American Animal exists within the crazed psyche of Matt D’Elia, which is appropriate because he’s the star, the writer, the director, the co-editor, and also one of a handful of credited producers. His character is Jimmy, a crazed, maniacal twenty-something suffering from a potentially terminal illness that sends blood frothing from his nostrils at intermittent intervals. In a speedily-cut montage that opens the film, we witness Jimmy’s taking of a dozen or so prescription meds, each one separated by a swig of bottled water, and each one giving us further indication of the pent-up rage the day ahead of us is likely to unveil.

The film answers to no one other than Jimmy, though he’s joined in the one-location production by three friends. Principally, there’s Jimmy’s roommate and best friend, James (Brendan Fletcher, who seemingly hasn’t turned down a role since beginning his acting career in 1995), who, economically speaking, is a lot like his living companion — both are apparently extremely well-off thanks to parental earnings, and their stylish, modern-looking Los Angeles loft requires neither of them to maintain employment of any kind. Such a situation is expectedly tempting to a pair of attractive young women — playfully billed as Blonde Angela (Mircea Monroe) and Not Blonde Angela (Angela Sarafyan) — who take great pleasure in the act of being showered with free food, booze, and drugs.

There’s trouble in paradise, however, when the literary-inclined James is offered a paid internship at a top-notch publishing company — exactly the kind of societal contribution that Jimmy, as he tells us over and over again through numerous costumed diatribes, absolutely loathes. James knows this, of course, and attempts to keep the news from Jimmy for as long as possible, but it’s not exactly an easy task to hide a revelation like that when you have nobody else to tell except the people in the very room you’re in.

It’s quite clear — from things like the boisterously colored mise-en-scène to the intense, from-the-neck-up two-shot compositions — that D’Elia has chops behind the camera, but the film’s main claim to fame are the words of Jimmy, and the radical, addicting energy D’Elia brings to the role. Indeed, American Animal quite often comes off as a deranged sort of essay film, D’Elia’s rants, in a unique way, taking the form of an enraged, impassioned student’s philosophical ramblings. That these long-winding speeches are also identifiably logical is an added bonus — Jimmy’s dialogues, regardless of how obscurely distracting the character’s wardrobe is at the time, are as surprisingly enlightening as they are simply dynamic.

A great many of viewers, I imagine, will take issue with a third-act-inducing incident that comes about an hour into the film. My major problem with it was that it strangely clouded what was, to my mind, a very agreeable and drolly respectable characterization up until that point. Still, though, I’d suggest not dwelling on it too much, not only because the film aggressively subverts the event’s oh-no-he-didn’t quality, but also because it makes way for D’Elia’s closing argument, which is worth every drop of fiery spit that shoots out of his mouth during the process.

Even more people, though, are probably prone to be turned off by the entire approach of the film, which is unusual and odd in the way it pieces together, quite erratically, arbitrary daily events into an oblique storyline. Take an early scene as an example: James is reading the newspaper, and Jimmy wants to know why. We get the point immediately — that these two best friends are very much opposites, one fully committed to gleeful, commitment-less isolation, the other harboring a desire to contribute and mesh with society as a whole — and yet D’Elia keeps the interaction going for minutes on end. It’s hardly necessary, from a narrative perspective, but I found myself entirely gripped by the boundary-free universe it sets up.

The real moment of discovery, however, is patiently held in tow until the very end, when a dead-tired Jimmy, leaning on his second-story balcony that holds a folded-over American flag, delivers a sermon about evolution. It was the effect of that line, creepy and cynical, that made me realize D’Elia’s film was something more than the presentation of a fresh, energetic voice. There’s a real, cutting methodical agenda here that, if you allow it, will creep under your skin like it did mine.

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I have a good deal of respect for a lot of what’s going on in The Five-Year Engagement. The film represents a monstrous thematic leap for writer-director Nicholas Stoller, whose two previous features, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek, were humorous and agreeable in a more straightforward sort of way. This one’s different. It’s cynical and biting just as often as it is blindly reassuring, and there are enough challenging moments — especially in the second half — that reveal this rom-com to be something that actually has ideas and concerns on its mind.

