POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING Review

There is a definitive climactic feel to everything about the latest venture from The Lonely Island, as if a culmination of everything the trio has been working towards since "Lazy Sunday" debuted over ten years ago. Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer have always had a knack for writing these catchy, hilarious spoofs of trending musical styles by taking timely and/or brutally honest perspectives and applying them to legit beats created by credible producers. The trick is they convey their sometimes cutting commentary and other times all out ridiculousness with the mentality of the pop culture machine in that it all feels superfluous and can be enjoyed for its surface level pleasures, but if one cares to look-there is more there. The Lonely Island have applied that same approach and ideology to their latest feature film project as this is very much a mockumentary that is lampooning the trend of pop stars producing their own "behind the scenes" documentaries in order to both appeal further to their established fan base while hopefully converting a few of the uninitiated as well. Out of the big, sprawling narrative we call life the managing teams around the likes of Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and One Direction have crafted three-act narratives around their phenomenon's in order to give some sense of structure to lives that likely have very little of it. The Lonely Island have taken the idea of this type of branding and selling and picked out every aspect in which they can make fun of thus creating the perfect vessel of sorts for them to both create their own music and release it simultaneously while adding the all-important visual element to those songs in the form of a feature film. As a longtime fan of The Lonely Island and pretty much all they stand for Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping feels like that aforementioned culmination due to the fact this format provides the perfect stage for the type of comedy and social commentary The Lonely Island has always been good at, but have now been afforded the chance to do so on a much bigger scale. Are there issues with the film as a whole? Sure, a few, but to pick out the minor quibbles would be to detract from how much fun it is to watch this deconstruction of not only the music industry, but pop culture in general and the near perfect execution with which it pulls off the task it sets out to accomplish.

CHARLIE COUNTRYMAN Review

The original title of this film added a slightly indulgent "The Unnecessary Death of" before stating its titular protagonists name. I still thought that the title until I realized it had been cut short to simply introduce us to Shia LaBeouf's character and the man in which we would be following on this journey that's described simply as him finding love in a Romanian beauty only to become entangled in the drama her intimidating and very violent ex-husband brings to her life. The film is being modest though in this description as Charlie Countryman has much more to it than a simple love story and both visually and dramatically it is consistently striving for something more, something important and more substantial than what it appears to be on its surface. I can see how it would be easy to take this film as first time feature director Fredrik Bond finding his footing and infusing writer Matt Drake's screenplay with a strong sense of style and visual flair that would allow it to appear as nothing more than an exercise in artistic freedom, but as I took the film in I couldn't help but to feel they were really trying to accomplish something here. Drake has only penned a few screenplays in the past, his only feature being what couldn't have been more than a sketch outline for 2012's Project X, but once that forgettable paycheck project was out of the way it seems he was ready to really invest in something he was creating and thus we have the plight of Mr. Countryman. I've always had a soft spot for LaBeouf simply because I enjoyed Even Stevens so much as I was growing up and was happy to see him go on and find success in big-budget blockbusters, but as he's grown up too it is clear he wants to challenge himself and feels a want to find material that is more satisfying for him to look back on, something he might actually be able to be proud of when he hits fifty; at least moreso than watching himself run from CGI robots. With this film he has at least proved he has the capability of accomplishing such a feat even if the overall project may seem somewhat lacking. Despite the name change there are still plenty of over-indulgences in the film as it's never sure of what it wants to be and its tone skips around so much that we sometimes don't know with what context we're supposed to accept a scene, but more times than not Charlie Countryman is an entertaining if not introspective look at how the soul compensates for loss and continues to love.