Mitchell Altieri & Lee Cummings' STAR LIGHT proves a pretty strange 'n scary genre jumper

A rock star, her hunky/sweet fan, and his several good friends come together oddly and violently in the new slow-burn (for awhile), what's-going-on-here? survival thriller, STAR LIGHT.

As genre jumpers/genre mashers go, this one proves quite watchable, thanks to smart co-direction (on a tight but well-used budget), decent writing and nice performances all around.

The film's two directors (Mitchell Altieri, below, who also co-wrote) and Lee Cummings (shown at right) have clearly watched and learned from a whole mess of movies. Still, what they juggle and rearrange in Star Light is clever and different enough, TrustMovies surmises, to keep fans of survival thrillers, slasher movies, and extraterrestrial/ otherworldly motifs at least semi-on their toes.

We open at a rock concert of a famous and quite popular singer named Bebe, and then we're watching her through the eyes of that

heavy-duty, handsome young fan -- who, though he's smitten beyond belief, has no hope or expectations of ever meeting this woman. Funny how things work out.

How they work out is put together with enough skill and pizzazz by Altieri and his co-writers (Jamal M. Jennings and Adam Weis), then brought to fruition via the relatively swift and nicely focused direction and performances that combine to bring the fairly clichéd characters (with the exception of the rock star, her "handler," and her number-one fan) to brisk, if utilitarian, life -- so far as this tale's immediate needs are concerned.

Bebe, the star singer, is played by Scout Taylor-Compton (above, right), and that fan by Cameron Johnson (above, left). Mr. Johnson gets the juicier role, and he handles it with aplomb, while that very queasy-making handler, played by Bret Roberts (below), delivers the film's villainous role equally well.

The movie gets plenty gory (hence my inclusion of the slasher genre) but certainly not beyond the pale, and its consistent and near constant mashing of genres creates its own interesting and thankfully not over-explanatory little sub-genre.

So if  you're in the mood to try something a bit different, remember the name Star Light -- from 1091 and running 90 minutes -- when you're combing the streaming sites for the evening's (what the hell, afternoon's or morning's, too) entertainment. It becomes available this Tuesday, August 4 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Absolutely in a class all by itself: Makoto Nagahisa's WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES

Mashing up so many dfferent genres while remaining utterly its own original, WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES gave me the most bizarre and special movie experience I've had since first encountering South Korea's lollapalooza, Save the Green Planet. First of all, this film is as witty -- verbally and visually -- as anything you have recently (or even not so recently) seen. It moves like a house afire, telling the tale of the meeting and life thereafter of four children, all orphaned on the same day, and all already fed up with adults and life as they have so far experienced it.

I think it is safe to say that writer/director -- whose first full-length film this is after a single, award-winning short -- Makoto Nagahisa (shown at right) is clearly a born filmmaker. Except that he may soon tire of the medium, since I am not certain what more he could give that he has not already provided via this film. We shall see.

Meanwhile, We Are Little Zombies addresses it all -- love (given, but mostly withheld), death, grief, contemporary life, parenting (mostly bad) -- even as it cleverly, delightfully indicts parents, adults in general, Japan in particular, and consumers and society at large (both eastern and western). Have I left anyone or anything out, Nagahisa?

Yet this indictment is so funny, fresh and endlessly entertaining that movie buffs ought not mind, even if more mainstream audiences may throw up their hands in disarray. Who cares? How the filmmaker gives us these kids and their back stories, those parents and their deaths, the real and surreal, fantasies, facts, fishbowls and so much more will make you grateful you still have eyes and ears.

While a Puccini tune runs throughout the film, its oddball musical numbers are amazing in their own right. For a while the film seems like some old-fashioned videogame come to life, and then around the midway point it takes a turn -- for the even better. Our heroes/heroine become a kid band, complete with their own sleazy/sweet manager (the red-head above),

before moving into the utterly surreal/unreal/too real. And still, the energy and wit never flag. Sweet, sad, profound, memorable and certainly one of this year's best movies,  We Are Little Zombies also proves to be the zombie movie to end them all, even without the de rigueur flesh-eating. (The scene in which we suddenly see the zombies -- and their "attachment" -- proves a perfect humdinger.)

From Oscilloscope Films and running a full two hours (from which I would not have wanted to cut one minute), the movie opens today in virtual and real cinemas all across the USA. Click here and then follow directions to learn how and where you can view it. Oh, and I want to nominate for the Movie Faces Hall of Fame little lead actor Keita Ninomiya. What a face -- and what a beautiful pair of eyes this kid has!

Dealing with the future in Noble Jones' unsettling, funny, surprising and moving movie, THE TOMORROW MAN

Audiences are not going to want to hear the message of THE TOMORROW MAN, the new movie from Noble Jones (here being billed as Nobel Lincoln Jones), any more than the recipient of the telephone call wants to hear the message being told him by the character, Ed (played so very well by John Lithgow) that opens this unusual film.

That message is this: The world we live in is today in such terrible trouble environmentally, politically, morally that we must do something/anything -- arm ourselves, stockpile, get ready, do something! -- before the shit (whether via our environment or our fellow man) hits the fucking fan.

Now, Mr. Jones, shown at right, whether by intention or maybe accident (I doubt the latter), has peopled his movie with two main characters so oddball and interesting, and then cast his film with two actors of such graceful, aging countenance and top-tier talent that you cannot take your eyes off them, as that aforementioned theme keeps rolling forward.

In addition to Mr. Lithgow (shown below, left), we have Blythe Danner (below, right) in yet another of her impressive senior-years roles (See You in My Dreams, What They Had, The Chaperone), and together these two superb actors bring to life a couple of characters we might not want to spend a lot of time with in real life -- due to their strange

compulsions/obsessions -- but are more than happy to watch in a movie that puts them front and center, then lets them run with the film and, for some folk, at least, steal it from under its urgent and uncompromising message. How uncompromising you will only understand at movie's end. Which I will not go into here.

Taken as a whole, The Tomorrow Man is a lot more than the sum of its clever parts: surly/sweet old codgers who are difficult but loveable; younger generation family members who just don't get it but still provide some love and support; an urgent warning of how we are losing the world we inhabit.

As much fun as the film often is, how terrific are its lead performances, how well-constructed the screenplay and well-written is the dialog, how astutely directed is scene after scene, overall, this is one quietly jolting experience. Sure, we ought to enjoy today -- the now and all that -- as the film points out. But, hello, what about the future?

From that opening scene, as what we hear sounds like some very intelligent, if aggressive, radio or TV pundit prognosticating on our dire future but then turns out to be someone quite different, Mr. Jones knows how to keep us on our toes by subverting expectation. Lithgow and Danner do this subverting, too -- as so many intelligent actors can. They know that surprising us is every bit as important as entertaining and/or pleasing us. And Jones has given them the opportunity to do all three.

The Tomorrow Man is full of ironies -- its title being but one of these. It will probably annoy as many people as it pleases, but it is worth seeing, enjoying, wrestling with and -- yes -- being depressed by. From Bleecker Street and running 94 minutes, the movie opens here in South Florida this Friday, May 31, in Boca Raton at the Cinemark Palace 20 and Regal Shadowood 18, and in Palm Beach Gardens at Cobb's Downtown at the Gardens 16. On Friday, June 14, the movie will expand to The Movies of Delray and the Movies of Lake Worth and to the Miami area at AMC's Sunset Place 24 and Aventura 24, CMX Brickell City Center 10, the Coral Gables Art Cinema, and Regal's South Beach 18. Wherever you live around the country, click here to learn if and when the film will be coming to a theater near you.