Adam Pally plays a loser-times-ten in Dan Gregor and Doug Mand's comedy/mystery, MOST LIKELY TO MURDER

How bracing is it to see a American independent movie in which the hero is a loser par excellence, a guy who possesses -- from what we can tell early on and for most of this alternately funny, bizarre and occasionally a little too been-there/done-that film -- almost nothing at all to recommend him.

The fact that lead actor Adam Pally mostly pulls this off is commendation enough to try this movie, which also feature good performances from Vincent Kartheiser and Rachel Bloom (a bit wasted here, but certainly out of her Crazy Ex-Girlfriend mode and into relative normalcy).

MOST LIKELY TO MURDER is a family film -- at least, in the sense that it's all about family life, at its oddest, if not worst. It's our "hero," Billy, and his visit to his own family, even as he connects to the families  of his best friend and his not-so-good-friend across the street, that sets off the movie's ridiculous but amusing and very oddball plot, in which a murder appears to have been committed, which, of course, must be investigated and solved.

The director and co-writer (with Doug Mand, shown above, foreground), Dan Gregor (shown above in the background) does a fine job of plopping us immediately into the awful Las Vegas life of Billy, who is clearly an asshole on the job and off. When he gets home, in the very next scene, he becomes even more of one. Billy is one of those high school smart-asses who was popular in the day but never managed to grow up. Mr. Pally (below, left) makes him so obnoxious that he nearly hypnotizes us: How much worse can he get? we wonder in amazement. You have no idea.

Ms Bloom (above, center), as Billy's very ex girlfriend, provides some necessary ballast to Pally's antics, and Mr. Kartheiser (above, right), as the closest thing to a villain that the movie provides, offers up his usual obnoxious manner, here tempered with both creepiness and just a little sadness regarding how badly used by Billy this poor kid was in high school.

TrustMovies doesn't want to oversell this piece of low-end Americana. It's fun but not great. Yet considering how few comedy/mysteries arrive on screen these days, together with how many actual laughs the movie does provoke, you could do a lot worse. And when, at last, a kind of redemption arrives for our hero, it is, for a change, both justified and oddly original.

From Lionsgate's STUDIO L and running 97 minutes, the movies arrives today, May 1, on DVD, digital and VOD -- for purchase and/or rental.

Digital & DVDebut: Madellaine Paxson's creepy, frisky, funny genre piece BLOOD PUNCH

What might you get should you shake together Groundhog Day, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Time Crimes, Scarface, Edge of Tomorrow and Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit? That's some range of styles and genres, I know, and I doubt very much whether all those movies (and one play) were on director Madellaine Paxson's and writer Eddie Guzelian's conscious minds as they came up with the funny, frisky and occasionally ferocious BLOOD PUNCH, the award-winning-at-festivals genre piece currently making its DVD and digital debuts this month. But you've got to hand it to them: the duo has turned out a nifty little movie that would probably make all those other movie-makers, along with that famous French philosopher, duly pleased.

Paxson (shown above) and Guzelian begin their film as our brainiac hero, Milton (Milo  Cawthorn, below, right), awakens into, yes, a nightmare. Then we flash back a bit to the drug rehab center and a support group in which the stories told by the members are about to bore us to death when a new girl named Skyler (Olivia Tennet, below, left) suddenly opens up and changes everything.

We're then whisked off to a mountainside retreat where we meet Skyler's original boyfriend, Russell (the very hot Ari Boyland, below), and all sorts of weird things begin to happen. If M. Sartre insisted that hell was other people, and Groundhog Day indicated that it might consist of constant repetition, Blood Punch combines the two, along with some other ideas, to offer up a quite original little hell of it own.

What distinguishes the movie, in addition to its smart and tingly story, are the especially good performances Ms Paxson draws from her excellent cast.  Cawthorne's nerdiness works well for the humor, but the actor also possesses enough sex appeal and strength to work as the films more-or-less hero, while Tennet is full of sass and naughtiness and enough mystery to keep us guessing.  Boyland -- with his goofy grin, gorgeous body and face, and loose-canon menace -- is a cringe-worthy delight. I wish he'd been given a little more to do.

The movie -- a combo of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and scientific mystery -- is basically a three-hander (which for a time, moves up to five characters). What holds us in thrall most of the way along is the simple question of what is happening here, and why. That the filmmakers manage to pull this off for a full 107 minutes (that's long for this genre) should give you some sense of how special this particular movie is.

From a technical standpoint Blood Punch is well done, too. What special effects there are tend toward the bloody variety, though much of this is used for humor rather than ugliness. And the filmmaker's choice of music is smart and original, as well.

From Midnight Releasing, the film hit DVD and Digital venues as of September 1.

WILD CANARIES: Lawrence Michael Levine's new-fangled comedy/mystery throwback

Imagine Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys meeting as adults in modern-day Brooklyn and encountering murders and a lot of lesbiansim, and you might just come up with an idea of what you will get from the new independent movie WILD CANARIES.

Better yet, think of the 1950s television series, Mr. and Mrs. North, with Pam and Jerry played by the modern-day couple Lawrence Michael Levine and Sophia Takal, and you'll have an even stronger sense of this odd little concoction.

The press info for the film calls it a "freshly comic take on classic film noir" -- which is yet another way to approach the movie. As a kid TrustMovies couldn't get enough of the Mr. & Mrs. North series. Watching some of these half-hour programs again recently on video, he can understand why he loved them so back then, while realizing that, no, they're not all that entertaining for the adult mind. Something of the same effect transpires in the course of this new film, written and directed by Mr. Levine (shown at right).

Levine's movie begins promisingly enough, with some fine banter between its in-love protagonists, Barri and Noah (Ms Takal and Levine, above) involving everything from jobs and money to friends, landlords, employers and past loves -- several of whom we soon meet.

These folk include the likes of roommate Jean (Alia Shawkat, above), a young woman who has more than a passing interest in Barri, and Eleanor (the gorgeous Annie Parisse, below) ex-lover and current employer of Noah, who is herself now exploring a lesbian relationship of her own.

Then there are the couple's neighbors who include the aged Sylvia (Marylouise Burke) and her visiting son (Kevin Corrigan, shown in the penultimate photo), and the building's relationship-troubled landlord, Damien (Jason Ritter, below).

There are plenty more familiar names and faces for those of you who frequent American independent cinema, including even the likes of Larry Fessenden (playing poker in a non-speaking role). In fact, as it unfurls and because the plot is not a little far-fetched and the final explanation of which even more so (though Miss Parisse does a bang-up job of explication), the movie seems to almost be a kind of "inside" joke played upon us by the bougie-aspiring Brooklyn filmmaking set.

The excellent, if highly naturalistic performances here -- especially from Corrigan, Ritter, Lindsay Burdge and Eleanore Hendricks -- sometimes interfere with the movie's aspirations to the screwball comedy/mystery genre, while the performances of Takal, Levine, Shawkat and Parisse all handle the plot machinations with a lighter, more graceful touch. While some this can be attributed to the characters these performers play, at times it seems that half the cast is appearing in a different film.

One of those movies that you sometimes feel may have been more fun to make than to view, and despite its straight-ahead intent to charm and entertain above all, Wild Canaries raises some interesting questions that its filmmaker might have included here in an unconscious rather than conscious manner. Why are all five of the most prominent women in the film either involved in or toying with a lesbian relationship, while, among the men, there's not a trace of homosexuality to be seen. Are Brooklyn gals more open to exploring their sexuality to its fullest, while the guys are, as usual, completely closed off dunderheads? Or is this the too-often experienced male view of women as all possibly femme fatales, to which lesbian tendencies simply add? Interesting to consider. It makes one wonder what a female writer/director would have done with this story?

In any case, Wild Canaries -- from IFC/Sundance Selects and running just a little too long at 96 minutes -- is a well-acted and not un-entertaining bauble that I wish had been even more so. It opens this Wednesday, February 25, here in New York City at the IFC Center. On Friday, March 6, it hits Los Angeles (at the Arena Cinema), Seattle (at the NW Film Forum), and Miami (at the Cosford Cinema. Click here to check in as later playdates are posted.

DVDebut: In PLAYING DEAD, Jean-Paul Salomé offers up an enchanting, low-key who-done-it

Who'd have thought that Jean-Paul Salomé, the fellow who earlier gave us Belphégor - Le fantôme du Louvre and The Adventures of Arsène Lupin would come up with such a low-key charmer like the new PLAYING DEAD (Je fais le mort). As we've been told, many times, you never know. The U.S. distributor of this new French comedy/ mystery, First Run Features, distributes many more docu-mentaries than it does narrative movies. When it offers one of the latter, however -- from Nobody Else But You to Secret Things, What if...? to Special Treatment -- the film is worth seeing. As is FRF's newest arrival.

It stars the very popular Belgian comedian/actor François Damiens (above) in the kind of role at which he excels: the very annoying, full-of-himself, and can't-seem-to-help-it provocateur. We've loved the surprisingly versatile M. Damiens in everything from The Wolberg Family to Heartbreaker and Delicacy, and here he comes through again as an out-of-work actor (he can't get jobs due to his abrasive personality) who proves smarter than he looks (or acts) while playing the corpse in a law enforcement murder reconstruction in which all is definitely not as it first appears.

M. Salomé, shown at right, both directed and co-wrote this amusing little trifle, so major credit for its charm and success must go to him, along with his well-chosen, classy cast. This would include Géraldine Nakache (below) as the judicial person in charge of the reconstruction, Lucien Jean-Baptiste (at left, two photos below) as the local police inspector, Anne Le Ny as the very interesting lady who owns the hotel where the reconstruction team is staying, Jean-Marie Winling as the only surviving member of the murder massacre, and Corentin Lobet (especially provocative and funny) as the tiny little fellow who is the supposed murderer.

There's very little pushing here; the plot unfolds gracefully, with humor and a bit of surprise now and then. And the French Alps scenery, of course, should please anyone with a taste for snowy vistas and charming little resort hotels.

There's nothing great here, however. Real mystery fans may well expect more, but for comedy/mystery aficionados, we don't get movies like this often enough to look that gift horse in the mouth.

In French with English subtitles and running just a tad too long at 104 minutes, Playing Dead will appear on DVD and via VOD streaming.