Months from now, and even years from now, someone is going to ask if you’ve seen Small Engine Repair. I believe this because it’s exactly the kind of unassuming little film that takes time to find its audience — living through word of mouth, one conversation at a time. So why not just see it right now?

Written and directed by John Pollono, adapting his own 2011 award-winning play of the same name, the movie centers on one family — both biological and unofficial — in working-class Manchester, New Hampshire. Ex-con single-dad mechanic Frank (Pollono) is struggling with his only child, Crystal (Ciara Bravo, 2021’s Cherry), leaving home for UCLA. A tomboy writ large, she essentially has been raised by three dads, although not always simultaneously: Frank and his two lifelong best friends, macho Terry (Jon Bernthal, Sicario) and meek Packie (the ever-reliable Shea Whigham, Joker). Amid this flanneled trifecta of testosterone, it’s fun to watch Bravo so at ease, giving as good as she gets.

One night, the men’s iron-tight bond snaps. Months later, Frank reaches out to Terry and Packie, seemingly to make amends, but he has an ulterior motive: He needs a favor — for which he can trust no one else. Small Engine Repair is best appreciated if you go in with no more context than Frank gives his friends.

The second half of Small Engine Repair works as well as it does because Pollono invests so much time up front getting you invested in his characters. Relevant details of their complicated relationship and shared history, which have a way of helping determine their collective future, are skillfully peppered in versus dumped in lazy exposition. Only in first painting a realistic blue-collar portrait is Pollono able to throw the narrative into a new direction that threatens your blood pressure and keeps you along for the ride.

For Pollono (screenwriter of David Gordon Green’s Boston Marathon bombing drama, Stronger), this marks an exceptionally strong directorial debut. Obviously the man knows his own material inside and out, down to each and every well-placed “fuckin’,” and that confidence results in a work that continues to resonate with me weeks later. Like the William Friedkin/Tracy Letts collaborations Bug and Killer Joe, it proves that plays with turns of the perverse and felonious stand the best chance of generating sparks onscreen. —Rod Lott

Down Nova Scotia way, the po-po are on strike due to a labor dispute, so crime runs rampant, primarily under the grip of the New Order — not the band, although that would be something. Of blue collars and unfettered ignorance, the loose collection of garden-variety fascists take advantage of the lawless land — at least as far as the night on which Siege is set — by terrorizing a friendly neighborhood gay bar known as The Crypt. (Oh, it’s right next to Thrifty’s Just Pants; you can’t miss it.)

When the bartender is accidentally killed, the New Order homophobes call in their fixer, Cabe (Doug Lennox, Police Academy), a strong, mostly silent type in black leather and silencer to match. To dissuade the bar patrons from reporting what they’ve seen, Cabe executes them one by one. Except for the one who gets away: Daniel (Terry-David Després).

Pronounced “Danielle,” Daniel runs and runs like Lola to the relative safety of an ugly, three-story apartment building, where he’s saved by the couple Horatio and Barbara (Winter a-Go-Go’s Tom Nardini and Echoes in the Darkness’ Brenda Bazinet, respectively). The remainder of the film entails the despicable New Order’s efforts to penetrate the couple’s threshold to nab the “fruit pie,” even if it means positioning a sniper across the street.

Siege so deftly plays with simple a “what if?” scenario that it quickly doesn’t matter we know nothing about Horatio and Barbara, such as why they have two blind students (Meatballs campers Keith Knight and Jack Blum, aka Fink and Spaz) just hanging out in their shithole of a pad. And why does their medicine cabinet lead into the unit of their next-door neighbor, Chester (Daryl Haney, Lords of the Deep)? I’ll answer that: Because it gives our heroes a unique home advantage, as does Chester’s proficiency at making dirty bombs and other tools of the terrorism trade.

Also known under the yawner title Self Defense, the Canadian production from co-directors Paul Donovan (Def-Con 4) and Maura O’Connell is taut and ingenious — the kind of thriller that works best then seen with an audience, but you’ll love all the same if watched alone. It’s as if Roberta Findlay’s Tenement had a moral code; Mr. Wizard harbored a Death Wish; and the Westboro Baptist Church participated in The Purge. Siege is all that and more. See it! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

For Murder Weapon, one of David DeCoteau’s first mainstream films after a half-decade in gay porn, the director goes incognito via his “Ellen Cabot” nom de plume. However, there’s no mistaking DeCoteau’s penny-stretching, runtime-padding work from the get-go: a superfluous 10-minute wordless prologue that at least establishes, re-establishes and establishes again one character’s fondness for rubbing and re-rubbing and rubbing again tanning lotion onto her big-haired, big-breasted self.

To celebrate their simultaneous release from a sanitarium, mafia princesses Amy (Karen Russell, Vice Academy) and BFF Dawn (Linnea Quigley, DeCoteau’s Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama ) invite all their boyfriends — ex and current — over to their house. Except for the metal rocker (Mike Jacobs Jr., DeCoteau’s American Rampage), who looks like Jerry Seinfeld dressed as Mötley Crüe for Halloween, they appear entirely interchangeable. One of them (Allen First, also American Rampage) has a shaving fetish and convinces Amy to let him Schick her legs while she sits on the toilet.

