One-Liners: Underdogs

PATTI CAKES (B+) - This tale of a chubby New Jersey white girl who wants to be a rap star has a lot of heart and a good feel for the rhythms of working class lives.

You can quibble with the paint-by-numbers narrative arc and a few corny characterizations, but this labor of love from debut writer-director Geremy Jasper is smart, funny and touching, mostly in all the right places. TV actress Danielle Macdonald ("The East"), an Australian, nails the Jersey patois and attitude as Patti, the ringleader of a trio of misfits who long for human contact as much as they crave superstardom. She is joined by Siddharth Dhananjay as Jheri (the smooth T Pain wannabe) and Mamoudou Athie as the mystical anarchist Basterd, who creates sonic soundscapes in his shack in the park.

Patti, or Killer P (nee Patricia Dombrowski, or Dumbo to her fat-shaming detractors), must compete with her mother, a middle-aged hot mess trying to reclaim her glory as a young diva who almost broke big. Barb (Bridget Everett, one of the hilarious pals to Maria Bamford on Netflix's "Lady Dynamite) hooks up with a cop and fronts his blues band -- but her pipes are long destroyed by cigarettes and booze. And Barb does not approve of her daughter's dabblings in black culture.

The movie often seems on the brink of descending into a pity party, but the three young actors ooze confidence in their portrayal of a nerdy trio of musketeers who refuse to give up on their ambitions. Jasper scores a Springsteen track to lend cred to the production. And most important, the raps that Jasper pens for Patti are perfect -- clever but not too intricate such that a 20-something product of New Jersey's public schools couldn't knock them out with some effort.

When the inevitable rap battle kicks in at the climax, the outcome feels about right, even if the flourish at the end of Patti's performance is just a bit too precious. And the scenes with Patti's ailing grandmother, played by Cathy Moriarty ("Raging Bull"), occasionally teeter on the mawkish. But Jasper knows these characters inside and out, and he would never let them go forward without being true to their roots.

COLD IN JULY (C) - Too long, too confusing, too cluttered and too much of Texas noir porn, this one is more of a curiosity for performances by grizzled old cowboys Sam Shepard and Don Johnson.

This stem-winder has a long, dull setup that leads to a midpoint twist. Dane (Michael C. Hall from TV's "Dexter") shoots an intruder in his home, and he and his family are soon being stalked by the man's father (Shepard) -- or so it all seems. None of the characters are particularly compelling, and the detective story that ensues in the second half lacks true intrigue.

We're left with admiring those two old coots, Shepard (in one of his last roles) and Johnson, as big a hoot as he was in HBO's "Eastbound and Down." But even Johnson can't spit out all the clever Texasisms with a straight face consistently. "I need a drink," his character spits. "And I haven't even had my goddamned coffee yet."

Bloated at 109 minutes, "Cold in July" tries to get by on mood and crude. By the time the bloody climax hits, you'll wonder what all the fuss is about.

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (C-minus) - This is a great idea, and must have been a pretty good book, but the film version of this zombie romp with a twist sits flat on the screen and descends into tedium during a sloppy middle third.

Newcomer Sennia Nanua plays Melanie, a tween housed among other children who are afflicted with a zombie fungus but who still function fairly normally as long as they don't get a whiff of human, while being immune to attacks from other "hungries." Looking not unlike an old British boarding school, the remote military facility is also used as research conducted by Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close), who sacrifices the children one at a time as she zeroes in on a cure.

When it's Melanie's turn to be euthanized, kindly teacher Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton) interrupts the experiment, causing a breach at the facility and an infiltration by zombies. Melanie and a handful of adults survive and hit the road like a post-apocalyptic A-Team. Once they are mobile, the film descends into a series of zombie movie cliches, including pointless violence, an odd twist involving fungus-laden spores, and a few idiot-plot devices.

Nanua is wonderful as the young girl who clings to her humanity and forms a real bond with Miss Justineau. But poor, poor Glenn Close is reduced to a screaming hysteric by the final reel, a sad turn of affairs for one of the great actresses of her generation.

Rarely does this rise above the level of a decent AMC TV serial. What veteran TV director Colm McCarthy does have is a riveting opening 20 minutes and a killer ending. What he doesn't have is a movie.

BONUS TRACK
The "Patti Cakes" trailer: