They’re rejects for a reason

Working his way through the Z-movie pantheon of ‘70s exploitation subgenres, rocker-filmmaker Rob Zombie transitions from house of horrors homage to serial killer road movie with this crass, vacuous exercise in grind-house stylistics.

As in his 2003 feature debut, “House of 1000 Corpses,” the director borrows from numerous films, embellishing them with his own bizarre sense of deluded grandeur.

Though the genre-hopping director maintains that this is not a sequel, “The Devil’s Rejects” does continue the exploits of the psychopath stars from the first movie, the Firefly family, whose members are inexplicably named for Groucho Marx characters.

From the stylized freeze-frames that end most sequences to the overly familiar climax that references so many films there should be footnotes, “Rejects” feels like 100% regurgitation, minus whatever protein that may have existed in the originals.

-- Kevin Crust

“The Devil’s Rejects,” Rated R. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes. General release.

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Drilling for the war’s ‘Oil Factor’

Given the obvious apathy of the majority of Americans toward the idea of a future involving reduced dependence on foreign oil, the muckraking documentary “The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror” may not ruffle many feathers despite its disturbing nature. Although the general thesis -- that U.S. foreign policy is strongly motivated by a desire to secure access to the world’s oil reserves -- is not new, husband-and-wife filmmakers Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy pack their film with information that will not please anyone frustrated by the ubiquity of space-hogging, gas guzzling SUVs.

The filmmakers, whose previous work includes “Plan Colombia: Cashing In on the Drug War Failure” and “The Hidden Wars of Desert Storm,” use interviews with familiar faces from the poli-doc circuit such as Noam Chomsky, Karen Kwiatkowski and William Hartung as well as Gary Schmitt, executive director of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, to make their case that not only has the Bush administration targeted oil-rich regions in the war on terrorism, but that the strategy only amplifies policies that have been in place for decades. The interviews are carefully augmented with speeches by President Bush and other administration officials, plus footage from Iraq and Afghanistan, and powerful graphics detailing the depletion of the global oil supply. Ed Asner provides the somber narration.

-- Kevin Crust

“The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror,” unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes. At Laemmle’s Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.

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A search for truth in ‘Twist of Faith’

The following is an excerpt from a TV review published in The Times on June 27, the day before “Twist of Faith” debuted on HBO.

The Middle American town, the beefy, small-mouthed cleric -- the images are haunting, and they’re meant to be, for they also haunt Anthony Comes, the firefighter, father, husband, hometown guy and working-class Roman Catholic who is at the heart of the moving, Oscar-nominated documentary “Twist of Faith,” and who, as it turns out, has just learned that his brand-new dream house is five doors down from the parochial high school counselor who he says molested him when he was 14.

It’s only as the film tracks the months to come -- in which he seeks redress and respite, first from the church, then from the courts, then via the crapshoot of the press and the purgatory of the victims’ rights circuit -- that the toll of his free-floating rage becomes apparent.

This is thanks, in large measure, to the resourcefulness of Kirby Dick, the director, who gave Comes and his family and friends their own cameras and let them shoot much of the footage without him.

It’s a demanding film but one filled with important truths about humanity in all its denominations. That alone makes “Twist of Faith” important even as the headlines around it now fade.

-- Shawn Hubler

“Twist of Faith,” unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes. Exclusively at Laemmle’s Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.

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No need to meet this family

“Meet the Family” is an experience to be missed. Silly, far raunchier than funny and seemingly interminable, it is virtually a filmed play -- and a dire one at that. A nerdy scientist (Clent Bowers) brings his pretty but unbelievably naive girl friend (Jennifer Alden) home to meet his parents (Beau Billingsley, Marilyn Sue Perry), but his mother decides to surprise him by having almost the entire family on hand, most notably his grandparents (Sheridan French, John Gipsun). They engage in nonstop put-downs of each other’s sexual shortcomings, and his sister (Alisa Banks), a singer, spars equally as incessantly with her other brother (Donn Carl Harper), a shady, flashy layabout with as much a passion for crude sexual innuendo as has his grandmother. All this sails over the girlfriend’s head, so the raunchy talk is no deterrent to the scientist’s proposal of marriage -- after nearly 90 interminable minutes. Written and directed by Stan Lerner, “Meet the Family” is good-natured and exuberantly politically -- socially is more like it -- incorrect, but it is woefully under-inspired and amateurish.

-- Kevin Thomas

“Meet the Family”: Unrated. Crude sexual humor. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Exclusively at the Grande 4-Plex, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. (213) 617-0268.