Snakes as a pathway to the divine

If you have an aversion to snakes, particularly poisonous snakes, you may not want to see Them That Follow, a backwoods drama about an isolated group of snake-handling Pentecostals. Directors Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage employ a powerhouse cast as they examine the terrible impact of those whose beliefs not only are literal -- but weirdly dangerous. Pastor Lemuel (Walton Goggins) uses rattlesnakes to purify sin: Handle a rattler without getting bitten and you're clean. If you get bitten ... well ... the devil hasn't been banished from your tarnished soul. The drama centers on Mara (Alice Englert), the pastor's daughter. Englert's Mara finds herself caught in a love triangle between the devoted Garrett (Lewis Pullman) and the non-believing Augie (Thomas Mann), a young man whose only desire is to escape this stifling community. Matters are further complicated because Mara has become pregnant after a brief but guilt-inducing fling with Augie. Olivia Colman -- fine as ever -- and Jim Gaffigan, equally good, portray Augie's believing parents. The directors fill the movie with Appalachian flavor as the story works its way toward a conclusion that may shake you, even if you see it coming. The mood is somber and the movie flirts with back-country cliches, inducing a degree of skepticism: Doesn’t anyone who might be called “normal” live in these woods? Kaitlyn Dever appears as Mara's best friend, a young woman who's understandably confused by the tension between religious dictate and human impulses. Nice work all around, with Goggins giving a stand-out performance as a pastor who can seem level-headed around the dinner table but who exerts sinister control over his followers. There's nothing particularly profound to be realized -- or at least nothing you don't' already know about the dangers of fanatical belief -- but Them That Follow catches you up with its mood and performances. And, yes, scenes involving the snakes will give you the shivers.

A teen movie that's not just for kids

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl effectively mixes humor and heartbreak.

If I told you that the movie I'm about to review revolves around a high school senior who establishes a relationship with a female classmate who has been diagnosed with leukemia, you'd probably tune out.

Who could blame you? I could be talking about a zillion and a half teen movies in which annoying, pop-culturally savvy kids crack wise before discovering some slightly deeper meaning to life.

But consider: The movie I'm talking about is called Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a title that suggests that you might not be in for the expected mixture of jejune antics and tear-jerking sentiment that too often define the genre known as YA fiction.

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon brings visual creativity and smarts to the story, which -- in outline form -- follows the path I've just described. But with movies (as with many other pursuits) it's not always what happens, but how it happens that matters.

Working from a Pittsburgh-based novel by Jesse Andrews, who also wrote the screenplay, Gomez-Rejon brings us into the world of a high school senior who has discovered what he considers to be a viable survival strategy: Greg (Thomas Mann) gets along with everyone, but gets close to no one. He's floating through life.

Greg refers to his one real friend (RJ Cyler's Earl) as a co-worker. That's because Greg and Earl have been collaborating on movies since they were little kids.

These films (some of which we see) may not be brilliant, but they reflect more than a passing knowledge of cinema. They also have shrewd, parodic titles: Sockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Butt, Senior Citizen Kane and The 400 Bros among them.

What sold me on Me and Earl and the Dying Girl begins with the way Gomez-Rejoin respects his young characters.

Greg is smart, slightly underachieving and reasonably observant. He can be honest, although he's also capable of self-delusion.

The girl of the story (Olivia Cooke of TV's Bates Motel) is appealing because she isn't looking for anyone to join her in a pity party.

Many of the scenes between Mann and Cooke take place in Rachel's bedroom. No, it's not what you think; it's the movie's way of telling us that Greg is being drawn into a world outside his own. He's violating his own rules about keeping his distance.

Greg doesn't do this willingly. He's forced into a relationship with Rachel when his mother (Connie Britton) insists that he make contact with the "dying girl," even though he's barely aware of her existence.

Greg's father, by the way, is played by Nick Offerman, who brings oddball spin to his character.

Molly Shannon portrays Rachel's mother, a woman who's dealing with her calamity by drinking a little too much wine.

No one goes totally off any rails as Gomez-Rejon develops the story, which ultimately finds Greg and Earl trying (without much success) to make a film for Rachel.

