Taken on its own, Choke is a sporadically funny and only moderately sentimental indie comedy, with themes on everything from the symbiotic nature of charity to the commodification of American history to the lengths that are sometimes gone to for a little bit of affection.

As a freebie—for those members of the left-wing choir who can tolerate Moore’s situational narcissism—one has the decided impression that they’re getting their money’s worth from Slacker Uprising, maybe even a bit more.

The Hollywood treatment of LA as a hotbed of ubiquitous racial tension has grown increasingly wearisome and Lakeview Terrace possesses some of the same weakness in character motivation, moments of sluggish relationship drama, and an easy and cheesy dénouement found in other films.

So many non-traditional films that reach the art-house theater these days are self-described as “austere.” Apparently, this is a euphemism for somnolent or, in worst-case scenarios, suicide-inducing. Must a triple espresso/Redbull/wheatgrass/methamphetamine milk shake be a prerequisite for experiencing cinematic art?

Not in the case of My Winnipeg.

The Metaphysical Film Festival might be a little, er, eccentric, but, truth-be-told, it sounds like a blast.

Burn After Reading is a little trifle of a film that is so utterly disappointing, dispiriting, redundant, lazy and pointless that even the wink-wink ironic admission of its own meaninglessness—annunciated by a minor character at the film’s conclusion—can’t save it from being anything but a complete insult to the audience.

In these, the last days of summer, two great thrillers about smuggling and moral ambiguity, both set in cold places, go head to frosty-eared head. Both are well worth seeing in the theater. But it’s the one that less people are certain to see that’s really something special.

The fear that the new Italian drama Days and Clouds mines is precisely the one that runs through American politics. It’s the middle-class anxiety (ascendant in down-turning America, even more so in market-reforming Italy) that all one has attainted can be gone in a flash: one sickness, one downsizing, one accident and poof! Gone.

Central to break dancing in Santa Fe is the Genoveva Chavez Community Center. That’s where 3HC: Holyfaith, one of the best breaking crews in New Mexico, practices. That is, unless a full-court basketball game breaks out, in which case they have to move. From the margins of society, b-boying has moved to the margins of a basketball court.

Traitor is not all that bad, but, then again, it’s not all that good either. It’s the sort of movie to put on your Netflix DVD queue at position 33, and then to keep pushing back until you finally never see it.