For Your Consideration - Haha Edition

For Your Consideration is a weekly round-up of upcoming indie limited releases. The idea is to either expose you to or remind you of films that can't afford to plaster their posters on the sides of buildings or accompany your Happy Meal in toy form.

It's all about avoiding Steve this week at theaters. Luckily the guaranteed-to-be-mercifully-forgotten-quickly-disaster of It's All About Steve is counterbalanced nicely by the Mike Judge's latest also-likely-to-be-forgotten-but-undersevingly-so effort. The rest of this week's releases include another group of immigrant tales, multi-generational family dramas, and indie horror films that, according to all reviews, do nothing to separate them from the pack.

EXTRACT

What: The fourth feature from Mike Judge ("Beavis and Butthead", Office Space) Extract follows Joel, the sexually frustred owner of a flavor extract company, as he tries to struggle his way through a mid-life crisis while dealing with obstacles from all around.

Where: NY - Angelika Film Center, Empire 25, AMC 34th Street 14, City Cinema 123, LA - The Landmark, Century City 15, Monica 4-Plex, Arclight Sherman Oaks, Arclight Hollywood

Why: I'm just going to go ahead and say it - Mike Judge is a master of realism. Sure, Idiocracy and Beavis and Butthead will never be mentioned in the same breath as the works of Krzysztof Kieślowski or the Dardenne brothers, but when it comes to capturing the subtle nuances of a relationship or analyzing and perfectly representing the archetypes of any environment, very few can match up against Mike Judge. He is also a genius at drawing great performances from every actor he works with. Although it feels wrong to single out any particular actor, Ben Affleck and David Koechner deserve special mention. Often miscast as a leading man, Affleck shines in the film, stealing every scene he appears in with his criminally under-appreciated comedic timing and Koechner finally plays against type to marvelous effect. Ignore the lackluster trailer (posted below anyway) - this is the comedy of the summer, and you should do everything you can to make sure it doesn't follow the all-too-familiar path of box office poison to DVD superstar that marks the rest of Mike Judge's oeuvre, because if this one is successful, we might not have to wait 4 more years for his next sleeper hit.

Everything Else

STILL WALKING

TICKLING LEO

AMREEKA