Methods to Nothing

A Kerbside Sights relieve a cool Iron Pictures presentation an Ambush Entertainment production. Produced by Amanda Marshall, Sim Sarna. Executive producer, Matthew Leutwyler. Directed, edited by Matthew Leutwyler. Script, Leutwyler, Gillian Vigman.With: Julie Benz, Dane Prepare, Greg Germann, Zack Gilford, Kali Hawk, Elizabeth Mitchell, Erik Palladino, Barbara Hershey, Miranda Bailey, Vincent Ventresca, Mark Kelly, Tony Denison, Aja Volkman.Carrying out a run of genre films and disappointing lit adaptation "The River Why," author-director Matthew Leutwyler is applicable with a factor personal with "Methods to Nothing." Stitching together a quilt of tales including disparate Angelenos inside the mode of "Magnolia" and "Short Cuts" and myriad other crisscrossers, this somber drama is well crafted and watchable but lacks the distinctive story content, style and standout performances being more than a serviceable reboot of familiar ideas. With comedian Dane Prepare toplining and moderate critical support likely, prospects are mild for 12 ,. 2 launch in 12 U.S. urban centers. Home-format potential looks more upbeat. The various strands circle around the highly marketed go to a recently disappeared 10-year-old suburban girl. Mom and dad requested a suspicious neighbor (Greg Germann), though audiences may also be introduced to question of a creepy schoolteacher (Mark Kelly) who obsesses inside the situation whenever he is not playing fantasy games online. Likewise living alone inside the teacher's apartment building can be a cop-in-training (Erik Palladino) dealing with their very own hidden issues. Prepare plays a counselor who's getting an affair getting an outrageous-child music artist (Aja Volkman, from band Nico Vega) while glumly tugging from his wife (Elizabeth Mitchell), who anxiously wants a youthful child. He's further soured with the inadequacy of his mother (Barbara Hershey), who still demands his father will return carrying out a decade's abandonment. Meanwhile, among his clients, a TV author (Kali Hawk), embarks around the tentative romance getting a appear specialist (Zach Gilford) while fighting the internalized racism she's developed from constantly being the lone African-American in their fortunate professional and social situations. Within the opposite finish in the spectrum, a unemployed retrieved alcoholic (Miranda Bailey) fights for custody of the children from the kids of the brother (Vincent Ventresca) who's braindead from the kind of accident she was associated with. Hatched throughout a time period of soul-searching the director experienced carrying out a divorce, these figures in crisis maintain interest around the fairly extended but well-paced narrative haul. Low-key tenor is sacrificed for just two climaxes that feel a tad conventional, one a violent conclusion for the kidnapping mystery, another a triumph-of-human-spirit episode together with a marathon. Cast encompassing numerous Leutwyler's regular collaborators is solid, though the truth is no principal figures is particularly absorbing, encouraging or three-dimensional. Pic's episodic character, selection of issues, and basically-modest impact may have best round the smallscreen, where its inadequate originality won't appear so conspicuous. Packaging is professional, even though upset handheld lensing applied by d.p. David Robert Manley feels inapt of those intimate dramatics.Camera (color, HD-to-35mm), David Robert Manley music, Craig Richey music supervisor, Michael Becker production designer, Joe Lemmon set decorator, Jennifer Lemmon costume designer, Keri Cruz appear, Eugene Thompson re-recording mixer, Jeremy Grody assistant director, Nick Touhey casting, Michael Testa, Serta Shaner. Examined on DVD, San Francisco Bay Area, November. 26, 2011. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 124 MIN. Contact the number newsroom at news@variety.com