That Jason Segel — who stars as an affable, San Francisco-based culinary talent named Tom — is also the co-writer here shouldn’t be dismissed as a coincidence. He pulled the same actor-writer trick on last year’s hugely beloved The Muppets, and his front-and-center appearance in Jay and Mark Duplass’s unevenly ambitious Jeff, Who Lives at Home further suggests a voice in need of stretching its wings more and more each time out.

He’s helped enormously here by Emily Blunt, who’s every bit as inviting and quick-witted as she was opposite Matt Damon in the almost mediocre The Adjustment Bureau. She plays Violet, a psychology nerd with years of studies under her belt but nothing to show for it. That all changes after Tom proposes to her, when she’s offered a multi-year spot in the University of Michigan’s post-doctorate program that will pit her under the instruction of the curious Winton Childs (Rhys Ifans).

Tom takes the news better than we’d think. He’s quick to accept the idea of taking a two-year hiatus in Michigan, and thinks he’ll have no trouble finding a restaurant position that’s equivalent to his handsome west-coast practice. As luck would have it, though, he ends up serving sandwiches at a local deli, while Violet’s studies continue to pose the threat of extending their stay in the Midwest (and thereby transforming Tom into a savage, Paul Bunyan-esque layabout).

Tom and Violet’s plight is co-existed by that of Alex (Chris Pratt) and Suzie (Alison Brie). He’s Tom’s best friend, she’s Violet’s sister, and a misjudged one-night stand renders her pregnant and the couple married soon thereafter. The treatment of the Alex-Suzie dynamic works to sum up both what distinguishes the film and what keeps it from completely banking on the material’s promise. Their relationship is one that’s kind of sad and fabricated — it’s predicated on a meaningless one-night thing, and yet they end up destined to spend their entire lives together. Half the time, Stoller keeps in actors in check with this emotional ambiguity, and these scenes have a power to them. But when he lets the couple go off the rails — like, for instance, when they make-out like caged animals at the central couple’s pre-wedding party — the bite of the previous tone gets lost.

Unsurprisingly, it’s the supporting Ifans who brings plenty of meaningful meditation to the party. The actor was, of course, absolutely towering in Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, but here he’s channeling more of that lingering philosophizing he brought to Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg. He’s chillier here, though, walking around with wiry glasses and an agile flexibility that exudes mousy arrogance. He’s a manipulative maestro, and it’d be easy to dismiss him as such if his reasonings weren’t so well-timed and exacting.

Bringing an unexpected harshness, too, are Tom’s parents, played by David Paymer and Mimi Kennedy. The latter delivers a late-occurring harangue to her son that, in its own way, is somewhat shocking, and brazenly sums up the ruminating passion of this film that I can do nothing but tip my cap to. It’s a moment that belongs in a different movie, arguably, but it’s potency is still felt — with all the potential maternal formulas there are to rely on, Kennedy’s relentless bashing of her son becomes an admirable litmus test. However at odds it may be with everything else, it’ll actually make you feel something.

An issue most people will have here is the two-hour runtime, which is admittedly felt as the film nears its half-satisfying conclusion. But it’s a two hours I was glad to sit through, because if it would’ve been cut down to a more standard length of the genre, all of the moments that’ll stick with me — Ifans’s distancing didacticism, Kennedy’s anti-motherly presence, and the pauses that allow a bearded Segel to reflect on the practicality of relationships — would’ve likely been erased. But included they are, and a full-fledged life-affirmer The Five-Year Engagement is not.

