Complaining that a Miranda July film is too quirky is like complaining that the Saw franchise is too violent. Anyone who ever dabbled in performance art from an early age has had that eccentric, overzealous, slightly creepy teacher: a dance instructor in a way-too-tight leotard, jiggling to New Age music, a drama teacher overemphasizing inflections of gibberish words—Miranda July is that performance artist. Frizzy-haired, pale, and willowy, looking like a cross between ...

Jacob Tierney's film career launched in 1993, at the age of thirteen, when he starred—alongside Joan Allen, Martha Plimpton and a young Jake Gyllenhaal—in the adolescent road trip comedy/drama Josh and S.A.M. For the next ten years, the Quebec-born actor was cast in relatively obscure independent films featuring legendary character actors, such as Neon Bible (produced by his father, Kevin Tierney, and starring Gena Rowlands) and Rainbow (directed by and starring Bob Hoskins). In 2003, he made his directing and writing debut with Twist, an adaptation of “Oliver Twist,” and its success in Canada granted Tierney the opportunity to shoot a higher-budget film: The Trotsky, released last year to acclaim and starring geeky heartthrob Jay Baruchel of Knocked Up fame.

For Good Neighbors (which comes out today), Tierney, once again at the directing helm, cast Baruchel and Trotsky co-star Emily Hampshire, as well as Scott Speedman (most known for the TV drama Felicity) as three ill-at-ease neighbors in a dimly-lit Montreal apartment building. Adapted from Chrystine Brouillet's noirish 1982 story Chère Voisine, this black comedy concerns a serial killer on the loose, a war between an equally demented cat killer and cat enthusiast, and one of the more grotesque murder sequences of late. Screen Comment talked with Tierney about his favorite early acting experiences, his break into directing and his distaste for setting movies in our current Internet-dominated era.

Errol Morris' Tabloid (released on July 15), examines what is left, spiritually and mentally, of a once-respected, now-notorious figure, ruined by the unending scrutiny of trashy media. There is, however, one crucial difference. Mr. Death's title character, a builder of more “humane” electric chairs, essentially crucified himself when he became a rallying Holocaust denier; Morris never questions Fred Leuchter's guilt. In Tabloid, all of the subjects interviewed seem a little mad, yet they all possess hints of clarity and conviction; no one's quite smart or stupid enough to believe or disavow.

On the surface, the 2003 melodrama-turned-cult-masterpiece The Room is just a worse than usual soft-core porn film. There’s lots of horribly wooden dialogue (“Should I try the dress on?” “Sure, it’s yours”) and blocking right out of bush-league theater (characters say “Well, I’ve gotta go” to end virtually every scene). The lead actor has Fabio-length hair and comically over-toned abs and ass. The splendidly unerotic sex scenes feature candle-lit bedrooms, rain-streaked windows, third-rate Stevie Wonder clones on the soundtrack and more emphasis on luxurious satin sheets than the thrusting bodies within them. The plot, of course, is negligible: sensitive hunk’s girlfriend cheats with hunk’s vacant best friend.

“Bad Teacher” aims to be the sister comedy to 2003's "Bad Santa," another one-joke, R-rated premise about supposedly kid-friendly people hating and cursing out kids, with hints of the more lighthearted “School of Rock” thrown in. But “Bad Santa” went all the way with its indecencies, and had an actual plot framed around them. And in “School of Rock,” the joke was that Jack Black’s teacher was the child, learning to shed his ego through his students’ sweetness.

In June 2009, O’Brien graduated from Late Night on NBC, replacing Jay Leno on the Tonight Show and knocking him back to an ill-conceived 10 PM slot; seven months later, due to poor ratings all around and complaints from NBC affiliates, Leno’s show was moved back to 11:35 PM, and O’Brien was asked to take a 12:05 AM slot. He refused, pointing out that an after-midnight slot isn’t “the Tonight show,” and walked away with $45 million. Not too shabby—most of us would have jumped at such an opportunity, and we wouldn’t get squat if we turned it down. But as the movie makes clear, Conan O’Brien is a wreck without an audience. When the filmmakers ask him if he’s ever happy out of the spotlight, he glares at them, and he doesn’t seem to be joking around. For the first time, Conan’s freakish height, his chuckle-under-the-breath Irish humor—laced with contempt even when goofily self-mocking—is more intimidating than funny.

In a Judd Apatow production, no mention of gastrointestinal or bodily fluid concerns is overlooked . So naturally, the meat-eaters pay their price. Just after they’ve slipped into $800 dresses at a high-end boutique shop, their stomachs start rumbling, their faces redden, the sweat breaks out. Soon, two of the women are hurtling to the shop’s single bathroom, vomiting on their gowns—and each other— into a single toilet. Meanwhile, the fat, bawdy Megan (Melissa McCarthy) defecates into a sink; Wiig swallows her puke along with a breathmint; and, in the most disturbing fecal-related cinematic shot since Divine actually consumed dog shit in “Pink Flamingos,” the gown-clad bride herself (Maya Rudolph), dashing to find an unoccupied restroom, has a full-blown “accident” in the middle of a busy intersection.