Then the guys start to get killed, in bursts of gore so unexpected that the first instance — sledgehammer, meet head — is bound to catch you off-guard, even though I just told you. That makes Murder Weapon unique among the DeCoteau oeuvre and, amazingly, the unpredictability doesn’t stop there. Now, that doesn’t mean he fails to deliver his usual completely gratuitous and entirely overlong softcore sex scenes; in fact, each starlet gets her turn, with Quigley’s being the most memorable. Russell may be more beautiful, but only Quigley gives a rousing round of what appears to be “seizure sex,” concluding with nipples so out-and-about, they look like pop-up turkey timers.

For virtually any other movie featuring a post-Carol Burnett Show Lyle Waggoner (Danger USA), mentioning Lyle Waggoner’s appearance would be among its 10 most odd elements. Not with Murder Weapon, so strange it almost approaches a surrealistic genius of happy accidents. Knowing what I know now, wondering what the flick would be stripped of all abnormalities is something I don’t want to consider. To borrow a quote from Amy, it “makes my tits shrink just thinking about it.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Between Mark Harmon and Zac Efron, what is it about playing Ted Bundy that causes pretty-boy actors to up their game? Whatever the answer, we’ll not be adding Chad Michael Murray (2005’s House of Wax remake) to that short list based upon his portrayal of the infamous serial killer in Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman, yet through no fault of his own.

Written and directed by Daniel Farrands (The Amityville Murders), American Boogeyman follows Bundy and his trusty VW Beetle through a four-year interstate murder spree, starting in 1974. Also following his exploits before they know his identity are FBI agent Robert Ressler and Seattle police detective Kathleen McChesney, respectively played by newcomer Jake Hays (son of Airplane!’s Robert) and Holland Roden (Escape Room: Tournament of Champions). The movie doesn’t do justice to either real-life authority figure, but especially McChesney, reduced to a cop-show cliché: “I’m going to get him … if it’s the last thing I do.”

The last third preps for a climactic sorority-house slaughter viewers know is forthcoming, even if they’re unfamiliar with the actual event at Florida State University, due to the multiple establishing shots of the Chi Omega house sign. Indicative of American Boogeyman’s production level, every scene is sparsely populated, no matter the location; even the Chi O home appears to have only half a dozen residents.

Farrands’ film is serviceable to a point: the point it’s clear the project is pure exploitation — somewhere around the pretentious, Dexter-stretching narration kicks in. American Boogeyman is interested only in depicting Bundy being Bundy, in essence becoming a greatest-kills reel of extraordinarily poor taste. It errs in not exploring its subject beyond a surface-level celebrity, perhaps wrongly assuming you have prior knowledge of his story.

Ironically, in failing to show a shred of Ted’s supposed charisma or give him a speck of humanity, it feels icky enough to be on his side, like how a Halloween sequel of the Dimension era fetishized its boogeyman as something of a fanboy hero; not coincidentally, Farrands penned 1995’s problem-plagued Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. (Let the record show Farrands excels at documentaries on hallowed horror franchises, including Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy and His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th.)

With so many scenes that provoke titters instead of terror, it’s hard to believe the movie isn’t at least half a put-on. Fliers posted across the FSU campus read “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?” but instead of a police sketch of Bundy, the illustration is a pair of eyes behind your garden-variety ski mask. A feverish, seemingly meth-edited montage cuts between Bundy furiously masturbating and Bundy berating mannequins, ending with him awaking the next morning in a bed full of mannequin parts. Subtle! Creative choices such as those ensure Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman isn’t going to be — as a police sergeant shouts — just “another Zodiac hippie devil-worshipping Charles fucking Manson on our hands!” —Rod Lott

If the makers of the Norwegian disaster movies The Wave and The Quake have no plans to round out their trilogy, the makers of the Norwegian disaster movie The Tunnel have done it for them — or at least gave it a valiant try.

On a very snowy Christmas Eve, a bunch of people — and one hamster — get trapped inside a 5.6-mile tunnel on a mountain pass. Blame falls on the driver of a fuel tanker spooked by a plastic bag. His overreaction causes an accident that, one leak later, turn into a full-blown explosion that fills the tunnel with deadly smoke. With no emergency exits existing, the victims’ only hope is the nearby village fire department.

While not the chief, our Viggo Mortensen fill-in hero is Stein (Thorbjørn Harr, Stockholm), a widow with a new love (Lisa Carlehed, Department Q franchise reboot The Marco Effect) and a resentful, pink-haired teen daughter (newcomer Ylva Lyng Fuglerud). Naturally, the latter angrily runs from an argument with Dad straight on a bus to Oslo — a bus now stuck in the tunnel, giving Stein all the impetus to whip into Sylvester Stallone mode.

The Tunnel is reminiscent of Stallone’s own tunnel thriller, 1996’s Daylight, in that both become mighty tedious shortly after the disaster occurs. Here, after Villmark Asylum director Pål Øie spends about 30 minutes placing his flammable pawns on the board, the tanker goes kablooey; as the dust settles, so does the picture’s pulse. It’s well-made and the characters are likable, but when the rescue half arrives, predictability takes center stage and doesn’t allow enough variety to join. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.