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Apple has posted the trailer for the indie psycho-thriller The Good Doctor, which has me moderately intrigued due to the slithery lead presence of Orlando Bloom, who, as we all know, is rarely seen in small-scale productions wearing normal, everyday clothing. He looks to have a nice handle on his character here, who takes a rather unusual liking to one of his patients (played by Riley Keough). I’m worried that this may come off as a B-level ripoff of Mark Romanek’s truly chilling One Hour Photo, but it does have Lance Daly behind the camera, who’s coming off his very nicely received Kisses. Magnolia Pictures will serve up The Good Doctor on August 31. Embed after the cut.

Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad, judging by this Apple trailer, basically looks like a big-screen realization of the L.A. Noire video-game. And that’s fine by me, I suppose, except for the fact that this material probably won’t be getting treated as seriously as it could’ve been. Nonetheless, Sean Penn’s bonkers Mickey Cohen rendition looks like it’s going to explode through the roof, while the period evocation, however glossed-up and stylized, has a striking zeal. Throw in the likes of Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone, and Nick Nolte — once again appearing rather short on oxygen — and Gangster Squad becomes a solid bet for a good time, if not the stone-cold-departure route Fleischer could’ve taken. Embed after the cut.

It’s hard not to be on a Matthew McConaughey high right now. He sunk his teeth deeply into last year’s The Lincoln Lawyer, giving one of the prime leading performances of his career, and his 2012 slate, which already includes Richard Linklater’s Bernie, is overflowing with intriguing director collaborations. Jeff Nichols’s Mud, which will play at Cannes, is probably the most promising of the bunch, but he’s also got The Paperboy from Lee Daniels (Precious) and Magic Mike from the always unpredictable Steven Soderbergh.

This one, meanwhile, comes from William Friedkin, best known for his two universally acclaimed early-70s efforts, The Exorcist and The French Connection. He looks to be working in pitch-black territory with Killer Joe, whose NC-17 billing has been perceived as inarguable. (There’s reportedly a chicken-bone scene that goes to some queasy places.) LD Entertainment, who thankfully brought us Joe Carnahan’s The Grey, is handling the distribution. Check out an embed of the Apple trailer after the jump. The film hits theaters on July 27.

By most accounts, including mine, Ben Affleck is a handsome two-for-two behind the camera so far, though I’m perhaps in a modest minority by preferring the sad soul of The Town to the intricate plot layerings of his previous Gone Baby Gone. Yet whichever way your tastes lie, he’s clearly an actor-turned-director with a legitimate sense of ownership, and this Apple trailer for his forthcoming Argo indeed packs an aura of assurance. The pristine-looking period detail aside, I’m most excited to see Bryan Cranston — after the likes of The Lincoln Lawyer, Contagion, and Detachment — in a supporting role that’ll extend beyond a scene or two. Warner Bros. will dish Argo out on October 12, and I wouldn’t be surprised if an Oscar platform follows suit. Chris Terrio’s adapted script, especially, is exuding sharpness here. Embed after the cut.

We got the poster for Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild less than a week ago and, as expected, the debut of this Apple trailer wasn’t far behind. Having already collected some brief thoughts on the film, I’ll save the rest of my thumbs-up reaction for my review, which I’ll put together sometime around the July 27 release date. As for the trailer, it does a fine job of distilling the experience, especially as far as the rapturous score — co-created by Zeitlin and Dan Romer — is concerned. Check out the embed after the jump.

“Hope is lost. Faith is broken. A fire will rise.” Pretty optimistic stuff, eh? Warner Bros. has officially unveiled the third and final trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises via their YouTube channel — a quite-welcome surprise for people like me who were dreading the thought of a week-long wait until the release of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. The hushed tone of the trailer’s opening minute is sensational, and basically everything I want from the movie. The way Anne Hathaway delivers “I’m adaptable” immediately shredded any preemptive doubts I may have been harboring about her character. And Tom Hardy’s Bane, whose voice has evidently been messed with a lot in post-production, is growing on me. Even the obligatory post-title humor is sort of acceptable. Check out the embed after the cut, and give the first two trailers another glance-over by clicking here and here.