The film also makes room for an astute aside about the racial component of the relationship between Greg and Earl.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl won the Grand Jury prize at January's Sundance Film Festival, and likely will win over audiences, as well.

That doesn't mean it's a masterpiece, but Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has a knack for keeping Greg's self-absorption from getting on your nerves, and -- for me at least -- that counted for a lot.

Is it a party or a weapon of destruction?

Project X is a bad-taste comedy with energy and anarchy to spare, maybe too much of both.

It doesn’t take much by way of film background to know that movies are caught in a cycle of escalating expectation, not to achieve greater artistic quality but to discover new ways to poke, prod and otherwise bring audiences out of their collective stupor.

Each new horror film must be gorier and more creatively vicious than the last. The next fast-paced thriller must make the last fast-paced thriller seem as if it had been slogging through mud. The same pattern holds for movies about adolescence, which expend tremendous amounts of energy trying to be dopier, raunchier and more superficially transgressive than their predecessors.

It, therefore, should come as no surprise that Project X, a comedy produced by Todd Phillips of Hangover fame and directed by newcomer Nima Nourizadeh, is trying to be the teen party movie to end all teen party movies. If it’s not, I’d hate to see what comes next. Project X is so full of anarchic energy, it practically makes your head spin.

I suppose it’s fair to call Project X a supercharged descendant of Superbad: It's half party movie and half assault on suburban decorum, a teeming comedy that finds a way to include rioting, girls gone topless, drugs, noise, and wall-to-wall music, not to mention a nut job with a flame thrower and a phalanx of police officers.

Here’s the wafer-thin and all-too-familiar premise: Thomas Kub (Thomas Mann) is celebrating his 17th birthday. His parents are leaving town for the weekend. When parents in a teen movie go away for the weekend, you can bet all hell will break loose. Spurred on by his randy pal Costa (Oliver Cooper) and his chubby friend JB (Jonathan Daniel Brown), Thomas agrees to host a house party that’s meant to be a game changer; i.e., it’s supposed to turn three generally anonymous high schoolers into cool kids.

In the hands of these three kids, Thomas’ house party becomes a weapon of mass destruction, which (and I don’t think I’m giving away anything here) ultimately results in the demolition of half his neighborhood, a battle royal staged with choppers from the local news stations circling overhead.

The first half of the movie (maybe more) serves up party-hearty humor with the speed of projectile vomiting -- and no more subtlety. A high point? Consider the angry dwarf who punches taller men in their genitals. Nearly everyone at Thomas’ party looks to be so stoned (on various combinations of alcohol and drugs) that they barely can utter a coherent sentence, which, I suppose, is appropriate because Nourizadeh’s pop-riddled soundtrack may be more important than any dialogue.

Kids jump off the roof of the house into the pool; they do tequila shots; they dance; they abandon the backyard for the forbidden interior of the house; they tie the families Yorkshire terrier to helium balloons and let him float skyward. They hold nothing back as the nervous Thomas, who has been warned by his parents not to wreck the house, gradually gives himself over to the "epic" spirit of an evening that’s destined to go down in North Pasadena history as a volcanic eruption of hormonal insanity.

In the movie’s late stages, the party blows up -- just about literally. The level of chaos becomes so intense that even jaded critics may find themselves watching with a bit of jaw-dropping amazement.

Project X wavers between funny and appalling. Which side you lean toward probably depends on how old you are. And the movie ultimately can’t seem to make up its mind whether it wants to caution against wanton excess or provide non-stop titillation.

Mann does a decent job as Thomas. Thomas' tension: To give into the party impulse with new "hotties" or stick with the girl (Kirby Bliss Blanton) who liked him before he was considered cool.

Say this: Project X -- utilizing the woozy, hand-held approach necessitated by yet another found-footage gimmick -- leaves you wondering whether you’ve witnessed a teen movie or a blow to civilization as we know it. And if you're looking for something that does justice to the adolescent female point-of-view, you'll have to look elsewhere.

I didn’t find Project X especially funny, and I hope that its steaming pile of bad-taste jokes aren't mistaken for anything truly rebellious. I admit to feeling a bit of wide-eyed amazement at the lengths to which Nourizadeh and company go in applying anarchic zeal to every situation, but in the end, an overdose of anarchy is just that -- too damn much.