Starring SNL alumni Sasheer Zamata in the lead, the trio head out of the city to stay with Zadie’s mother’s B&B for a little country getaway. At first it seems like things are going OK, save for a couple of awkward moments between Zadie and Margo. They go for a walk, have a nice home cooked dinner, but when another guest arrives for the night (Y’lan Noel), the group is knocked off balance, and old feelings quickly come to the fore.

While this off-kilter romance boasts a pleasantly indie vibe, unfortunately the films takes everything a little too casually to be effective as a comedy. The pace is very plodding, meandering its way through only a handful of plot points, and while the relationship dynamics are interesting, we aren’t invested in the characters enough for it to really mean anything. Why did Zadie and Bradford break up? How long have he and new beau been together? Have there been any clashes between Zadie and Margo up to this point?

Perhaps the plot would have worked a lot better as a single episode inside a longer TV series, but for me it lacked the punch it needed to pull the heartstrings this way and that. Coupled with a very misplaced score and it creates a series of very strained scenes that do little to jump out of the screen.

The Weekend isn’t a disaster. It’s authentic, Sasheer Zamata is pret ty solid and it’s not _not entertaining_, but also I’m not intrigued enough for a second watch to find out if there’s a deeper meaning that’s drawn out when you jump back in.

Set in Miami, Moses Al Shabaz (Marchánt Davis) is the leader of the Star of Six, a community farm and mission that hopes to overturn the “accidental dominance of the white people”. Moses suffers from mental health issues and comes to believe a series of escalating delusions, telling his followers that God and the Devil speak to him through a duck, and that he knows of secret CIA schemes like breeding a small group of dinosaurs. Though a more immediate worry is that he needs money to save his family and followers from eviction.

Introduced by a paid informant, it comes to pass that the FBI try to trick Moses into becoming an arms dealer by fueling his madcap revolutionary dreams, though before long things are totally out of control, both in the Star of Six, and the offices of the FBI.

The Day Shall Come tells a dark and chilling story, deeply rooted in satire but with a very apt and tragically accurate ending. The film unfortunately captures our power structures so well, as law enforcement take advantage of Moses’ poor mental health to simply meet quota.

The cast is superb, with Marchánt Davis excellent as Moses and some slick performances in the side roles too. Comedian Jame Adomian steals every scene he’s in as officer Settmonk, while Anna Kendrick adds clout even if she’s a little underused.

The film does stutter a little though in the middle act, and while the lead-in works, ditto the big climax, some of the posturing at the film’s core doesn’t quite sell the flip on Moses. The film isn’t quite silly enough to descend into farce, while it isn’t serious enough to be considered a thriller, The Day Shall Come falls somewhat awkwardly in the middle. However, creating a discussion about mental  health deserves great praise, especially among people of colour, and means this is a film that in the end does elevate it’s subject matter, which is the hardest thing to do of all.

A surreal suburban satire in the image of absurdist shows like Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh, it’s hard to state how bizarre everyday life is in Greener Grass. Starring writer/directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe as two competing soccer moms, wanting a baby, Jill (DeBoer) gives her friend Lisa (Luebbe) her own newly born, and then everything else starts to fall away around her too.

I really wanted to like the film, I like absurdist comedy, I like films that try something different, but everything about this world fell flat and I barely managed a chuckle throughout the entire 101-minute running time. Even star of the cast, Beck Bennett, so excellent on SNL really struggles here.

Once the weird starts, it just keeps coming at 100mph. There’s a kid who turns into a dog, someone who sticks a volleyball up her dress in an effort to convince everyone she’s pregnant, but the surreal world DeBoer and Luebbe have created just isn’t funny. Expanding a 15-minute short, unfortunately Greener Grass doesn’t know how to turn a skit into a something resembling a plot. No doubt a lot of e ffort into crating this strange creation – DeBoer and Luebbe definitely score an A+ for weird – but weird doesn’t always equal comedy, and this film is stark proof to that end.

But things are about to change. When her dad cuts her off, Sasha quickly realises how reliant she was on the family fund. Meetings about her clothing designs aren’t going well, and her so-called friends suddenly aren’t so interested when she isn’t flashing her cheque book, ultimately she’s given a choice; back to to the family home in China and chip in on the family business, or be cut off forever. The next day, she’s on a plan back to Hong Kong.

A story of culture clashes and family drama, Sasha struggles to adapt to the change of pace at the family-owned toy factory, as Go Back To China charts Sasha’s struggle to adapt to the change of pace, and new responsibility.

But as Sasha tries to forge new relationships with her father and sister, the film unfortunately struggles to find a deeper meaning too. Though Go Back to China is a semi-autobiographical tale from writer/director Emily Ting – she too went back to China from the US, to help out in the very same factory where much of the film is shot – the film feels oddly impersonal. The dialogue is quite simplistic and you can predict every plot point long before the narrative takes hold. It’s strange, because for a film with quite a unique story, the heartfelt care and attention that clearly went into crafting every scene, the end result is unfortunately quite bland.

On-screen Anna Akana and Lynn Chen are exce llent though, and somewhere inside Go Back to China there is a great story trying to fight its way out, I just don’t think this film hit the heights it set out to achieve.

So not sure what to expect, they meet with the family lawyer who presents just one item, a sword. But not just any old sword, Cynthia’s grandfather claimed it proves that the South won the Civil War.

Hoping to sell the sword for a quick buck, the couple team up with local pawn shop owner (Marc Maron) and his lacklustre assistant (Jon Bass). The foursome agree the split the profits, and a few internet rabbit holes later, find a potential buyer who is very interested in sword’s “unique backstory”, though it’s a world they quickly regret stepping into.

Shot in a remarkable 12 days from just a scriptment by Shelton and Mike O’Brien, the dialogue is largely improvised as the meandering film both lives by, and dies by, the sword (no pun intended).

Where it works, and the snappy cast are let loose in a scene to fantastic effect, the film raises more than a few laughs and really entertains in scenes of relative isolation. But it struggles to maintain a strong sense of narrative in between, feeling quite loose and baggy where the audience sometimes needed to be swept along from point to point.

Much of the film is watching the foursome talking, scheming, bickering. And while I could watch the excellent cast for hours as they go back and forth (Jon Bass is particularly excellent), for a narrative film, they lack that extra depth, a second side of the film alongside the relative farce of the sword. It didn’t need to be anything earth shattering, just somewhere else to go too.

Nevertheless this is a subject area ripe for play, and while Sword of Truth is hardly a take-down of conspiracy theorists and revisionist history, it pokes fun as those elements of society with excellent effect. And there’s no doubt you’re rooting for the ragtag foursome when they find themselves in a little too deep with some particularly bizarre characters.

Sword of Truth is not a total success, but it’s cer tainly not a failure either. And when you consider the remarkable production timeline, Shelton deserves great credit for pulling together such entertaining, if slightly leggy, farce.