Donkey Punch - Opens Jan. 23

Sailing out to sea, seven attractive Brits take some E, and in the middle of some naughty sex some rather nasty violence occurs. In Donkey Punch—the title refers to a technique used to heighten orgasm during anal sex—a character dies during the act, which, as it happens, was being recorded. Oops! Is someone guilty of murder? Was it an overdose? Will the incriminating tape fall into the sea along with the corpse—or into the “wrong” hands? It is hard to care, given the film’s selfish, dumb-headed characters, but it is fun to watch.

Co-writer/director Olly Blackburn tries to keep the tension mounting along with the body count as alliances are formed and double crosses happen. But after the first death, he fails to do much to quicken the pulse. The availability of life-ending props is more palpable than the claustrophobic nature of the yacht or the characters’ dire situation.

However, Donkey Punch is less about murder and its consequences and more about how the threat of death or jail helps reconfigure the truth to cover one’s ass. As such, the pleasure of watching this film is less about considering who is morally right and if they deserve to survive than it is watching good-looking people behaving very badly. B- —Gary M. Kramer

The Lodger - Opens Jan. 23

It’s hard to be a serial killer thriller in the shadow of Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs. There’ve been some good ones—David Fincher’s Seven and Zodiac spring to mind—but the genre’s collapsed beneath the weight of inferior movies (Copycat, anyone?).

So it’s no shame that Daniel Ondaajte’s feature film debut, The Lodger, doesn’t come close to its forebears. But did it have to be so enervated?

Based on a 1913 novel updated to modern L.A., The Lodger features Alfred Molina as Chandler Manning, an investigator hunting a Jack the Ripper-style killer. Hope Davis is Ellen Bunting, a bored housewife in a loveless marriage (to Donal Logue, playing the McGuffin). Simon Baker is Malcolm Slater, the mysterious lodger who rents Ellen’s guest house. Slater’s M.O. immediately fingers him as the killer: He demands privacy, he keeps odd hours, he carries a black leather bag. But so does Ellen’s husband!

The plot twists and turns, then twists and turns again, yet it’s not dizzying, just inept—filmmaking techniques are used without logic (the best is Ellen’s high-speed preparation of tea!); there are needless duplicities (pick a scene, any scene); and the acting…well. Davis—beloved from Next Stop Wonderland—gives a regretfully wooden performance, Molina is lifeless, and Baker is bland (the biggest mystery being who gave him the bad black hair dye?). D —Dan Loughry

Serbis - Opens Jan. 30

In Brillante Mendoza’s latest film, a Filipino family in the throes of financial troubles deals with the day-in, day-out routine of running a dilapidated adult movie theater in the City of Angels. Shot with a sort-of cinema verité style, the movie tracks one day in the lives of the Pineda family: “Auntie” Flor (Gina Pareno) awaits the outcome of a bigamy case against her philandering estranged husband; her married daughter, Nayda (Jacky Jose), deals with incestuous thoughts about her cousin Ronald, who also lives in the building; her son, Alan (Coco Martin), is upset over the unplanned pregnancy of his girlfriend, Merly (Mercedes Cabral) and in pain from a boil on his butt; and his brother, Ronald (Kristopher King), has sex with the gay rent boys that frequent the theater in between changing film reels. All of the action in the movie is set against the backdrop of the theater, a local hang-out for the gay hustlers who like to have sex in the auditorium, which sees its share of action. (Indeed, between Alan having sex with Merly, Ronald getting serviced by a rent boy and all the hustlers getting it on in the theater, the movie is filled with graphic depictions of both homo and hetero sex.)

The film’s Super-8 realism is admirable, but it might also be its biggest hindrance: How much one likes the movie will depend on his or her fondness for long tracking shots of people walking up and down stairs and movies in which the monotony of day-to-day life is championed. But there’s something at once fascinating—and frustrating—about the whole affair, and it’s certainly worth a look for those who gravitate toward such naturalistic indie fare. B —Ken Knox