he restricts to scenes at the family cemetery — as if a hidden harmony were trying to make itself known to these loving sufferers. We’re privileged to see it, even if they cannot. Still Walking is the sublime work of a contemporary master. (Regent, Mon., June 22, 7 p.m.; Landmark, Wed., June 24, 4:15 p.m.) (FXF)
