First came Megan Mylan and John Shenk‘s The Lost Boys of Sudan (’03), a doc about the struggle of two Sudanese youths to adapt to U.S. culture after fleeing civil war in their country. Then came Christopher Quinn‘s God Grew Tired of Us (debut at 2006 Sundance, released a year later), a “lusciously photographed, exquisitely edited documentary about John, Daniel and Panther — three young Sudanese men, all refugees from their country’s ongoing, utterly devastating civil war — who escape to America to start new lives only to encounter profound longings for home and family, and no small measure of guilt.” And now, finally, The Good Lie (Warner Bros., 10.3) — a presumably heart-tugging Reese Witherspoon narrative version from director Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar) and producer Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. Reese plays a humanitarian worker who helps four orphaned men (Arnold Oceng, Ger Duany, Emmanuel Jal, Nyakuoth Weil) find a place to live, some working income and a way to bring the rest of their families to the States. Corey Stoll costars.

Tony Zhou‘s video essay about Martin Scorsese‘s fine use of silences ignores — naturally! — that his next film, which begins shooting next month in Taiwan, is an adaptation of Shusaku Endo‘s Silence. From the moment I first heard of it the concept of Scorsese’s Silence (i.e., son of Kundun mixed with a parable about today’s wacko Christians and Islamics?) has filled me with dread. I don’t want Scorsese guiding me into the gloom of 17th Century Japan. I want him taking me into 21st Century Newark or Oakland or some other den of iniquity and laying on the gangster shit.

When director Raoul Walsh allegedly “borrowed” the body of the recently deceased John Barrymore and then “left his corpse propped in a chair for a drunken Errol Flynn to discover when he returned home from The Cock and Bull Bar,” it was obviously an exercise in macabre humor. The “fun and games with a stiff” concept was used more flamboyantly in Ted Kotcheff‘s Weekend at Bernie’s (’89). But now, according to a 6.22 N.Y. Times story, this shit is happening for real — not humorously but earnestly, respectfully, lovingly. Are these people deranged? Why stop at placing the dearly departed in a sitting position at a dinner table? Why not stand the corpse up with a steel rod, put it on a platform with wheels and give various mourners a chance to waltz with it around the dance floor? Why not put a microphone in the corpse’s upraised hand and play the deceased favorite songs and pretend that the corpse is singing to them karaoke-style?

My initial viewing of James Byrkit‘s Coherence was on my Macbook Air, so I decided to catch last night’s 9:45 pm show at the Los Feliz 3. Almost as engrossing, definitely worth it, big-screen detail, etc. Emily Baldoni was chatting with admirers in front of the plex when I got there. Coherence is almost certainly the coolest low-budget flick playing anywhere right now, but that doesn’t imply it’s anything but a very creepy little mindfuck. Wells to Byrkit #1: Forget the Manohla Dargis pan — everyone has their blind spots and she has hers. Wells to Byrkit #2: After reading about the Twilight Zone influence, I naturally assumed that the specific trigger was “Mirror Image,” the 1960 Vera Miles-Martin Miler episode that most closely resembles your film. I was more than a bit surprised, therefore, when you said in an interview with Complex.com’s Matt Barone that “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” “is definitely the biggest influence on the movie, no question.” May I respectfully disagree? Never trust the artist — trust the tale.

Something got my attention when those new photos from Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman appeared on Entertainment Weekly‘s site on 6.19. That marquee shot informs that Michael Keaton‘s actor character is named Riggan Thomson, and right away it hit me that I’d never once heard or read about a guy named Riggan in my entire effing life. Not even when I visited Ireland in ’88. So I ran it by pokemyname.com, and here’s what they had to say:

“In order of popularity in the U.S., the name Riggan ranks at 30,487. In other words, there are 30,486 names that are more popular than Riggan. One in every 702,203 Americans is named Riggan. For every million people in this country, 1.42 persons are named Riggan. As of 6.21.14 there are 456 people named Riggan in the United States and the number is increasing by 4 people every year. The use of Riggan as a middle name is more common than its usage as a first name.”