If Malgoska Szumowska’s Elles proves one thing, it’s that the magnificent French actress Juliette Binoche, who’s so often gifted with richly complex characters (Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, to name the latest example), can be just as fascinating and evocative whilst toying with subpar material. The character she’s given here — Parisian journalist Anne, who finds herself caught in the thick of an assignment centered around student prostitues thirsting for rapid income — has room for potential, but Szumowska’s concerns are so confused and scattershot that any chance of the characterization arriving at a satisfying epiphany is evaporated.

But Binoche keeps you watching, and Szumowska, for all her on-the-page agitation, presents herself as a capable filmmaker with a penchant for staging scenes with the intention of heavily evoking the sensory experiences of her characters. This is evident from moment one, which positions itself as an aggressive close-up on an unidentified man receiving off-screen fellatio. Such a depiction is scarcely motivated from a narrative perspective — and, indeed, much of the film suffers from this gratuitously uneven fascination with depicting sexual relations barbarically and explicitly — but the primal impact of Szumowska’s intrusiveness lingers, and keeps the film moving even when it appears bound to hit a standstill.

What keeps this particular piece from being yet another routine Elle document for Anne is that the experiences of her interview subjects fill a nagging void in her own life. Her son is a lazybones pothead who disregards his mother as an uptight workaholic, whereas her two guinea pigs — Alicja (Joanna Kulig) and Charlotte (Anaïs Demoustier) — treat her with a consuming immediacy. Alicja’s more of a wrecked wildcard, offering Anne the alcohol-fueled seduction that she no longer gets from her husband (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), while the sweet-faced Charlotte embodies a pure sensitivity that seems wholly at odds with her under-the-curtain occupation.

If that quick rundown reads like an encouraging set-up, that’s because it mostly is — the hindrances lie in the inconsistent precision Szumowska applies to each narrative thread. It’s overwhelmingly Anne’s own domestic sphere, interestingly enough, that’s treated like a half-welcome guest to a dinner party. Since the character of her son is only barely developed, his dismissal of her overworked anxiety feels like exactly what it is — a fleeting, pot-induced challenge of authority — and nothing more. The wonderful Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, meanwhile, brings a resigned sadness to his character that, because of the role’s scantily-written quality, isn’t fully capitalized on.

It’s really Alicja and Charlotte who share the most time with Binoche. (That is, when they’re not carrying their own scenes as horrifically helpless teenagers thrust into the homes of lustfully deranged husbands — you won’t be questioning the NC-17 billing much when a shot of a man relieving himself on a kneeled-down Alicja is merely the tip of the iceberg.) The drawback of these interactions, however, is that Binoche’s reactions are kept most genuine and tangible when she’s conversing with her cohorts face-to-face. When the film finally shifts to focusing almost exclusively on Anne’s frantic preparation of a meal for her husband’s fussy business partners, the images, like the one of Anne pleasuring herself on the couch while classical numbers occupy the soundtrack, are far less grounded and convincing.

Still, the film, because of its maker’s demonic representation, remains an experience that’s difficult to reject outright. Szumowska may have confounded herself into forgetting what she was trying to say in the first place — resulting in a character arc that’s as clustered as it is falsified — but Elles is a projection of the fact that Szumowska at least has the tools to say something. For her next venture, then, pinning down the page-based construction should be the primary area of concern through which all else flows. And if that backfires, she can always call on a superlative presence like Binoche to keep things from falling through entirely.

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Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena will be receiving a theatrical release — via Zeitgeist Films — beginning on May 16, and this Apple trailer has been concocted in anticipation. I’ve yet to catch up with either of Zvyagintsev’s previous two features — the first of which, The Return, appears to be the far more acclaimed of the two — but Guy Lodge was convinced enough to carve out a spot for Elena on his Top 10 of 2011 list and, well, that’s basically all the recommendation I could ask for. (The film was also awarded with a Special Jury Prize in last year’s Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.) Embed after the cut.