Couch pilots: Rob Huebel and Josh Radnor in ‘All Happy Families’.

Here’s a handful of reviews of some good independent films, two from the US, one from NZ. No release dates yet for Australia.

ALL HAPPY FAMILIES *** (90 minutes)
A project to prepare the old family house for rental brings a clutch of stories together in a quality, highly relatable dom-com where the threat posed by sub-standard plumbing serves as an apt metaphor for the anxieties baked into domestic life.

Serving as the film’s narrative fulcrum is Graham Landry (Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother), a struggling actor/screenwriter who has hit the doldrums but whose spirits lift when he discovers his first tenant might turn out to be Dana (Chandra Russell), an old flame from college.

Arriving in the house without much notice is Graham’s slightly older brother Will (Rob Huebel), a successful TV actor whose congenial manner masks the real reason for his impromptu visit.

Freshly retired, the brood’s matriarch Sue (Becky Ann Baker) finds herself having to cope with an incident involving a former boss with boundary issues. Meanwhile, there are widespread worries the clan’s aging patriarch Roy (John Ashton) might be slipping back into his problem gambling.

It’s a messy scramble of storylines, sure, yet they bounce off each other nicely, reflecting one of the central truths about families, that there’s always a rich, often conflicting range of narratives running through a household at any given time (even in supposedly ordered ones).

And while this Chicago-based domestic comedy is imbued with a distinct lightness of touch, director Haroula Rose (who co-wrote with Coby Goss) strikes a deft balance, maintaining a comic veneer over a range of some pretty serious undertones.

Distinguishing the film is its raft of breezy, naturalistic performances, thanks to Rose’s unforced direction and reams of believable dialogue (an increasingly rare asset in movies of late).

With an eye to behavioural nuance, the film draws strength from its assemblage of closely observed vignettes, wisely resisting the temptation to make statements or wax lyrical about the nature of family life in mid-list suburbia.

The closest the film comes to thematically nut-shelling the film is via the running issue about the plumbing issue that threatens the stability of the house. Very nicely done.

If anything, the comedy and drama at the heart of All Happy Families modestly trades on the simple truth that, in the cross-currents of emotions that course through a family, there are no simple truths. Nothing is tidy. Everything is messy.

That said, the film arguably could have done with a more polished and rounded final reel – though that perhaps would not have been in keeping with the rough-edged nature of the story.

It’s always easy – too easy, in fact – to label such clans as the Landrys as dysfunctional, a term that has become so over-used it has been rendered almost meaningless.

Though the family here is subject to a variety of troubles the whole point of the film is showing how the family strives to stick together despite all the mud that life slings at it.

Surely, a family fighting to withstand tough circumstances rather than succumb to them is the opposite of being dysfunctional. Or perhaps that’s a pedantic and chronic misreading of the film.

Footnote: This was one of the last films to feature John Ashton – best known for Midnight Run and the Beverly Hills Cop films – who passed on 26 September. A fitting tribute.

All Happy Families is available on Apple and Amazon in the US.

ALL YOU NEED IS BLOOD *** (100 minutes)
On the surface All You Need is Blood might seem like a perfectly nutty, off-the-wall zom-com with all the requisite gore, carnage, dismemberment and fountains of blood you are entitled to expect.

And, well, it is. Yet it also serves as an affectionate little satire about the passion that drives budding young filmmakers who will do anything to realize their vision, however demented it might be.

In the case of teenage Kubrick Bucky Le Boeuf (Logan Riley Bruner), his dream is to make a festival-conquering zombie movie that will act as a calling card to greater things.

Luckily for him, an intergalactic rock with a zombie virus lands in the backyard of his rural home and promptly transforms his dad into one of the undead.

Rather than chalking it up as an unfortunate happenstance, Bucky seizes the event as a career-igniting opportunity to make a zombie movie with an unsimulated zombie.

With local has-been actress Vivian Vance (Mena Suvari, she of American Beauty and American Pie nobility) cast as the mandatory scream queen, Bucky sets about making his pioneering video movie, happily incorporating other freshly-minted zombies into his vision before everything boils over in a delightful swirl of blood-splattered mayhem.

Writer/director/editor Cooper Roberts gears the film more as an outright comedy rather than as a classic horror-comedy, merrily eschewing actual scares in favour of laugh-inducing excess, with the film’s final reel recalling the early films of Peter Jackson.

An energetic Logan Riley Bruner does a swell job anchoring the film, yet the real treat performance-wise comes courtesy of Mena Suvari, who chews the scenery with rampaging glee. Talk about being committed to the bit.

Notably the film ends on a neat meta note, thus explaining why Bucky is credited as the film’s writer and director. Given how self-referencing has become so common it has achieved cliche status, Roberts deserves a salute for exercising restraint, especially in a film replete with the opposite.

Kudos, too, for the tribute to I Love Lucy icon Vivian Vance. A nice touch. (If, perchance, you don’t know of Vivian Vance…shame.)

All You Need id Blood is available to buy and rent on AppleTV, Amazon Prime and various other VOD platforms in the US.

NEVER LOOK AWAY *** (85 minutes)
Very good feature documentary from Lucy Lawless (aka Xena: Warrior Princess) about Margaret Moth, the extraordinary news camerawoman whose love of getting into the thick of war zones distinguished her from male colleagues who preferred hiding behind cars when the shooting got too close.

Though Moth’s inspiring story has been told before, Lawless (in her first outing as a director) highlights her intense personal life, interviewing lovers about Moth’s lust for love, and her remarkable post-injury story of survival.

In 1992 while working in Sarajevo Moth was hit in the face by a sniper, demolishing her jaw. Lawless details the incident, how it initially crushed the confidence of a once-beautiful woman, yet failed to douse her adventurous spirit and desire to confront danger.

Oddly, there is surprisingly little footage of Moth being interviewed and, if anything, it seems to cover her subsequent battle with cancer a little quickly.

Still, Never Look Away serves as a stirring tribute to a woman whose achievements haven’t received the popular recognition they deserve.

In that regard, the film is a fitting companion piece to Lee, the Kate Winslet passion project designed to get the life of war photographer Lee Miller out of the shadows.

Never Look Away: iTunes and Amazon.